What’s blooming!

Now it’s feeling like spring! 60s weather and sunny for a couple days anyway.  I feel like it has been endless digging in that front bed to get it cleared of roots and ground cover, and I guess it has been endless. I’m a little worried that some of these might be tree roots as well as ivy, bushes and groundcover, so I am not going to go gung ho and rip all that out, mostly the surface stuff.  I would hate to cause problems with the trees, seeing as they are our neighbor’s and not ours.

We were at Lowe’s last night and I couldn’t resist looking at the discount rack for plants. Wouldn’t you know there were $5 clematis vines?  I have no idea why because they look fine. Just need a little water:

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I think what they do is that when the “buy me” blooms fall off, they move the plant to discount. Even though people in the garden world know that clematis don’t bloom yet here, I guess if you don’t see blooms you don’t buy it? Whatever, I’ll take a $5 vine to help cover the chain link fence on the one side of our yard (which is ours).

I went back there to dig a hole for it and wouldn’t you know, more of those slate rocks are buried right along the fence. So I dug up another big pile — go muscles!

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That bucket was for me to cart dirt that we dug out of the front bed for the path to replace the space the stones left. Functional fitness!  I think we can about build another Stonhenge with all the rocks I’ve dug up so far. I then planted the new clematis and moved over the sweet autumn clematis that was supposed to grow on our old fence.

I had a frustrating bit with squirrel damage. There were new tulips just about open and a squirrel came and ate all the buds.

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Grrrr!  So, I got some animal repellant (at said Lowe’s visit last night).

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This stuff I guess is kind of like the bitter apple to keep dogs from licking. It’s safe for humans and pets, it just doesn’t taste good. It stinks, though. It smells sort of like a cross between liquid smoke, garlic and maybe bacon? LOL. Yuck. Hopefully this will save the other tulips.

They only seem to bother stuff out in the back and never the front of the house. Not sure why. Anyway, bloom time!

Forget me nots, which are in the lawn.

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All of the claudias are open now. They are so pretty!

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The triumph tulips are open now:

escape2This is called Escape and what a red color it is in the sun!

Even in the evening it has a nice glow to it.

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Front shot:


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Still more tulips to come, the black and white ones, plus a couple others.  The majority of the plants made it through the winter. Just a couple casualties, but I will wait a bit and see if they are just really slow to wake up.

Saturday will be good riding weather and we are planning on a 40-mile ride for the first time this year. That means cupcakes!! 😀

6 thoughts on “What’s blooming!

  1. Jody - Fit at 58

    BEAUTIFUL!!!! I share your tulips with my friend that loves Pixie. She is a tulip fan too!

    BAD squirrels!!!! Hope that stuff helps!

    Have a great bike ride with cupcake!!!!

  2. debby

    I never knew squirrels would eat tulips. I guess Noah is good for something after all!

    I got deer repellent when I had the tomatoes by the front fence, and it smelled just like rotten eggs. I used to go out and spray it as I ran away from it 🙂

    The tulips are soooo pretty. And I look forward to hearing about your cupcake ride!

    1. Lori Post author

      I thought it might have been rabbits, but then I saw a couple tulip buds that were there and an hour later they were gone and the squirrels were there. Last year I had one of the rose bushes get hit by the squirrels. It was too high up on the stem to be anything else. Regardless, that spray is supposed to be for all animals, so hopefully it works and I didn’t spend money on bulbs for animal food…

  3. Jeannie/Qlts2Slo

    Wow, glow is right! That isn’t red, it’s RED. Beautiful.
    As a human, can you still smell the repellant after a day?

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