When you read hear when these pictures were taken you'll know how far behind I am running. They were all taken over a week ago when Alice, Gill and I went to the Oklahoma City Arts Festival and ended the outing by walking through the beautiful Myriad Gardens.

I love peonies and couldn't resist running over to a bush that I saw blooming to get a shot. I was excited to see that a bumble bee was inside and busy harvesting pollen. He took no notice of me. The picture on the right above is of a lovely water feature with pink roses blooming around it. See the little bridge on the other side of the water?

Then we came upon this turtle covered branch. It was so crowded that a couple of the turtles sunning were piled up two deep. The picture on the right is a close up of another of the thousands of roses in the gardens.

I was pretty grateful when I got up this morning and checked my garden. You see we had hail last night along with really strong winds. I was pleasantly surprised to find all my plants and flowers were still in tact . . . all but the hostas. They sustained lots of little tears in the leaves from the hail, but I think they'll pull through OK. I was especially surprised to find the Iris and the peonies still standing and in great shape.  

A Quick Glance At the Yard Today

Here's a real quick tour of my backyard today.

Tiny little daffodils                                           Homestead Verbena

Home Run Rose Bush                                     Columbine

          Another Home Run Rose bush         Sweet Autumn Clamatis on a trellis

Grape Hyacinth in amongst String Sedum                       Gaillardia

Gaillardia                                                            My back yard

Thrift                                                    Yellow Rose & Purple Homestead Verbena

Dianthus                                                   Tiny Ruby Dianthus

I bet my husband is looking down from Heaven just shaking his head in disbelief. You see I did no yard work before he died. We had an agreement: I took care of the inside of the house and he took care of the yard and everything outside the house. He liked lots of colorful flowers and I think he'd approve of this yard. 

We got rain again today. I'm so glad, because God's watering is so much better than water from the sprinkler system. I've been patiently waiting for my yellow rose bushes to finally bloom. They were only about 5 days behind the Home Run rose bushes. This morning there was only the one yellow rose, but later in the day another 3 opened up. And I have 32 more buds waiting in the wings to make their appearance.  When I bought these three little rose bushes last spring, they were called miniture roses. I was really expecting the roses to be miniture, but that's not the case. The bushes are smaller than most rose bushes, but the roses themselves are full size. I love them.

Last year when our garden club had it's spring plant sale, I purchased several little Columbine starts. They bloomed last year for about a week and then basically disappeared. I thought they were dead and gone, but low and behold . . . they came back this year with vigor. The blossoms are much larger and prettier this year. I hope they all come back like this one did. I had pink, yellow and white last year and the pink is the first to bloom. Now I'm wondering if they'll have enough room and if I should provide something for them to climb on.

This is the unenhanced photo of the cute pink blossom.