Gallery 10 - My (New) Indiana Home in Spring

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Our sixth spring ... similar subject - but a new camera (my Panasonic Lumix 12 megapixel, 18x zoom!). Walked the flower gardens almost every day eagerly looking for old and new plantings coming up. Late winter / early spring was very dry as things opened up. Mid spring was very wet and cool interspersed with the occasional run of warmer, sunny days. We finally took the plastic off the windows and opened them to let the warm air in to dispell winter's chill. I started substitute teaching this spring and between that and the weather have not had time to work in the garden like I did last year - so, exploding from all this rain, it's about to get away from me as I write this on Memorial Day.

Rainbow Over Ray's Barn

Tommy our Daycare Turkey

Magnolia Tree Buds

Magnolia Tree Budding Out

Summer Kitchen Flowerbed

Windmill Flowerbed Tulips opening up

Magnolia Bush Blooms.

Backyard shot - forsythia bush and windmill

Benny's new buckboard

Magnolia Bush outside kitchen window

Magnificent Magnolia

Magnolia Tree Blooms opening up

Spring Trees

Hazel behind Forsythia at sunset

Spring trees

Flowering Maple

Magnolia Bloom Bud Closeup

Red Tulips around Windmill

Spring Violets - they are prolific this year!

Walmart Violas - these survived the winter and bloomed beautifully this spring. Hope they will do that every year!

Kitchen Window Flower Bed

Traditional Red Tulip outside Kitchen Window

Traditional Red Tulip

Kitchen Window Flowerbed

Vinca in Bloom

Kitchen Window Flowerbed

Trilliums from last year's Master Gardener's sale

Looking for my Jack In the Pulpit from last year's Master Gardener's Sale - just sprouting

Proof that I have Dutchman's Breeches. Bought these about two or three years ago. Leaves come up every spring but they never bloom.

Goldie and Butterball, our two yellow lions, resting on front porch. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they get along - go figure ...

Goldie airing his tummy

More violets in Bloom

Tommy Turkey Strutting

Front yard shot

Magnolia Tree in Bloom

Traditional Red Tulip

Benny, Kate, and Annie ploughing garden

Walmart Foxglove - gorgeous!

Kate and Annie executing a turn with the plough

Dharma resting in flower bed

Phlox and Lillies of the Valley in Bloom

Katie tied to tree in back yard, resting from ploughing garden

Our menagerie - they are all out there with us curious about what's going on

Goodwill porcelain sitting doll for sofa back

Goodwill figurines - porcelain girl feeding rabbits, goldfinch feeding baby

Benny and girls with the buckboard in a field of mustard blooms

First peony blooms - right in time for Memorial Day May 2011

Don't remember what this is called, but I planted it last year in the horse hitch flower bed and this year it tripled in size. And it bloomed!

Blue Porcelain Clown Figurine Music Box

Another Good Will Find - a newspaper stand - great for recycling newspapers.

Bon started these tomatoes and peppers from seed this winter - they were planted in late May when the weather finally warmed up.

Walmart Foxglove

A new batch of Batchelor Buttons

African Violet in full bloom

Had to work hard in Photoshop to get these deep red peonies to show up in my photo - the camera made them pink.

These peonies are actually deep red, but I had some trouble getting the color to show up correctly

Applied rose fertilizer spikes in April, rose bus came on in mid-May and opened up the last week of May. This dark red climber came from behind the evergreen bushes on the North side of the house. I relocated it by my other climber a year or so after we moved. Took it at least a year to bloom to bloom.

Rose bush in bloom

The joys of country living - fresh peonies for our wall pockets for Memorial Day

Shot of both climbing rose bushes

Goldfinch on Shepherd's Hook outside kitchen window - now if I could only get a shot of that orchard oriole that likes to come to our hummingbird feeder!

Climbing roses June 2

New barn fan flag and climbing roses

Kate and Annie and climbing roses

2011 has been the Green Spring - lots of rain, cool, some perennials making a good showing, others not so much, and everything blooming one at a time, first the daffodils, then the tulips, finally the peonies, and then the roses.

This is the late blooming peony bush that I moved from the north side of the house where it was too shady. This is its first year to really bloom. It did not bloom prolifically, but the blooms were large and lush. They were a very light pink.

My 50% Saturday Good Will Find - I couldn't resist her for $1.50!

I brushed her hair, fixed her waistband and glued the soles onto her shoes.

Hollyhock Heaven

These pink hollyhocks re-seeded from some well spent Walmart hocks I bought last summer

These deep red hollyhocks reseeded from some well spent Walmart hocks I bought last summer

Ditch lilies and Annabelles coming on - my yellow hocks are later bloomers, evidently.

Pink hollyhock behind summer kitchen

Red hollyhock behind summer kitchen

Summer blooms coming on! Daylilies, hollyhocks, and hydrangeas..

Finally Sweet Peas! These guys took a long time to take hold. I've been trying to get some growing since we moved here in 2005.

I planted Sweet Pea seeds from some friends' gardens about three years ago and for years there were one or two short spindly little vines. They never got much longer but they always came back each year.

This year my Sweet Pea vines exploded - along with everything else in my garden, including the weeks. I substitute taught this spring and as soon as school was out, came on board as an intern at a startup company in Purdue Research Park - and the weather being off and on, I haven't even gotten mulch down. But here are my very first Sweet Peak Booms!.

Sweet Pea Blooms.

Second round of blooming from my Walmart Fox Glove.

Daylilies Galore

Two stems can produce 40 to 50 blooms!

These ditch lilies are crowding out my peonies - I'm going to have to do something different!

The garden of my dreams - not quite there yet, but finally multiple flower blooming at once and sporting different colors.

Patty's Hollyhock Doll

Sunday Surprise - our neighbors dropped by with their team of mules

Harley and Checkers

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