April Flowers

Lots of things blooming in my yard, end of April. These smell so sweet - and I get more and more of them every year:


I'd bring some inside to admire, but the ants like them as much as I do, so they're definitely a flower to keep outside and admire from afar.


I keep thinking about diversifying, and getting some other colors of peonies, then separating these and mixing them together. But my favorite colors are green and cream, like these. I wonder what other varieties they make? I'll have to go hunting next fall.


I have several different colors of iris, too. Plain yellow, plain lavender, and two varieties of purple/white ones.


For some reason, I don't get both varieties of purple/white and white/purple blooming at the same time.

Wallhanging almost finished!

This is the mystery quilt I started last Nov. at our retreat. Everyone else did it in three-inch squares, but I didn't want a huge wallhanging, so I scaled it down to one-inch squares. I left the fence hinge (well, ok, the GATE hinge) on the pic so you could get some idea of scale. It finished at 27 inches square.


I don't do much machine quilting, so this was a challenge to me, making teeny loops and squiggles around the little half-square triangles. None of the green or brown in the center of the quilt has any quilting, so they puff out a bit, compared to the flat quilted white areas.

And I machine sewed the binding - have you guys seen the funny blog post on binding tutorials? I couldn't help but laugh at it:

Binding Tutorial Spoof

Finally, here's another flower picture from my yard. The wire trellis I borrowed from my sugar peas is keeping them all upright this year, and they look much better:


I love my peony bush, and I'd take some into work for others to enjoy if it weren't for the ANTS! Tiny little black ones that like my peonies as much as I do! I took 4 huge blooms in a couple of years ago, having put them upside down in a bucketful of water for an hour first, hoping to drown the ants, or at least chase them off. Didn't work, and I was thumbing ants to death on my desk at the library all day. :D

Anybody have a solution? I don't want to use ant spray, the flowers would smell bad, instead of sweet, like they do now.

More Iris

Well, the yellow iris are still blooming, and now the purple ones are out too.


I have a lot of this variety, big purple petals with a zebra-looking vein pattern on the petals.


This year, the ruffled ones with purple edges are full of blooms too, they're my favorite. :)


And finally, my peony bush is just starting to bloom. For some reason this year, a lot of the buds stayed tiny and turned brown. I guess I need to make sure to divide them this fall, maybe that will help.

Flowers Blooming

Beautiful Spring weather for flower growing we've had so far this week in Memphis ... tomorrow it's supposed to rain, and for the rest of the week, so I took pix while the picture taking was good. My yellow iris are done, but the big purple/white ones are just starting:


And my favorite part, a closeup of the zebra stripey pattern on the bottom:


And my peony bush is just outdoing itself this year. Most stalks have two or even three huge blooms on them - I'm trying to keep the old ones pinched off, so they don't get too top heavy. And that's not weeds behind it (well, maybe one or two!) but the lighter green pointy foliage up against the brick is the beginnings of my orange daylilies:


As they bloom, over a week, that center bit of these peonies gets huge, tennis ball size. The scent is just glorious. This year, I sprayed them with ant spray before the big golf ball size blooms opened, and now I can take some in to work, to share, without taking in little crawlies too. The ants just love these:



Anyone else got flowers to show?