Bad Egg

I found this intact egg in my garden yesterday; it's probably a bad one cleared from a nest.

It's smaller than robin's egg, and its turquoise color is deeper, darker. I could not find on the web who it belongs to; will update this post if I do.

Spring Bouquet

Peonies have spread a lot this past year in my garden and this spring there are many blooms. It's such a lush flower.

Last Sunday I made three bouquets with peonies, climbing rose, clematis, dianthus, lavender, catmint, bachelor's buttons, Siberian iris and lamb's ear: one for us and two for my son's Sunday school teachers.

First Salad

Earlier this week I made the first salad with ingredients from my garden: radishes, baby lettuce, dill and shallot leaves. The later is basically green onions, but without white part; just pick a few from the plant, not all.

 Chop it all up, add some salt and sour cream. Now that's the taste of spring.

First Radishes

They are just a tad bigger than garbanzo beans... never less I plucked them from my garden and they taste good!

Mini-oasis

Irises around a utility pole near my neighbors' house are in full bloom.

There are quite a few mini-gardens like this one around here. I wonder if they were created because of practical reasons (who wants to mow and weedwack that narrow strip between a sidewalk and street and around utility poles?) or because a gardener just had to have one more patch of soil where to put in even more plants. It's probably a little bit of both.

Lazy Weekend

While on Sunday I watched a very busy robin build a nest in neighbor's maple (here's a very blurry picture)...

... and a catbird also building a nest in a bush under one of our windows, I had a lazy weekend myself when it came to the garden.

It's fresh and green right now and plants are starting to grow very fast.

Spinach is big enough for the first salad.

Chives are blooming.

And the first clematis flower has opened. It's almost iridescent, this picture really does not do it justice.

 Variegated iris will open any day.