Stewartia malacondendron

It is Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day and it’s mid-May but some of the strangest weather you could imagine.  As you see above our favorite Stewartia is indeed in bloom, but many other things have suffered the drastic hot/cold cycle that we went through in mid-April.  We had temperatures at 85-90 degrees and then three days later down to 26 degrees.  Although it was hard to imagine at the time the net result over the last month has been an almost total loss of apples and peaches as well as drastic damage to many other trees and bushes.  I think we may get a few pears, blueberries and raspberries but it’s going to be a different year.

We still have some flowers to report on but I need to keep this fairly compact as I still have a lot of planting to do outside.

As usual the Azaleas are among the peak performers in May.  In addition to the Gibraltar exbury hybrid and the Klondyke we’ve now added a third exbury hybrid

Azalea exbury hybrid ‘Gibraltar’

Azalea exbury hybrid ‘Klondyke’

Azalea exbury hybrid ‘George Reynolds’

Of course regular Azaleas are busy doing their thing as well.

White Azalea in the front yard

I should mention that at the end of last month we got a nice flowering from the Azalea ‘Visco Sepala’ in our raised bed by the porch.

Azalea ‘Visco Sepala’

This is probably the most fragrant Azalea that has ever flowered.  We got it from White Flower Farm about 50 years ago and I’m not sure you could fine it anywhere nowadays.

And as you might expect Peonies are performing every day.

Paeonia x ‘Morning Lilac’

It is always astounding to see the flowers of Festiva Maxima show up because we brought this with us from Alexandria, Va over 50 years ago.

Festiva maxima

It’s now against the house, in the lawn and in the pasture.  It seems to be vigorous and happy no matter where we put it.

Somewhat more suprising is vigorous growth of the Chines Ground Orchids which seem to be spreading every year as well, both white and pink.

Chinese Ground Orchid (Bletilla stricta)

Bletilla stricta

In addition to all of our carefully planted flowers we have wild flowers contributing to the beauty of our hillside.

Blue Flax and Dame’s Rocket

Many people are very negative about the invasive impact of the Pink Evening Primrose but to me it’s like saying you don’t like California poppies because there are so many of them.

Pink Evening Primrose (Oenethera speciosa)

Pink Evening Primrose (Oenethera speciosa)

One of the major projects for us over the last month has been restoring the Alpine bed next to the greenhouse.  And hooray it is now being planted again.

Restoring the Alpine bed

Restored Alpine Bed