One of my favorite things to do is to take a stroll around the garden to see what’s happening.  Things change so quickly that it’s easy to miss the first coral charm peony finally blooming or to suddenly discover that the sweet peas should have been staked last week.

We’ll start with the Russian sage.  Maybe you know the old saying about perennials:  the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.  If so, we’re about to have some leaping Russian sage this year.

Most of our foxglove died out this winter, so we ordered more plugs this spring, and they’re just getting ready to take off.  I’m excited about a rose colored variety we’re trying this year.

One year I started bupleurum from seed and ever after that, it reseeds itself in the fall, stays green all winter, and gives us a bounty of free greens every spring.  A plucky, generous sort of plant for sure.

The larkspur is looking like it’ll make a fair show this year.  A lot of my little girl memories of Grandma Coblentz have to do with her flowers, and one, in particular, is her larkspur.  I can still picture the massive bed of it that she had one year.  It was the most magical thing I had ever seen, and I purposed right then and there to have a sea of larkspur just like that one day.

I’m not sure quite what the poppies are up to, but they’ve been growing like crazy in the last several weeks.

A handful of orach reseeded itself.  It’s always fun to try new things and see what comes up in the spring.  This is a happy accident, since the orach seeds I started indoors this year have had about a 2% germination rate.  Yeah, not so good.

May is peony season, and I can’t wait for it to start.  I love so many flowers, but peonies have a special spot on my list of favorites.  This is the first bud of a deep red kind called ‘Armani’ that we planted two years ago.

The sweet peas are hitting their stride, and it’s true.  They should have been staked last week, or the week before that.  Whoops.

I confess to having been a little bit anxious for the roses this year.  When we went to trim them this spring, they had all died back to within six to twelve inches of the ground.  But we gave them a trim, spread the fertilizer liberally, and, with the exception of one or two, they are looking pretty good.  I also think new rose leaves have some fascinating colors.

As we may have moaned about before, this spring has been a little unusual and not in the best way possible.  LaRonda dubbed this spring as a Wummer: winter run into summer with no time for spring.  A Wummer Bummer.  If I was going to wail about anything in this disappointing spring, it would be the ranunculus.  It doesn’t look like we’ll be harvesting a single one.  We went from snow to eighty degree weather in the blink of an eye, and that’s not the sort of thing that makes a ranunculus happy.  We’ll chalk it up to experience and see if we can find a way to circumnavigate that problem next year.  In the meantime, if any of you zone 5 or 6 gardeners have grown them successfully without a hoop house, please talk to me.  I’m all ears.

Most of the stock is looking fine in spite of being rooted around in by the most vigorous crop of moles we’ve ever had.  There’s a few obvious spots where the moles have uprooted and killed the stock, but most of it is looking pretty good.  The main reason we grow this flower is for it’s delicious, spicy scent.

The blackberries are kicking it into gear.

So that’s pretty much what’s happening around here.  You’ll notice plenty of weeds, grass that needs to be cut, and the occasional bare patch, but altogether, I think we’re shaping up for a fun year.

Rosita