The first of June is always one of my favorite days of the year. It usually means that warm weather is here and that's always fine with me. We've had an abnormally cold and rainy spring. The only good thing is now that the warm weather is here, everything is starting to bloom out - albeit a week or two late this year.
Cindy thinks this has been the perfect spring. I have to disagree. We didn't get warm temperatures until May this year. In fact, we were still having frost in early May. It was so wet this spring, my sump pump was running non-stop from mid-March to just about a couple days ago.
We normally have roses blooming by just before Memorial Day. We had our first one open up just a couple days ago. But Cindy's iris' are looking pretty good this year. This is on the east side of our house.
Our back berm is looking pretty good this year. The lilac bush and the crab tree blossomed this spring. And the wegela bush is looking pretty good, as well. And the columbines are huge this spring.
This is another shot of the berm with the backyard in the foreground. This is the best our yard has looked in the nearly six years we've lived here. I always wanted a yard where you can take your shoes off and walk barefoot and it feels like a plush carpet. We've got it this year.
We only planted one tomato bush this year. Perhaps we were omniscient as our next door neighbor Barb was one who benefited greatly from the abundance of tomatoes we would have in the past. Now she's gone and we'll have one less person who will want our tomatoes this summer. But in the meantime, I've planted peppers and my usual batch of herbs. Here's a shot of two of the three basil plants I have out back, along with the oregano. In the background, Cindy planted strawberries in the strawberry planter. I'm kind of interested to see how that turns out.
One of the benefits of a cool and wet spring have been the perennials under our tree in front of the house. We've tried for years to plant things under the tree, but it just zaps the moisture from the ground. About two years ago, Cindy started to plant a lot of perennials that work well in the shade. They just took off this year. Once again, this is the best the foliage under the tree has ever looked since we've been here.
We lost 9 rose bushes last year after three nights of a hard April freeze. Warm temperatures in March caused a lot of the rose bushes to bud early and the freeze zapped 'em. We bought 14 rose bushes this winter and we planted them in the early part of May. Here's the rose garden with some of the new roses. We had to cage 'em as the friggin' rabbits like to chew on the tender leaves. They won't look like much this year, but we're expecting some brilliant colors and great fragrances starting next year.
Oh, and don't look at the maple tree "helicopter" seeds in the rose garden. That's another thing that was late this year. Last year, we caught a huge break with the two maple trees that are over our yard. The seeds were out and then the hard freeze basically made them fall off long before they dried out and began to "whirly-bird" around the yard. But this year, they're still on the trees long after they should have fallen.
Well, Cindy's calling my name telling me to come out and finish cleaning the garage and to help her sweep up the helicopters. At least the weather is sunny and warm.
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