Summer Containers

After the gardens in Hearst Castle I was afraid to come back home and be disappointed with my own, but my flower pots look cheerful and bright, so I am quite satisfied after all.

Climbing Rose Story

My farther in law loved roses. He always had a specific opinion on what it should look like, sometimes different from my own. He helped me to pick this one, and we planted it together. It's been 3 years ago. He is no longer with us, but the rose is thriving and reminds me of him every time I smell that delicate scent and admire the color and abundance of it's flowers. What a great way to be remembered!

April Roses

What a week of hot weather can do! It's only April, but roses are in full bloom, and they are huge and gorgeous. This picture hardly gives justice to a real beauty of this classic flower. Year after year you see them, but never get tired of them, and never can have enough of them. Somehow the roses you grow yourself are so much more exciting than the ones you buy in the store.

Sausage tree and mother in law tong

Few very funny plants I saw in Ann Arbor Botanical gardens.

Back home!

It's always nice to come back home, but when you left a bare garden and came back to a flowering one, it is not just nice, but very rewarding. Roses, irises and tulips are the starts now. Foxgloves, delphiniums and later blooming roses look ripe and promising. It's going to be beautiful. I also planted all my hanging baskets this morning. One more month, and I am ready for garden parties!

Spring in Ann Arbor

This morning I was alone in the house. The sun was out, I had no car, no urgent pressing duties, so I went for a walk in the neighborhood. Spring is early in Ann Arbor this year. And it is a different, I would say a "proper" type of spring here, not an instant California one, which becomes summer before you even realize that the winter is over. The abundance of lilac bushes caught me unprepared. Purple flowers triggered the memory of a similar time of the year in a small town in Belarus where I grew up. With the i-tune's music from my youth happily pumping it's way to a distant memory in my heart and flowering lilac around me i had 30 min of sheer bliss. Unexpectedly, I fell into that rare state of mind when one feels free and envious of his own destiny. Young and hopeful when the future is still undesided, and when the world around you seems just perfect and belongs only to you.