Some Spring Blooms

Winter got you down? Tired of the cold, snow and ice and are instead ready for some spring weather?

Here in the South Eastern part of the US where I live, we've had spring weather for a while, but the last few days turned rather cold. Tonight I'm going to see a low of 23 deg F. The good news is that the temps starting tomorrow will pop back up to what they were before.

But spring is here for us, we have lots of blooms here. I went out this morning with my camera with a macro lens attached (like having a magnifying glass) and took these images.

White Azalea bloom:



Red Azalea bloom:



Blue Berry bloom:



Bud from a long leaf pine tree sapling:



Redbud tree:



Here is some sort of ground cover plant, it's name escapes me at the moment. During the rest of the year it's just green leaves, but during spring, it looks like this:



And if you've ever wondered what tree lichen looks like up close, here you go:

Really thinking hard about getting my 40g stock pond going this year.

I've found a place that has some bog plants, and I want to get a pitcher plant especially with maybe a gamecock iris. Then I'll have some anacharis bunches down in the tub.

Around the tub, I have two large planters. I want to put some miniroses in them. I found a variety that has yellow and lavender blooms on it and can be wintered over outside with some mulching. I want to put those on either side of the tub so they can grow up around and maybe overspread a bit. Then maybe a hanging planter with annuals in it and I have some shorter window box planters I can put herbs in that can be positioned in front of the tub.

I want to put some platy fish in the tub. Unless a 'coon finds them overnight and fishes them out (happened one year), I'll take out more than I put in to begin with and they'll browse algae and eat mosquito larvae for me. The pitchers will eat mosquitos and other insects too.

Kid is getting big enough to maybe be interested in helping with maintenance on the project. He might get more invested if we let him have his own plant to go in the mix, and it will be a good learning project for him. And by the end of the summer, it will be an excellent excuse to have one of my indoor aquariums up and running again (I miss them!).

As far as my plants are going, my two columbines are peeking up shoots and my coral bell is getting going. My confused Dutch iris is also starting to grow again (I call it confused because the stupid thing always starts growing in October and gets the tops of its foliage frozen) and it looks like it might have split. The tulips are coming up and so are the other bulbs a previous owner planted.

I haven't noticed new growth on my clematis, but I also haven't looked closely at it.

Best thread of the week in my opinion.
Keep the blooms coming.
I love to see new life emerging; thanks...

a reply to: eriktheawful


[best Napoleon Dynamite voice]: Lucky!

We up here in the Last Frontier have seen a return of single digits! The trough of high pressure rolls through, passes into Canada, then hits the Lower 48. So those storms were weather we had a couple weeks ago. There were three high pressure system stacked on top of each other from Russia that is wrecking havoc on the Eastern seaboard the past few days. At least somebody is seeing good weather.

Nice to see flowers bloom! I like the lens too! It shows a lot of detail and kind of fuzzes out the background. Kind of artsy!

We have a kind of lilac here that I need to get some pics of. They are not on my land here, but are all over the county and South Carolina.

They look like grapes, hehehe. Quite beautiful looking. I'll see if I can't take some pics of them tomorrow and post them here.

I looked today, and my clematis is putting out new growth. Come May and it ought to be loaded with royal purple blooms.

Beautiful!

15* here with blowing, drifting snow. I don't even want to know the wind chill!
Probably two more months until we see full bloom!

Sigh!
WOQ

a reply to: eriktheawful

Some great budding blooms you have there Erik.

Next week is officially Spring here in France and I am observing my Wisteria which is starting to look a little perky right now.

I hope to have some decent pictures to share here next week when the blooms around my garden and POND start going nuts.

There is another thread where you can see what my Wisteria looks like here but not sure if I am allowed... But whatever... Who dares wins : www.abovetopsecret.com...

Warmest

Lags

a reply to: eriktheawful

Ground cover looks like Phlox.

Well sorry guys, but two nights of below freezing temps have destroyed the flowers I was going to show you:

Wisteria

Grows wild all around here, and is pretty cool looking IMO: