Spring Ephemerals, Catch Them While You Can!

Spring Beauty with leaves

Purple Hepaticia  Flower

Sharp lobed Hepaticia leaves

Bloodroot Flower with leaves

Bloodroot  Flower and beginning seed pods

Now is the time to be outside looking for wildflowers and tending the garden.  I will edit this  later when it rains. Today the Brown thrasher and mourning doves are singing. The arbutus is fragrant and for now I am out of here. Consider this a rough first draft. Later!!!!!

Basil, Peppers, Dust Bathes, And Weeds

The garden is hot and dry, but Ed persists.  The basil is all weeded and mulched.

Basil adores the heat, but with the lack of rain the plants are very short and starting to produce flowers.  

You can see by my footprint just how dry the soil in the garden is now.  Some of the birds think it's great.  This morning  I watched a beautiful brown thrasher take a long, writhing, wriggling, dust bath.   It was fun to watch and the bird loved it!

The basil plants are very small, but strangely enough the only way to keep these plants growing is to pinch them back.  The leaves I remove will make tonight's salad something special.  Basil tastes best and is happiest when it is good and hot!

The peppers will get weeded, watered and mulched next.  These tiny little pepper plants have some blossoms, but it is hard to think of plants that small supporting peppers.  I'm sure if we get some rain these plants will grow.  If not it is likely they will drop those blossoms anyway.  Tonight is the first time in weeks that the forecast shows a real change of rain.  I hope we get it.  That brown thrasher has had her dust bath,  it would be nice if she had to wait awhile for her next one.

Gatchelville Iris

Now that's a name you won't find in any catalog. My grandmother lived in Gatchelville, PA. It was and is, a small place. When I was a child there was a store, a church, and a few houses. I spent many happy hours there.


These iris grew in my grandmother's garden. Mom loved them, and took a piece of iris root with her whenever she moved. Now they are growing here. My sister has them too. Ownership of Grandmother's house has passed from the family. It is my responsibility to keep this iris going. They are planted in several different places in and around the garden.  I have shared them with many gardening friends.  I can take no chances with this family heirloom.


They are not a big showy iris. They don't flop over when it rains. With their deep purple and snow white, I find them elegant and striking. Their fragrance is sublime!

An elaborate bird song caught my attention while I was working in the garden. I ran to the house to get the binoculars thinking of a mockingbird because the song was so varied. The bird who was sitting in the very top of the locust tree near the garden was a brown thrasher. The bird book had little to say about the song of this bird so I searched for and found my bird song disk. After listening to that, I decided we must have the Caruso of brown thrashers living here. He can sing for me anytime.