The peonies are starting to bloom

One of them is particularly bright and showy this year.

Great-grandpa's allium

We're short a few allium heads.

 No, Reuben was not the culprit. Evania freely 'fessed up to the fact that she had pulled them off. I'm grateful she did not take all of them...and perhaps without putting their energy into flowering, the headless ones will divert energy to the bulbs instead and *next* year will be even showier.

"Next year" is one of the best things about a garden.

Another great day to spend outside around the bench and slide!

Lingonberries

Last year we planted lingonberries (a ground cover) amongst our new blueberry plants. Supposedly, a few times a year they will produce tiny red berries that are tart, high in vitamin C, and good for baking. Our trip around the yard tonight before bed revealed the first blossoms we've seen!

Kids in the garden

This bench was a free find last fall, and has yet to find its real home. I picked it up intending to put it against the wall by the vegetable garden, but it hasn't made its way back there yet. It wintered over in the front yard, and made its way into the mulch now that mowing season is here again. Seeing Owen and Bogomila laughing here, though, makes me want to keep my eyes open for more finds like this one!

What's blooming now?

A new addition to the gardens this year - a gift from my grandpa - bits and pieces from his flower garden, in the form of giant allium bulbs, garlic starts, and a variety of perennial seeds. I have wanted giant allium for years, but it's hard to justify spending too much money on the gardens when I have so much plant material already, and so often get new things from friends who are splitting things, so I prefer the challenge of waiting to see what comes. That makes these even more delightful!

Also blooming at this time of year is the impossible-to-get-rid-of-once-established periwinkle...though it's so beautiful this time of year that it's hard to imagine really ever wanting to get rid of it! And on the right, a bounty of blossoms on just one branch of just one of our new blueberry bushes. We're excited to nibble and bake this summer!

In the front garden by the curve of the driveway, I have one volunteer wild columbine, and a single Japanese peony blossom. In the background, you can see the traditional peonies beginning to form their buds.

And back along the west edge of the yard, my larger clump of fern-leaf peonies is very, very happy. You can't even tell that Sam and Sylv dug some up last year to move into their yard!

So, that's a taste of what's blooming this mid-May day in our Motley Garden.

Mother's Day

The children are blooming freely in the Motley Garden! We're only missing Leah and Tsvetomira.

Evania's first garden

Gardening with my girls is one of my favorite things to do.

This year is Evania's first year to put in a garden. She picked out a 6 pack of annuals with some of her birthday money, and we are having her plant it at the base of "her" crabapple tree.

 Even before being "pollinator friendly" was a big thing, we have had a diverse lawn. Although I have no love for creeping charlie, I do enjoy many of the other broadleaf plants that are spread all over the yard - violets, scilla, clover, and can't bring myself to approve of chemicals on the yard to create a monoculture. That means dandelions and other thrive alongside violets this time of year. And children. Don't have to worry about them eating the dandelions in our yard!

Morel Season

On a brief after supper walk last night Leah discovered...a Foozie mushroom!

(Context: when we added on to our house, we hired a contractor from our church to do the framing because Matt couldn't do it all himself. He and the kids began an inside joke where they call each other "Foozie." When he was here working at the very end of the project, he saw a mushroom growing in the mulch of one of our gardens which he identified as a morel - and he and his wife both really enjoy hunting and eating morels! As much as we enjoy eating what grows in our yard, and even though I do appreciate mushrooms, I'm not quite brave enough...yet...to try eating my own mushrooms.)

In past years, the morels have grown in the mulch right around the base of our old elm tree that didn't make it through the construction, so this was the first time that we'd seen any out in the grass, and, Oh! were they out there!

When Foozie and his wife stopped by late the next day, they filled one and a half collanders with little morels, leaving the very small ones to grow a bit so they could come back for a second harvest in a few days. The kids are guarding that piece of lawn meticulously, making sure we don't inadvertently step on any of Foozie's mushrooms.

The dead elm itself provides a perfect perch from which to supervise the harvesters.