Stoney Acres

As I’ve told you before we are not really big flower people here at Stoney Acres.  Most of our flowers come in the form of perennial bushes and vines.  This time of year we do have some real nice color in our yard from all the late spring blooming plants.  Here’s a look at what’s in bloom around the yard.

I couldn’t resist including this shot with a big old bumblebee hard at work.

This plant is a flowering vine called Perry-Winkle.  It has this great little purple flower in the spring and then has a beautiful foliage all summer and into late fall.  It dies back each winter but promptly returns each spring and fills back in by mid May.  It makes a great ground cover, requires almost no work all season, it thrives in terrible soil, doesn’t require a lot of water and even does well in the shade.  This is our all around favorite ground cover!!

The warm weather this spring has brought out the blossoms on our “snow in summer” a little early.  We usually don’t see these blooms until June.  In another week this will be a white blanket of flowers that last about a month.  The plant dies back a bit and looks bad for a few weeks after that but then fills back in and makes a nice ground cover for the balance of the summer and fall.

We love our “snow ball” bushes, they are covered in big blooms like this for about 3 weeks each year.  The bushes are getting pretty big too.  You can see this one is as tall as the 6 foot fence behind it.

This one was planted by the first owners of our home and they put it a little too close to a tree.  It still puts on a pretty good show despite being in the shade most of the day.

Okay to this isn’t really a flower, but I had to include a shot of these vates kale plants that I’m letting go to seed to replenish my seed supply.  They have a nice little yellow flower.

The former owners of our place really loved Iris.  We like them too when they bloom, but the plants are kind-of plain the rest of the year.  They are really putting on a show right now with 3 or 4 different colors all over the yard.

We have a lot of this beautiful dark purple Iris scattered all over the yard.  It’s a great dark purple with some lighter purple to contrast with a yellow center.

Mrs. Stoney loves this little plant.  It has been moved around the yard several times as other plants have encroached on it.  The problem is we have no idea what this plant is?  Can any one out there help us?

Now is also the time of year for the chives to be in bloom.  The pretty little purple flowers look great and can be used in cooking or to flavor oils or vinegar.

Mrs. Stoney caught another of our pollinating friends in action.  She is pretty proud of this photo, very good for a simple little digital camera!!

Well I hope you enjoyed this trip around the yard.  There’s a lot more to see check in later in the week and I will give you a tour of the edible plants in the yard.