An heirloom flower show…

About this time every year I begin to work in my garden.  When we bought this house about 20 years ago, there was not a single plant.  There was only grass to the foundation.  Our house provided a blank canvass for me to paint with heirloom flowers.  Last spring the above heirloom rose, named “Lady Jane Grey”, unfurled in the shape of a heart.  Painting with heirloom flowers has been a passion of mine and I am endlessly pleased and I marvel at the annual flower show my beauties perform.  Here are a few early sneak peaks of what is to come from season’s past.

May will reveal lilac blossoms.  This is a french lilac with a picotee trim of crisp white.

This beautiful lilac was a gift from my friends Bill and Pam Anderson.  It was a start from a very old lilac in the front yard of their farmhouse in Patton Valley.  It has an intoxicatingly sweet frangrance.  Such a lovely gift.

Early June will provide clematis blossoms, which emerge from rather homely looking dried up brown vines.  I have about 6 varieties on a couple of trellises.  They put on quite the show every year.

My hollyhocks are appearing as small mounds with round leaves.  They will grow to about 6 feet tall and the blooms last about three weeks.  I buy heirloom starts.

I really love hydrangeas.  The French grandmother of the children I cared for in Boston introduced me to the French lace cap hydrangeas.  They had a gorgeous hedge at their beach house on Cape Cod.  I planted two lace cap hydrangeas in her honor and I think about her when they blossom.  She was a lovely lady and has now passed on.  She is missed.

This hydrangea is one of my newest varieties I planted in my back yard.  It is a pink and pistachio green colored blossom.  It is unusual I think.

I always look forward to my day Lillie’s flowers.  Each blossom only lasts a day, but new ones appear each day.  Their green spikes foliage adds interest in the garden, even when they are not blooming.

I call these my “sis” flowers.  My friend’s mother “sis” insisted that I take some of her Leopard’s Bane starts.  They were among her favorite spring flowers.  I always think of her when they bloom in May.  I often leave a bouquet of them on her grave on Memorial Day.   My Sis flowers remind me of my friend who gave me a baby shower for Parker just after he was born 15 years ago.  These happy yellow flowers make me smile.

Who couldn’t fall in love with ranunculus?  If I were a fairy, I’d sleep inside one of these fluffy blooms.  They are dreamy and magical in every way possible.  They are showy, lovely, looking like they found the perfect shade of blush and lipstick.  The photo below is another knock out purple variety of ranunculus.  Lavender petals with dark purple eyes say, “Come hither bees!”.  Stunning purple perfection.

Gardening is one of my favorite creative outlets that I truly adore!  I can spend all day in the dirt and my small yard has at least 100 varieties of flowers for cutting all spring and summer. I find gardening an endless source of learning new things. I will admit that one of the best things about having bunnies is their pelleted manure that flowers LOVE.   It doesn’t really take much to have a nice garden, but good dirt, compost or in my case bunny manure, water and a knowledge of planting, pruning and weeding, lots of weeding.  It also provides quiet time to think and to connect to the earth, even if it is just a small plot like ours.  I get lost in my garden and adore the beautiful flowers it provides in exchange for my time.

If you want to catch up with me, you’ll probably find me in my yard.  If you’d like to share your garden with me, I’d be forever interested in seeing what you are growing.   If you want to garden and don ‘t know where to start, start simple, like grow a big row of giant sunflowers.   Plant one thing that you love and add one more plant each year.  Research your soil, sun exposure and choose something that likes what you have to provide.  If you don’t know what kind of soil you have, dig up a spade full and take it in a container to a good nursery like Blooming Junction on Zion Church Road and they can tell you all about your soil.  Or bring it to me, I can tell you what to plant or how to amend. Again, my 4H and FFA education continues to pay off in my adult life.

I hope you enjoyed my heirloom flower show from my little yard of heirloom varieties of flowers.  Won’t you share what’s blooming too?  Happy spring friends.