Spring has Arrived

The Virginia weather all winter has been beautiful and nothing to complain about. We had 2 snowfalls, can you call them snowfalls down here? It snowed for about an hour and this is about as much as we got. No snowman building for us.

Well now that spring is here we need to deal with all those leaves on the edge of the property. Mike decided to try to mulch the leaves and see if we could use it in the flower beds. He started under the Eastern Redbud Tree which I am sure will be my favorite tree in the yard. It has heart shaped leaves after it is covered with purplish little flowers. Our tree is a little sparse but hopefully over time it will be thicker and fuller.

The mulching was a success so we decide to continue with this project.

As we raked out the leaves on the edge of the property we found many a different shrub like plants. They were thin thin stocks of I do not know what but I was excited to find out. Turns out they were azaleas! This is one of the almost finished mulched flower beds. Oak leaves are great for the soil and will help them become fuller.

Here is the left side of our driveway where you can see the mulched section versus our neighbors.

We have forsythia bushes as well that we were able to free from the leaves. They were beautiful but I forgot to get a photo of them.

We have several random clumps of Variegated Hosta that are also one of my favorite plants.

Periwinkle, creeping myrtle, or vinca vine is covering the other side of our fence. My favorite color is purple so I am thrilled. Not so much about the ivy all over the place.

I believe these are Dusky Challenger Bearded Irises. I thought they were going to be purple based on the color of the stock but then the bud looked black.

They are a royal velvet purple. Looks like they have a fuzzy caterpillar in the middle. Purple again, wicked excited. They are scattered around the yard so I am going to move them come fall and ring one of the trees we still by often.

Life is good!