A Bloomin' Explosion!

Finally, all those plants I've been stalking have bloomed. That's not to say there aren't plenty left to give us something to look forward to, but these are the ones I've been dying to see.

Why? Because we started them as seeds last spring - yup, 2011. Last year, they got all bushy and happy, but no blooms. So we waited. And were rewarded!

Painted daisies, in both light and dark pink:

Shasta daisies: there are only a few of these this week, but you can see tons of blooms about to spring into action...

Shasta daisies are actually my favorite flower. This one is doing so well, I decided to plant a whole flat of peat pots this year (72 plants), and ended up with about 50 + starts. So several of them ended up along this really long bed, to the left of the rocks:

Now, that makes me excited for next year. You can't hardly see them because they're so small. But they are there, and they will bloom next year (so help me). Hehe.

Sweet Williams: Now, I know I showed these to you last week. But you just have to see them now - each stem is like a mini-bouquet. Light pink and dark pink...

And here they are in white, framed by that really spectacular verbascum that I wanted to rip out last year (yes, you've already seen that one, too). The potentillas also took a full year to bloom, but were worth waiting for (even though I'm not 100% sure they really are potentillas...so correct me if I'm wrong!).

The roses in front of the house also decided to start blooming.

This bush looks horrid, but the flowers are quite nice. Maybe a trellis would help tame it? It grows a lot during the season, so it must be a climber. This was one of the few plants from the days of the previous owners, and I'm grateful - truly - that it is here, but I am thinking about moving it. This is the front of the house - not really a great place for a bush that isn't tidy or really even that pretty.

Iris: Now this is a plant that has me conflicted. This time of year, it's one of the only plants that is really glorious. However, the flower doesn't impress me much. This was from a grab bag of bulbs (though technically it's a tuber, not a bulb) that I ordered from Breck's (online nursery) last year. What makes me very happy: it's yellow. It's still an iris, but I might be able to live with it if I mass a few of these together. Then you would see more color than flower shape. At any rate, it's very cheery.

Sage: this one was a surprise. I purchased this plant last year, and it has really taken off. The flowers are nothing like anything I've seen, though. They are almost luminescent, the true blue of their little petals just glowing against the blue-green foliage. I tried many, many pictures, but was never able to capture the actual look. Still, you can see how many flowers there are...

Peas: Technically, not a flower per se. This is from Doug's Pee-Tee-Pees. The flowers on those sugar snap peas are just so sweet, they had to be included.

That's all the new flowers...the thyme also bloomed, but the flowers are super small, so they aren't included. I had to add one more picture, because our pear trees are both producing an amazing amount of fruit. This was also unexpected, much like the sage flowers, because we thought there wouldn't be any fruit in our orchard for several years. Hooray for pears!

What's blooming in your garden and/or neighborhood? Share, share! And have a great week, everyone!