Fertilizer Friday the 13th!

Finally a chance to join in on Fertilizer Friday!  Blogger had been down so I guess many of us are late in getting our posts up.  I was so happy to have sunny weather, new blooms and my husband off for a couple of days during the week.  Nothing unlucky about this Friday the 13th!  We spent most of the last two days outside enjoying sun and nice temperatures in the low 60's.
Here is just some of what has started blooming now:

The apple tree is covered in blossoms, more than I've seen on it in years.  Luckily the bees have had some dry days to come to visit and pollinate.

Columbines are just starting to bloom.  These ones face way down and are hard to take pictures of (especially since I was on the phone with my sister while trying to take these).

Bergenia flowers.

Saxifraga 'London Pride' which was shared with me by my blogging friend Linda from Gardening by Trial and Error.

My first bloom on a Trillium, does it do more than this?  It's seems to be stuck at this stage.

A new Clematis growing in one of my wine barrel containers.

Geums are starting to bloom.  I'm waiting for one called 'Double Bloody Mary' to open, sounds yummy right about now.

Polemonium or Jacob's Ladder the grape scented flower.

Weigela 'Minuet' is the first of the Weigelas to bloom in my garden.

A new plant Erysimum 'Apricot Twist' smells really good.

Yesterday at Sweet Pea's track meet the Littlest Gardener and her friend played in this grassy field full of tiny daisies.  They were collecting the cut grass and decorated the piles with flowers and pine cones.  I loved how they didn't need any toys to have fun.  And it was even better since the track meet was 3 hours long, the previous weeks have been cold and cloudy and rainy.  Sweet Pea is a 7th grader and running varsity against 8th and 9th graders and doing really well, especially the 400 meters.

This is another thing my husband and I did yesterday, put together a new potting bench.  We are trying to decide how to paint or stain this potting bench - any suggestions welcome!

I hope you'll take time to visit Tootsie Time to see what other gardeners have blooming today.

All words and photos in this post are property of A Gardener in Progress.

Our newest members of the family.

This was the perfect weekend to add new members to our family.  Not only am I a mom to my kids, but a mom to our pets as well.  As many of you know our pet rabbit Cookie died unexpectantly about a month ago.  The girls were very sad and still talk about how much they miss him.  Sweet Pea decided she wanted another Holland Lop, so we were able to find a breeder and just picked him up early this morning.

This is Blackthorn the Holland Lop.  The breeder named him after a spring blooming flower, I looked it up and it's in the Prunus family.  Sweet Pea liked his name and is keeping it.

He was so happy to have so much open space to run and hop in.  His one ear likes to stand up, I think it gives him character.

Over the winter we lost quite a few fish for some reason.  My friend that lives nearby also lost most of their fish this winter.  Today we bought 4 new fish.  We found these koi at the local pet store, they were very inexpensive ($3 - $5 each).  These are the two the girls picked out.

I chose these two yellow ones.  The one on the right is a butterfly, but I think the other one is too although it was in a tank with just regular koi.  I chose them for their beautiful colors.  For some reason I love yellow fish.

Hopefully they'll like their new home.  There are only about 4 or so other fish in there now and maybe a couple of tiny babies that we had seen a month ago.

Hope you all get a chance to work in your garden this weekend, the sun is trying to come out here.  Happy Mother's Day!  

All words and photos in this post are property of A Gardener in Progress.

Keeping busy.

It's been very busy around here, I think this may have been the longest time between postings in awhile.  Part of the reason I've not posted was that I've just been busy with life, kids, etc.  The other part is that this cold and wet spring has gotten very old and I've been frustrated with wanting to garden and not being able to because of weather, also that it seems the garden is in slow motion.  I've also found that I lost quite a few plants, I've pulled rotted rootballs up of quite a few plants.  Anyway, we did have good weekend weather and today apparently we had our first average temperature day of 62!

Old-fashioned bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) 'Alba' are finally in full bloom.  They were worth the wait!

The white ones usually bloom after the pink Bleeding Hearts but they are blooming together this year.

I'm so happy to see so many apple blossoms on the tree.  Last year there were very few.  I forgot what a pretty pink color they are.

The shed garden has really taken off all of a sudden.  Columbines, Bergenia, Bluebells, Deutzia, Meadow Rue and Heucheras are all beginning to bloom.  I think even the variegated Rhododendron might actually bloom this year.

Aside from tulips the front yard is still taking it's time.  I'm wondering if the Mexican Orange (Choysia ternata) will survive the move back in February.  It's pretty wilted still, but I'm not giving up yet.

Today I finally was able to get some of the plants that I started inside out in the ground.  I planted out Pattypan squash, Butternut squash, zucchini, pumpkins, chamomile and roses.  I now have cookie sheets for cooking again.  Funny how many kitchen supplies I use for seed starting.

The vegetable beds before I planted.  I can't wait until they are full of things to eat, if the temperatures warm up the seedlings will hopefully grow a bit faster.

As I worked in the garden over the past month I noticed that the soil we had delivered back in February didn't look very good.  It was very gray, full of rock and sharp glass and formed a hard dry crust after the soil began to dry after all the rain we'd been having.  Many of the seeds I started began wilting.  A woman from the company came to look at the soil and told me they had delivered the wrong type.  It wasn't the special garden mix we ordered, but some other "supreme mix".  I pointed out how hard the soil was, showed her the glass and she apologized.  The company agreed to credit us back half of the money and agreed to deliver 2 yards of compost.  That meant scraping off the top layer of the raised bed, then spreading the new compost over most of the front yard.  This was another two days of hard work that we thought we were done with.  I think the soil will be fine when I mix it in as I plant things.  I was happy the company acknowledged their mistake, but not happy we had to spend all that extra time on it.

Looks like more rain and cool temperatures are back on their way here.  I sure hope we can start getting more than one day at a time of warm weather.  I know many others are dealing with a cold and wet spring too.  Hopefully things will begin to turn around.

All words and photos in this post are property of A Gardener in Progress.