Spring Interlude

Thanks much to everyone for all the well-wishes. I had been so hoping to dodge allergy season, but it got me anyway. Feeling much better now, so I thought I would take a page from everyone's book and show off our outdoor pretties.

Unfortunately, not all of it is pretty. All that stupid snow we got decimated the rhododendron in front of our house:

We're hoping it'll come back, but it still breaks my heart to see it like this, especially when this is what it looked like two years ago:

Fortunately, the rhody in the backyard has not only survived, but thrived:



Because it's in the backyard, it blooms much later than the one in the front, which is good because the front yard one often ended up getting hit by the last frost of the winter just as it was blooming.

Hubby has both his gardens set up; this is his flower garden surrounding our waterfall pond:

Because it's a mix of wildflowers and nursery plants, it tends to look a little overgrown (it also looks like that because hubby isn't always diligent with garden maintenance, but we won't go into that). I found the perfect garden stone for it a couple of years ago:

Oh yes, it lives up to its name and then some... :)

This is his vegetable garden:



It's not very big, but that's how we like it. There's tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, lettuce and a few other things that I forget. He even added a couple of basil plants for Mr. Mick. We're just hoping the fershlugginer chipmunks will let us have some of it this year.

Back to the front yard: hubby found some lovely hanging baskets this year:

The perennials at the bottom surprised us by coming back quite strong, and hubby's added a couple more so that he won't have to worry about that space next year.

Milo the bunny statue has his annual batch of impatiens again:

He is an excellent gardener: yes, impatiens are hardy plants, but the ones that grow in his wheelbarrow always bloom biggest and best of all our plants.



And just in case you were looking for a certain spoiled rotten wabbit:

"Hmph...Like anyone comes here to look at plants..."