Blooming: Iris, Phlox, Wild Rose, Wild Geranium, Lilac, Lily of the Valley, Mountain Ash, and More

Reason to blog #213*: Keep track of the cycle of time. At first, as I was taking pictures today, I thought, I can't put these up, I did this last year. Then I realized that's ok. It's good to remember that this happened last year, and the year before, and to think about how you've made the world better in between. It was a bit of a shock to discover that some of these flowers I posted exactly one year ago today.


Our first iris just opened today, and not quite fully either.






These plants really look like they should be inside all winter, that they can't possibly survive an Alaskan winter, yet they do quite well. I wrote a Haiku about this and the next flower.


Like birds in our yard
words in my brain come and go
beyond my control.






I couldn't remember the name of this flower last year either.













The pale lavender wild geraniums are pretty common. The white ones are a little harder to find.






Our mountain ash tree provides berries for the bohemian wax wings (be my guests) and bark for the moose (grrrrrr!) in the winter and flowers for me and the bees in the summer.
For a while each summer we have a carpet of pink phlox. If you look closely you can see there are actually two different kind. There are only a few with the red markings. You can see them in the lower right hand corner of the background picture above.

While all our neighbors have spectacular lilacs, we've never been successful until we got one little bunch of flowers last year. I was pleased to see it come back again this year.





Oh yes, I can't forget the spittle bug. My second post, July 9, 2006, was about spittle bugs. Before I had a digital camera. And then again last year on June 23, 2007 I got pictures. They are later this year and not nearly as big or wide spread. Also the aphid larvae were much earlier last year. I'm sparing you the picture of them today.