Lilacs

I have always loved lilacs. They hint of romance with their aromatic fragrance and beautiful flowers and who doesn't love romance!!! I recently received a Garden Gate magazine that had an article about lilacs. I was surprised to learn how many colors there are. I knew of the deep purple, white and lilac, but there are also blue, pink and yellow varieties. There are actually over one thousand varieties! There are also single and double petal varieties. Bushes can grow tall, as much as 30 feet. And, there are dwarf sizes which only grow about three feet high.

When our guest Beth was here, she bought me a lilac bush. I knew my mother had the deep purple and white varieties, so I came up with the idea to make a lilac garden. When we were at my Mother's a couple of weeks ago, we dug up some white and some deep purple and planted in our future lilac garden. Then we went and bought 2 more bushes, dwarf lilac variety, and got some fencing. On Monday, Andy worked at putting up the fence as a backdrop to the lilacs, then mulched and here we are:
I can't wait now for spring to see if they'll bloom this first year!

Another project we worked on was to move the forsythia bush. I had originally planted it in back of the 3 mailboxes at the road, but it grew so much so fast that it was becoming a hazard trying to get out of the driveway. So I got some perennials and planted them in that spot after we moved the forsythia back from the road. Now we can see to get out and don't have to wonder if someone is coming! As you can see from this spring picture, the forsythia is right in the line of vision.
I wish I could do something to hide this ugly pole. Yuck!

My ice plants are very beautiful this year.
All that work tired us out so yesterday afternoon, we drove down to Harrisonville Lake with our lounge chairs and did some serious relaxing. It was a beautiful day so it was easy to enjoy being there.