Colours of May

May has been a lovely month so far, if you can ignore the fact that the past couple of days have been cool, to the point of needing to stoke up the woodstove.  Yesterday, Mother's Day, was awfully grey, with cold rain, snow and sleet which came pouring down at various times during the day.  Despite that, the flower beds have been vigourously proclaiming that it's spring.

The Forsythia bloomed this year.  This shrub was planted many years ago by the former owners of this house.  It was planted in a very protected spot, almost overly so.  In January, when we get a few days of reprieve from the cold weather, the buds often swell one or two will often bloom.  Then the cold weather clamps down again and kills off all the flower buds, leaving us with a barren Forsythia in the spring.  This year however, it is dressed in all it's golden glory.

I don't have enough tulips planted!   They make a lovely spring display and seem to be impervious to the chickens scratching about.  They get frost bitten in the spring, but they still grow and bloom when it's miserable out.   This fall, I will have to plant many more as there is a definite break in colour from when the bulbs bloom to the next plants are ready to flower.



Under the very, very old maple tree are a few Periwinkle plants.  Usually, there aren't many flowers but this year, they are blooming away.  They are so pretty and delicate.   For a plant which has been stuck in a mound around a  maple tree which would take 3 of me, hand in hand, to reach around the circumference, and neglected, it's doing very well this year!




Currants!  This year the red currants are full of flowers.   Hopefully I'll get to them before the birds do.   I much prefer black currants to the red ones.   When finally, after scouring every plant centre and nursery around, I found a single black currant bush amongst the soft fruit stock selection, I grabbed it.  I didn't have a place to put it, so I stuck it at the corner of the garden, as a holding spot, thinking I'd move it in a week or so.  However, that didn't happen and it's been growing happily away in it's little corner.   I will definitely put some sort of bird netting over it so that I can hoard it's meager harvest.