Friday, May 15, 2015

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day -- May, 2015

Q: If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?

A: Pilgrims.

Did schoolchildren here on the West coast tell that silly joke too? Growing up in Massachusetts, living for 25+ years only one town away from Lexington and Concord, where the American Revolution began, I was raised with a very concrete awareness of early American history. That little tidbit is, of course, neither here nor there.

It's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, hosted by Carol Michel of May Dreams Gardens. In the case of this May, our May flowers have brought even more May flowers. Also, yes, we're having showers, but we really could use some heavy rain. Here in the PNW we are heading into the dry summer season with a major deficit of precipitation.

The lilacs at the end of the driveway are again loaded with flowers, although I do nothing to them.

The scent seems to perfume the entire neighborhood

Chives in the herb garden are flowering

And the ornamental Alliums too



One Brugmansia flower survived the recent repotting
One of my Daturas, grown from seed last year, is finally flowering. It never grew big enough to flower last year, so I dug it and overwintered it in the greenhouse. But now I'm sadly disappointed. It was supposed to be a double purple flower.

Not a double flower

Only the backside is purple.

Abutilon 'Red Tiger' enjoying some fresh spring air

California poppies have started opening on these recent sunny days

Centaurea dealbata


Lunaria annua/Honesty/Money plant

Achillea

Primula bulleyana

The very last Dicentra 'Valentine'

Thalictrum

I'm not sure if the fab foliage is photo-bombing my shot of the 'Gold Heart' Dicentra flowers, or if it's the other way around.

Enkianthus

Clematis 'Josephine'

My bear grass (Xerophyllum tenax) is flowering after 5 years in the ground



I have a variety of self-sown Columbines flowering all over the garden.






And our PNW native Aquilegia formosa



And, in the category of incipient flowers:

Magnolia macrophylla

Callistemon 'Woodlander's Hardy' -- the shrub is covered in these cool flower buds

A second Callistemon is also going to flower heavily

Peony 'Cora Louise,' an Itoh peony

An herbacious peony is all set to burst

A couple of Bromeliads are getting ready to flower too.



The Cardiocrinum gets taller every day

I'm excited to see it open

Are you celebrating Garden Bloggers Bloom Day? Lots of garden bloggers do. You'll find Carol Michel's post at May Dreams Gardens here, as well as links to other bloggers around the world.