Out with the old, in with the new

Early each spring the garden is a mix of the old and the new: last year's spent stalks mixed with the fresh green emerging leaves.

Or in this particular case, last year's hay used as mulch for 'Blush Noisette'.

I spent this weekend finishing the garden clean-up at an almost feverish pace.

The cats have been faithful gardening companions. I'm outside with them and on the ground, I must be there to pet them, right? After getting her allotment of attention Prissy is content to lay nearby.

Here she is resting in the shade of some old Biden stalks as I was in the process of taking them down.

Here comes Tommy. He's a Maestro when it comes to getting as much attention as possible.

As you can see from all of the pulled weeds in the path, the chickweed and the grasses have taken off at an alarming rate. I leave the Lamium because the bees love it. The big perennial bed is a pasture of Lamium right now.

The temps have reached the mid to upper '80s here so it hasn't exactly been hot. The humidity is low and there has been a good breeze. The warmth is drawing out the flowers like crazy. A few days ago the redbud went from this

to this.

And like always, the bees are going nuts over the flowers! Carpenter bees, bumblebees, and honeybees are all over the tree in swarms.

Almost every spring I see a huge snapping turtle, usually going from our ditch to the neighbor's pond. This year I saw her(?) going from the woods to the ditch.

There are all of these wonderful shades of spring green.

The daffodils have held up well to the hot sun.

The daffs around this rose are supposed to be Thalia, but is it possible to be unhappy with these?

The serviceberries did blow out very quickly, but they never last that long anyway. I love them but it's so hard to get a decent picture!

Everything seems to be coming into bloom all at once.

More pictures to follow -- the blossoms on one of the apple trees is open, the crabapple down in the floodway field is full of buds, and we're getting to see the wisteria bloom this year.

After a two year hiatus, the chickadees are indeed using the nest box at the back of the big perennial bed. They were fussing at me the other night because they thought I was too close as I was working. Today they didn't seem to take any notice. I'm not sure if the female is incubating already or not.

By the way, these pictures were taken before The Yellow Haze descended two days ago. Today I was filling the water trough in the horse pasture and a huge cloud of pollen came billowing from the pine trees. It was such a ridiculous amount of pollen that it was actually funny. I'll have to post pictures of Prince's face. It looks like someone hit him with a big yellow powder puff.