Acrylic Painting
36X40 inches
Paperwhite Narcissus, Formosa Azalea, Jet Bead
This Narcissus has spread all over the yard. It makes it impossible to mow until it is finished blooming and building nourishment for next season.
Here are a few non native bloomers in the yard. I am not as partial to the overly hybridized varieties. Love the natives. But the blooms have certainly added some verve to the old place.
Formosa Azalea blooms
I have never looked up this flowering shrub. It was here when I moved into this hundred year old house. There were several old favorites, Spirea, Forsythia, Crepe Myrtle etc that some lady of the house, now long dead, planted, perhaps lovingly, in her yard. I have kept them in honor of her, whoever she was. My father, a nurseryman, called this one Jet Bead but I never asked what family of plants it is in. I am assuming that it is called Jet Bead because of it’s jet black berries that really attract the birds. That is my primary fondness for this shrub that grows under my window. Birdwatching.
Christmas Fern Fiddle Heads
These posts tonight are not flowers but I still welcome the new growth.
Bloodroot, no blooms this year
Bloodroot next to the fence
I was really looking forward to this blooming this year. My photos of it last year were awful. I had learned to use this Kodak a little better and thought I could improve a little. I have a painting going that needs some more studying the plant. My dog trampled the flowers which appeared before the leaves. I thought I had it in a place she wouldn’t want to go. Not so. I love the dog but am so disappointed. I guess I will move this clump outside the fence and wait another year.
Magnolia Frazeri Blooms
The bud of a Magnolia Frazeri
My yard is blooming! Happiness! I grew this deciduous magnolia native to North Carolina. I found it while roaming around the woods near a cabin where I was staying on the NC/Tenn line. It was about fifteen years ago. There were several of these magnolias in bloom all through the woods and under them all were lots of little sprouts. I didn’t have a shovel with me so brought it home bare roots and about a foot high. It has survived to enrich my life in my barren city landscape.
A Frazer magnolia full of buds against a stormy spring sky.
Flame Azalea in Bloom
This incredibly showy native azalea is deciduous and hearty in the Piedmont. It one of my favorite shrubs It is a beautiful orangy yellow mass in my yard. I air layered it from some shrubs that my Father had in a section of his nursery devoted to native plants.
Blueberries Threatened by Frost Again
Blueberry from the eastern wilds of North Carolina.
Once again, just as my favorite fruit is in full bloom, we are threatened with frost in Piedmont North Carolina. I was given this plant by my brother (who got it form my father). As a family, we have always enjoyed these blueberries. My father had a large blueberry “patch” and my brother set them out on his property in long rows that gave him a huge crop every year. I have one lonely shrub but I love the fruit. The grocery store berries are tasteless compared to my wild high bush variety (rabbit eye blueberries) with more acid and the twang of the heath family. This one very full and tall shrub bears enough for my husband and me and some birds …..that is, when it escapes these spring frosts.
Yellow Trillium in Spring Sun
I tried my photos of the trillium again. It is still washed out. You folks who are able to get such depth and detail will find it dull. I am happy to see it bloom. It also came from my father’s botanical garden and I think about how much a plant can carry on after you are gone. I wonder how his plants are doing but I can’t bring myself to go to my home place and find out what the new owners did or did not do with his collection.
May Apples in the Weeds
Here is another delicate little woodland beauty struggling in my weedy yard. I had gone out to photograph the Yellow Trillium and discovered the Blue Phlox and May Apples. The trillium pictures were not clear so I will try again tomorrow but these plants, now in a wrong location, tugged at my heart. They should be deep in a cool wood. I was once a great gardener but can’t seem to get myself into the yard and do much with it anymore or I would have rescued them from the weeds and moved them to a less overgrown area. I wonder if this is what happened to my Dad’s botanical garden when the new owners took over. They did not know wild flowers. How could they care for them?
Blue Phlox in the Yard
This clump of blue phlox was brought to my house from my father’s botanical garden in 1983. It is a lovely little woodland flower but struggles in my unkempt center city yard.
