Paschal melody

It's Spring!!! Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, my wife and I are out in the garden pulling weeds and fertilizing flowers.

It was a long and somewhat dreary winter. We are rejoicing in the beauty that comes with the season, yet always surprises me.

Just scroll down from this dandelion which was growing between the cracks in one of our walks. As an aside, the dandelion was chosen by my granddaughter's graduating class as their flower of choice. It blooms under the worst of conditions, has several pretty phases and persists.

Vinca minor growing in the tiny wood beside our house.

The two surviving tulips of the dozen we planted last Spring. Tulips in Little Rock are mostly annuals. Our Summer comes on too fast for them to grow their bulbs back before the heat wilts them.

These are hellebore (Lenten rose). For a change, they are actually blooming during Lent.

Usually, these beauties bloom earlier. Our seasons are somewhat ahead of the European ones that gave them their name.

These are the daffodils that a neighbor brought from her home in Italy. Not only do they look different from the native daffodils in Arkansas, but their perfume is quite different.

Muscari or grape hyacinth. After they bloom, the flowers fade and they form a grass-like cover under our Japanese maple.

We had a serious erosion problem due to the slope of this hill. We built terraced beds and filled them with plants we like to slow the drainage. The tall yellow are Forsythia. The smaller yellow are daffodils. The pink that you can barely see between the Forsythia bushes are Texas flowering quince.

This is our camelia. We stuck daffodil bulbs in front of it. The two scents combine into a wonderful perfume while we weed in that spot.

Last picture. These bleeding heart flowers are in a bed of Japanese anemone. The anemone are fall bloomers.

As you can see, I have some leaf removal ahead of me and I'll harvest the dead anemone stems for mulch.

Thank you for touring our little gardens.