Bread Poppies

Most of my poppies have passed now, leaving these lovely pods which I like to use in dried arrangements and wreaths. The pink in the middle of the picture is a gladiolus.

One poppy flower is seen in the lower left of the above picture.

Here is an interesting article on poppies and the legal ramifications possible from growing them.

Poppies Blooming Today

 These are annual poppies and should be planted in the late fall for spring bloom. I mix mine with a little sand as the seed are too small to handle alone. Then broadcast in a prepared area. Do not cover the seed. Or alternatively, just let the seed fall in the garden when they are mature and come up wherever they will.

They mature and pass before the early summer flowers come on so they do not take space from later flowers.
These poppies are a bright red and the stamens are dark, almost black. The blue in these pictues is an anomaly of the photograph.

Gold Hill Plant Farm Today (March 28, 2015)

                Most of the daffodils have passed now but the Narcissus are really glorious this year.

                           
                                        More Narcissus under the Dogwood that is trying to unfold.

                                                               The oaks are blooming.

You never know what surprise you may find! The rooster violets are blooming. They seem to prefer the worst soil and the very place you'd never figure anything could grow. I remember how they used to grow and bloom on a red bank at my Grandmother's house. I have tried them is more hospitable locations but they die out in a year or so.

This shrub is Exochorda or more familiarly, Pearlbush. It blooms earlier than the white spireas but is also a member of the rose family. It roots and grows easily, without special treatment. It hails from China and Central Asia. Occasionally you will see one blooming in abandoned places or the edge of woods. It may be that it reseeds, but not readily enough to be a pest.

Spring Beauty: a diminutive wild bulb plant that greets the first of spring with white faces smeared with a bit of pink rouge.

Every year the thrift around this rock takes a bigger place. I love its cheery fuchsia color, and talk about a plant that takes care of itself and does not mind living in poor soil! It's main requirement seems to be sun.

I can't count on a big beautiful display of tulips , but every year I have a few show up , even with smallish blooms. The main thing that seems to help them rebloom is fertilizer. It would be better if I could remember to fertilize in the fall, but by then they have disappeared underground and I can't find them.

Spring!!

                                         The persistence of daffodils without care is well known.


Click here to read or hear a cheerful poem about spring!

It May Be Chilly Today...

These are from my yard yesterday. Spring will soon be spronging out everywhere!

                                  Sweet smelling Edgeworthia  chrysantha (Oriental Paper Bush)

                                                                The first open Daffodil

                                                                 Pink Hellebore

White Hellebore

                          James Applewhite in his poem Jonquils called them sunlight broken in pieces

Artist with cerebral Palsey

This link takes you to a video of a truly remarkable artist, who has overcome physical handicaps and age to produce something meaningful and beautiful.

Front Flower Bed in August

This was my yard last August, just in case we all need a reminder that slowly, surely, the seasons are changing and the plants and people along with them.
An old red oak is the backdrop to my largest flower bed. Some long ago hurricane probably took the top out, and it has some kind of scar or growth on one of the limbs that has gotten bigger and changed shape over the years, but it solders on, providing shelter and food for local wildlife as well as shade shade and lowering of temperature in my yard