As everyone knows things move slowly when you sit and watch grass grow, but it finally gets there.  The nice thing about this farm is the flowers help to mark the time passing.  The vegetables in the kitchen garden are growing a little more each day and in about a week more we will be eating green onions from the garden.  Then when I thin the spinach we will get a small serving of that and then things come along much faster.  In the meantime I watch the flowers change.  I forgot to show you the red bud tree.
This is the small redbud tree.  8 years ago I planted two small sticks labeled red bud and the killing frost we had that year killed one almost back to the root.  The other grew so big it started to interfere with the pear trees so after Norman complained about it enough I got sick of listening to him and told him to cut it down, which he gladly did.  Now the little one can get more sun and it is growing larger and this year is just loaded with red buds.  It is a delicate tree so hard to see with the other trees around and in the background but in person it is just beautiful!   The pear trees are in full bloom.  This is only the second year for the Moon Glow pear so there will not be many pears but a couple dozen will suit us fine.  The Bartlett will be luck to get two pears, maybe next year.  The peaches no longer have flowers and their little green peaches are too small right now to get a picture of.  Up from that are the apple trees. 

This is the car apple.  In New Hampshire the crab apple was always planted in the apple groves to give good pollination of all the trees.  I am hoping that is tree since my Winesap has lots of blooms this year and the golden delicious has none.  Even if it doesn’t help pollinate the Winesap it is a beautiful tree right now.

I tried to get a close up of the apple blossoms but they are so far out on the tree it is hard to see them, but here is proof we have some blossoms this year for the first time.

This is the other side of the apple tree.  This is a big tree and to see any buds I can’t get a picture of the tree also.

The bleeding heart is starting to bloom also. 

This will get much bigger and loaded with such branches but I always love the first branch best.  By July this is all gone past as it does not like the heat.  Where it is planted it gets only the early morning sun so loves the spot. You can see the Vic Major grown at its feet.  I have to pull that out each year so it does not grow right up over the bleeding heart when it rests in the late summer.  There are two plants and last year I almost lost one as the vica major was chocking it out.  Now I watch it and pull out the vines when they grow up over the crowns.  

Between the bleeding heart and the hellebore  is a carpet of vica major, you can see a small coral bells on the left hand side but they have to struggle to live through these vines.  There should be some fox gloves in there also but I am not sure they survived the winter.

The hellebore are still blooming.  I have to protect them also.  They should have little babies each year but I think the vica major kills them off.  I have been moving the vica major back and maybe this year I will push it back further.

Sunday when Joe and Holly were here they brought up some strawberry plants.  I didn’t have room in my gardens for them so we took the old recycling bins we brought up from Florida and planted one bunch in each bin.  Holly took the poorest lot to see if she can nurse them back to good plants and next time they come they will take the second bin.  So Holly this is how the better ones look now.  

These will have berries before the summer is here.  The grapes are starting to open also.

These are just opening.  They will get branches out of each cluster and each will get three or four bunches of grapes.  These are  Concord grapes and make wonderful jelly and juice. I guess that is all that is new right now.  Have a great day.