My garden in May

Our spring has been goofy. It's been super hot, into the ninties for crying out loud. And then almost within the same day, the temperature would drop to way below freezing. It has wrecked havok on my perenials, and has made me very skitterish about putting in any annuals.

But finally, with nothing but good temperatures in the forecast, I started easing into the garden. We are not, NOT, going garden mad as we did last year, for the wedding. I don't even want to think about how much we spent last year.

Filling the planters with annuals starts with deciding on  a color scheme. I love geraniums, and they have some really gorgeous colors now-a-days. Good old cherry red geraniums are perfect for our old house, and I love them, so I will likely continue with the red/white/blue theme in the front.

In the back is a whole other story. The patio, pond and many planters are right off my studio sliding door. This is my happy place. For this year, I'm going with a white and pink palette. Actually, I've found it challenging to find truly pink flowers, so they are actually almost lavender.

I have this concrete urn thingie in my rose garden. A twelve inch plastic pot fits perfectly inside, making it easy to bring it in to over-winter.

In the past I've filled it with annuals, mounds of lobelia, and little bell petunias and trailing verbena, plus a couple of huge geraniums.

This year, in the spirit of cutting back, I decided to fill the urn with hardy English ivy. The little wire tower will add the height I wanted. It will be fun to train the vines to it. I used three different varieties of ivy, one edged in yellow, another edged in white, and two plain leafed. Half of each plant will be trained up the tower, the other half encouraged to drip over the edge.

To fill in the space, I added a little summer color. In keeping with my pinky-lavendar colorway, I've added in pink/lavendar and white super bells, which are lovely, trailing, minature petunias.

The urn is centered so that it lines up with the trellis and forms a lovely vignette coming into the back garden.

I like the idea of creating garden "rooms".  I also like the Japanese idea of making the path crooked to slow the journey. Often my garden dreams are way bigger than what I could ever keep up.

The pond is really coming along. I can't remember when what year we put it in, but it's at least six years old. The water plants are getting established, offering shade and hiding places for the fish. I think, this year I will need to break up the big clump of iris. But I'll wait until it's done blooming.

It's amazing how quickly the water lillies shoot out of the bottom of the pond. Here are my two first blooms. I'm hoping that the pink plant will bloom again this year too. Time will tell.

I love the moss growing on some of the rocks. This one is so happy that it's blooming. I've had to add more of the smallest rocks (which fill up the spaces between the larger rocks) to the edges of the pond, especially the edge touching the patio. A certain couple of grandchildren (cough Alex and Nicole cough) love to toss the little rocks into the pond. As long as they don't target the fish, I'm completely okay with it. Another bag of little stones costs just a few dollars, and the giggles of my grands are priceless.