Nantucket Daffodil Festival

Arriving on the ferry and taking a trip

up cobblestoned Main Street.

The garden club members are

decorating for the annual

Daffodil Festival.

Around the corner at the bookstore, 

it's obvious Spring is not as far along

here as it is in Connecticut.

Linda's driveway display in the fog.

Some more yellow out towards the pool.

The next day, the sun came out

and made the daffodils gleam against the gray.

Back downtown, 

yellow was everywhere.

We brought some blooms inside

to brighten the gray sky outside the windows.

No wonder Nantucket celebrates daffodils!

Blooms for May Day

Purple (or Violet!)

White Flowering Deutzia shrub

Blush Daffodil

Red Tulip

Classic Yellow Naturalizing Daffodils

and another color variation.

Somehow these May blooms ended up

on my Designs by Didi blog...

Budding Quince

Flowering Pulmonaria

Such abundance!

No wonder the pollen--and the allergies--are terrible.

Mid-April Blooms

This is about the extent of anything happening in the garden beds.

The Tete-a-tete Daffodils bloomed after an 80 degree day on Tuesday.

Even though we've had rain, we're not out of a drought.

And we've hit 80 one day each of the past two weeks.

Other than that, we're chilly and sunny today for an egg hunt.

I bought some pansies for color.

The chives were green.

It's definitely jacket and sweater weather for Lily and Violet--

and most of the other blooms.

Ahhhh! Back to Gardening

It's not an April Fool!  The sun came out; the skies cleared up; and the soil was workable. Ahhhh!

I grabbed my garden gloves, pruners, a lopper, and an old fleece.  I wanted to pull out the Creeping Jenny which had invaded the garden last year so I also took the 3-tine cultivator.  Garden man came later with a tarp and a wheelbarrow--reluctantly.

I exercise regularly all winter so that first day in the garden is not too much of a strain.  I switched between pruning and cultivating to rest my back a bit.  It felt very good to be in the sun and in the soil.  The birds were singing.  The brook was roaring after two days of rain.  All is good.

Done for today!

Gloves are drying out.  Pruners also.

Bird bath is ready to level later.

Poppies are coming up again!

They tried earlier but faced snow and cold temperatures.

The tulips are hiding behind the daffodils

(from the front of the border).

Sometimes the deer and/or bunnies don't see them.

I hope this will be such a year.

I cut back the fountain grass (foreground)

and the butterfly bush ( behind grass).

The Buddleia was much too big last year.

I read in the UCONN Garden Center newsletter to cut it back to 6 inches now.

We'll see what happens...

Signs of Spring

It's hard to believe a friend and I walked the paths in Elizabeth Park a few days ago.  The wind is howling around the corner of the house, making the windows creak. I have the fireplace going to dispel the cold leaking in. Yet, these are the sights from that amble down the paths.

Crocus find a sheltered spot to bloom.

Snowdrops bloom in drifts across the leaf litter.

We had been to a luncheon at the Pond House Cafe

to hear a speaker, Stephen Scaniello.

He is author of the book A Rose By Any Name.

He is an acclaimed Rosarian

and gardener and curator of

several famous rose gardens:

Brooklyn Botanical Garden and New York Botanical Garden

and now the Elizabeth Park Rose Garden.

He has been especially helpful with

the new Heritage Rose Garden there.

We can't wait to visit again in late June to see the 

old, old roses we remember in our grandmothers' gardens,

both their full-petaled bloom and fragrance.

Christmas Cactus Blooming in Late February

What a surprise this morning to go to the basement workshop for glue and find the Christmas cactus I put in the window there when decorating upstairs for the holidays--and forgot.  I brought it upstairs and put it in my sunny window.

I hadn't watered it for months!

It didn't seem to mind, but its biological clock 

wasn't working correctly.

Then I did some reading on holiday cactuses

and found there are three kinds:

Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Easter cacti have bristles on their leaves.

And sure enough, this one did.

It's not mine, but my daughter's.

She gave it to me to nurse

because she could never get it to bloom.

I guess my lack of nursing skills

came in handy.

No TLC needed with this plant--just negligence!

Tropical Gardening

We strolled the grounds of the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford houses in Fort Myers, Florida, today. The only way we could do that was to get out of town and the cold and blustery Northeast. And we did!

Edison's garden plan included an allee of Royal palms between the houses and the river.

The trees and shrubs were all labeled--and may not be familiar to a Northern gardener like me.

The breezes were wonderfully cool and gentle so you could linger to read the signs

and enjoy the unfamiliar plants in the shade or in the sun.

The orchids grow and bloom on the trees

exhibiting the air plants that they are.

The banyan tree seems a strange creature, not a plant at all.

The huge Mysore fig has sprawling roots

that the geckos love.

Can you spy two?

Upper right and lower left (tail).

My favorite area was the Moonlight Garden with its pool that reflects the moon.

Many of the plants blooming now in February were also white,

but the hedge around it was red bougainvillea.

It was very lovely to stroll in a garden again after a long winter,

especially when it reminds me of my great-grandmother's garden.

In simplicity and gentility, not plant material!