This is a very belated update on the garden status. Once things started blooming, the gardens took off fast. Between new plantings going in, deadwood coming out, and constant deadheading of old blooms, there has been a little time for working on the computer. Perhaps I need to take my laptop into the garden to keep up on blogging!
April was the month for bulbs. Other spring bloomers, too, but primarily bulbs. Mainly daffodils:
The daffodils don’t show up in photos as spectacularly as they did in person, but at one point, the garden was a disneyworld of daffodils:
We had big daffodils and little tete-a-tete daffodils:
Then there were hyacinths, both grape hyacinths and regular:
When nothing else was blooming in the back yard, even St. Francis had a sea of daffodils:
The yellow was a welcome sight after the winter. It was good to see growing, green things blooming. After the daffodils started, the flowering trees began to follow suit. First, the Snow Fountain cherry in the front yard bloomed:
The serviceberry in the side yard performed exactly the way I had envisioned when we planted it over 10 years ago:
My house and my neighbors’ are on the old 1950 side setbacks of 6 foot each, so our houses are only 12 feet apart. I wanted something feathery in there to give some bloom and light leaf cover, plus being good for the birds. Plus, a pretty, delicate spring bloom:
Shrubs began blooming, too. The PJM Rhododendron and the Chinese Witch Hazel:
The spring-blooming camelias, this one is “April Kiss”:
And something that was a long time coming, the flowering pink almond. I live in the house I grew up in and, as a child, remembered that my mother always had a flowering pink almond on the front southwest corner of the property. I can’t remember exactly what happened to it, either a lawn mower got it or the kids playing in the yards crushed it, but it had long disappeared. One of my goals was to reestablish the flowering pink almond:
It is not very flashy but should fill out in time. I was happy to see it in the traditional spot.
As April and the daffodils waned, other bulbs came to take their place. I am not much of a tulip person, but had invest all of 20 dollars in a huge bag of mixed tulip bulbs from Home Depot. Who knew? It turned out to be one of the best investments:
The Wool Merchant's Daughter 
At that time of year I mess the bleeding heart I used to have at my old house, it came up through the purple vinca and it was really pretty. I have not been able to get one started at this house.