A Second Look--April 25, 2017

We've had mostly warm days with plenty of rain and things are growing fast and furious these days. I don't think we've been below freezing for a few weeks now. The grass is especially happy in this kind of weather and we had to cut it twice last week.

All of this rapid growth is interesting to watch along with the various perennials that are emerging--some of which I recognize and some of which I don't. There are a few I'm still on the fence about as to whether they are are weeds or not. I have a lot of learning to do in this area. Unfortunately, the poison ivy and other invasive plants are starting to leaf out, too. I learned my lesson in my old yard and know it's best to spend a year or two trying to eliminate the vines and invasives before doing much else. Otherwise, we'll end up with more problems than we started with. I have so many ideas that will just have to wait.

While all of this is exciting to discover, the most exciting thing is what I discovered a couple of days ago. I found a nest being built in one of our nest boxes. It looks like a bluebird's nest although I haven't seen any bluebirds around. Time will tell.

Here are a few pictures of things I've seen during the past week. Some of them don't show exactly what I want, but it's been raining for a few days now and that has prevented me from venturing out to take other shots.

Except for the dogwoods, most of the trees are done blooming and are now leafing out.

However, you can still find a few lingering blossoms like the one on this apple tree.

Several bushes are in full bloom like these azaleas.

And the 4 or 5 lilacs that are in the yard. I really need to count sometime. I haven't seen many bees. Mostly carpenter bees like the one on these lilac blooms.

This back corner bed looks like it was a very nice bed at one point. Right now the ground covers have totally taken over, but I see various things popping up. Earlier there were a few daffodils blooming here. Now I also see day lily and iris leaves.

I uncovered this plant in the corner bed which looks like it could be a dianthus.

Nearby, were some coral bells.

The yellow lamium in the corner is pretty, but very vigorous as most ground covers are.

Outside of the formal flower beds, I found a few of these volunteer purple flowers from the neighbor's yard. 

And a nice patch of violets.

As I've been digging around in various places, I've found the soil is rocky with both big and small rocks.

We cleaned this corner out and then I planted grass seed. This is an attempt to have something competing with the weeds that will try to take back over.  We may add flower beds here sometime in the future.

The grass is coming up, but I don't know how well it is going to compete with the hardy weeds.

This looks just like the pine needle bluebird nests we got at our old house.