In The Garden

Here are a few photos of my late May garden

       A light yellow columbine.

       Wild geraniums in my back woods.

       A pretty weed?

       White columbine and purple asian lillies

White Trillium

       We have a patch of Periwinkle in front of the house that encircles several Locust trees.   Residing also in this shady spot is one White Trillium.   It has bloomed every year that we have lived here.   That would be 27 years.

       This picture is one I took last year, around May 10th.   In it the Trillium has turned pink, which it does right before it dies for the season. Trilliums have three petals.   The name translates to “three” in Latin.   In 1987, it became the official wildflower for the state of Ohio.   You can see that the Lillies of the Valley are just starting to bloom, as the Trillium is fading.

Guinia Hen Lillies

       Exactly one year ago I made this post on Guinia Hen Lillies.   They are an unusual springtime perennial that has bloomed like clockwork in my garden for the past 27 years.   The flowers comes in two different colors.   Most are a maroon in color, with a checkered pattern. There are also pale yellow flowers, which appear in smaller numbers.

       In Europe, these are considered wildflowers.

       This checkered lilly has been given several really ugly nicknames.   Snake’s head lily, and Sullen lady are not very nice!   Shaped like the bells carried by lepers in medieval times, it was also called Leper’s Bell.

Yellow Trout Lilly

       This pretty wildflower gets it’s name from its mottled leaves, which look a little like the skin of a trout.

       Only four to six inches in height, the Trout Lilly prefers to grow in wooded areas, between the months of March and May.

       The yellow flowers follow the path of the sun and close for the night.

Finally we have a beautiful spring day!

       Today was a gorgeous day here in northern Ohio.   Here are a few pictures from the garden.

Naturalizing a garden

       The first Spring we were in our home way back in 1983, I was surprised to find my lawn sprinkled with patches of daffodils.   The couple who lived here before us were into naturalized gardening. They planted bulbs all over the west side of our property.   I’s quite pretty to look at, and very hard to mow around!

       Here are several bunches of daffodils inside a patch of periwinkle, that leads into our back woods.   This is a link to a post on the subject of naturalized gardens, I made last year around this time.

Spring Beauties

       These pretty blue flowers are always the first to bloom in my yard every Spring.   They are called Spring Beauty Scilla or Siberian Squill.

       Grown from hardy bulbs, these clusters of tiny slate blue flowers originated from Russia and Eurasia.

       Spring beauties are very resilient to snaps of cold weather and snow.   Fortunately, they recover nicely.

       They are a great choice for naturlaized gardens like mine, because they tend to show up in unexpected places, like in this picture of my woods.

Easter Bouquet

Daffodils

       My daffodils have had a slow start this season.   Usually they are farther along by this point, but anyway, here are a few pictures of the different types that are blooming in my yard right now.