Thursday, April 7, 2011

Wildflowers

We first saw the house on May 5, 2010. It was a hot spring here in New England, so everything had already bloomed by then. It was more like summer here that day. So we really never saw the house in the spring. It was nice being surprised by all of the random flowers! We first noticed daffodils sprouting up... some behind the lean-to, some by our lilac bush, some by our mailbox... even some randomly planted in a line in the woods. Those ones are a little strange.. Then the wildflowers started coming up. The whole northern half of our backyard was covered in these pretty little purple flowers.
I loved them!! After about two weeks or so, they died out, and new flowers appeared in the southeastern part of the backyard. I believe those were violets.. white and purple ones. Our backyard was so beautiful (until R cut the grass this morning and as a result also cut down most of the flowers)!
The trees in the woods grew in (except one... which looks dead on the bottom, but now has small buds on the top.. we aren't sure what to do).. I love the privacy that the woods provide.. I love looking out the back windows.. it's calming.


The bare patch in the yard where the pool used to be even filled in a little bit. R bought a bag of grass seed and spread it around the yard in the random bare patches. However, then the rain that we were promised didn't come for about 2 weeks and in the meantime the birds had a buffet of grass seed. So, it didn't fill in completely, but it still looks better than it did last year. The pool spot is where we're planning on planting a garden anyways.


And now we have a bunch of tulips randomly planted around the yard. There are a bunch around the tree by the driveway and a lot in the space between our driveway and our next door neighbor's. I love tulips. I got some more that I plan to plant later this year.


Even the bushes in front of the house are somewhat growing in. So we've decided to wait until next year to see if we need to replace them. They don't look bad from the street because we're on a hill.. it's only when you're up close to them that they look horrible. We'll see...


We've also decided to put in a walkway in the backyard that goes from the driveway to our backdoor. There is some sort of paved trench there now that has served as a walkway, but it's horrible. And it wasn't at all helpful in the winter (R just shoveled a path next to it on top of the grass). So I think we'll get some pavers or bricks sometime soon and just put in a simple path. Anything will be better than what's there now!

10 comments:

  1. Did that long comment just get deleted?

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  2. What it did it again?! Are my comments too long or something?

    Little purple flowers with white centers are Glory of the Snow. Solid purple are Siberian Squill or Scilla.

    Tulips are everywhere because the squirrels move them. They love to eat them so if you plant more line the trench/hole with wire mesh, fill with dirt and bulbs, and top if off with more mesh. Squirrels, chipmunks, moles, and voles will eat them. They won't touch daffodils if you want to plant those instead.

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  3. Scilla! Yes, that was the name someone told me.. I couldn't remember it! Those were the flowers we had in our first round of wildflowers.

    That's interesting about the tulips... they are definitely more scattered whereas the daffodils are more orderly. I will definitely take your advice and line the hole with wire mesh. We have all of those animals you mentioned in our yard! Thanks!

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  4. Now it won't let me copy and paste the rest of the comment I had saved. Tried it multiple times. What is up? Does blogger not like the new version of Firefox?

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  5. Those conifers are way too overgrown. But don't remove them until you have time to redo the beds and replace them. Otherwise you could have erosion and weeds with exposed soil. Last year we planted a bunch of dwarf conifers around our foundation. They only grow an inch or so a year so they never need pruning and they will take a long, long time to outgrow the space. Conifers never stop growing unlike shrubs. At some point you can only prune them so much before they die.

    Finding out what spring flowers you have is fun isn't it? I've taken up gardening to turn our mess of a yard into something people want to actually stop by to see. I have a lot more to do though. My local garden club has been invaluable. They help identify what I have, tell me what works in the area, and give me free plants when they need to divide theirs.

    Have fun with your new plants!

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  6. Strange.. I'm not sure. I haven't upgraded my Firefox yet. Now I'm scared to!

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  7. Robin, when you say conifers do you mean the bushes in front of the house?

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  8. Yes those bushes are conifers. Sorry Robin = threeacres. I thought maybe OpenID was having the issues so I tried a different profile.

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  9. Seems to be working fine today whatever it was!

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  10. Sorry, I really don't know that much about plants! So if the plants we have in front of the house are conifers, and they grow roughly 1"/year, they must have been there for a really really long time! Before we cut them down to below the window line last summer they were approximately 8' tall... at least!

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