Springing Up and Out All Over

There are signs of spring throughout my yard. I got a new camera yesterday. Add these together and what do you get? An incredibly long post with many photos.  The camera is a Canon Powershot S95 - great review at the end of the year by David Pogue, been on my wish list for new pocket camera since then.

Daffodils are still everywhere. I like these "reverse" ones -with white in the center and yellow on the outside.

I am entranced with bud break and emerging foliage. I love looking for the details and imagining what will come next.

Oak leaf hydrangea - this shrub has interesting details every month of the year.

These are the tiny little leaves of my pagoda dogwood. This will have clusters of tiny white flowers and then black berries which are the absolutely most popular bird food ever. This dogwood was killed to the base two years ago (by deer) , but is again taller than me.

I love how the rose foliage is tinged with red. This is my yellow rose, which is only slightly red around the edges. It is almost entirely green when fully emerged.  Sadly, I did not get a good photo of the red one, which is really red. I'll try again.

The little leaves and shoots are also very very fun to look for. You have to pretty much stand right over them to find them.

I've shown these trout lilies before - the foliage is endlessly fascinating while visible. I've seen this down by Sligo Creek as well. It's ephemeral though, and will be gone by June, I think.

This is Golden Groundsel. Again, it occurs wild down by the creek. Likes moisture. It has really settled into the yard and spread quite a bit on the slope, where it is a nice ground cover 11 months of the year. For a month, it has these tall yellow flowers, which are kind of disreputable singly, but make a nice mass at their peak. I'll show it again then.

This is the foliage from Golden Alexander (Zizia aptera). I started this from seed about four or five years ago and it spreads slowly. It has yellow flowers later in the season, but I also like the foliage quite a bit. It likes shade, but this patch is in almost full sun and might go dormant in August.

This is a Home Depot iris from a few years ago picked up only for the foliage, though it blooms with nice enough blue flowers.

This is a wild indigo. I went nuts on indigos a couple of years ago and put them everywhere. Most of them are a lovely deep blue, but I'm pretty sure this one is yellow since its in the yellow bed. Looks like asparagus coming up, but member of the pea family. Native. Can tolerate shade and drought once established, because its got deep roots and cannot be moved once its big.

The emerging foliage of sedum 'Autumn Joy', with drops of water held in the foliage. This is one of the most popular perennials ever - this one probably comes from Lowes or Home Depot. I was able to split it up into pieces after a few years, and this patch in well drained soil with good sun does much better than my other parts of the same plant elsewhere in the yard.

I also took numerous daffodil portraits. I love my daffs, and I was trying out the camera. I got some extreme closeups, and I may have used the digital zoom accidently. I haven't found where to turn that function off yet. I was taught never ever to use it, because it basically is throwing away the outer edges of the photo without adding any additional detail. But I found I kind of liked doing in camera cropping, which is basically what the digital zoom does. I could focus and frame exactly what I wanted. The only issue is a false sense of how sharp the final image will be. No additional commentary necessary about the daffs but I am happy to share the pictures here.