Nature's Garden

Thank you to all of my sweet friends for your lovely comments on JoAnn's book, 'Are We Walking To Alaska'. 

You can find all the links for this wonderful book on my side bar. 

I also want to thank you, Dear Friends, for coming by to visit me! 

I so enjoy reading all of your kind comments and appreciate every one. 

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day. 

As I was watching, this red-tailed hawk flew to the 'hawk tree'. 

This is a large Western Red Cedar that stands by itself with a very good view of the valley beyond. 

Birds always land on this tree and have a look around. 

Right after I took this shot, he flew down to the ground and didn't come up. 

Must be good hunting grounds. 

Signs of spring are everywhere now. 

The wild plum trees are blooming and the daffodils are still going strong. 

Can you see my two dogs, Champ and Whitey? 

There's Champ peeking through the plum blossoms. 

The bird feeder is in the tree in between the daffodils. 

My sweet boy, waiting patiently for me to play with him. 

He loves to fetch the ball. 

Whitey couldn't be bothered with all that foolishness. 

He has a bone. 

And when Whitey has a bone, he doesn't let it out of his sight. 

Except to bury it! 

Yes, I have bones buried all over. 

He always has dirt on his nose!

But no time to worry about that, I have daffodils and roses to fertilize. 

The very early daffodils are starting to fade, 

so they get a little fertilizer to make sure we have more next year! 

I will be sad to say goodbye to these little happy faces! 

They are scented, too! 

I do try and plant only scented flowers. 

Here's my boys resting in the dandelions. As you can see we don't use weed killer. 

We keep everything natural and healthy for ourselves, the pets and our water supply. (We have a well). 

As we walk towards the house, we pass the blooming 'Pink Current' bush. 

Now that the berry bushes are starting to bloom,

 the hummingbirds have not been visiting the feeders as often. 

I can hear them chirping and buzzing around me, as I walk around.

There are also bumble bees!  

Another favorite hummingbird flower; 'Salmon Berry' blossoms. 

White daffodils bloom among the mossy rocks. 

These are very old and were planted when my children were small. I don't know what variety they are. 

I try to keep track of things like that, but I always lose the tags. 

I want to start a garden journal and document all that I plant in the future. 

Do you make note of varieties when you plant? 

This is a wildflower that is very much like Coral Bells. Instead of the flower wands being Coral, they are green with a slight tinge of pink along the edges.  I spread the seed around to ensure future wildflowers. 

I now have large colonies of these. 

Nature's garden beneath the Cedar tree. By nurturing wild plantings, I have encouraged nature to create it's own gardens. 

Here we have Holly seedlings, wild 'Coral Bells', and a wild thistle that has the most unusual leaves. 

Oh, and a dandelion or two. 

Nothing I could ever plant would thrive beneath this tree, so I have welcomed these wild interloper's. 

I spent the day weeding around some Forget Me Not plants that migrated out of their rock garden into an area where we lost our Golden Chain Tree in last winter's ice storm. 

Golden Chain tree in summer of 2011

The Forget Me Nots had seeded themselves in under the shelter of the flowering branches. 

I will replace the tree with something else and allow the flowers to stay. 

That's how I garden. 

Mother Nature does most of the work and I just help her along. 

Are you able to get out in the garden yet? What are you growing this year? 

xoxo