From this window - May 20th, 2013

Yesterday my husband and I made a trip up the river road to Hornbakers Nursery in Princeton.  It's way more pricey than buying plants at Lowes but the quality is superb and the selection is amazing.  They've planted much of their property in lovely gardens you can walk through.  They also have many different ponds and waterfalls.  It's the type of place you might want to take your lunch and stay a while - not so much a store as a destination.  I found a gorgeous honeysuckle that was almost as tall as me, four beautiful Black and Blue Salvias, and a cardinal plant.  My husband bought some shade plants for his 'forest'.  He's trying to populate his 1/4 acre with native wooded plants and Hornbakers has a nice selection.  Past purchases are doing well back there and spreading.  It's a slow process but coming along.

Yesterday I noticed our Wiegela is starting to bloom.  We have two really nice sized bushes and the hummingbirds are crazy about Wiegela.  The fence is finished around the old raised bed and ready for planting.  We're going to use it as a 'way station' for some of the plants we are moving but don't know their final resting place.  We're moving plants from bed to bed to gain a more cohesive and polished garden.  Right now it's kind of English garden-y, lots of tall plants hither and yon.  The area around the pond is tangled and has some trees that have managed to take root in spite of our best efforts.  The phlox that the deer love will go in the fenced bed along with my rose bush.

The iris are just beginning to bloom and I have one water lily that bloomed yesterday.  The Lotus has put up one leaf which is always a relief (no pun intended).  I wonder from year to year if it will survive; the blooms are absolutely breathtaking.  The wren has one egg in the house in the back flower bed, they abandoned the house on the gazebo to the house sparrows so we took that one down. 

The dirt for the new raised bed that Andrew built last week is due this week when the weather will allow.  They will be using a skid steer loader to off load the dirt, run through the yard, and dump it into the raised bed.  If the yard is too wet, the loader will leave tracks and ruin the grass.  After the bed is filled, we will start moving plants from the bed behind the raised bed and Andrew will move on to pulling out the bushes in the front yard and edging some of the other flower beds.