Flowers by the Furry Gnome

A day or two after Mrs. F.G. I was out in the garden myself, drawn by the first of our large Peonies, a bright pink one, bursting into flower.  We have several of these bright flowers which will dominate the colour for the next couple of weeks, but I think this one is my favourite.

When Dominion Nurseries in Georgetown was going out of business, they held an open house where  gardeners could come and dig up Peonies for free, since the fields would soon be bulldozed.  We got several and the six we still have are the descendants of those plants.

All of our Peonies are 'singles', with wide-open flowers which the bees can get into easily.

The pistils and stamens are an open lesson in botany!

We have several Columbine, which I think of as the 'travelling' plants in the garden.  They self-seed easily, so we never knw where they're going to pop up the next year!

The first of the Pinks are starting to bloom, another of my favourites.

Jacob's Ladder is a beautiful blue flower, and this time I was able to get a separate flower stem, which shows the flowers much more clearly.

Our tall Allium in a distant corner of the garden are in bloom.

And the beautiful little Coral Bells are adding a bright touch.

And finally, you may remember the big White Ash trees we had removed last fall.  Rather than pay a huge sum to have the stumps removed, we chose to keep them, providing another spot for Mrs. F.G. to display some plants.  Quite effective I think.