Gardening Day

It's pretty much a perfect day for gardening, so I've been doing things out on the patio and in the yard today.  And in case you didn't believe the little pine tree's incredible comeback, I'm starting this post with a picture of it from this morning.  It still amazes me. 

The other pictures in this post are the three peach trees.  The oldest one is shown first.  It looks the best from a distance, but up close it's infested with some sort of insect layering the newest growth.  They look kind of like aphids except they're black.  But they bunch around the new growth like aphids do on roses.  I sprayed the heck out of the tree with Seven dust spray yesterday and today and hope that will take care of them.  There's not a sign of them on the other two trees.   

The littlest peach thinks it's a peach shrub, growing out from the ground.  I guess I should be grateful it survived being buried by the foundation repair people.

I've been transplanting things out on my patio since around 11:00 this morning.  I transplanted the wandering jew and the airplane plant (spider plant?) into hanging baskets and later this afternoon I'll put hooks up and hanging them over my patio.  They're looking kind of puny so I decided to move them outside.  I also moved all the aloe vera outside. And I took some of those cacti that I raised from seeds and transplanted them in a big pot outside.  I'm seriously acting like we're over all our freezes, so the weather better not disappoint me.

I have a pair of house finches who have commandeered the one bird feeder.  They spend a lot of time there and zealously guard it from all other comers, including another house finch pair and a pair of cardinals.   Another thing I did today was move one bird feeder out to the tree by the back fence because I decided to put a hummingbird feeder up on that hook close to the house.   We'll see if I manage to attract any hummingbirds.

I also  transplanted the one azalea from the pot it was in, into the ground next to the patio.  It's been looking a little peaked, so I'll see if it does better in the ground.  While I was doing that I noticed that the mint is coming up in various areas around the patio.  I'm glad to see it but will have to try to keep it a little more under control than I did last year.  I'm more motivated to mess around with plants and things this year.  Last year I was just watching for what would come up and grow.  This year it feels more like it's mine, and I'm making some changes and working out there.  I cut all the roses waaaaaaay back in February and they're all putting on new growth now.  I also feel good about having all the foundation-repair-killed shrubs removed and replaced with pretty new shrubs.  It makes me happy to have growing and blooming things.          

Which makes me think - I haven't seen any sign of the Indian Hawthorne blooming.  I wonder if the weather we've had has made them really late or prevented them blooming.  It seems to me that they bloomed close to when the quince did last year.  Nope, just looked.  It was about a month later, in mid- to late April, so they aren't late yet.

Anyway, not much to say today and too nice to sit by the computer.  Guess I'll go hang those plants.