Sandance Designs: A Walk in the Garden

Okay, so the title is a bit pretentious. Actually, I stumbled around the yard with my camera.

It's time for our annual April freeze. Summer bulbs, shrubs and perennials are raising their hopeful little heads, only to be smacked down again by Old Man Winter...Mother Nature's cantankerous worser half. Every year I go out and cover everything in the hope that I can keep it from freezing...every year I fail. Most things recover...some don't. Winter ain't over til it's over....which ain't guaranteed until May 1 here in Metro Atlanta.

I wanted to check on some shrubs that I hoped were native azalea. A few weeks ago I cleaned a bunch of Mother Nature's uglies off of a bank that leads down into the woods behind the house...blackberries, honeysuckle, zillions of ugly little birch trees. Honeysuckle had engulfed several shrubs that looked suspiciously like Native Azalea. After weeks of rain, I notice now that they have big fat buds, that certainly look like native azalea.

This photo is of a bud on a plant that I know to be a Native Azalea. It sure looks like a more developed version of the photo above.

There are a couple of plants that I've not yet identified. Be ye friend, or be ye foe? If you know what they are, please speak up. Otherwise, I'll be pouring over books trying to ID them. Notice the bloom spike at the top.

Growing at the base of this plant is another unknown. It sort of looks like Virginia Creeper, though I've never seen that growing on our property.

The ferns new fronds are beginning to emerge.

The oakleaf hydrangea thinks it's already summer, foolish thing! If you look closely, you can see the little flower buds emerging.

The hopeful hosta are already almost a foot tall. I want to tell them 'go back, go back'. Every year they come up early and are turned into hosta-cicles by an April freeze.