Ready for another photo tour of what’s been blooming the past couple of weeks? Note: I started this about three weeks before I published it and now it’s summer! Better late than never though eh?
While working from home (due to the pandemic) and ever since the weather got warm, I started a new walking routine. I try to do either two walks or a walk and a bike ride each week day. I have a few routes that I take from my house. My favorite is the walk to Willow Pond. If I walk on the Willow Pond path all the way to the brown house with the interesting garden, that’s 7-8 minutes, so round trip it’s nearly a mile. It’s a fairly quiet path in my neighborhood with occasionally one to three other walkers. I enjoy photographing the flowers as well as the reflections in the pond when it’s calm. I included one other photo with reflections from our local park in this gallery.
one day I counted 10 turtles on that log!
the calm before the storm
spiderwort
this is at Central Park but I loved the reflections
I took a lot of photos of lilacs this year! I never tire of them.
And iris too.
neighborhood iris
my iris
my iris
brown house iris
When we walk to the park we either walk there and back, circling around the amphitheatre, or we go all the way around the lake. The latter takes about 40 minutes and it’s a good hike. And if you’re lucky, you’ll see some wild life. The other day I saw an egret as I rode my bike around the lake.
Several of my neighbors have rain gardens and they’re between our house and the park, I’ve taken photos of these too. I thought my neighbor said that the city helped them with theirs. So I was curious and found information about their purpose and benefits as well as the Ramsey-Washington County Metro Watershed District. I’m thinking my neighbors may have benefited from the Stewardship Grants program. The gardens in my neighborhood are all a bit different and it’s fun to see their progress throughout the season. My neighbors to the south have the largest on the block and it’s full of flowers! Here are some rain gardens on the way to and from the park.
that’s cat nip in full bloom
actually not sure if this is a rain garden but it’s cool anyway
We also have a vegetable/fruit garden. During the winter we had some wood delivered which was stored in this garden space. We haven’t had a garden in that spot for a couple of years so the first project was moving the wood. In the next gallery are photos of this garden when it was first planted and then a little later and it’s easy to see the difference. We planted basil, green pepper, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and another, regular size tomato but I forget which variety.
newly planted
tomato looks happy
cherry tomato
cucumber
pepper
And of course there’s the monster rhubarb plant. It’s since been pruned.
time to harvest! this was before the wood was moved.
This year I also took photos of the cottonwood trees and their blossoms. I was on a walk by myself and yep, it’s that time of year where you keep your mouth shut so as not to collect cottonwood blossoms in your mouth. Yuck. But I realized that I didn’t know what a cottonwood tree looked like. So I followed where the blossoms were coming from and finally I know what a cottonwood tree looks like.
cottonwood tree blossoms collecting in the gutter
close-up of cottonwood blossoms still in the tree
cottonwood tree
To close here’s a gallery of a few more things in my garden. I have columbine that grows in the cracks of the patio. I now have three of them! Other photos are of lamium which is a nice ground cover and it pretty much blooms the entire season. But beware, it will take over if you let it!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of spring in the twin cities. I’ll be back soon with summer blooms!
lamium ground cover
lamium close up
daisies
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