Happy Springtime, everyone! It's so lovely to have sunny days and springtime flowers again -- it's one of the most beautiful and cheerful times of the year. And after a cold winter spent away from loved ones over the holidays, it's doubly nice to be able to be outside again as Covid vaccination progress is allowing more Americans to venture forth from their homes again.
Here are a few pictures of what's been going on in my gardens:
The big project my family and I finally tacked last weekend was scraping and painting the white picket fence around our house. We hadn't done this for six years, and it really does need to be done at least every 3-4 years. Some of the exposed wood had started to rot a bit in places, so it's pretty disgraceful that we waited so long. (I really wasn't aware it had been that long, but this post I did back in 2015 tells about the last time we painted the fence, using our paint sprayer. We dread trying to get the sprayer to work so much that we ended up painting it with brushes and rollers this time, which took all four of us more than eight hours of work to finish.) But it's finally taken care of, and it looks really nice now (in addition to protecting the wood for a few more years).
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| The fence really does look nice now, gleaming in the sunshine! |
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| Yes, much improved, setting off the bright colors of the basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxtilis), grape hyacinths and a few leftover tulips from a few years ago. The delphiniums and oxeye daisies in the far bed will look especially nice against the brilliant white fence next month. |
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| Daffodils a few weeks ago. |
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| Pretty creeping phlox next to my house. |
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| Lily-flowering tulips in the Paradise Garden last week. This is the third time these have bloomed, so I'll have to find more of this kind to plant elsewhere, I think. |
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| Some deep red pansies that seeded themselves in the Paradise Garden. Tiny, but beautiful. |
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| The North Border looks lovely in the sunshine, with bulbs, phlox (and dandelions) blooming among the evergreen trees and shrubs. |
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| And some potted tricolor violas look very cute in my front steps. I love spring flowers! |
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| Waiting, waiting.... |
I'm greatly looking forward to being able to plant more things outside as the ground warms up, which will happen within a few weeks with any luck. And my houseplants will be very happy to go outside for the summer, in my Tropical Garden area around my patio.
Here's to the arrival of May, and after that, to summer living!
Thanks for reading, -Beth
