Tag Archives: IL

September snow?

 I’m at the shop in Morris, it’s 50 degrees with strong winds. I look up and see this~ literally millions of tiny, glittering, white flakes racing through the sky above the roof. I don’t think it was snow, but I really don’t know what else it could have been…

Happy Surprise

This morning, I went outside to check if my columbines had bloomed yet so I could get a picture. 
What I thought was my pink and white Grandma’s bonnet, which was what I had planted in that spot two years previous, was this….

Apparently my Magpie, a black and white columbine, has cross pollinated with Granny here and this is the happy result.  Sadly though, my grandma’s bonnet is nowhere to be found. I will have to start another one soon. 
I wonder though, if I saved the seeds from this new cross, if it would come back true or revert back to the Magpie, like most hybrids do…. Hmmm. 
I’ll let ya’ll know next year!

T

Happy May Day!

 
 
 
 May 1st arrived bright and sunny!
Even if the temperatures only made it to 55 degrees 
and it sprinkled later in the afternoon!
To celebrate, 
here are a few more pictures of what’s blooming in my garden.

Bleeding heart, Dicentra spectabilis

  
The tart cherry is finally fully bloomed!
Even Daisy was enjoying the sun!

Signs of spring in Lil’s garden

 
 
 
Just when I feel that winter will never end….
The miracle of spring returns,
reminding me of how foolish I was for not having faith…
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 Evening light on my little Persian lilac~  
one of many mailorder plants in my garden
 Flowers and leaves getting ready to “pop”
on my 12′ tall Northstar Cherry tree~
one of many rescues in my garden
(the tag promised only 8′ tall when I bought it ten years ago!
Must have been all the love I gave it!)
 A volunteer columbine growing in the cracks of my walkway. 
It’s from my black “Magpie” columbine~ another mail order plant. 
Here’s what it looks like “all grown up”
I try to save the seed every fall.
 Beginnings of a new branch on my Japanese tree lilac~ mailorder.
By the end of summer, this will have grown a foot long. 
In June it will be covered in huge white panicals of  “privet” smelling flowers.
It’s an odd smell and not the sweet lilac scent you would think~ but it is a pretty and durable little tree.
One of my favorite daffodils. This one has a sweet smell to it. 

Another view of my Persian lilac.
the two trees behind it were also mailorder~ a reoccurring theme in my garden it seems….
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Sunday Driving (on a Saturday)

 Every other weekend Steve and I take a drive through the Park or out on the country roads to unwind from the week.
(Last years Prairie grasses on the outskirts of Starved Rock State Park)
 (Back roads North west of Ottawa)
While on our drive, off in the distance we see this black cloud over a house.
(Of course I didn’t get a picture of that!)
As we got closer, we realized it was starling and grackles.
Thousands of them!
So many that the trees looked as though they had black leaves.
These pictures don’t do it justice~ they were behind us, over us~ litteraly all around us!
We both kept thinking about that old Hitchcock movie…