Sunday Stroll: May 1, 2016

Happy May! It’s spring!!

I’d like to welcome my new subscribers. I’m so glad you’re here. You might not know that I am also a gardener, although my art has pretty much pushed it to the back in the last couple of years.

The Sunday Stroll is where I like to show you what’s going on here at Happy Acres. I am amazed every spring how things come alive.

April seemed to be off and on cool with rain. Since I have been working on my online class, Icy Delights, that weather gave me an excuse to stay inside and work on it instead of gardening. Now it’s time for me to get out and be one with the soil!

But before that, let me talk about irises. When I started this blog in 2009 I counted every one of my irises. We had quite a few back then. However, some have died. Others have been moved, and one area has put back into grass. But I still have a few and still love to count them.

Last year I dyed fabric to match them. Not sure I’ll get around to that this year, but if you missed that and love dyed fabric, check out this post on my iris-inspired colorways.

Here are a few so far this year. The white-looking iris at the bottom is really light blue. I really love irises, but sure wished they’d stay around longer.

The shade garden is really looking good. I try to get out and mulch before the hostas and ferns are up, but didn’t make it this year. I’ll just have to work around them. I bought the mulch last week and put the bags in the area so tomorrow I can start working on that area.

These lilac bushes are outside our back door and part of the new landscaping we had done around the house. They aren’t as pretty as the old ones we had, but they sure do smell good.

This is the first year for the Encore Azaleas to really bloom nice. They were also part of the landscaping around the house we had done a couple years ago. The plants that were around the house when we moved in were really high maintenance. Since this area doesn’t demand a lot of my time now, I can spend it in the shade garden and other areas in the back.

This picture makes my heart and tummy happy. The blueberries are coming on! Yipee!

The Blackberries are also blooming.

Again for those of you who are new to my blog, hubby grows a lot of what we eat. If you are interested in gardening, or just want to see what we’re eating right now, check out Dave’s blog.  This is the main garden. Since we have LOTS of problems with deer, the fence is necessary. Also, Dave sprays all of our hostas and other deer “food” on a regular basis during the summer. Otherwise, there would be no shade garden to enjoy.

That white object on top of the fence post is our weather station. Dave loves to keep up with the weather. You can check out our weather here. It’s pretty neat to have that information for gardeners and weather geeks.

Dave also grows a lot of stuff in the greenhouse and the cold frames.

Inside I’ve been working on getting my Icy Delights online class finished. I worked on the last couple of videos this weekend so the dye studio in the garage was all set up. Since I’m filming in the garage, even though our road is quiet, Friday afternoon when I shot two of the videos I forgot about all of the school traffic. We live right down the road from a school. The only time we have a lot of traffic is before and after school. I was so happy to have the videos finished, but came inside and watched them and behind my voice was the roar of cars driving up and down the road. Anyway, hopefully I will finish them today or tomorrow so the class can go live in the next couple days.

If you haven’t entered the fabric giveaway on this post, be sure and comment. The deadline is Friday.

That’s all for today. I sure hope you are having a wonderful and creative Sunday. As always, thanks for dropping by.