‘April showers bring May flowers’, me arse. What April did was get all kindsa crazy hot for over a week, and make my plants go beserkers with the growing.

May, the aul’ bitch, came along with nothing but heavy wind, rain and hail. The wind has been the killer – all the formerly insanely happy but very tender new growth has been beaten to hell – against walls, other plants, or snapped off by the gusts. I’ve probably lost a hundred raspberry fruit buds, the roses look like shit, and my poor from-seed lilac is even shorter than it was in April.

Dammit.

I do have growth. I hope it will be stronger for weathering a May of bluster.

 The tigridia is coming up! Not just here, where 3-year old plants are coming back, but the ones from seed last year are looking about the same. Yay! Love these damn things.

Some of the new lilies are above ground, too!

 I already forget which ones I planted in this pot. Oops! The blue things are slug-pellets. Sadly a necessity here if you grow from seed. I don’t have squirrels, or deer, or manical plant-killing peacocks; I have slugs by the billion.
 Strawberries are looking great, even if they are useless weeds to me at this point. I keep looking for strawberry half-pots I can hang on the wall of my shed, but so far no luck.
 I rue the day I started these violas from seed. Little shits are everywhere now. On the plus side, I aparently can also grow hostas from seed. They are also kind of everywhere, but only within the area the hostas actually were planted. Except for this one, and another, which I stuck in a pot last year because I wasn’t sure they were actually hostas. They are. 

 We bought these right before Halloween, and left them out front in this tiny-ass seedling tray all winter. The purple ones were more black, and the Orange ones were more orange back in 2014. But hey, they are still alive so I might finally make them a home this year. Oh, they were infested with insects so that is why I didn’t plant them out. Think I’ve killed all the wee bugs now, though.

And yah, I cannot wait to get the pressure washer out and get rid of all the yuck on my house and pots! I love to pressure-wash. Best invention ever for someone who adores making old shit look new again! Therapy of a sort. 

 My only proper flowers right now – the columbine (aquilegia) from last year. The plant overwintered, and left me about a half-dozen babies in other plants nearby – which I dug out and repotted, of course. I don’t remember columbine overwintering when I lived in Ohio, but I’m assuming they do, now, and also require a cold season for the seeds to germinate.

One tiny sweet William blooming in the background, too. Also rather rue the day I planted them. Smell lovely but unless you deadhead the crap out of them they seed everywhere. Going to start calling them the Duggar plant!