Spring flowers

[Big Frank]

When spring was about to begin and my tulips, etc. started growing, I realized I took some pictures of flowers in my yard last spring but didn't post them. A week ago Bing Wallpaper's daily background was Crocus flowers and that was another reminder. So a couple days ago I resized my pictures down from whatever mega-size they were to 1,200 pixels. I trimmed most down to 1.000 pixels because  the other 200 pixels were wasted space. I had multiple shots of most and picked one to keep. But I don't have any crocuses. I know I had a nice bunch of them growing in the front lawn as usual, and if I recall correctly I was going to take a picture the next day. Maybe frost killed them, or it rained and I stayed in for a few days then forgot, but I didn't get a picture. But I think last spring was when I carefully mowed around them, thought that I won't be doing that again, and immediately mowed them down.

[Big Frank]

Daffydowndilly. Would you believe that's what daffodils used to be called?

Grape Hyacinth. Bad pics of good flowers early in the season.

Tulips.

Tulips later in the season. Many of the poppies I had in front of my porch were the same color. 

[Big Frank]

Star of Bethlehem next to my shed. I don't know what the tiny purple flowers under it are. Lilies next to the front porch. The ex and I planted Stargazer lilies plated somewhere but this isn't it. This looks like some kind of Tiger lily to me. It was probably already growing here when I bought the house  in 1991. But when you buy flowers, and especially bulbs, you never know what you're actually buying and we may have planted it. I had to trim some pictures again in both posts to get them under 500k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilium_%27Stargazer%27

[Big Frank]

Pics I took with my digital camera instead of my phone, so no telling how old they are, but probably two or three years ago. The tulips are on either side of the steps on my front porch. I used to have a lot of daises in front of my front porch, but don't remember having many, or any, last year. I'm down to basically just tulips and a couple of daffodils where there used to be dozens of kinds of wildflowers. If we hadn't planted bulbs too, there would be nothing but grass to mow, which means this fall is a good time to move them out of there.

For the last few years I've been thinking about digging up the lilies and breaking up the bulbs. That way I could spread them out and replant them. Maybe I'll do that this fall, and plant them all the way across the front porch. Just one little row, up tight against the porch. Either that or I have to paint because it looks like crap.

[Big Frank]

Here are a couple songs to go with the flower pics. Listen to the Flower People and Springtime, both by Spinal Tap.

I have some old pics I wanted to post, and figured this thread is as good a place as any since I didn't want to start another one for them. The flowers and this both involve nature in my yard, so they do have that much in common. One night couple years ago I went out to dump some garbage and sawdust in the compost bin. There was a spider hanging there on the fence-post next to the driveway waiting for a photo op, so I obliged. You can see from the pics it's smaller than a gallon jug, and it's also smaller than the wolf spiders that are sometimes found in the woods, but still a fair size spider by city standards. It's a Spider, Man, Spider, Man, great big frieakin' Spider, Man! I reduced the pics 50% from the original 4160x2340 size.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-yTWhuK48s


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2zf39ubM0k

[Sponsor]

[alfsauve]

Here at the 34th parallel we had a false spring which caused some things to bloom prematurely.   My Confederate Jasmine may no make it, sadly.  But the Wisteria is ab fab. 

[Jim Kennedy-ar154me]

I joke from a car salesman on the radio this morning.

"I got SOOO excited about Spring, I wet my PLANTS".

[Big Frank]

Looking good, Alf. A couple days ago I noticed there were some crocuses blooming among the Star of Bethlehem leaves in the back yard so I took a couple of pics today. The weather has been too rainy and cloudy, but the rain and cool temps are good for the grass. I don't know if I'm going to get a good bunch of crocuses this year or not. I keep thinking they were growing in the front yard near the grape hyacinths every year. I'd like to have a good bunch of grape hyacinths to take a picture of before I mow them down, but so far they aren't even growing. Maybe leaves like the other plants, but I didn't look that close.

P.S. They look so sad and lonely. And beat down.

[Big Frank]

I have one daffodil that was doing really well today. I took some pics as the wind was whipping it around. I really should didg up all the bulbs an separate it from the tulip it's with.  The fat tulip leaves with the daffodil that has narrow leaves is one of the things that confused me and took me so long to figure out what kind of flower it was. I have a bunch of wild violets in my yard. That would give some homeowners fits, but i don't care. It's better than bare ground, and I don't mind having some flowers to go along with the greenery.

In the back yard where the crocus was struggling last week, there's not a trace of it. Just lots of Star of Bethlehem plants. I can recognize the plants as soon as I walk into the yard because of how dark green they are, whereas the grass among it looks like crap. The dark soil, etc. at the top of the pic is from when I cleaned up the grass growing in the cracks of the driveway in the fall and piled some nice dark soil next to my shed. This is the north side of the shed and gets VERY little sun, even less than you'd think. The weeds and bushes and crap on the fence at the back of the yard blocks a lot of the morning sun, and the back yard is in the shadow of the house in the afternoon. I turned to the left, zoomed in x2 and took another pic. There were more Star of Bethlehem plants, and I see one Crocus in the picture.

Next to where I was standing is where my dog is buried. The lawn is pretty healthy where he is. He's a good boy. Even after he died he was good for fertilizer.

[Big Frank]

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I need to mow my lawn, whether any of the flowers I've been looking for pop up or not. First I have to pick up a lot of my neighbors' trash. I don't want to mow all the trash and blow it around. Spring has sprung, for sure, no doubt about it now. It got up to at least 79 degrees today, maybe in the 80s before I crawled out of bed early this evening. Thankfully, at the parallel 43° north where I am, I know that it's only possible to get just so hot. There is a limit to it, and as bad as it gets, I know it could be worse if I lived farther south. By the way, at this latitude the sun is visible for 15 hours, 22 minutes during the summer solstice and 9 hours, 0 minutes during the winter solstice.

I knew it was warming up outside yesterday because it was warming up inside - the butter that was setting out at room temperature for a couple of weeks suddenly softened up. I thought to myself several times over the last year or two, should room temperature butter really be that hard? I thought about asking you guys, but I guess it depends on the temperature of the room. At 75 degrees it's soft, but at a temperature where I feel comfortable, it's solid and I need to scrape off bits of butter.