Just Another Day in the Garden

This morning I went in to Downtown Atlanta to meet friends for lunch. I love getting together with this fine group of folks. But, I really hate going downtown. On the trip into town, I noticed the tall buildings were hidden in a smoggy haze.

But, 50 miles south of the big dirty city, this beautiful afternoon greeted me when I returned home!





This spring, the blooms seem to be coming and going very quickly! This plant's blooms have almost faded. I know it was not in bloom a few days ago! Does anyone recognize this plant? It grows wild at the edge of my garden and I really don't know what it is!

UPDATE! My neighbor identified this plant as Red Buckeye!




There are a zillion Cleome seedlings in the garden! If you want big showy flowers that love hot summer days and will re-seed themselves like mad, Cleome is the flower for you! Sadly, most of these seedlings will have to go. The flowers can't possibly grow this close together!




This is one of my favorite garden plants! Most of the year, it is almost invisible at the edge of the woods. For a week or so in spring, it's gorgeous! This is a Native Azalea. Grows wild in our Georgia woods.




This is a closeup of the bloom cluster.


And this, my friends, is what a Georgia gardener's boots look like after stomping through the woods and spraying Roundup on poison ivy! That yellow stuff is not dust, it's POLLEN!

Spring has Sprung and the Pollen is Plentiful

Spring has Sprung in the Sandance Garden and the world is thick with pollen. You can see a dusting of pollen on some of the flower photos.


I took this photo at 3am one night last week, when the daffodils were at their peak. These are my favorite flowers, and I have a lot of them. Many were rescued from soon-to-be-bulldozed sites.


Mattie, the Great Pyrenees doing what she does best...BARK! You can see that the Bermuda grass is just beginning to green up.



This is a funny little birdhouse pick in an iron pot full of some kind of succulent. I don't know what it is...it was rescued from an estate.



The spirea is now in full bloom. Most of the year is sits quietly forming a backdrop for the garden border. For a few weeks, it is glorious.




This snowball bush is 3 years old. This is the first spring we'll have blooms. I can hardly wait!

Wow. You can really see the pollen on this Flowering Quince! And something must think it's mighty tasty.

My grandmother had a whole bank full of phlox, which she called "thrift". My hope is to have thrift cover the bank by my driveway.

The front porch window boxes are full of pansies, which are doing very well right now. As usual, they look their best just when it's time to rip them out and replace them with summer annuals. It's a juggling act. The summer annuals have to be planted before it gets too hot, which means the pansies have to be replaced before the summer heat kills them. It's really difficult to dump out gorgeous flowers, but it has to be done. At least they have an after-life in the compost bin.

This is one of my garden favorites! Poncirus Trifoliata...called "mock orange" by its friends! Check out those thorns! They're at least an inch long. In the spring the mature shrub/tree will have white flowers, which are followed by small yellow-orange 1" fruit. I assume the fruit is inedible, as the birds won't touch it. These were planted 3 years ago, and have not yet bloomed. They are offspring of plants that were in my Grandmother's garden when I was a child.

The hosta are already up and growing fast. I think they grow about 3" per day right now. I need to set up some kind of deer deterrent before they chomp them down to the ground.

These are some of my favorite garden flowers! They were made by my sister and her husband out of horse shoes. They are truly perennial!

The grape hyacinth has about 'done its do', as my Grandma used to say! It's been very pretty this spring.

The forsythia is just past its glory, but still makes a pretty statement in the garden.

We have so many daffodils! These come along as many others are fading. I love these big double blooms. These resemble the ones Grandma called "butter and eggs".

The dogwoods don't seem to be as nice this year as in the past. Maybe it's just my imagination.

THIS is why I HATE deer! I don't think these tulips will be blooming this year. Anybody want to hunt deer off my deck?

I know spring is truly here when I see butterflies sunning. These three were slowly opening and closing their wings, and stayed still long enough for me to snap this photo.

It's easy to see why this is called "bleeding heart"!

And that concludes today's garden tour!