Planters

My wife is very creative and has a knack for adding significant color to our back yard palette. This is a planter she fell in love with at our local garden center and carefully directed me to fill it with flowers that accent planter and create an interesting color scheme.
Here's my attempt to be creative. Notice that everything is orange or nearly orange. This planter makes me think of orange creamsicles or push pops I used to eat when I was a kid.

This is another interesting collection designed by my wife. It's flowering very well. I especially like the flame flowers and how they interact with the pinks from the impatiens and the coleus.

This is a planter I built last year and filled with geraniums. I forgot to fill the drain holes this year (I noticed it got very dry last year) so the flowers had a rough start. There are several blossoms ready to open now, though. I'll get another picture shortly. In the meantime, who's that two headed ghost in my garage?
This is a planter that I picked out. It belonged to my wife's mother. We brought it here after her passing and I planted this red and white mix. The allysum has nearly filled the container and the geranium is ready to send out a bunch of new blossoms.

Alley Development

Our house came with a well established colony of bleeding hearts on the alley side. In addition to being beautiful, I found these especially fitting considering the connotation of some liberals to be 'bleeding hearts.' Mixed in with the traditional pink blossoms are some interesting white blossoms.

It's hard to make out in this picture, but these are bold yellow tulips in full bloom. To the left are some stragglers from the bleeding heart group and a hearty collection of my favorite irises in the world. There color is a deep sunset orange and there are tons of them.

Here's a shot of the house with the crab apples in bloom. Initially these trees appeared to be dying and our first two springs were disappointing because the petals fell off the blossoms right before they bloomed. We then learned that they were being attacked by a fungus which caused the leaves to turn yellow and fall throughout the summer. I try to avoid using many chemicals in my yard (as evidenced by the impressive crop of dandelions I turn our every spring, much to the chagrin of my neighbor), so I was reluctant to start spraying fungicide around the front of the house. Instead, I found an application that mixes with water and is introduced to the plant at the roots. I've used this for the past two springs and have been extremely pleased with the huge blossoms and lush foliage the trees produce now.

Here's a shot of the rain barrel shortly after it was installed. The green branch hanging over the edging is a raspberry of some sort. It seems to be doing well and may actually produce fruit this year.

This was another pleasant surprise this spring. We had been trying to cultivate columbine in our ally wild flower garden and had been having no luck until this awesome white columbine flowered. It made several seed pods and I intend to help it propagate this fall as the pods dry out.

Enjoying the 'Stay'-cation

Partly as a way to reduce our carbon footprint, partly because gas is so expensive we can't plan any long trips right now, we have embarked upon a stay-cation. The Superior Hiking Trail runs through Duluth now and we have nearly forty miles of trail to explore right in our own back yard.
This is the view from the top of the winding steps that we encountered near the beginning of the trail, from where we started at Spirit Mountain. We chose to start here and hike two sections of the trail, so we ended up on Skyline Parkway. We drove two vehicles, but neither of them drove much further than we would have if we went to the mall, if we did that much.
This is as close as Lulu would let me get with the camera.

This is a picture from the bridge over Kingsbury Creek, which flows into the Lake Superior Zoo.
A special thanks to everyone along on the trip that day- I had no idea how dumb I looked wearing that hat until now. I know I can count on you guys to let me wander around, oblivious to and resplendent in my dorkiness.

As we trekked northward on the trail, we emerged from the heavily wooded portion and meandered through several upland meadows. The wildflowers were in full bloom.

All along the way were amazing vistas like this one. I had no idea that we has such great scenery so close to home. It was interesting to have this kind of wilderness with the highway so close that we could hear semi's down shifting on Thompson Hill.

New Rain Barrel

Here's a look at the Rain Barrel 2.0. I added two new barrels to the front of the house this spring; this one is on the alley side. The goofy snorkel looking thing sticking out of the top is just that- it allows air to escape from the barrel while it is filling. So far, we've had rain and dry spells staggered sufficiently that I've watered mostly from the barrels and have been able to use most of the water in them before the next rain.

This is a close up of the flower planted on top. This is aesthetic- it reduces the industrial look of the barrels.

The Garden House

We discovered The Garden House through the kindness and charity of my co-workers after a recent loss in our family. As part of their condolences, we were given a gift certificate to this wonderful green house and garden center. It truly seems to defy laws of space and time. Here are some examples of our plunder, waiting to be planted.

We visited The Garden House shortly after it opened on May 1. Some of the flowers are still waiting to be planted, but we have the majority of them in their planters or in the ground where we want them.

Update

Our Crocus in full bloom last month. We also have several that are dark purple, but they were wilted before the picture was taken. This is supposed to be a sign of spring, but I kept watching them get snowed on, so I don't think it worked out the way it's meant to this year.

Busy Times

It's been two months since I last updated the blog and there have been tons of changes around the old homestead. Since the April posting I have changed jobs, which involved many hours of resume writing, interviewing, waiting, and making some tough decisions. Needless to say, there wasn't much room left for blogging. In addition, this spring has been moody. Twice I attempted to harden off or plant some of my seedlings, only to have them whipped senseless by the wind or unexpected drops in temperature. I've supplemented the garden with several purchased plants and it seems to be coming together pretty well. I'll get some pictures out this week and share all the wonderful updates to the horticultural palette!