Here's What's Blooming in My Garden Now

Not my typical post, and has very little to do with antiquing (unless you count heirloom plants as antiques which, technically, they can be), but I played in my garden all day today, and here's what's blooming:

These buttercups are like of sea of sunshine in one corner of my garden!

My Asiatic lilies are on the decline, but the peach ones smell wonderful!

Pure Southern perfection - my magnolia smells as good as it looks!

My purple clematis vine stands regally in the corner opposite the buttercups.

The bee balm are standing in attention (they look like jester caps, don't they?!) You can see the clematis in the background, with my azalea bushes under planted.

Perennial geranium are still in bloom, long after the azaleas (these are planted between my white azalea bushes).

The spirea bushes are waning, but still pretty in muted pinks.  One set of knockout roses (background) have been pruned as climbers, the bee balm is just this side of the roses, and there's purple salvia and emerging black-eyed Susans surrounding my 'Augustine' putti.  Butterfly bushes are to the far right.

Butterfly bushes are just starting to bloom.  I place one of my four hummingbird feeders right in front of these, giving the hummers a choice of  nature's blooms or my homemade sugar water.

My hydrangeas are just starting to bloom also.  I have seven of these bushes - they're huge - and I need to relocate at least one of them this year.

There are a few stragglers remaining of my Spring wildflowers - snowflake anemone on the right, and a tiny little blue flower on the left (Love-in-a-Mist, which is one of my heirloom plants.  These make a wispy sea of delicate, green fronds with the tiny blue flowers when they're blooming en masse).

Here's a photo from last year, showing the Love-in-a-Mist en masse.

Adjacent to the main yard, you enter my courtyard where, along my garage wall, I have my climbing roses, and lavender planted at the base.  With full sun, these plants thrive here!

This past week, I have been busy harvesting lavender, both English and Dutch.  A bumper crop year, I have already cut 8 bunches as big as these, and have more to cut!  May-June are super busy in the garden!

This little guy was getting drunk on my lavender!  Bottoms up!

I've planted several containers:  pentas, dracena & potato vine in two huge containers; geraniums, dracena, alyssum & lobelia in two more; and lantana (lemonade) in the small one below (the poodle statue memorializes my little Coco that I had for 11 years).  These are all in my courtyard.

And I planted two of these small boxwoods this year, thinking I'll shape them and take them inside - later.

My husband keeps our grass in good shape.  This view looks toward our river property, making for great scenery.  You can see my other set of knockout roses to the right in the above photo.

And this is where I/we sit to enjoy the show in the garden, and entertain visitors.  You can see the hydrangeas in the background, right.  The draping evergreen branch in the foreground is a weeping cedar atlas.  It has a gnarly twisted growth that spans more than 12 feet along the brick wall!  

 Here are some of today's visitors in the garden:

 These two robins, one in the water (female, I think), and the male on the ground, bottom R.  I think they were checking out the real estate in the Magnolia section of the garden today, may have already moved in, judging by their activity.

 This bluejay decided the pool at the base of the Magnolia was worth jumping into.  I can hear the robins saying, "there goes the neighborhood".

 Bluejay, preening on the trellis, next to the magnolia, after swimming.  I plant four pink mandevillas on the base of the trellis each May, and they grow to cover the trellis by August or so.  That's a snowflake viburnum behind the trellis.

Then the cardinal showed up for the open swim.  This is, by far, my visitors' favorite pool of the garden.  See those plants behind the birdbath?  Those are my Lord Baltimore hibiscus - major work each Spring staking those.  I'll post on their progress later....they should be blooming by July.

And now, the sun is setting, the cushions are in, and the garden will rest for the night.  Me too.  And tomorrow it's supposed to rain, which means more growth in the garden, more lovely surprises.  It's all good. :)

This week, I'm linking up with The Scoop Link Party #70 with Anita from Cedar Hill Ranch and all her friends!