Open, Open, Open

When it's springtime, I find myself venturing out into the garden on a daily basis, looking for the next surprise. There's a lot going on right now with the budding and blooming, and it seems as if there's always something new to see.

It was nice enough to be outside yesterday, and that meant the kitties could be outside too. When I let them out, I walk around clapping my hands just to be sure there are no "bad dogs" around. As I'm making my rounds, I'm checking everything to see which new buds have appeared, and which old buds have opened. Here's yesterday's display.

Most all of the azaleas are budding out now in all different colors. This one will be a brilliant red in a few days.

The flowers are beginning to open on the clematis.

The dappled willow seems to be doing the thing we planted it for. I wanted this for the spray of white tips it makes as it regains its foliage. We planted it two years ago, and so far, it hasn't behaved as expected. This year, I'm noticing more white tips on the new growth.

Here's one I saw on Pinterest. It looks better groomed than ours, and so maybe we need to try shaping it a little better.

For now, ours looks a lot like my hair does these days. A little like Doc from Back to the Future.

This next one is the Golden Chain tree. When we arrived home, we were saddened to see it had blown over at some point during the winter. It had green buds on it, and so Mike staked it up, only hoping it would survive. Yesterday, I noticed the first flower buds appearing, and so we are optimistic.

In the background, you can see Mike and his blue New Holland tractor planting fence posts. He and Matthew were out working in the long-neglected vegetable plot yesterday. They got quite a bit done, and pulled the fencing out of the weeds. Sadly, a portion of the fencing was mowed over at some point, and so it will need to be replaced. Most of it was in good shape.

The lilac is covered in buds now. I'm excited for them to open.

The plum tree is fully in bloom now. With rain in the forecast, I'm not sure how it will get pollinated. I think I say that every year, and every year we get more plums than I can use.

The apple tree has lots of flowers. It will be interesting to see how many apples it produces. They aren't great apples, but the deer love them.

Finally, the rosemary has been in bloom ever since we came back. When I worked in the herb garden a couple of days ago, I cut off all the dead branches, and so it looks a lot better.

It took me a long time to get a rosemary plant going that would survive the winter. This one has been with us for a couple of years now. Each year a few of the branches die off, but it replaces them with new ones. Still, I would expect any big ice storm to kill it off, and then I'll have to start over again.

Most of my day yesterday was spent working on the Poppy Mosaic. I finished the first row of sections. There are 7 sections across and 10 down, so there's still a lot to do on this.

Sadie was an excellent companion for this, and she refrained from rolling around in my sorted piles of scraps.

By day's end, I had it this far along.

So far, I'm using my tiniest scraps on this, but I won't have enough for the whole quilt. I'll have to break into the medium-sized scraps before it's finished. The little squares are cut to 1-1/2 inches, and so they are 1-inch when sewn together. The centers of the poppies are black, and you can see the last section had one HST that included the first bit of black. There will be more in use before the day is over.

We're back to rain for today, and then it should clear up for a day or two before the rain returns. It's a good mix during Spring, and I usually don't have to start watering in earnest before June. Today will be a stay-in-and-sew day. There are a few housekeeping chores, and I need to make up a grocery shopping list. There's plenty on the agenda, and so I'll just get to it. I hope you have a good day.