Spring daffodils and other flower portents of Spring

I like these daffodils with the two colors.

These yellow daffodils are tinier and more delicate in appearance.

These interesting shoots will hopefully be glorious peonies in a month or so.

Tomatoes

Tons of yellow pear tomatoes

and grape tomatoes from the tomato plants this season this far.

I am not sure how many more yellow pear tomatoes I will get as that plant looks wilted and dying, but I am not sure from what. We have had a long heat wave followed by a lot of rain, and while we kept watering the garden at least during the heat, this one tomato plant out of the four doesn't seem happy at all.

Tonight, a yellow pear and grape tomato and onion salad with white balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Lily of the Valley on the Shellpot Creek

We are completing our third year at this house and yet I am still finding interesting things and discovering plants that I didn't know were here.

These lily of the valley are right on the edge of the yard next to the creek almost growing from under some rocks there. I do not recall seeing them before, so I got in close to record them.

They are supposed to have a wonderful smell, but I couldn't really get in close enough to smell them. These are native to the Eastern US, but there is some debate about this. Examination of the details shows that they are not necessarily native to Delaware. I guess we can assume they were planted there by someone.

Irises finally!

I try to have irises at each of the places I have lived. I had a great set at my house in Wilmington, and we have tried repeatedly to grow some at this house, with a startling lack of success until this year.

One set that is finally blooming at the end of the driveway was to replace two other attempts that yielded leaves and then nothing the next year. Then we waited one leaf-only year for this one to produce a ton of iris flowers, some of which are on stalks almost four feet tall. I wish I knew what caused the success, perhaps it is just patience.

We planted another set closer to the house. These irises are not as tall, but are as bountiful with blooms.



I never realized until taking these closeup pictures that an iris "flower" appears to made of three flowers in a triangle, and that the center of the triangle is not the flower part, it is the fuzzy triangle corners that have the important flower "parts" so to speak. My amateur naturalism and horticulture are starting to pay dividends with new knowledge for me.

Gladiator Alliums

Each house I live in I try to grow Gladiator Alliums because they are so tall and spherical and because I can shout "Maximus" at them just like in the film.

Even since these pictures were taken last week, these alliums have gotten taller and the flowers large in diameter.


The bulbs for these plants missed last November's planting date, so we put them in as soon as we could in February of this year. It seems to have done them no harm. Let's see what happens next year.

Spring Beauty

In the spring, we often get many clumps of delicate white flowers with pink lines on them. They are very tiny, and pretty enough that I tend to mow around them on the first fews mows of the spring.

After much research, I have finally found out that these flowers are called Spring Beauty, Claytonia virginica, and are native to the area. Thus they are not weeds and will get accorded great respect each year when they arrive.

The flowers of spring

Some flowers of Spring arrive even before the Spring. Just a few days of nice weather and the snow is gone and the earliest flowers are starting to bloom.

The snow drops were first.


Then came the crocuses.




The other bulbs have sprouted and have green on them. More flowers will arrive soon.

Fledging sparrows at the end of summer

Towards the end of summer we noticed that some birds had built a nest in the large flower pots that we have on our front porch, but never really saw any birds in it. In early September at the end of summer, all of the sudden the House Sparrows that had hatched were ready to fledge. I captured what appeared to be two babies and two parents during the first flight event. Ah, the wonders of nature.

Cucumbers of the gods

Two weeks ago we had the second cucumber of the season. The first had to be fed unwillingly to our "pet" groundhog" to go with the lettuce that he ate.

Before washing and having the spikes removed

A glamour shot with drops of water just like in a supermarket ad.

These little bush cucumbers don't get too big but they are very tasty. I still fear to grow them or any variety because I haven't figured out when to pick to avoid overripe, bitter cucumbers.

Are there any cucumber aficionados who would care top comment in what to plant and when to pick?