Boys in the Garden
Joseph helps me water some lilies I transplanted last fall.
John plays with one of the many snakes that like to sunbathe underneath the black plastic in the garden.
Daniel making mischief helping in the garden:
Gardening
Spring Flowers
More crocuses:
To get a really good idea of how different this spring has been from past years, I went back and looked at pictures of this same group of tulips in full bloom. This year they started blooming on April 1, and last year thy were blooming on May 7, and the year before on May 15!
This bulb grouping has been a great success. I planted four tulips and two daffodils in the fall of 2007, and now there are over twenty tulips and nearly thirty daffodils!
Interesting mushrooms Joseph found in my garden.
Sunny Surprise
Doing a little weeding in the garden, a small splash of yellow caught my eye. I looked down and was astonished to see that it was a flower no taller than my thumb.
I was wondered for a moment where it had come from, then suddenly remembered the crocuses I had planted last fall. I have been waiting for them to come up for several weeks now, but I had been looking for them on the opposite side of the garden!
Birds and Butterflies
Last year I let the weeds take over the garden. This year, however, I’ve been keeping on top of the weeds (with help from Johnathan, Alexander, and Joseph), and my perennial garden is really thriving. This has drawn a multitude of butterflies to our yard, and species I had never even seen in our yard, such as tiger swallowtails, now visit us daily. Today I was also fortunate enough to see a viceroy on the aptly named butterfly bush, a kind of butterfly I didn’t even know lived in South Dakota. It was kind enough to stay around long enough for me to run inside and get my camera, and let me get really close to it.
God gave the Viceroys a very effective disguise, and they look like the poisonous monarch to fool birds. The only way to tell them apart is by the line the viceroy has on the hindwings, which the monarch lacks.
Tiger swallowtails are very easy to catch, and I caught this one with only my hands! I brought it inside to show Mom and the boys, then let it go again outside.
Coneflowers attract not only butterflies, but hungry goldfinches as well!
My Gardening Buddy
Daniel is very fond of ‘helping’ me in the garden. He loves to tag along by my side, carrying a shovel along with him, blissfuly happy to be doing exactly what I am doing.
He will point to any plant he sees and ask, “Weed?” If I tell him he is correct, he will rip as many leaves off as he can with a disgusted face:
Sometimes he is lucky and pulls out the root as well. Other times he gets carried away-
-and doesn’t ask whether his prey is a weed or not. Here he is repentant for pulling a balloon flower bloom.
If I tell him the plant is a flower, he will bend down to smell it.
Garden Tour
On Wednesday my Grandma took Maria and I on to a Garden Tour. It was a lovely day, cool with a fresh breeze blowing gently. We rode a school bus (for the first time) to five different gardens around our city. The gardens ranged in size from a normal backyard to a giant estate, and were very fun to look at. I took a lot of pictures of the flowers we saw, and some of them turned out very well:
This water lily is my favorite.
There was a man taking pictures of flowers, and he showed me a couple nice pictures he had taken of bees on flowers.. He asked me if I had any pictures of bees. When I replied I hadn't, he chided me for "Not watching out for those bee pictures." So I stood in front of a patch of coneflowers and waited, hoping to shoot a bee photograph. A few moments later, Maria called my attention to what she thought was a monarch butterfly. I quickly turned my camera in its direction, and as it alighted on a flower, I was able to snap a picture. At the same time, I realized it wasn't a monarch, but a butterfly I had never seen before. Later I found out it was either a Aphrodite Fritillary or a Great Spangled Fritillary. (They are distinguished from each other only by a small marking on the underside of the wings, which I never got to see.)
Advent of Spring
Every year, the same signs herald the rise of spring and the death of winter, yet every year these changes are as exciting and as fascinating as before. Today, the first of the annual signs appeared, as the first of my tulips emerged from below the earth.
The columbine also, one of my favorite spring flowers, decided it was time for a second try at coming up. (It was fooled by the short warm week in mid February, only to get nipped by temperatures in the single digits.
There was also an enormous migration of snow geese in the morning and early afternoon, with large V’s of birds visible in the sky at any moment. I looked them up in a bird book, and found that they winter in the southern US, and are now journeying to the uppermost region of Canada and Alaska for the summer. They were very loud, and although they were only small shadows high in the sky their distinctive honk was clearly audible from the ground.
One of the smaller flocks of geese.
Pumpkin
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From the Garden
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A white balloon flower. I also have some blue ones, but it only has buds on it right now.
This is why they are called 'balloon flowers.'
The first baby pumpkin.
Raspberries. We got to eat a handful today, and another handful is still ripening. Really good, since you aren't supposed to get any the first year you plant them.
Lovely lily.
This is bee balm. I didn't notice the ant until after I took the picture.
A shasta Daisy.
A purple coneflower.
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Spring in the Garden
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Pictures from the Garden
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These pictures were taken with my brand new Canon powershot SD790IS, which I bought on Tuesday. It is a big upgrade from my old camera, having twice the pixels.
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Spring Pictures
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A goldfinch high in a tree
Spinach from the garden
Columbine in bloom
Another columbine plant
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