Garden on April 1

I took this picture yesterday, really, and I should have posted it yesterday on April 1 of course, but here it is. As you can see, things look quite a bit different from a month ago. All the purple blooming is nepeta, or catmint, and my lambs ears are looking healthy. You can see my iris pallida in the foreground and the white candytuft on the left. The big green mounds are sedums and asters and phlox. Daylilies are emerging. In the back to the left of the front door is my tree peony. A few tulips are still blooming and the tall snowdrops are still going strong. Yesterday was a work day in the garden, and we got a lot done. The Boy Scouts delivered 25 bags of mulch last week, so we got about half of that spread around trees and in my side beds. I like to mulch those areas to keep the weeds down, but I don't mulch my perennial bed. I have it filled enough so that the plants keep the weeds down, and I like to be able to get in between the plants myself and scratch around. For some reason, I just don't like mulch around my perennials.

Pretty heuchera after the rain

Freshly mulched rose bed

Fruit on the mahonia

Can't resist alyssum in the spring

Last week when we were walking around Capitol Hill with Pat and Jack, I saw a small garden that had a few big pots of alyssum and I thought it looked really good. So I bought some alyssum this week and planted a pot and then planted the rest in some nooks and crannies of the garden.

Lily of the Valley 

And I had to share this picture of some of my lily of the valley popping up. It is one of my all-time favorite flowers, and I have it growing everywhere. And 35 years ago today, I was carrying the most beautiful bouquet of all lily of the valley (that we had to special order as it wasn't blooming yet),  as Walt and I got married at my sister Linda's house, in front of her fern.