Irises

I'm so excited, my bearded irises have finally started blooming! Two have opened so far:

Some of my irises have been in ground for a couple years and this is the first time any of them have bloomed.  These are ones I planted last spring.
There are a lot of buds getting ready, I can't wait to see the colors - I've planted a few different varieties and have sort of lost track of which is located where (doh! will label them as they bloom)
 

Luv me some raindrops on petals.  Magical.

Beauty in the yard

I made a round of the yard this morning with the camera, so many beautiful things to observe.  Here are just a few:

Daffodils, tulips, hyacinth are blooming.  Sprouting are daylilies, asiatic lilies and banana trees.

Hosta and hen and chicks.

Stonecrop peeking through the creeping jenny, which has creeped the hell all over the place and needs to be trimmed back mightily.

Blue muscari and phlox, which smells wonderful.

A mix of parrot tulips by the mailbox.  This is their first year in the garden and I am very pleased to see they do indeed resemble parrot feathers in both color and texture.  Gorgeous!

Beginning of Gardening Season

Here in Tennessee, the weather is sporadically attempting to warm up and everyone is starting to work in their yards again - mowing grass, clearing out dead brush from the winter, getting new bulbs and trees in the ground.  The garden centers are filling up with flowers and fruit trees and young veggie plants.

I have begun to work myself.  Today I mowed and edged 1/4 of the front yard that grows faster and also trimmed some bushes.  Then I temporarily placed a line of stepping stones right down the middle of rectangular veggie garden, I'm dividing it into 2 sections and this will make it much easier to tend things without getting muddy.  Hopefully.

Over the past couple weeks I've been working on starting my seeds indoors.  These pics were taken on March 25, mostly everything has grown since then, I'll update again soon.

  This is my high-tech indoor seeding zone - a spare bedroom with little furniture (good floor space) and decent light from a south-west facing window.
Sadly, this is the most action the toboggan has seen in a couple years.  Oh well.

Here we have cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, pumpkins, squash, zucchini, sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, morning glories and surely other things I'm forgetting.

 

Yellow squash.
You can see the first tiny "true leaf" in the center of the  cotyledons.  When two of them have emerged and grown to a healthy size, it'll be ready for transplanting.





 

Pumpkins and sunflowers.




As the sprouts grow bigger, I'll transplant them from these cells to larger containers, which will then move to the garage which has windows and gets pretty decent light.  Then I'll shift the young plants to the front porch during the days, back to the garage at night and then finally let them stay out overnight night to complete the hardening off process. 

In 2011 I had great luck with corn in 5 gallon buckets.
In 2012..... not so much.  It was incredibly hot and dry last year and neither my 5-gallon-bucket corn nor my ground-planted corn had any edible success.  There were a couple puny little ears but that was it.



This year I'm planning to add more soil amendments to the vegetable patch (claybreaker and organic garden soil) because our yard is really heavy red clay and I think it will help with rooting and drainage.



Tune in later for more!

Spring Snow

We had a chance of snow in the forecast and it came through!  There was about 3/4inch on the cars, grass and rooftops by 10am, big slushy flakes that made great snowballs.  We had an impromptu snowball fight while clearing the windshield on S's car.  Then the temps came up a bit and it melted down mostly.  Sounds like the mountains are in for quite a bit more.
Here's what my Spring flowers looked like at 9:30

Daffodils and Hyacinth

Hyacinth and Daffodils

Blue Muscari

Bulbapalooza

Prepare to seethe with jealousy (if you're into seething).
I hit the bulb jackpot!
A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across these bulbs on sale for $2.00 a bag at MalWart, which was a good deal as they were originally $3.98/$4.98 each. They're clearing out the last of the fall-planting bulbs and I snagged these 3 bags for me and a couple other bags that I gave to my mom.

A few days ago, I went to a different MalWart & they had many of the same/similar bulbs that weren't labelled on sale, but I grabbed a bunch & took them to the price-scanner machine and they were.......
*drumroll*..... *wait for it*.....

$0.02 each.
!!!

I bought 136 bulbs for twenty-four cents. Wooohoooo!

Now I have to get them in the ground ASAP because some of them are already sprouting - big time.
Namely the dutch iris mix (which is supposed to be late-blooming!):

The red hyacinth is also peeking through:

Warmish temps right now feel very Spring-like, maybe even hitting 70 on Saturday!  But the weatherpeeps are saying we'll be cooler again next week......

Early Spring

We were out and about in Cades Cove on Sunday - it was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, though it was a bit chilly and there was still a dusting of snow in the terminally shady spots.
This Winter has been much milder than the last couple years and going along with that, it seems that Spring is getting a jump on things.
After finishing our hike along Rich Mtn Rd and coming back down via an old roadbed, we popped out in the field next to the concrete fire ring(?) across the road from the Missionary Baptist Church and discovered a patch of daffodils almost getting ready to bloom.
This seems very early.
I imagine the large patch near the north end Hyatt Lane will be coming along as well.... didn't get to check on it.

Garden Update

I'm busy busy busy, so here's just a quick update on what's happening around the garden:
The new hydrangea is adjusting nicely, no longer drooping over terribly in the heat of the afternoon. Its blooms are so big and beautiful considering how small the shrub is yet. I think it is beginning to shift from blue to purple.















Ahhhh, the sunflowers.... so bright and cheerful :-)
There's about 8 of them and 3 have begun to bloom. They are getting about 4-5 feet tall now.










A nice, juicy cucumber in the front flowerbed. They sure are spiky when they're little! A few more tiny ones are under the leaves, but it looks like all the vine's energy is going into this particular cuke.

I've got corn sprouting in a couple 5-gallon buckets, and some watermelon vines and red peppers plants in the works, more pics later. Happy gardening!

Buggin' Out

A walk around the yard leads to beautiful discoveries if you take the time to stop and smell the roses. Just be careful where you poke your nose!












Huge bumblebees are frequenting the garden, they dive bomb me sometimes but mostly I'm ignored, they're too busy eating up all that juicy pollen.
See how the passion flower rubs pollen on the bee's back as it works? Click to enlarge the photo and see better how much it's caked on!



Some kind of neato beetle, I love it's b&w stripey pants. There was a big beetle orgy in one of the plants on the vacant lot next door and they were flying all over the place.


Pretty wildflower, right? Look closer....

In the Yard

I've been in the yard a lot lately and I'll share a few things going on out there. First up, our azaleas are blooming beautifully this year:









I was planting some caladiums next to the azaleas a few days ago and got an amazing up-close look at a bumblebee in pollinating action.
Next, I've potted two kinds of sunflower seeds, crimson red and Russian giant. Can't decide yet where to put them in the backyard so we'll see what happens with the sprouts first.








A couple mondo crinum bulbs I've planted by the mailbox in full sun. They look like mutant onions!











Hope mine bloom as pretty as the picture.

Better get back to the yard....
I bought more bulbs today, omg the shame!!

Wildflower Extravaganza

On April 2oth, we took a hike through one of the popular Spring wildflower destinations in the Smokies. A drizzly weekday & therefore not too busy, only encountered a handful of people.

Catesby's Trillium


There were many different flowers to enjoy, but the stars of the area were certainly the huge patches of blue phlox covering the greening landscape.









Miterwort, Bishop's Cap


Eastern Red Columbine










Stunning carpet of phlox








What's this? A stinkweed amongst the flowers?! Bah! A dainty rosebud am I.





One of several caves in the area. Normally entry is allowed (with a permit only) but currently all entry is forbidden... & Big Brother is watching...



....due to the presence of White Nose Syndrome, which is unfortunately killing bats in huge, huge numbers.







There are multiple manways winding through the area. In past visits we'd followed several of them and I'd wondered where the others led. This time I'd done some research and printed an old topo map which was helpful. We were all over the place exploring, it was great.






Old gears





Still, there are other old paths yet to be explored among the heavily traveled ones.



A small waterfall plunges into a deep, slippery cavern. Once again, entirely no cave entry at the moment, on a normal basis entry by permit only.
We normally leave via the steep slope next to the falls, but today we exited on an old route to create a longer hike.



This little patch of stunning common blue violets near Schoolhouse Gap was an incredible shade of purple.








First sighting of the season! Crested dwarf iris blooming along the upper portion of the main trail.






Back in the parking lot, saw this growing in a large patch of horse poop.... looks like wild greens, maybe red veined sorrel? I don't know, but I could've eaten a pretty big salad at that point ;-) Off to find lunch.

Spring flowers at home

We had some wonderful blooms pop out recently, a pretty combination of daffodils, tulips and hyacinths. Unfortunately the unseasonably early heat has begun to beat them down, but here are some shots from a few days ago:

Spring has sprung

Sorta. We've been having a particularly cold and often snowy winter, but you can tell Spring is in the air. The days are getting longer, I've seen birds checking out last year's nests, and now my tulips and daffodils are starting to break through the soil. We're still in for more cold and snow showers, though....

Ramsey Cascades Trail

On Sunday we hiked out Ramsey Cascades Trail in the Smokies. A really interesting trail, lots to see along the way. It is a 4-mile hike to reach the falls with an elevation gain of about 2,200 feet. The most strenuous section is within the last 1/2 mile of the falls.... due to combination of steady incline and tiredness of legs :-) But definitely worth the effort - the falls are spectacular!

The trail starts as an old gravel roadbed. After 1.5 miles, you reach a turn-around loop.... the unnamed footpath branching off left of the loop heads up toward Greenbrier Pinnacle. The falls trail continues on at the back of the loop.


The first log footbridge is about the halfway point. We hiked up here this winter but turned back due to snow and ice, which made the log slick as a sheet of glass.






Erosion along the trailbed.... thousands of feet and countless storms have exposed the root system.
Paying attention is high priority, one small misstep can lead to a twisted ankle or a tumble.





Beautiful bee balm was spotted along the trail in several places.
Lots of rhododendron in bloom .



Traveling onward, the trail winds by three of the biggest trees I've ever seen - pass through two huge sentries to the hall of the giant king, of record proportions!
Cross over another footbridge, just rebuilt in May and still smelling fresh of sawdust (one of my favorite aromas).

Finally after some diligent rock scrambling, the roar of the falls could be heard. As they came into view, so did a grim reminder of the dangers associated with waterfalls. A fun day of enthusiastic exploration can turn deadly in a second..... and so often we witness foolish or careless acts within view of such signs.


We were the first to reach the falls that day and were lucky to enjoy them all on our own for about 10 minutes, until the rest of the hikers started trickling in.
One girl hiked the entire 8 miles in flip-flops. Yeah.
All said, we passed roughly 35 people while on the trail, and our hike-time was 4.25 hours.