Our Backyard

I took photographs of our yard and gardnes on Monday. Yesterday Tom got out there early in the morning and photographed some of the flowers that were blooming. What a difference a week makes!

This is one of the flower gardens that we put in. The Bee Balms have really florished, in fact they crowded out all my poppies :-( and the cone flowers are over five foot tall!



We put this 4th flower garden in late last Summer as a "baby garden" because we had gotten a whole bunch of little baby plants from Mary Lou and we were afraid that they would be choked or shadowed out in the larger gardens. Well, some of these plants are not HUGE and will need to be transplanted this year. This little bird house in the Butterfly garden had Carolina Wrens last year and this year cute little house wrens. Sunday the 4 little ones fledged and Tom got photos of them about to fledge (I will post these separately).



The white gooseneck loosestrife is about to bloom. This year i found some PINK variants being sold for cancer fund raising and I put two of those in.



This was a little baby put in late last year as a small single plant -- it really took off!



The bee balm are growing and multipying like crazy, but they look so pretty and they do attract the hummingbirds. They bloomed a week earlier than last year and they are twice as wide and twice as tall.



This year I tried pink geraniums on the planters near the driveway, more delicate looking than the red ones I usually put in.



These couple day lilies were the only flowers here before we moved in. SOME DAY I am going to runa whole row of day lilies and daffodils along the front property line. The daffodils come up early and then just as they start to look scraggly the day lilies will be lots of green and then they will bloom for the rest of the summer.



We have been hearing these hawks in the backyard for the past three days -- really loud and for long periods of time. Yesterday Tom borrowed my 500mm lens and set out in search of the nest (ther has to be babies because there is too much noise). He found the mom calling and calling but did not locate the nest.





We put in our first real in ground veggie garden this year. We bought an easy to install raised bed garden from Gardeners Supply http://www.gardeners.com/

Dad gave me some cucumbers and a whole bunch of tomato plants.



Tom also took a few photos of some of the great little birds at our backyard feeders. Here is a cute little tufted titmouse.