Scenes of Early May

I was looking for a statue for this spot in my Yellow Garden, and then it occurred to me that this bird bath that I had in my garden shed, waiting for a spot, might serve as a focal point instead of a statue. I didn't even have to fill it, since we've had almost two inches of rain in the last few days.

These are busy days in the garden for all of us, and things look different almost every day. We've had quite a bit of rain, which we needed and which has come at the right time after we planted a lot of new shrubs, trees and perennials. And the grass is growing so incredibly fast that I desperately had to mow again today, even though the grass was still wet from our daily rains (and in fact it rained on me while I was mowing too). The tulip time is about over (although we're going to the Pella Tulip Festival tomorrow -- I hope that the Dutch immigrants there know the bloom-delaying techniques of their mother country and that there are still some tulips for the festival!) and the iris time is beginning, as well as other late spring perennials.

Here are a few scenes from my gardens in the last week:

The lilac time is always so lovely and pretty-scented.

Bleeding heart in the Yellow Garden (OK, I know the hearts are pink, but the gold foliage, which I planted with the regular green-foliaged ones that were here already, looks good before and after blooming).

This is not a terribly exciting photo, but this is the first time I have ever been able to transplant ferns successfully. Nearly all of them that I planted here last spring next to my garden shed have made it through the winter!

I grew these tulips in my cutting garden, and there were almost too many to cut and bring in. 

I have reduced my Cutting Garden beds to these four and I'm getting ready to re-design their planting. I'll post with progress reports about this area as the summer gets going.

Not much is blooming in the Rainbow Border, except in the Purple Section, which is looking very purple right now. In fact my Front Border and North Border are almost exclusively purple at the moment. I'm going to have to bring in some other colors during this transition period in those borders....

I finally got around to re-covering my front porch bench cushion, which I had to make myself to fit this long bench, and I found the green cushions at Aldi for $3.99 each and the bird pillow at Lowe's. And our porch swing is again hung up after the winter. Time for summer now!

I hope you are also enjoying the quickly-changing scenes in your own gardens during this exciting time of year. Thanks for reading! -Beth