Tour of the yard

These are the apple trees my partner got several years ago, and yesterday they looked like spotlights of Beautiful. Today they are leafing out more and are less brilliant. Last night's rain raked off a lot of the petals, too. -- If we have an apple for each of those blossoms, both trees will be ruined. -- I have been whacked on the head with apples on these trees, mowing under them. They are big, hard and heavy.









This is grandma burdock and a couple of her daughters (over near the tires)











Grass is kinda smart. It will seed shorter, if you keep mowing it. That has always amused me for some reason.

This is a patch of yarrow that established itself near our Osage orange. It's so beautiful! Ah, May, you are a beautiful month!

This is a recent transplant. When it went into the ground three weeks ago, it was just a stick. Now its a known live stick. Just joking. This is an elderberry I bought cheap (in a group of 25) from the local NRCS. 25 elderberries and 25 chokecherries. 

This is a mullein we found in the garden last year. I staked it out with some of the sticks that are all over our yard. -- I generally only pick up larger sticks. The rest just get mowed. -- Anyway, you can see that one was a willow, and now it thinks it is a willow tree.

This is a lilac bush that smelled good yesterday, but wasn't blooming very much. Today it's the picture of lilac loveliness. I hug it every day when it's blooming. YUM!

This is, on the left, St. John's wort. It's known for liking to live in compacted soil. Sure enough, it's alongside my driveway where I occasionally drive right over it. On the right, is a wild rose with last year's hips on it.

Nyctaginacea mirabilis, the wild four o'clock. It's really cute at this stage before it gets all leggy and knobby-kneed.

This is my lead plant. Every year I think it has died because the lead plant waits a long time to leaf out. It is silvery, but this is too flashed-out and you can't see the real color.

Silphium terebinthenaceum, prairie dock. Not similar to your other docks, but a cousin to cup plant and compass plant, therefore Very Tall. Its first year with me it was 14 feet tall.

A chokecherry in my yard I didn't even know was there. It was hiding in some greenery. This is just one of many reasons to regularly inspect your yard! Woot!

Here's another chokecherry. This shape of the group of flowers is quite distinctive. I can see this from the highway. There's really nothing else like it in my part of the country.

The evil, evil forsythia.