There's No Place Like Home: Spring Garden

I love when spring finally arrives, warm weather, rain showers, and best of all, everything blooming again!

Last fall, missing the spring flowers from our old house, the girls and I planted over 100 bulbs. We anticipated them all March, and when we came back from Europe we found crocus shooting up out of the snow!

By the end of March, the hyacinths had bloomed, filling our entryway with their sweet fragrance.

By Easter the daffodils had erupted, along with a variety of tulips I've never tried before, called parrot tulips, they were stunning.

Last week I found one of the roses open in front of our house--summer is on it's way!

We did a lot of landscaping last year, building a retaining wall and putting plants in around the house like mock oranges, and a lilac bush. It's been delightful watching them return from their winter hibernation, really it's thrilling as each one pushes out new leaves and buds.

I planted this last summer after it had finished blooming and I wasn't sure what to expect, so it was a pleasant surprise after the tulips had died.

We always know our hostas will come back. These were transplanted to our home in OP from our house in Missouri. The creeping myrtle is actually from Chris' grandparents house in Utah, replanted at Chris' parent's house in Missouri, to our old house. We dug it out when we moved to KS, it hadn't done very well at our other house but we can't keep it out of the grass here!

We're most excited about the rhodies coming back. We had purchased the largest ones we could find, Chris meticulously mulched and cared for them last year, and a couple of days ago they started blooming. Yay! They made it through their first winter without dying!

Of course, the bugs seem to like their leaves, we just can't find out which bugs have attacked it.

At least the bugs haven't destroyed them like they did to Kierst's columbine plant. A week ago it was green and thriving. Some kind of bug has stripped it down to nothing. Pretty sad.

Kierst has a tiny spot at our house for her garden, it's only about 1X2 feet, because that's all the room we have, our lot is pretty small. She begs and begs to plant vegetables, not realizing that those kind of plants need a lot more room to grow. We need Grandma and Grandpa to live closer again!

My favorite part of our house is the perennial garden. Parts of it have come back and others have died off, I love seeing what will happen in the spring.

This year one of the perennials seeded and new plants have come up all over the garden. I think it's a type of daisy, but I don't really know! We'll see when they start flowering!

We grow a few herbs along with a few vegetables at our house. This oregano has been around for a few years now, it comes back stronger every year, and like the creeping myrtle we can barely keep it under control!

Usually we drive up to Jamesport and buy our tomatoes, peppers and herbs from Amish greenhouses, we're picky about the varieties we put in our garden. This year we decided to support the scout fundraiser instead and buy from them.

Sorry scouts, but the tomatoes and peppers were pretty puny. We hope they make it. This is our "mortgage lifter," it's got a long way to go before it does that!

Because our kids missed the strawberries at our Missouri house, last year we brought back strawberry plants from Jamesport. Looks like they're thriving. Abs goes out every day to check on them, you'd think she likes berries or something.