6 on Saturday – 25MAY2024 – A Perfect Spring Week

Chris Mousseau

It’s really been a perfect week, weather-wise, here in south-eastern Ontario. Warm sunny days and cool nights have lead to a slow explosion of colourful new blooms and bright green leaves on trees and shrubs. In just a week we went from almost bare branches to a fully leafed-out tree line, it seems. A perfect week to join Jim at Garden Ruminations with Six things in my garden.

I’ll start with this wonderful new-to-me Salvia – ‘White Swan.’ I purchased and planted it last spring and it spent the summer as a small rosette of leaves. This year it’s spring up with these 12 – 16″ (30 – 40 cm) flower spikes.

I save and scatter seeds from multi-coloured hybrid lupins every summer, and this is the week they all come into full bloom.

The featured photo at the top of this post has another angle, with a bridlewreath Spirea in the background; here’s the shrub from the front, also in full bloom this week. No rabbit damage this past winter – they’re looking their best ever.

Lilacs started blooming a week or so earlier than usual this year and the bulk of the them, the common, mauve ones that line the side of country roads in abundance here, are pretty much done. A few of the hybrids in my garden; however, are still in their prime, including this very fragrant white one and this blowsy light purple one. Names of both are long lost, I’m afraid.

I’ve never planted columbines (Aquilegia) but they’ve appeared anyway, here and there, all over the property. Some are large and dark purple, some are the more refined (ie smaller) bright orange and red native species, and some are this very pale pink shade, which I find quite entrancing in the early morning light.

I’ll leave you with a tree peony – Paeonia suffruticosa yellow. I really should get a few more of these – I can picture them in various spots, hovering above still growing perennials like Echinacea and Rudbeckia. Have a lovely weekend everyone!

29 Comments

  1. Looks like spirea and lilac are a week or two ahead of you here. The blossoms that last week were so lovely are now faded and gone. Aquilegia are all on track though. I only have the native one from seeds given to me by my neighbor. I love the lupine and would like to try my hand at the native one, but have read it prefers sandy soil and I have clay…

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  2. It’s lovely to see your garden gently exploding into colour. The lupins are beautiful and way ahead of mine. No apparent slug damage either, that has to be good. The spirea is amazing but your gorgeous tree peony is an absolute winner.

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    1. I just love the tree peony! And no, no slug damage that I’ve noticed, yet, although the lower leaves of my snow peas are rather holey…not sure what’s the cuprit…

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  4. Lovely spikes of colorful Lupins, unique leaves, too. That’s a pretty, pastel shade for the Columbine…years ago, I bought a soft lilacy color, it’s seedlings have dispersed into so many pots.

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  5. Love, love, love the yellow peony! You’re about a week ahead of us I’d say. My lupins are not quite so far along.

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  12. It’s such fun to see your lupines — cousins to our bluebonnets. But that bridal wreath spirea! Yours are just about the size of the ones that grew on either side of our front steps at my childhood home, and their scent carries through time and space as clearly as the lilacs’.

    I was amazed at the grocery store this morning to discover a shipment of white potted strawflowers had arrived. I wouldn’t have recognized them except for your blog; it was great fun to touch them and feel that papery texture. No, I didn’t buy any — but I thought about it.

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    1. Gasp! Not purchasing a plant!!! I’m impressed with your restraint!

      I saved seeds last fall, started them indoors a few months ago and planted them out last weekend. They *should* be white or dusky rose…looking forward to finding out!

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  13. It all looks glorious Chris – this time of year must be savoured! Your lupins are beautiful – I think mine succumbed to slugs after all the rain we have had. Hope you get more perfect weather this week!

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    1. Thanks Cathy and I’m so sorry about the slugs…I didn’t post the picture, but I noticed, on one of the white iris petals in yesterday’s vase, a teeny tiny slug making its slow wayacross….

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  14. ‘White Swan’ salvia looks like white obedient plant (which I have not seen since the early 1990s). I like it, even without getting acquainted with it, because it is white. Hybrid lupines do not perform well here. I think they prefer a bit more humidity when the weather gets warm. A few other species of lupine are native, and some are splendid over large areas, but none are very showy individually. We try columbine also, but it performs no better, but then appears where it was not planted. Strangely, those that grow from seed bloom nicely (although briefly) for spring or autumn.

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