Spring Garden Tour

Spring is finally here!

It's a toss up between Spring and Fall for my favorite season, but I have to say, Spring may just be winning. With all it's gorgeous flowers and budding trees, it's almost no contest for a flower lover such as myself. 

Every year, I add more and more plants and flowers to my gardens for each different season. Tulips and Daffodils are often the most thought of flowers for Spring, but I've discovered that there are so many more Spring blooming flowers out there! I like to add different and new items whenever I come across them and I am very happy to report that every new bulb and plant that I put in last year has come back!

Spring came very late this year to northern Indiana and all my flowers bloomed much later than in previous seasons. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, the bloom season would be prolonged somehow, but sadly, most of my Spring flowers are already on their way out. 

I have to say that my gardens are really rockin so far this year and I am already making plans for what to add next year! The most wonderful time of the year has begun!

New favorite flower alert! Crocuses are some of the first blooms in Spring and these tiny little flowers are actually perfect to plant in your yard since they will be gone by the first mowing. I got a small bag of them last Fall as an experiment and I will definitely be planting more in my yard and in my flower gardens next year!

I've seen yellow, white, and purple crocuses and mine were either purple or white. I love these purple ones with the white striations!

Above is my creekside garden in all it's Spring glory! My favorite thing about it is the border of purplish-blue Muscari. This is my favorite spot in my whole yard. When I moved in, it was just an overgrown eyesore filled with poison ivy. I had to work very hard to get it into shape for a garden and I am very proud of it!

Muscari make perfect garden borders and they multiply like crazy every year, so it only gets better and better!

Last year I planted a mix of Tulips that I got for free, not knowing what color they would be. I was hoping for red and luckily, most of them were! They look awesome next to the yellow Daffodils and blue Muscari.

These tiny little Daffodils came from a mix bag and I have never seen anything else like it. They are tall like regular Daffodils, but have several small clusters of flowers on them. They are very unique and I am glad they are in my garden. That's the thing with a mixed bag, you never know what you're going to get!

I think the best smelling flower may be the Hyacinth. Get around a group of them and it's absolute heaven! I am going to make it a focus to plant more this Fall. Possibly as a border somewhere. I wish I could find this exact color of purple again, it's the only one I've seen and it's much brighter than others.

Inspired by Foster Park here in Fort Wayne, it's been my goal to plant as many different kinds of Tulips in my yard as possible. I love these new orange ones that I planted last Fall and the different color variations on them.

These Lilac bushes literally began as sticks from someone else's yard. Lilacs are very easy to transplant, but they take a while until they bloom. This is the first year that all three have bloomed and I was even able to harvest a few branches to bring inside and put in a vase!

I was asked if they all have different smells and they do! The dark purple ones smell a little fruity to me and the white have a spicy smell. 

Funny thing about this tulip bed. I started it three years ago as a white, purple, and pink bed. My friend had gotten a Tulip bouquet of those colors and it was so pretty. Last year only one white Tulip came back, which I later found out that for some reason, white Tulips are notorious for not coming back like other colors. So I planted more white ones. This year, only one pink Tulip showed up to the party! I guess I'll be planting more pink ones this year! And probably some more white too, just in case!

I'm totally one of those people who can't seem to bring myself to cut my flowers and bring them inside. They just look so pretty in their natural element! But I desperately do want to one day be able to! This is my sole Daffodil, an Ice Follies, that I brought in this year and I only did it to save it because it had gotten cut off somehow. I am planning on starting some sort of a cutting garden so that I can have gorgeous floral arrangements in my home too one day!

I will wrap up the tour with my apple tree that finally blossomed this year for the first time! I am hoping to be eating some delicious Gala Apples from this tree in the Fall, but even if that doesn't happen, these blooms made it all worth it!


Thanks for stopping by and follow me on Instagram @ sweethome.indiana for daily updates on my flower gardens and all other things home!



Next up, Summer here we come!

My Spring Backyard!

Although it's beginning to fade now, this was my backyard in all it's full Spring glory a couple weeks ago!

I love Spring, but it never seems to last very long! It's such an odd season here in northern Indiana. Some days can be warm and downright balmy and the next day it snows and freezes all your flowers. 

I just try to enjoy Spring as much as possible while it's around! Every time I look out my window and see my creekside garden and all it's beautiful colors, it just makes me so happy! 

My yard is truly my happy place!

This is my beloved creekside garden! Right now, this end of the garden is a bit of everything Spring from the muscari border to the mixed daffodils to hyacinths. There's even a mum starting to sprout in there somewhere! My plan is to keep it a bit of everything and add some tulips and more mums to it this fall. For Summer, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet!

It took me two years to plant this muscari border! I am so glad it's finally done and looking good! Muscari are some of my favorite flowers and I love them as a border. They multiply so quickly that a lot of people don't use them for borders, but I do! The more the merrier, I say!

I love these double yellow daffodils that I planted last fall. These were from a mixed bag of daffodils so I wasn't sure what I was going to get. I am a little disappointed with how they all turned out. There were only about two different kinds in the bag ~ these, and some that had about four teeny tiny flowers on each stem. They were pretty, don't get me wrong, but not quite what the picture promised.

This fall, my goal is to plant tons of plain yellow daffodils at this end a la Martha Stewart! I want it to look like the field of daffodils I visited in Ireland!

My favorite tree in my yard! I think it's a redbud. I am hoping to find another cheap one to plant at the other end of my garden.

Here's my mama bird poking her head out of her house! I've yet to have any bluebirds nest in this bluebird house, just sparrows. But, I love all birds and I am not going to be kicking any out just because they aren't blue. I'm happy that someone is making a home there!

I love all these tiny purple flowers that appear all over my lawn every year!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the yard, my lilacs are finally blooming! About 4-5 years ago, my husband brought home three little sticks that he got from a client of his. They were three different colors of lilacs. They have grown like crazy, but this was the first year we've gotten any blooms and I am so happy! I love lilacs!

Here are the white ones just getting ready to bloom. As of right now, my purple ones have faded away, but these white ones are still going strong! I love their smell!

Here's one of the yellow finches that like to hang out in my yard! They are so pretty!

Happy Spring!

Spring is springing in my yard!

 

Spring is definitely giving Fall a run for it's money as my favorite season!

I just love seeing all the flowers, trees, and even the grass come back to life after a long, cold winter. Even though the past two or three winters haven't really been all that bad, winter always seems to stretch on forever. It doesn't help that I keep seeing everyone on Instagram flaunting their beautiful Spring weather! Which, by the way ~ I am on Instagram now! Follow me and my daily shenanigans @sweethome.indiana!

Here in northern Indiana, you never know what you're going to get! We have crazy weather! For example, it's supposed to snow an inch tomorrow, and yet on Sunday, the forecasted high is 72 degrees. See what I mean?

I am ready for the weather to be nice permanently! I want to finally shred my winter coat and bust out my spring jacket!

This strange weather definitely effects my plants. Earlier this year, the foliage was blooming about a month ahead of schedule, but after about a two week long freeze, we're closer to where we should be. The frigid, wintery spell slowed down my daffodils and unfortunately, looks like it fried my two newest hydrangeas. Their leaves went from a bright, vibrant green to brown and I'm just hoping they make a comeback because they were really cool!

Here's a little tour of my yard from this past weekend. With all this rain we've been having this week, things are really starting to green up and bloom! I just hope that the coming frost and low temps don't do any more damage!

A beautiful white hyacinth covered in dirt from all this rain!

Too bad everything can't bloom at the same time! This corner would be magical.

Love these pink hyacinths!

I am planning on planting tons more daffodils here this Fall.

This is a shot of my creek looking down through my neighbors area. See all the greenery sprouting on the left side of the bank? Those are gorgeous orange daylillies that they completely cut down last year! I'm glad to see they are making a comeback, but I just hope they don't do it again this year.

Just in case...I transplanted some daylillies from my front yard to my side of the creek bank last fall! Hahaha!!! They do look amazing when they are left to bloom along the creek!

This was my muscari two weekends ago...

And this is it a week later! What a difference! I love muscari!

You can just begin to see the pinkish tint of the Redbud tree blooming from afar. Pretty soon, this will be covered in bright pink blooms!

The peonies are getting ready to leaf out already! This is my Bartzella Peony, which is bright yellow with an orange center!

A cardinal!

The tulips are poking their heads out!

The hosta in the back is coming back to life! This lamb's ear in the front is getting taken out asap! When I bought it last year at Mains, it was tiny and almost dead. It quickly took over the whole area. I like it, but I had no idea it was so invasive!

A purple hyacinth just popping out in my front bed!

My daffodils did better last year I think, but it looks like there are a lot more yet to bloom.

My $4 forsythia from Walmart! I wasn't even sure it would come back and here it is, complete with a few blooms!

After some research, I think these are cherry blossoms! I love this tree/bush! I have several little ones along the creek I've discovered and it just makes me so happy!

Happy Spring!!! 

 

Spring has sprung?

 

If it's 63 degrees in the middle of January in Indiana, you have to get outside to enjoy it.

 

This was only the fourth day in the last ten years that it hit the 60's in the month of January here in northern Indiana.

 

My neighbor kids were wearing shorts and a t-shirt and riding bikes. I'm not condoning this behavior, I'm just saying this is how people act on a gorgeous winter day like today.

 

I knew that if it wasn't raining I was going to get outside to rake up some leaves that have been bothering me every time I look outside my kitchen window.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

I also cleaned up my bird feeders, took a nice long walk around the yard, and thought about re-working a flower bed that I need to enlarge. I decided to wait on that. 

 

Here are the leaves that we weren't able to get up before winter came, despite raking the leaves several times this fall.

 

After raking today. Looks much better! I feel like I can be at peace now. I didn't want the grass to die!

 

I blew all the leaves out of the muscari in my creekside garden so they could breathe a little.

 

This is my new muscari that I just planted this fall. So glad to see it came up okay, but now I can tell what a crappy job I did getting it close to the brick edge. Oh well, it'll grow!

 

After blowing all the leaves out of my creekside garden, I discovered that a lot of spring flowers were already starting to pop up! I believe these are the new daffodils I planted this past fall. This seems awfully early to see daffodils already. I hope they do okay since it's supposed to get colder again next week. It still makes me really happy to see them though!

 

This mostly dead looking mum has some new growth peeking out. Very strange.

Here are some hyacinths pushing through too! Spring will be here before we know it!