Magnificent May Blossoms

May Blossoms

Brook Park Plum Blossoms

May has been a very productive warm month up until today. It is windy, overcast and cool with a slight bit of showers, but we could use far more than that! It has been very dry here. Everything still looks quite fresh and green though. Not sure how long that would continue without some help from Mother Nature in the way of precipitation.

The fruit trees all bloomed early and are so gorgeous it almost surpasses words!

Pembina plums almost finished blooming

The first of course was the pear tree, but the plums on both siders of the deck stairs were not far behind (Pembina plums on left, Brook Park plums on right). The crabapple tree  (Dologo Crab) as next and for a short while they were all blooming at once! The smell as you walked up and down the stairs was so heavenly!

The small Hyer apple tree has a few blossoms this year but not as much as last. We trimmed it last fall quite a lot.  This might be more of a "rest year" for the Hyre apple tree which is fine.

Our tiny 'Canadian Tire' apple three has flowers on it, too. This little tree has 5 different varieties of apples; the stems were grafted onto one trunk.  The bottom 3 stems have tags that say:
Rescue
Harcourt
Hardi-Mac
I don't know what type the other 2 branches are...

Interested to see if it will have any apples to speak of this fall. Last year it had a few crab apple sized ones but they were pretty sour.

Lazy felines lounging in the sun

Saskatoon tree is blooming in abundance

The saskatoon shrubs are starting to bloom here at the lake. Im curious to see the crop they will produce this year. Last year was so abundant it was almost unbelievable, the amount of fruit we had!

Ornamental cherry

My perennials are growing like gangbusters in all the heat that we had in April and early May.

Stack stone bed and pond

We cleaned out the pond last week and added fresh water.  I cleaned out the pond pots and put the ones showing growth back into the shallow end of the pond. The goldfish will be going out right away, but we have a bit of a set back in weather this week. The night time temperatures are forecast to be zero or minus digits!  I guess we are getting the April weather now that we had skipped in April. :(

I will have to cover my rose bushes for the next few nights. They have sprouted a lot of fresh leaves and I would hate for the frost to get them.

Round angel bed/ early May

We dug out many of the perennials in my round bed and divided them. I completely removed the helianthus and cut back the Karl Forrester Calamagrostis reed grass. What a job getting all the quack grass roots out of that bed! There are still more roots sneaking to the surface, but the majority is done. I bagged a lot of diggings to take to my daughter's place for her new flower bed and we planted them this past weekend.

I dropped some perennial diggings off in town for the Plant Swap and I still have a bunch more to give away to friends.  Quite a variety:

Monkshood
Campanula cluster Bell flower
Campion/ Maltese cross
White daisies
Blue sage/ May Night Salvia
Purple/ white bearded irises
yellow day lily digging
Anemones
Blue Cornflowers
Helianthus
Reed grass

The centre of my round / angel bed is bare right now.   I have decided to try and reduce the amount of work in my big beds. I want to plant 2 or 3 shrubs in the centre, ideally something that blooms in spring and that I can much to keep down the weeds and seedlings. I have seen the most beautiful pink blossoms on some small trees in town and I wish I knew what they were! I'm thinking maybe flowering almond or something similar. Time to hit the big greenhouses and see what I can find!

Happy gardening!