Crazy weather

This week has seen some wild weather.  On the 16th, it got up to 90 degrees... and then by the evening of the 18th it was 37!  That's hard on the plants and animals.  We had very strong winds, and several inches of rain (I'm not sure how much because our rain gauge developed a leak).  The weather forecast warned of frost the past 2 nights, but we escaped that thankfully!

Our trees are in full bloom.  The peaches, plum, cherry, pear and blueberry are all blooming.  I haven't seen any blooms on the apples yet.  The dogwood is just starting to bloom.  The redbud are done already.  My lilac are blooming again!  I'm so excited.  I took some pictures earlier in the week (before it got windy).  Have a look.

Spring is really shaping up nicely.

Now let me show you what our "landscaping" looked like 7 years ago....

See. No flowers... No bushes.... just rocks and weeds.  No walkway.  I laid that stone walkway myself that first spring from rocks that were lying around in the yard.  All those bricks were just stacked up or lying around also.  There was no patio either.  I did all that.

John helped me a lot, but he was busy cleaning up the workshops and getting them organized.  Man, what a mess he had to deal with!

I bought a lot of plants those first few years.  Some lived and some didn't.  I'd lived in the Puget Sound area for 17 years before John and I got together.  So my gardening experience was NOT up to the challenge of gardening in Arkansas.  Washington has 3 seasons; warm and wet, warm, and cold and wet.  In 2004, the area I lived in got 300 days of measurable precipitation.  That's definitely NOT Arkansas.

Here we have 4 seasons.  The low temps in the winter can be downright cold, 11 is the lowest we've seen in the past 7 years.  And the summer highs can be damned hot at 111!  YIKES.  Some years we get so much rain that the Spring River floods 3 times... and last year we had a drought with no rain for 5 weeks.  None.  Not a drop.  And it was over 100 every day during that 5 weeks.  That's really hard on the vegetation. 

The native plants do very well.  But those nice "cottage garden" plants I wanted just don't survive.  Luckily, we were bless with LOTS daffodils, irises, viola and day lilies.  So that's what I've been moving around.  And I think it's coming out very nicely.  Have a peek at a few pictures from the height of the drought last year.

I love to take a walk in the woods at see what new colors I can find.  That's always an adventure.

Daylilies are tasty, very good in a salad or stuffed with creamed cheese and covered in tomato sauce.  Yum!

Our veggie garden is off to a good start.  I need to check and see that everything survived that nasty weather.  Hopefully I won't have to replant everything!

Ok.  Off to feed the chicks (13 in total), and get on with the morning.