Ms Nature is showing off her new clothes

I have yet to clear off my desk or work tables. While the weather is still overcast and cooler, it has been dry and so I've been working out in the yard Thursday and Friday tidying up the side yard on the west side digging up the walking onions and pulling other weeds (plan to make this a huge shade fern garden since grass doesn't grow there well anyway), planting fern nodules my neighbor gave me and the rest of the phlox Ms Moon sent me but mostly trying to tidy up around the bluebonnets out front. Got the weed eater out and trimmed around them and then when my retired farmer neighbor walked by and identified the grass crowding them out as rye grass which was starting to go to seed...you'll have ten times as much next year he says, just trim off the tops...I got out there with scissors and filled a huge trash bag with the debris, and picked the first of the peas.

Yesterday I trimmed the little backyard as the lawnmower won't fit through the gate and around the flower beds just outside the gate (the evening primrose which hasn't started to bloom yet and I are parting ways, much as I love it, because it has invaded my flower beds and just takes over), pulled up armloads of sticky weed (or cleaver as my sister calls it) and another weed that makes sticky little seeds that get caught in the cat's fur out of the big backyard (did I get it all? oh hell no). Then my daughter showed up for a surprise visit and after she left I took the dog for the long walk where we saw this ornamental plum tree in full bloom

and then filled the tea cup after a cardinal perched on it giving me the stink eye. Unfortunately, it slipped out of my fingers and crashed to the ground breaking the saucer, the third saucer I might add. Squirrels broke the other two by leaping off it with such vigor that it swung right off the hook. So now it's hanging slightly askew til I can get a new saucer to drill.

More yard work on the agenda for today, the main chore being a return to digging up the wild mexican petunias, which I also love but are highly invasive and crowding out stuff I want. You'd never know I spent a good week digging them up last spring as every bit of root left will regrow though they aren't nearly as thick.

these are coming out

The maroon japanese iris are sending up scapes as is the yellow which is the first time this one has bloomed but the white iris and purple iris behind the buddha which were always first have failed to bloom for the third year in a row. I also have a tricolor iris in the front that has four buds on that I noticed Friday and then Saturday two had been munched on so I put aluminum foil strips around the bottom last evening because I read somewhere that snails and slugs won't travel across it and this morning no more munching (no pictures because the stupid camera in the iPhone would not focus on the iris scapes, maybe when they bloom).

More spring porn...

The first poppies are open

and I guess I was just impatient about the bluebonnets which have really filled out 

and the indian paintbrush as the field has also filled out with many color variations.

click to bigify

          

The spirea is halfway to full bloom. It usually blooms with the azaleas but they bloomed early and are done now.

And the baby-blue-eyes scattered around the yard are also starting to bloom.