A few Spring plants and trees.

There is one street in town full of cherry trees and when they all bloom at the same time it is lovely to drive down, we look forwards to it each year.

I took this picture from my upstairs bathroom window, I happened to look out of the window and saw this hawk perched on a cut down tree in the garden.

We had to cut down a lot of the trees at the side of our garden, the side nearest the road had a lot of trees and bushes for privacy and to block the noise of the road. However the house next door has a 'natural' garden, or basically they are too lazy to take care of it. Their trees are completely overgrown with vines and the vines are strangling the trees, unfortunately for us it was creeping from the top of his trees onto our trees. This is his 'natural' area, it runs along the bottom of our garden, which runs perpendicular to the main road because we are a corner house. We have actually pushed back about 15' because we were sick of the weeds growing along our land. The second picture shows where we have cut down our trees to stop all the vines. and the third picture shows a bright red cardinal in all the mess of weeds, you probably have to click on the picture to see it.

This is a Japanese Maple Crimson Empress it doesn't have the traditional maple leaf shape it has a much finer lacy leaf. They were made for bonsai trees, they are very expensive, this sized tree is about $600 but I bought it some years ago as a $40 straggly little plant I wasn't sure would make it, but I really wanted one of these beautiful weeping maples with their red leaves so took a chance and happily it has grown into this

It has done so well that we splurged on another at the plant nursery this one is a brighter red it's called Red Dragon. and is a more upright variety. It's not a great picture because we just left it on the porch so we can dig a hole to plant it. I actually didn't notice the dog sitting behind it.

I also bought a few little plants and a hydrangea, The hydrangea has big white flowers that turn to a pink colour, we already have an incrediball white hydrangea and a blue one, so a few flowers picked for the house will be lovely.