Garden Blogger's Bloom Day MAY

It's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day - May... already!  Check out many more bloom day blogs listed at May Dreams Gardens.  This is such a great, fast-paced time of year for the horticulturalist!  Last year's little marsh marigold (above, Caltha palustris) is actually blooming: WIN.  Already, some creepy-crawly is eating and defecating upon the blossoms: FAIL.  

     Below, you see something as good as a blossom to me: the opening buds of a shag-bark hickory seedling (Carya ovata).  The long, expanding bud scales are typical and distinctive of this species.  Mine is a couple feet tall, started from a nut my sister collected in southern Ontario.  I intend to dig it out and move it from home to cottage.  Tune in later to see how much of the tap-root I manage to get.

That's it for my home photos.  Next are some shots from Annapolis Royal, NS.  We made an excursion there on Saturday to the Rare and Unusual Plant Sale - a highlight of the year, of course!  I'll blog later about a few purchases I made.  For now, enjoy a few photos from the area, known, among other things, for Magnolias.

 

 

At last we get to the cottage.  Finally, after rescue from an overshadowed and overshaded spot, I have a Bergenia in bloom this spring.

And the old clump of trilliums is happy again.  (Trillium erectum)

This Pieris, new to me last year, lost it's flower buds over winter, but the new foliage is beauty enough.  I forget the variety; must have a record of that somewhere!

Peonies and Promises

There's something about peonies arising from the ground that is so promising.  These were new acquisitions last year.  Both looked quite poor after a dry spell in the summer, but now they are proving they are wonderful survivors.  I don't expect blossoms this year, of course, but I now can expect to enjoy these plants for decades to come, and there will be blossoms!  Red and yellow, if memory serves correctly for these new plants.

You can see the promise of lots of weeding yet to come.  Let's just forget about that for now.  Another plant I've been taking cuttings of for a few years, and sometimes killing, is the elderberry "Black Lace."  This one, in the ground, is sprouting happily, as is one I have in a pot. 

Some of the perennials I started from seed last year, and planted in the ground, are also thriving.  Many of the seedlings I kept in pots are not showing any signs of life.  I think I'll try more "in the ground their first year" from now on.

Golly, what was this?  Hmmmm...

Eryngium yuccifolium, rattlesnake master!

Maybe this is Parthenium integrifolium, wild quinine.  I must start labelling things!

This last photo is not a great one, but the tree is great.  Last year this unnamed magnolia bloomed for the first time, and this year it will have many more.  So glad it has finally matured, and is happy in its windy spot by the Minas Basin.

Enjoy to the fullest all the great promises in your gardens.

Bursting Buds, Batman! It's May!

After a decade of childhood, my anonymous, adolescent Magnolia is beginning to bloom.  Now I know it shall be off-white, just barely pink. 

Other buds look very promising there at the Cottage.  

Podophyllum peltatum, Mayapple

Kentucky Coffee Tree, Gymnocladus dioicus

Trillium erectum

Red Buckeye, Aesculus pavia 

Clematis ____

This ordinary Burning Bush is a bit spindly, but the buds along its little trunk show it is going to fill out nicely.  

Euonymus alatus

 

Happy May to one and all!

At the Cottage

So, at the cottage, where I do most of my gardening, I'm eager to see things growing.  Thankfully, some faithful friends oblidge.The Arum italicum seems to grow these wonderful leaves in the fall just to liven up winter.  This dear clump is surviving well under a couple Hydrangea macrophylla.  Gotta move those arums!  And the little heaps of Snowdrops (Galanthus sp.) are beaming through the uncleaned up perennial bed.

The daphne mezereum is about to burst forth.  My reading indicates Daphne was brought to Nova Scotia by the Acadians.  My plants  came from Parrsboro, which is strewn quite liberally with them, in gardens and in the woodsy wild places about town. 

  So many other things are silently waiting for more of spring.  I am excited about this Magnolia. 

Planted it a decade ago when it was but a seedling I'd got at a Garden Club Convention.  The grower said it would be a surprise what colour it would bloom.  It never produced a single flower bud until this past fall.  Maybe ten are on this bush.  Now, though it's great to see the buds, I'm waiting to see if they have all winter-killed.  That's what seems to happen to the end of every single twig on this bush every previous winter.  :(  Here's hoping that the blossom buds are tougher!

   And I had one strange sighting while at the cottage a few days ago.  It's a bird?  It's a plane? 

No... It's a bat, in broad daylight.  5 pm.  Lost?  confused?  Sick?  Coming out of hibernation? 

Whatever... interesting to see it.  Better there than in my living room fluttering by.  Or bedroom.  Had that happen last year.

  OK, a couple parting shots: some surviving Puschkinia scilloides, I think.  Striped Squill.  I say surviving because they are struggling to make it through last year's undergrowth.  And an out-of-focus Winter Aconite, Eranthis hyemalis.