Nothing funny about feldspar

Moving to the back yard, coming out from the back patio door, you can’t help but be enamored of the Japanese Maple-and-Bleeding-Heart combination. I’d like to say that I’d carefully planned it, but really, it’s just luck.

Surprisingly enough, this Japanese maple came, several years ago, from Home Depot’s sale rack. If you’ve the time and energy to baby a plant for the first winter, then you can’t beat the sale stuff.

Like so many of the plants in our yard, the bleeding heart has a life-cycle totally unlike what Plagioclase’s mother expects. Her bleeding hearts (ours is a cutting from hers) would bloom in May for a couple of weeks. Ours, however, given its location and our good dirt (as opposed to her brick), blooms from April to June, and then often it blooms again in the fall. It’s even spreading — we have two other bleeding hearts growing nearby.

Rounding the front yews, we’re accosted by the Daphne “Carol Mackie.” This evergreen shrub is reported to be difficult to propagate, but easy to grow provided you’ve put it in just the right place. I think we’ve got it in just the right place. It’s supposed to be about 4 ft high by 4 ft wide. This one is about 4 ft high by 6 ft wide. Every year some of it gets lopped off by ice damage, but not this year. Perhaps it’s overcompensating.

Showing in the center of the shrub (and to the back left) is the Rose “Zephirine Drouhin.” It’s a mostly-thornless semi-climber (needs some support) that blooms for months and is fragrant. Nearly a perfect rose, really. Pictures of that when it blooms in June.

When the Daphne blooms, I get a headache everytime I step out the front door. But it’s worth it.

Hey! Who’s that?!

Here, now, is a series of tulips outside. These are species tulips, and you might be able to tell just why they were so popular in the 1700’s. They are three different plants. The first one is near our front porch. I thought it was a miniature, until I saw the others, which are “normal” sized.

We were introduced to species tulips by a dear friend who was leaving her garden of 40 years to move into a condo. She was looking ahead to a long retirement with her husband, without having to worry about steps or yard work or house maintenance. Unfortunately, her brain cancer had other plans.

These are for you, Nancy.

It’s such a nice day today, I had to get my camera out and take a few pictures of the outside world.¹

However, rather than dump them all here in this post, I thought I’d have some mercy on you RSSers and dole them out over the next day or so. (If you only get the feed once a week, you’re SOL, I’m afraid). It’ll also give me a chance to test out the future-blogging function of WP.

First up, a picture not taken in the garden, but on the table. This is an early tulip that I brought inside for Plagioclase’s mother when she couldn’t get outside to see it.

1. Yes, I know it’s a blog-cliché to post macrophotos of flowers. So sue me.↩

Much to the consternation of our fussy neighbors¹, we have 4 thistle feeders for the flock of goldfinches in the neighborhood. Of course, I just saw them eating dandelion seeds, so the food we so carefully provide isn’t perfect.

We get lots of goldfinches. And we also get house finches, which are ok, because they’re not sparrows. Surprisingly enough, we don’t get many sparrows, even though, historically, some live in our attic.

This year, we’ve got a mourning dove nesting in the maple tree in back. This is the world’s ugliest maple. It’s a teen-ager — all gawky with limbs everywhere and exuding mysterious substances all season². I keep suggesting we take it out, but Plagioclase (rightly) wonders what we’d put in it’s place. The robins built the nest, but abandoned it when they realized they were right in the middle of our yard’s squirrel highway. Doves, however, don’t seem to mind the traffic.

We’re keeping an eye on this nest. Our bird book says that the male sits on the nest from about 8am to about 5pm, when the female comes and sits for the remaining time. So when we go outside, he (the dove) placidly watches us from his balcony. I haven’t seen the shift-change yet. Not that I think it’ll be something special to see, just curious…

Yesterday, I heard the crows making an awful racket. Plagioclase said he saw them attacking the neighborhood hawk. Was it retribution? Or simply a preëmptive strike?

1. We try to tell them that the thistle is denatured, but they blame all the thistles in their yards on us. That would be true only because the goldfinches have eaten at real thistles and brought seed in their poop.↩
2. Not that mysterious, ok. Flowers and helicopters and leaves. Work with me here.↩