Bloomin'

The backyard might be a field of spent Dandilions, (lawn service comes tomorrow) but elsewhere in my yard, things are looking pretty good.

The sunflowers are starting to stand up on their own

 And one of them even has a head

Let's hope we can thwart whatever ate the last one.


While the Sweet Peas and Echinacea have sprouted (either the Poppies or the Columbine has sprouted too but I'm not sure which - I forgot to mark the tray!) it's going to be a few weeks until they are ready to transplant to the bee garden and I got a little impatient with just the sunflower sprouts in there.

The grocery store had bedding plants on really cheap so I picked up a few things to liven it up a little - just some Alyssum, some strange but pretty purple plant (I couldn't find any tags) and Snap Dragons

As a child, Snap Dragons were one of my favourite flowers, but for some reason I'd forgotten all about them - the garden centre where I usually get my plants doesn't seem to carry them.

 

I got a few for the front garden too. 

The front garden is doing pretty well. The English Daisies and the Black Clover have drooped, but I think they are finally starting to pick back up. The violas are doing fabulous.

 I just love those colours - and I think you may find it in yarn sometime soon....

The Rose bush has not one....

 ...but FOUR buds on it already. I didn't expect to see any activity until well into June. I have had to shoo Rocky away from it a couple of times, but it seems to have settled in nicely.

And speaking of cats

The Cat Nip is flourishing.

The Lavender hasn't fared so well

The sprouts that I transplanted have mostly died off. But there must have been some dormant seeds in the soil that got transplanted at there are new sprouts coming up... at least, they look like Lavender sprouts... of course, being outside they could be just about anything, so we'll have to wait and see.

And it seems the flora has spilled over into my work life too. At work I'm part of a pilot project that tracks how much we print. The software's icon is a daisy, so to mark the launch of the project, they gave everyone involved some daisies

I tucked mine in with this week's dining table flower arrangement.

And the Daisies came with little tags printed on seed paper

Apparently if you plant it, wildflowers will grow... what kind of wild flowers, I have no idea, but several coworkers gave me their seed papers and they will be going in the bee garden this weekend - it will be interesting to see what comes up!