Things have been really busy, but I had a chance to take some photos in the yard today and plan to add more entries this weekend.  The weather was gorgeous and the garden is full of wonderful things.

We have four crows that hang out around the yard.  We believe two are the parents and two are year-old youngsters.   We can only tell one of them from the others because she has a deformed bill.  We feed them every day (dog food) and they let us know when they want something.  I’m impressed with how well crows have adapted to urban environments.  They are incredibly smart and fun to watch.

We have a window box on the side of the house.  One of the snapdragons from last year’s seed-starting efforts wintered over well and is getting set to bloom.  I added a Nemesia from the Fred Meyers trip brother Tim and I took several weeks back.

I forgot that I tucked some Ornithogalum nutans bulbs in some of the pots around the house.  You can’t tell it from this bad photo, but the flowers are quite pretty and large.

Some shots of the orchard garden now, including wallflowers, tulips and bleeding hearts in the bed in front of the woodland garden.

Another view.

I had purchased dozens of tulips for the Armando parking strip garden, but the ground wasn’t ready for them last fall, so I plugged them in around the garden.  They are all viridiflora types, with green in the petals.  They are showy and elegant and really add to the May garden.

These white/green tulips light up the Doug fir bed.

More tulips in the Doug fir bed.

This one has very little green.

These are next to the house, near a downspout by the lilac shrub.

The bluebells are blooming right alongside the tulips–they make a nice duo.

Tulip hosting a bindweed!  The gorgeous flower overcomes the poor background in this photo.

More tulips.

And one last indulgence.

The Lamiums have never looked so good!  And on both sides of the path…so rare to have great foliage and flowers.

More tulips.  Leon cut the lawn this week and it makes a nice backdrop.

Another view.

The bleeding hearts are blooming big in the orchard garden.  This one from sister Cate is getting really large–close to three feet tall and wide.

Geranium phaeum blooming in the driveway bed.  This gorgeous, carefree plant comes up through its shorter neighbors and blooms for a few weeks, then disappears quietly.

Not a great photo, but you can get a sense of the volume of flowers.  This is a great year for this plant–maybe twice as many flowers as last year.

 

A lone tulip survivor which is several years old.  Tulips don’t perennialize easily in my garden, but a few of them survive and thrive.

I was ready to rip out the bearded iris in the driveway bed.  They are such a pain, with weeds and grass in-between the rhizomes and they haven’t been blooming well.  They must have sensed my threats, as this year there are 15 or more flower spikes!  That’s far more than we’ve ever had before.

More tulip views.

And another.

Aronia flowers in the orchard garden.

The lilacs are blooming and scenting the entire yard.

Columbine seedling.  The flower color is almost too dark, but there is a grace to these plants that I adore.

Abutilons blooming in the orchard bed.  These are three-year-old seedlings.  The plants need to be pruned or staked or something, but I can’t complain about the flowers–the cultivar is Suntense.

Another view.

And another….

The berries are blooming and I saw a lot of native pollinators around them.

I’m very impressed with these Geranium plants.  Grown from seeds two years ago, they were kind of spindly last year, but this year they are boisterous and bloomiferous.  You can see all the buds next to the flowers.

You can see how big these Geraniums are this year, close to two feet tall!  They are officially Geranium pyrenaicum “Summer Snow”.

There is a lot to not like about this weedy Lonicera, but I’ve kept one hoping the flowers are useful to birds and bees.  They don’t have any fragrance, so they aren’t much use to me.

Another view of an Abutilon.

I won’t get my hopes too high, but the cherry tree has approximately one jillion cherries on it right now.  I need to get some netting over it ASAP.

I liked the way this bleeding heart looked against the fence/trellis.

I grew this Iris siberica from seed.  I thought it was going to be “Lilting Laura,” but the color is wrong.  I’m thrilled that it is blooming for the first time this year.  I started it four years ago, I think.

Close-up of bleeding heart flowers.