April 2010
April 10/2010: April's garden panorama. I put this one together with Canon PhotoStitch, which (after some hours of online research into panorama software) I discovered came free with my camera. It's MUCH faster than doing it by hand with photo-editing software, so maybe this will help me update the photo album more often...
April 10/2010: Our salal has flowers for the first time!
April 18/2010: These are blueberry flowers... exciting, because they will eventually become blueberries!
April 20/2010: Chocolate mint. We recently removed a giant horseradish from this bed, so the mint will have more room this year.
April 20/2010: Kale flowers.
April 20/2010: Our chives are really healthy this year!
April 23/2010: ...and there are a lot of them too. Last fall I split up the main clump and transplanted some chunks to give them more space - with the mild winter each of the new bushes was able to survive and put out flowers. The yellow patch in the background is golden thyme.
April 23/2010: Christmas 2006 tree. It's finally bushing out and looking nice again! After Christmas we kept it inside for too long and it started to put out new growth - when we put it outside in spring 2007 it got shocked by the change and lost a lot of its growth. Then someone weed-whacked part of it. It was pretty sad for a while! But now it is looking handsome.
April 23/2010: Christmas 2007 tree. A good example of what "shock" looks like... this one also ended up losing bits when we put it outside in the spring. Then it didn't go into the ground for months because we thought they were going to do repairs to the roof (wishful thinking). So it was in a sorry state when it finally went into the ground, but it does seem to be picking up a bt this year. Also - it's got cones! The darker, upright conical bits on the upper branches are (I think) pollen-producing cones. Which means our little tree is all grown up. Well, not really, it's going to get bigger, but now it can have babies.
April 23/2010: Christmas 2008 tree. We were more careful with this tree and didn't leave it inside for as long. It is, however, a completely crooked and lopsided tree - it was really a challenge to decorate it. Then we dug it into this spot and presto - it doesn't look crooked at all. It fits there like a jigsaw piece - with the pre-existing rocks fitting neatly into the ugly gaping lopsided-bits as if we'd pruned that way on purpose. The rose in the background has always been there but this is the first year it's been healthy enough to get this big.
April 23/2010: Christmas 2009 tree. Much smaller than the previous three! It's just one of those little guys. We didn't have a big Christmas this year.
April 23/2010: I shove peanuts into the loose bark of the laurel tree so the crows can get them. This one has figured out how to carry more than one, and I am impressed. I like his loose feather, too.
April 23/2010: We have new neighbours and this is one of their dogs. He likes to roll around on the patch of grass, and he's been good at not walking in the actual garden. So the baby people moved out, and we got dog people instead... instead of toys randomly scattered around, it's now bones :) Either way, it means I don't have to dig up this last patch of grass.
April 26/2010: Another PhotoStitch-assisted panorama. I left the top margin uncropped because I liked the bit with the crow.