There have been a couple new arrivals in my yard in the last couple days. The two little yellow flowers above are Creme Brulee. They are the very first of them to bloom.  I have been anxiously waiting all spring to see if these lovlies would come back and bloom this year. They were tauted as perennials but some of them did not come back. So I guess I'll have to get some more and plug those into the blanks spots left by the ones that haven't come back.

The above blue and white  flowers are called Love In The Mist. Alice assures me that now that I have sewn their seeds and they've come up that I'll always have plenty of them throughout the yard...and that's OK with me.

Gill had said something about trying Gaura in a pot and I really thought that was a good idea. I love the way they sway in the wind, and wind is something we hardly ever have a shortage of here in Oklahoma. I tried them in the pots so that I could set the pots outside my computer room window.

My first lily of the season has bloomed and I couldn't be happier about that. I have early bloomer, mid bloomer and late bloomers, so I should be graced with plenty of lilies for the rest of this season.  A new flower for my yard this season is the poppy.  I threw seeds everywhere around the yard last fall and they this week they have appeared.  Then those white looking ones (they are actually a pale pink) are primroses, which I introduced into my back yard last week. Alice says I may someday regret that decision. We'll see.

Here's one of my latest "Digital Nuts" submissions. Seven new photos are posted each Wednesdays and we have a week to work on them. Sadly, I was done with all of them by Thursday evening. But I guess that's OK, because I have to pack and get ready for a trip to San Antonio to visit my son and his wife and their kids.  Also my yard keeps me hopping just dead heading and pulling weeds .

I guess I must have a one track mind . . . I can't seem to keep up two hobbies at the same time. I haven't been blogging every day like I used to because I've gotten into "Digital Nuts" now. Digital Nuts is a group of people who enjoy editing and enhancing digital photos. The photo above is of my new tiny water fountain. At first the spout at the top was forcing the water spout too high and it was getting blown out of the fountain by our Oklahoma winds, causing me to fill up the fountain 4 or 5 times a day . . . WAY too often. But there's a little clamp that you can use to restrict the flow of water and now that I've done that the water level doesn't go down nearly as fast.

Gill, Alice and I had our May outing today and decided to go to Will Rogers Park. The roses were beautiful but what caught our eyes were this momma duck and her 6 ducklings. I must have taken at least a dozen movies of them and I like this one the best. We followed them for about 20 minutes.

I thought you all might also enjoy seeing a few of the roses.

When you read hear when these pictures were taken you'll know how far behind I am running. They were all taken over a week ago when Alice, Gill and I went to the Oklahoma City Arts Festival and ended the outing by walking through the beautiful Myriad Gardens.

I love peonies and couldn't resist running over to a bush that I saw blooming to get a shot. I was excited to see that a bumble bee was inside and busy harvesting pollen. He took no notice of me. The picture on the right above is of a lovely water feature with pink roses blooming around it. See the little bridge on the other side of the water?

Then we came upon this turtle covered branch. It was so crowded that a couple of the turtles sunning were piled up two deep. The picture on the right is a close up of another of the thousands of roses in the gardens.

I was pretty grateful when I got up this morning and checked my garden. You see we had hail last night along with really strong winds. I was pleasantly surprised to find all my plants and flowers were still in tact . . . all but the hostas. They sustained lots of little tears in the leaves from the hail, but I think they'll pull through OK. I was especially surprised to find the Iris and the peonies still standing and in great shape.  

Here's a real quick tour of my backyard today.

Tiny little daffodils                                           Homestead Verbena

Home Run Rose Bush                                     Columbine

          Another Home Run Rose bush         Sweet Autumn Clamatis on a trellis

Grape Hyacinth in amongst String Sedum                       Gaillardia

Gaillardia                                                            My back yard

Thrift                                                    Yellow Rose & Purple Homestead Verbena

Dianthus                                                   Tiny Ruby Dianthus

I bet my husband is looking down from Heaven just shaking his head in disbelief. You see I did no yard work before he died. We had an agreement: I took care of the inside of the house and he took care of the yard and everything outside the house. He liked lots of colorful flowers and I think he'd approve of this yard. 

We got rain again today. I'm so glad, because God's watering is so much better than water from the sprinkler system. I've been patiently waiting for my yellow rose bushes to finally bloom. They were only about 5 days behind the Home Run rose bushes. This morning there was only the one yellow rose, but later in the day another 3 opened up. And I have 32 more buds waiting in the wings to make their appearance.  When I bought these three little rose bushes last spring, they were called miniture roses. I was really expecting the roses to be miniture, but that's not the case. The bushes are smaller than most rose bushes, but the roses themselves are full size. I love them.

Last year when our garden club had it's spring plant sale, I purchased several little Columbine starts. They bloomed last year for about a week and then basically disappeared. I thought they were dead and gone, but low and behold . . . they came back this year with vigor. The blossoms are much larger and prettier this year. I hope they all come back like this one did. I had pink, yellow and white last year and the pink is the first to bloom. Now I'm wondering if they'll have enough room and if I should provide something for them to climb on.

This is the unenhanced photo of the cute pink blossom.

You know, I should be used to the wind by now . . . after all, I've lived in OKC for almost 2 years now, but it has been so very VERY windy for 3 days now. It was even windy over night, when it typically dies down. I looked out my window several times in the night last night and my wind sock was still wildly blowing.  I wonder if the folks who named Chicago as "The Windy City" had ever been to Oklahoma City.