Sunday, April 18, 2010

My Favorite Color is Yellow

I love winter in Northern Colorado but I can't say I'm sorry to see this one end. It seemed we had more snow on the ground for longer periods of time, and the sun spent way more time behind clouds than I like.

When the first crocuses bloomed near my front door, I was thrilled. Then came the hyacinths and daffodils. Now my tulips. The first were these yellow beauties. The day I took this photo, they were wide open to enjoy the sun. We're going through a cooler spell now, so they've closed up until the air warms again.

When I was a kid, we had a wild, tangled rose bush that grew beneath the black cherry tree. The roses were this same shade of yellow, and they always bloomed around my birthday. Maybe that's why I'm so partial to yellow flowers.

In the top right hand corner of this photo you can see a tiny glimpse of one of my three lavender plants. I planted them last summer and they seem to be doing well. I trimmed off the dead spikes a couple of weeks ago and even the dried stems gave off a lavender scent and perfumed my dirty work gloves.

For those of you who read my earlier post about hunting for composting worms, I did find another garden center that had plenty of red worms on hand. My composting bin is full of fruit and veggie debris, a bit of soil, and 300 hungry worms. I'm thinking about starting a second bin now.

There's a lot to do in my yard this year. I tackle these chores a little bit at a time. Today I plan to make my first trip of the spring to Home Depot and back to one of the garden centers.

Tomorrow I'll continue the A to Z Blog Challenge with the letter "P" (and start worrying about what I want to write when I get to "Q").

9 comments:

Mason Canyon said...

Love the flower photo. Lavender plants are one of the few things I can get to grow even though I usually kill it in the winter. All the flowers blooming make spring a favorite time of the year for me.

Mason
Thoughts in Progress

Terry Odell said...

Should be interesting to deal with 1) Colorado climate after 12 month growing seasons in Florida and 2) a hilltop, tree-filled lot without much room for gardening.

Patricia Stoltey said...

Mason -- there are some lavender plants that are more hardy than others -- it appears all three of mine survived their first snowy Colorado winter.

Terry -- I have had no luck growing tomatoes outdoors in Colorado, but I didn't have any luck in South Florida either. That's one thing I miss about Illinois and Indiana -- yummy tomatoes. Sounds like you have additional obstacles, though. Hope you're close to some great farmers' markets.

RHYTHM AND RHYME said...

Lovely photo of the flower, yes it has been a hard long winter, perhaps we can put that behind us now. All we need is the planes to be airborn again......it's a crazy world sometimes.

Yvonne,

Talli Roland said...

Ah, spring! It's finally spring in London - we had over +20 C temperatures today and I spent the afternoon in the park! So lovely.

Happy the nice weather is making its way to you!

Pam said...

Thank you for your words. They underlined this day and time of year in a delightful way!

Raquel Byrnes said...

That is so funny. One of your characters dropped dead on you...I hear that a lot from other writers, that their characters have a mind of their own.

Jemi Fraser said...

Love the photo! Our crocuses are done and the tulips haven't bloomed yet. Hoping they will survive the snow and the cold snap. :)

mary.anne.gruen@gmail.com said...

Yellow flowers are wonderful! But for some reason I don't get much yellow past the mostly yellow daffs that I try to naturalize around the yard. We have some yellow clover in the spring, and a week or so of lowgrowing cinquefoil and the occasional yellow daylily. For some reason, most of the flowers that do really well in my yard are violet colored.