As much as I look forward to being able to get outside and garden once the snow is gone, maybe I’ve looked too forward to it – is it somehow my fault that we’re leaving May behind so soon??!! I’ve got to stop making the seasons happen so quickly! I know that before long it will somehow be the middle of June, and that too will also be my fault – you can blame me for this! All I know is: my seasonal clock became tuned to Finnish daylight hour mode – midsummer (June 21-23) is terrible. Why so terrible? Well, because from mid-December (winter solstice) last year until midsummer (summer solstice) of the current year, watching the progress of the increasing daylight hours is a real thing! But after midsummer, the hours of daylight start peeling back, until you guessed it – December! From about October through December, it gets pretty dark and gloomy. Bugger!

I’ve got lots of nice snaps from the garden, which are helping to take my mind off the quickly passing month of May 🙂

One – Malus adstringens ‘Wabiskaw’ – crabapple -Believe it or not this tree which is now 3 meters tall came from Finnish mail order plant seller, Viherpeukalot and was 1 foot tall when I planted it. Smothered in blossoms – it’s one of the first things greeting us as we come home and enter our yard.

Two – Prunus serrulata ‘Kiku-shidare-zakura’ Weeping cherry – Who wouldn’t adore these twinkly fairy blossoms! Our tree is young but already creating a striking branching system, full of these double blossom cascades.

Three – This handsome fellow is Fagus sylvatica ‘Purpurea Pendula’ All the new leaves are a luscious bronze which slowly turn to a lovely dark purple shade. The tree has a weeping form and is a beautiful focal point at any time of year.

Four – We have a lot of conifers in the garden. Some of them display new growth with a unique and unexpected color instead of the typical green. Here is an example of one pushing new growth which is all red. This is Picea abies ‘Punapaula’. After a few days the red fades, before you know it the red is gone completely – having blended into shades of green. It then looks like a customary picea abies.

Five – A dwarf bearded Iris we picked up from Latvia – lovely, but the tag was wrong. I have no idea what the cultivar truly is. Any ideas? The correctly tagged companion Irises, we thought it was, are yellow! (Iris barbata ‘Excelsa’) Do you think it could be SDB Banbury Ruffles?

Six – Apple blossoms! Sweet aromas all around 🙂 We have 7 apple trees and this is one of the original from 1950s. It produces a juicy large green apple which almost tastes of pear. It juices well, and is great in apple pies!

The weather is being very stingy on rainfall. Instead, we’ve been getting hammered with high winds. Anytime I see rain in the forecast, I begin to get optimistic – but that optimism is running pretty thin since hopes are usually dashed and the ‘rain’ turns into being something that lasts for 10 minutes, gets everything wet and is gone before leaving any appreciable rainfall. Where the heck is the rain?? It was 23c most of the last 10 days, and temps are gently falling from the high winds and cooler front that moved in, which looks like for the whole next week. I’ve got mounds of mulch to ferry around the yard, so I’ll take cooler working weather, but 5 c right now is ridiculous. Oh, what I really want is for a bit of real rain!!! Pekka’s got a birthday coming up on Monday – another year marvelous!

Have a great Saturday, everyone! Do drop in to see other gardens around the globe. Here you go, now on your way!

SOS zone