Garden Survey - Mid-April 2017

It's time for the next garden survey!  Actually, it's well over-due; these photos (taken on April 12th) are nearly a month old, now.

As usual with "garden survey" posts, there are a ton of photos (some of which are overlapping and repetitive) intended to give the closest thing possible to a virtual walk through the garden as it stood at a given point in time.

I've already been astounded by how completely (and quickly!) parts of the yard/garden have changed, over the past few years, and there's no knowing how things will change in years to come, so I try to take these "surveys" every month or two during the warmer seasons, to give a general idea of how things take shape from month to month and year to year.

In an attempt at honesty ;o), these are more "warts and all"-type photos than what I typically would take and share-- and because there tend to be so many of them, I don't usually edit them quite so carefully as I generally do.  (Most of my edits are rough attempts to even out the exposure in the photos where bright light and deep shadow rub shoulders.)  It takes me long enough to get them up here, as it is. If I waited for everything to look just so (weeded, no hoses on display, etc.), I'd never do it at all! Also, as in this instance, I may present them with little or no commentary.

Thanks for coming along for this last month's tour!
(I took photos for May just today, so maybe I'll get them posted before the end of the week.)

And that's what it all looked like back in mid-April!

Clearing the Photo Backlog

I'm losing track of which photos I have and haven't posted here, so apologies if there are any duplicates.

In any case, here's the backlog of recent photos, to clear the path for the next batch!

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The new elephant ears are slowly but surely adding in new leaves-- especially 'Tea Cup'.  It's still pretty short, but it's also early in the season.

{Colocasia 'Tea Cup'}

There are quite a few blooms on the pineapple guava, offering hope for fruit later in the season.  Neither of us are particularly fond of the fruit, but it's a nice, evergreen shrub with interesting flowers-- and this year, my youngest sister has "spoken for" the pineapple guava fruits, so I hope they'll be put to good use.  (Last year, the only one eating them was the dogs!)

Blanket flower and tropical milkweed:

Viburnum and 'Blue Bedder' sage:

I'm putting in a new flowerbed on the southwestern corner of the garage.  So far, it's planted with a Black Diamond crepe myrtle ('Red Hot'), orange daylilies (single/double? not sure!), assorted green-leaf canna lilies, rose of Sharon (unknown color), tiger lilies, variegated monkey grass, iris (probably blue flag?), and 'Sunshine' ligustrum-- not all of which are included in the photo below.

In the background, you can see our raised beds, which are mostly populated with tomatoes, this year.

We've been having a red-bellied woodpecker visiting our hanging feeder every day for the past several days.  At first, I was just excited to see a new bird at the feeder, but when it became clear that he was coming back every day-- and wasn't at all shy-- I began to wonder if woodpeckers might be "bird-feeder bullies".  I think he may be intimidating the cardinals a little bit, but I've seen him and one male cardinal sharing the feeder, so maybe it won't be a problem.

West-facing flowerbeds.
The flowers in front are part of the Oval Bed.  In back, it's the wide border along the back of the house.

Taking photos from this perspective (from across the yard) flattens things and makes it look like the rose arbor is closer than it really is-- but it also crunches a bunch of different flowers into one shot, which I like. ;o)

I hope to post the first of two new "survey" posts in the near future!

A Whole Lotta Daylily Photos

... And these are just the ones since last time, minus the ones I haven't loaded from the camera over the past two or three days.

Many of these are repeats from the same plant, but since I can't always remember which ones I have and haven't gotten a good photo of, I just take pictures as the mood strikes me.  Please excuse the excess. ;o)