Rewarded by laziness

Looking back on last year's blog entries, I see that I posted about a week earlier in April to say that I had blooming tulips and lots of garden progress.  This year, things are not as far ahead.

Snow ball fight, anybody?

On the bright side, the tulips are popping up and getting ready to bloom... I figure a few weeks from now, they'll be on full show.

The Mystery Plant that I still haven't identified is green and happy.  When it blooms this year, I'm going to take a picture of it to the local nursery and get it identified.

The bigger peonies are just barely starting to come out of the ground.

You have to look carefully for the red shoots.

So is the iris that the lady from the local golf course gave me.  (Every year, they split a lot of their perennials.  The landscaper out there hears about my gardens from my mom, who practically lives out there, so she always sends me goodies.)

Other than 'It's an Iris', I don't know what this will look like.

Trees are still pretty dormant, but I can always count on the lilacs to come out early.

Last year, I didn't get around to cutting back most of my gardens.  I usually do it by late October, but that didn't happen.  So, the snow flew and piled up high around the plants, and when the spring came, I found some surprises.

The snap dragons - very much an annual in this climate - is sprouting and trying to grow back.   They're struggling, but I'll leave them there for a few more weeks to see how they do.

Then, in my annual garden, there's a surprising amount of greenery.  Last year, after Winter ate my lavatera seeds, I had to go out and buy replacements.  Lavatera plants were scarce, so I bought two flats of dianthus seedlings... which are also an annual plant, I thought.  All two flats of them (except one plant) are coming back like gang busters.

Which leads me to wonder - where will the lavatera go this year?