A look around the yard today...

Hibiscus

The hibiscus are starting to grow in real good. This group is always the first to come and always the first to grow before the other two can catch up.


Sawfly

And it appears the battle has begun. There's several sawflies swarming around this one. Oy. I have to start applying sevin spray as that's the only thing that has ever worked on the buggers.


Iris


Iris

You know, I still can't figure out how to pollinate them? Can anyone tell me what I'm supposed to do here? I imagine that toilet-brush looking thing is the anther that I'm supposed to pluck. Where do I apply this thing to pollinate the flower?


Mini Tomato Grow Kit

At first when the seeds came up, it didn't resemble anything like a tomato plant. Then the extra leaves grew in and now they look like tomato plants. According to the instructions, I'm to start giving them fertilizer when they're 2" and then separate when they're 5".


Wisteria

I plucked a few wisteria seedlings and figured it'd be neat to take a picture of one to show y'all.

Iris

This is a picture of an Iris from a friend who sent me the bulbs a few years ago. One bloom opened on my mother's Iris but I failed to get any good pictures so I didn't upload any.

You know, I looked around online for information on how to pollinate them but I still don't get how to. I looked closely at the flower and I still don't get what I'm supposed to do.

Random Garden Stuff

Luckily for me, I was able to borrow a camera. I don't know how long I'll be without my own camera but I hope it won't be for too long. In the meanwhile, on with the pictures I took...


Amaryllis

Sorry MrBrownThumb. You're gonna hate this but I have no specific names on these either! hehehe. The big bulb in the middle sprouted all these babies around it. Towards the 'front' are two bulbs I got from a friend. One of them is sending up two buds. She thinks it's yellow but she said in all the time she had it, it's never bloomed (except she has one blooming this year so we're going to be sharing the surprise.).


Clematis


Hibiscus

Pretty soon, there's going to be three huge bushes and tons of blooms. Not only that but there'll be a very huge war against the sawflies as well. I have sevin spray that I'll be using. It's the only thing that worked against the sawflies last year after I've done many other safer attempts due to the dogs. There's now a fence keeping the dogs out so I may be able to spray more diligently.


Lilies

I'm surprised they're coming up. They were doing badly last year in another part of the yard so I relocated them this spring. I didn't think they'd come up. Now I'm wondering if they'll bloom.


Roses

The roses were also relocated because they've been doing very badly the past few years. They haven't bloomed in so long and it's to the point that I honestly can't tell you what color(s) they are. I finally relocated them to this spot and I'm hoping they'll do much much better and actually bloom.

Amaryllis

Two pictures of the Amaryllis that bloomed.


In other topics, my digital camera broke. Now I know how people feel when they say they feel 'naked' without their cellphone or some other gadget that they cannot live without. I'll have to dig through my stuff and find my old digital camera but I dread using it because I know the pictures won't come out so well.

Wisteria Not Growing Right

Hmm, That's unusual. I was waiting for it to get tons of blooms but for some reason, it has started leafing out before the blooms are even done opening. I'm not sure what brought this on.

Spring was here!

For the next five days starting tonight, the lows dip into the 30s. Saturday night's low was at 28 but now it's up to 31 but still just as bad. This means I'll have to start pushing stuff back into the greenhouse and cranking up the heater.


Iris


Iris


Iris

I'm excited about the Iris in the pot. A friend sent it to me a few years ago and they haven't bloomed since. I can't wait to see what colors spring forth from these because all he said was that they're mixed.


Amarylis


A few days ago, I tossed some seeds around into the beds such as the Alyssum. I took a look today and sure enough, they were little sprouts everywhere. Now I'm concerned the cold might make them shrivel up.

Wisterian Adventures

In my previous entry, I made the claim that Wisteria steals the show around here. I found some pictures of when it was at its biggest and that was in 2005 before the vines were trimmed back when the lattice was starting to fall.


April 12, 2005


April 18, 2005

Wisteria isn't all that pretty. The only reason the wisteria is established on a lattice board is because there used to be this giant pine tree in that spot. The wisteria climbed all the way to the top and you couldn't even see the base of the tree because the vines were as thick as my arm (I still find it annoying that I can't find any pictures back in 1995 when we first moved in and took pictures of the tree). After the tree was cut down, the wisteria was still coming up in that spot with so much growth that it was impossible to keep it mowed down. A lattice was put up so that it could grow up. It was pretty neat to see it bloom one year and every year since, it's grown bigger. In 2005, it was trimmed back so it's not as big and showy as it was last year.



Another thing is that the wisteria is very invasive. All of the wisteria has been here since before we moved in. We have no idea how it started. The neighbor across the street has a big tree with all that wisteria growing up it, similar to the one we had. We don't know if someone thought it was neat and didn't expect it to have such a tremendous underground root system to reach the woods. It may have grown under the street and perked up at the neighbor's tree and they just let it grow.

There's tons of seeds that fall. More and more fall every year. In fact, there were so many that I set up a trade with many people but I was overwhelmed and never traded again with the seeds.

Wisteria

If there's one plant around here that steals the show during spring, it's the Wisteria.







I'll have to look through my disk for some pictures I took a year or more ago when it was really a large display of blooms. Recently, the vines were cut back so it may not look as dramatic as it was while back.

The wisteria blooms open from the top and work their way down to the bottom.

What's amazing about this is that it attracts thousands of bees so it makes it tougher for me to get close and take pictures of them when I feel like I'm being chased off by them.