Garden Walk April 06, lots blooming!

Folks, its likely the best time of the year for flowers in our garden. We are finally getting it to what we want. OK yeah right. Part of the joy of gardening in experimentation and exploration.

Anyway there is a lot of photos to share, let me begin..

  Creeping phlox.

  Creeping phlox and primrose together.

 Creeping phlox.

 Woodland phlox.

Muscari with an honey bee!

Pansies, we have lots of different pansies, this is just one of them. Survived an 8 degree night this past winter as you can see. Planted last fall.

 Daffodil 'Hawera'

 Daffodil ' Mt Hood'

Daffodil 'Actaea' Showy and tall makes a great cut flower!

 Daffodil 'Broadway Star' one of my favorites for sure.

Daffodil 'Sailboat' These produce a lot of flowers!

Daffodil 'Sir Winston Churchill'

 Daffodil 'Quail' at least I think it is Quail.

Daffodil 'Pipit'

Daffodil 'Sound'

Daffodil 'Delibe' drop dead gorgeous!

 Daffodil 'Pink Charms' never seen any pink on this.

Daffodil 'Silver Smiles'

Daffodil 'Falconet' Nice..

 
Snow Flakes!

 Penny's Pink hellebore. Wow wow!

 Bleeding Heart, this is our newest one Meg brought back from Wilmington! Nearly 3 foot tall.

 This is a tiny Wild Bleeding Heart. About 6 inches tall.

Bleeding Heart from the front garden.

 15+ year old primrose. The oldest in our garden. Has been known to shoot about 50 stems of blooms, slow to burst this year.

 We've had this primrose 3 years, man its crazy.

I split this primrose when we planted it, the other plant looks almost as good as this one.

 Blue primrose

 Red primrose

Purple primrose.

Native anemone "Windflower"in our garden.

Our newest camellia, Camellia X 'Tiny Princess'. Meg and I visited the Coker Arboretum in March of 2010 and saw this blooming with thousands of fallen flowers covering the ground. Anyway Camellia Forest had it and I brought it home, see my post from 2010 about it with photos at 

Bloom Day my first!

I've been reading Bloom Day posts for years but have never joined in with my own post. Today I'm late but wanted to join. Hellebores in the garden are really going at it, many more yet to open, so I thought I would show you what we have right now, not all but some of our best.

We plan on going on Saturday Feb. 25 to the Pine Knot Farms Hellebore Festival Any one else going let me know perhaps we could meet up? Not sure we'll buy much as taxes this year has busted our budget.

This is Red Lady one of our first hellebores we purchased, you can see why.

Helleborus Breezy 13

 Likely the biggest Helleborus hybridus in our garden. These are named 'Breezy" as our friend Breezy was moving and she let us dig these hellebores out of her garden.

Helleborus Breezy 09

 This is growing under our back deck, never seen two so different flowers on a single plant!

Helleborus Breezy 04

 Just starting in the front garden, this flower has been smiling like that at us for weeks!

Helleborus Breezy 03 

This is the first bloom on this plant really looking forward to seeing the blooms, any day....

Helleborus Breezy 08

 One of the first to open here. You can see seeds are setting in and seedlings off to the lower left.

Helleborus Breezy 07

 Been waiting to see the first blooms on this plant as well.

Helleborus foetidus 

(above showing slight pink edges and huge seed pods)

(below the full plant)

 Really proud of this plant,can it get any bigger? The bees have been enjoying all these flowers.

Pansy 'Purple Wing'
Most the pansies and violas in the garden have been slightly set back by the recent 20 degree night we had about a week ago. These look pretty good IMO.

 Ok we did not grow these lilies. Below are the locally grown lilies I got Meg for Valentines. These lilies we buy them often, the aroma can take over the house and they last about two weeks. See the large white one O measured it 9 1/2 inches across if that tells you the scale of these lilies.

Lots of people buy store purchased roses for Valentines, not many know the terrible conditions some of those roses are grown in South America and Africa. I will not bother you with the details this blog touches on it very well.

Here are the Sugar Snap Peas I planted on January 26. Seems I added organic fertilizer to one of the patches, the patch without fertilizer looks better than the one with the fertilizer. The peas planted last fall it appears the 20 degree night toasted them. Meg reminded me peas do not need fertilizer.

The bees are doing well, I added another super for honey yesterday and opened up the entrance for them to reduce the traffic jambs at the entrance. It looked like 3 out of 4 bees were returning with pollen!

Be sure to visit May Dreams Garden to see other Bloom Day posts.

Fall bees and violas planted

Yesterday it reached 70 degrees here in North Carolina, could not beat a day like that. Meg and I worked most of the day in the garden, raking leaves, getting up acorns and planting pansies and violas. Meg also pulled up the remaining pepper plants done in late last week by an icy night. I tilled in one of the remaining beds and Meg sowed a cover crop of rye grass and crimson clover.

On Friday I stopped at the farm at the bottom of the hill and got a flat of mixed pansies, 48 in the flat. Saturday while running errands Meg and I stopped at the Durham Garden Center and bought a flat of violas for a winter planting, hoping the bees would use them for food.

 Here are some of the flowers we got. Above is Victorian Burgundy pansy, this one isnew to me.

 Above is Sorbet Orange viola and below is Sorbet Yellow Frost viola, I really like this one.

 We planted the one below last year Sorbet Orange Duet viola, clearly I like this one a lot.

 Below is Sorbet Yellow Baby Fa viola.

The bees were very busy yesterday, the entrance is reduced a lot more than in the summer making the bees dodge traffic to get in or out. We did see medium sized packets of orange pollen on a few bees. Lots of ants coming and going into to empty top feeder, might have to do something about that. Feeders so many choices, yet not found the ideal one yet.

The birds are visiting the feeders and suet, most of the usual suspects have stopped by.