Spring keeps getting better

Love birds are flying everywhere. They are fighting over the boxes, but I am sure soon they will have all that straightened out between them.My small purple wisteria. And my white wisteria on the arbor in the backyard. Someday it will be as large as the one we had in Halls, but it still has a way to go.

Purple Wisteria

I am home from Stitches South. Had a WONDERFUL time, spent way too much time ( and money) in the market place. Came home with yarn and ideas for myself and to sell (for my Etsy shop). In time I will show my workshop accomplishments, none of which are quite complete at this time. I took two entrelac workshops from a wonderful teacher, Gwen Bortiner, one of the nations top entrelac experts. She has an entrelac book coming out in August at Stitches Midwest, out for the general public in September. Sweaters, etc in this book, I can't wait to get my copy, but I won't be going to Stitches Midwest.

Oh yes, the purple wisteria above is not at my arbor, but in my backyard. It is from my mother's yard, which means it is from my Granny's yard. Wish I knew where all Granny's flowers originated, may be from several more generations of my family.

a stroll through my yard this morning

The morning started out a little on the cool side, but it is a gorgeous day in East Tennessee. I got out with my camera and took a stroll, came back with over 100 photos, some of which I am sharing here. More than I usually put in one post. Daffodils
Purple Leaf Sand Cherry Tree

Next came my old fashioned bleeding hearts. It always amazes me that this delicate looking plant comes out before frost is all gone, and does not seem to be affected by the cold. Mid summer everybody thinks it is dying, it just can not take the heat, but it comes back early spring.I promise to share more photos from this little delicate plant.

more Daffodils

Wildflower - Little Brown Jug....looking good

The white dogwoods are just beginning to show a little bit.

Redbud that Jimmy had trimmed way back because it was shading too many of my flowers.

Common Columbine

more Daffodils

Flowering Almond, already fading. I have 4 of these in my yard.
(Acquired from my Mother)

This Wisteria will be blooming all over itself in the next day or two. This Wisteria is about waist high, tiny as far as Wisteria go, but it is going to be covered. I have other Wisteria, including white, but they are not as far along as this one.

And finally to the fruit trees. Hope I get pears off this one this year. Year before last I had pears, but not last year. Time will tell.

hopefully the bee is helping my chances at fruit on my many different fruit trees

I hope everybody is having a wonderful weekend. We are getting together with our children and grandchildren tomorrow afternoon. The grandchildren get to try out the new swings their Papa has hung for them.

Can you smell the Wisteria?

My Granny Sorrells had wisteria at her farmhouse. This is the same Granny I received daffodils and a plain white iris from. I probably also received my love of flowers from her. These photos are not from my yard. Wish this first one was my yard. When we bought our property in October 2004 the 2 acres had been part of a pasture field. It will take several more years before we have anything remotely close to this. At our previous yard we had a purple wisteria and a white wisteria planted about 50 feet from each other. The above wisteria is smaller than either one of ours. When we bought at our current location Jimmy built an arbor for us to plant our wisteria startings at. The next spring we took shoots from both the white and purple, with plans of the white and purple to be mingled together this time. They have struggled, and we thought we had lost them totally. But last year they began to grow some. This spring we finally have blooms, they are ALL white. Which is ok with me, because I wasn't going to be able to get a start of the white again. The purple I can get a new start from my mother.

Some of you agreed yesterday how good the lilac bush smells.

Wisteria would overwhelm the lilac it is so strong smelling.

Now to the story of how I got my start of the white wisteria. We bought property in Knoxville that we ended out building a home on in 2000. In 1999 my office moved and I traveled a different road going to and from work. I saw this beautiful white wisteria up high in the trees on the side of a very wooded area of the highway. Jimmy and I decided to get us start of it. I babied that start until it had to be put in the ground due to it's size. We transplanted it and it lived. I begun to feel guilty about taking the start until one day I went by that same location and the county road crew and wiped out the whole bunch of it, plus another 20 ft beyond it. That spot is still cleared, so the white wisteria never came back in that location. I am so happy that I got a start from my old house and it is going to make it now. Someday I will have an arbor covered in this white wisteria and if we are all still blogging I will show it to you.

By the way, I printed the first photo just to see what it would look like for a card. Ended out putting it in one of the Mother's Day Cards in my greeting cards. I still was not sure what I thought of it, but got a very good response about it when I showed it.