Spring means flowers

This is a nice flower... notice the spines on the stalks, and the leaves... everything but the blooms... Everybody that sees these guys, says "what pretty flowers!" Yeah... right up till you touch the plant... This is Cnidoscolus stimulosus Aka finger rot, 7 minute itch... A very close relative to texas bull nettle and a really scary plant out in AZ called mala mujer ... Is totally a fun plant to have growing up among the tomato bushes... if you know what I mean...

Hmmm.... The turnips are through... I leave them for the butterflies...

And the wasps... Gotta keep those pollinators happy!

While we're looking at the weeds... Here's one of our native blue salvias... Sorry people, this is not the salvia that you smoke... unless you absolutely want to...
This salvia with the pretty blue flowers is lyre leaf sage, a perennial best left in the ditch... not a good choice for the flower garden... it is very seedy.

March Bloom

Carolina Jessemine

The Carolina jessemine is a native vine, blooming early here... I used to see the blooms on the ground at my previous garden, but never actually see the vine... they'd climbed well out of sight...

The daffodils are winding down

With the early Spring here, some patches of daffodils didn't bloom.
I was reading an article about "blind daffodils" recently... it explained why otherwise happy drifts of daffodils had failed this year.

Pear Flowers

I planted these pear trees 2 Autumns ago, they might produce this year... I had a frost which killed back the taters that were up a couple of days ago... but am hopeful re the pears....

Edit:

The pears produced!
the poor trees had their tops dragging the ground.

See pic

Early Emergence

A study of contrasts, the wild delphinium first emerged from sleep.

It's impossible to grow the nursery delphiniums here, but this brave little guy stands up to the heat.

I discovered the viper's bugloss growing near the fire department as I drove past (a couple of years age)... I pulled over and took a closer look at those showy blue flowers...

Picked a couple of seed pods, and sowed them in my garden... Good thing I got them, because they soon had that area covered in sod... YUCK!

Last Spring they came up and bloomed, but my camera died... I'll try to get pictures this year.

I grew this camellia from an acorn...

Neat story, a neighbor came by a garden where I was helping the homeowner, with a pocket full of camellia seed... Asked if we thought they would grow...

I thought they prolly would... The neighbor gifted me with the seed... I took them home and planted them... had a nice crop of camellias come up... I shared them with people and took a dozen (or so) of them up to TN for a visit to the mountains... for a couple of years, before bringing them back to middle GA...

Another hellebore picture... These guys are so pretty... It's still going to be another month before we get the peak bloom...

Fixing to move a tree...

Had a walnut tree come up in someone's garden, they couldn't figure out where they had room for it... but it couldn't stay there...

Also picked up a plum tree... I hope to have tree fruit some day...

Is it Spring yet?

First Daffy-dill! Is it Spring yet?

The hellebore are prettier and prettier!

The atamasco lilies are coming up too!

road-kill

I was checking facebook updates this morning, getting ready to go do a day's work, when I got a phone call from an acquaintance... There's a fresh road kill over here, someone just hit a deer, it wasn't here yesterday...

I told him .... I'm on my way...

Fresh deer meat is mighty desirable.... You can't purchase anything like that... Go to the Walmart Super-Center and pick up a steak that's been fed chicken manure, and growth hormones... Sometimes, I can taste that stuff... And what they do to hamburger... After reading Toxin by Robin Cook, I was put off store bought meat for a month or so...

Anyway... I got to the carcass, the back end of the deer was clearly a dead loss.... but it was a brand new kill... threw that baby in the back of the truck!

Doesn't bambi look tasty!

Getting bambi back to the house, I lost no time getting the carcass processed...






Yeah, it's a bloody mess, but I'm quality control!

Does it look like food yet?

How about now...

This is a plate full of butterfly steaks (tenderloin) I've seen entire deer killed where the hunter took nothing but the tenderloin!
With our deer explosion, you hear some insane stories about 5 deer in the freezer, and the hunter still out there looking for more...



Butterflies in the pan... Mighty tasty! Some good eatin there!

Pot of ribs... Just add barbque sauce! Yummy!

Check it out... several meals ready for the freezer.

Who's coming over for dinner?

What's blooming today?

The hellebore seem slow getting started... While the blooms begin appearing in December, they're terribly far and few between...

It's the end of January, and I have some blooms... I certainly appreciate that... I'm impatiently checking all of my patches searching for colour!

This is a nice green one... I know someone that actually wants an entire patch of green blooms... I'd previously felt like there was something wrong when the bloom didn't colour up better... I've gained some perspective on that... It's genetic... You get what you get when you grow stuff from seed...

Here's a sweet plant...

Some people collect miniature daylilies, I suspect that miniature hellebores could well become collectible soon also.

Here's one with red spots...

And a sorta pink one.

I should mention that it was so dry last summer that ALL of my vegetables died....

These guys didn't get a drop of water, and while all the hellebore looked wilted, everybody pulled through like champs! Hellebore make excellent plants for dry shade...

Oh man, there's nobody home...

I am seeing the wrens acting interested in nesting sites... This nest is from last year, but I expect I'll be seeing new ones soon...

Winter

It's been that uncolourful period of the year, between the killing frosts of December, and the first blooms of January... Nothing to shoot with the camera except seedpods and berries...

Yesterday, I finally got a pic of a hellebore bloom!

today, I shot the bloom encased in ice...

Won't hurt the bloom though, hellebore are as tough as nails....

Shot a clematis show yesterday before the storm.... Summer clematis
seeds...

The towhees show up nicely against the ice...

These pics are all clickable.

One last snow picture....