A Garden Walk About

May Day Blooming Friday

Today gardeners post a few blooms and call it Blooming Friday. This day of blooms is hosted by roses and stuff: Blooming Friday.

The dainty delicate blooms of epimediums rubrum and alba seen above are delighting me right now. Their fairy like flowers are lovely from the minute they begin to unfurl while still along the ground surface in arabesque like form. Epimediums also have beautiful heart-shaped foliage which continues to please throughout the seasons. There are a couple varieties of prunus, magnolia and swelling lilacs also making a show in the gardens this first day of May. You can see other blooms from around the world by clicking on 'roses and stuff' above.

May Myrtle Warblers Multiply

May Day posies these charming Myrtle warblers are not, but they are bright and cheery and flitter about into the shrubs that are near to flowering allowing the eye to see simultaneously colorful feathers and plump vivid buds. I love these little warblers for their song and antics as well as their lovely dashes of yellow and marbled black patterns. They will be nesting in the shrubberies so I hope to get some closer photos soon. Warblers are back to nest or just passing through and fill the air with their sweet songs. Every spring I have a hard time remembering which is which, but it is fun to identify a bird by its song and then find them to see if you are right. Besides adding so much delight to being in the gardens they are working with me, when they are not preening or arguing a point, these birds are busy feeding on bugs in my buds and opening flowers in the shrubs. I am joyfully grateful for their return!

May Buteo Platypterus and Buteo lineatus Continue to Fly High

It is May Day and raining lightly outdoors... perfect time to be transplanting those perennials I have been hoping to divide and put about the gardens. Instead I am here transplanting photos of this beautiful raptor to these pages. One of the great things about being a farmer or gardener is the environment one is planted in, and having a large sky above open and shrubby fields, before a forest is ideal for eyeing soaring Buteos. It seems we have a pair living here, from the courtship display high in the sky, and my sighting them flying together many times, when I did not have my camera. I hope they like rabbits! I know from research hawks delight in dining on voles. They are welcome to the little varmints here that feast on my iris, and perhaps are also the critters who near girdled my lovely Japanese maple this winter. Perhaps that is what the precious one was looking out for perched in the rock maple giving me a beauty of a shot. These pictures were taken on different days over the last couple of weeks... I think they are all the same buteo or cousins at least, but just maybe the ones that now seem to be residing here at Flower Hill Farm. I know too they may devour the other nesting birds here but hopefully more tasty prey will present themselves... less bony with more meat of the four legged rodent variety. The broad-winged hawks are unusual in that they migrate in large flocks or "kettles". I had the great chance one fall day to see hundreds of them fly right above me and one by one coming in a straight line go up and catch a thermal current right above the southern face of the garden. It was thrilling! An odd post for May Day so I will have to do another with garden and blooms a plenty. It just seems this is a perfect story all to itself... a raptor tale and this one has equal sized bold white and black along its real tail... a feature that helps to identify it, as it is so close in appearance though smaller to the Red-Shouldered hawk. (It seems that I have images here of both hawks. There is one high in the clouds that I was able to reach a view of its red shoulders.) To fly high in the clouds and over the flowering tree tops with Buteo platypterus seems a good enough way to move into May. Happy May Day!