The crisis in Crimea and our garden (yes, they’re related!)
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The crisis in Crimea and our garden (yes, they’re related!)

I’ve blogged about this amazing flower before, and now I’m finally growing it at our new place. Lavatera tauricensis is a very uncommon perennial found in the mountains of Crimea. At some point, someone collected seeds and sold them to Thompson & Morgan, and I bought them way back in the 1990s. The flower’s name…

This is what forsythia should look like… and not
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This is what forsythia should look like… and not

I love forsythia! It’s always the cheery harbinger of warm days, and it’s one of those shrubs that in my mind is best left to look wild. It should be allowed to send its long branches out, covered with beautiful blooms, sometimes arching under the weight of those awesome blossoms. The example above is in…

A sad day for our elm tree
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A sad day for our elm tree

Early Saturday morning, before dawn, our Lacebark Elm (Ulmus parvifolia) suffered a major break from some heavy wind. We’ve had wind like this many times, but there was a weak crotch where two major scaffold branches were growing in too deep of a V-shape. When branches grow with narrow crotch angles, they end up with…

It’s Hibiscus time! And other photos from this evening
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It’s Hibiscus time! And other photos from this evening

  All the Hibiscus shrubs have burst into bloom this week. I love the one above — I think it’s Hibiscus syriacus ‘Aphrodite.’ I also have some double-flowered ones — they’re quite frilly and don’t really look like Hibscuses at all. Oh, and one more of the Aphrodite shrub, too: And I finally got my…

A little bit of paradise and a lot of photos
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A little bit of paradise and a lot of photos

This is the upper part of my backyard today, experimenting with a stitched-together panoramic shot. I also took some other photos of things blooming or looking good in my garden. Too many pictures to comment on right now (it’s late at night!), so I’ll just add them all as a gallery below. What do you…