So much to do before it’s warm enough to plant into the new native plant garden in my front yard – that’s the April project. Now I am working on existing plantings. The Missouri evening primrose has come up in the small bed near the mailbox. There is a stone crop there too. I trimmed off the seed heads from last season so that the green at the base will show sooner. I try to leave the small twigs and leaves in the bed…reducing any bare soil that might wash away during the spring rains.

I need to trim the boxwood, but I’ll wait a bit on that. The electric hedge trimmer will make fast work of that job. I got a little sidetracked while I was looking at it when I realized it was blooming…and had a lot of new leaves; it was a good opportunity for some macro photography.

In the back yard – the iris bed where we cut down a pine several years ago was full of stalks from goldenrods. I cleared them away and realized that some of the leaves are rounded instead of pointy like the irises; those are naked lady lilies and there are more of them than last year. The bed is not formal, and I am letting it develop with the idea that the America beautyberry will eventually be the tall plant.

The fragrant sumac that I planted the first fall that we owned the house is blooming! I noticed that there is Japanese honeysuckle (an invasive) in the bed. I have spent several mornings working on it and am at the stage of digging out some of the hubs of the vines. I’ll work to keep the plant in check (or eliminated) this summer.

In the area where the small red buckeye is unfolding its leaves, the debris from last season’s violets and leaves provides good mulch that does not overwhelm the small plant. As it gets larger, I’ll decide if I’ll just leave it with that groundcover or put wood chips around it. There will never be a lawn mower near it….but no bare soil either! way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

It was a mostly cloudy morning when I took a walk around our neighborhood last weekend. I noticed that the stonecrop near our front porch was ready to bloom and the seeds had formed on a redbud tree near the entrance path to the ponds.

A willow hangs over the inflow channel to the ponds…shading the area and making a fringe of green almost down to the water.

The native plants that had been in pots several weeks ago when I walked around the neighborhood last have been planted around the shore of the largest pond and there was a stick near one of them with an Eastern Amberwing dragonfly sitting still long enough to be photographed.

A little further along two small red-eared slider turtles were soaking in the warmth of the morning.

I always enjoy photographing magnolia flowers. The season is far enough along for the tree to have some seed pods forming too.

Last time I walked around the neighborhood there was a bullfrog sitting in the shallows of the larger pond. This time, there was one in the shallows of the smaller one. Based on the coloring…it was not the same frog! Both times, the frog seemed very focused on the pond…paid no attention to me walking around to get another perspective.