Taken for Granted - Almost.

As gardeners, we are so busy in April and May – acquiring new annuals, getting them in the ground or in containers, maybe adding a perennial or two, cutting dead branches out of shrubs, cleaning up the last of the winter debris – that we pay scant attention to the plants that are “just there”. The shrubs and perennial flowering plants that we, well, take for granted. They cause us no problems, they require little or no attention, and while we spend our outdoors’ time with new Daisies or Daylilies, transplant Basil, Tomatoes, Cosmos and Impatiens we have started from seed into our gardens, and figure out if it’s time for the Pansies and Violas to go, they keep our landscape beautiful without any participation from us.

This morning, I decided to photograph a few of them. My garden is richer because of their presence.

This Germander has not looked this good in years. Some years it's stalky and woody, with more brown than green in evidence. I've owned this plant for eight years already -- since before I had my current garden.

Acquired as a small shrub in a one-gallon pot, this Viburnum is now huge. It took several years for it to bloom, but for the past two years it has been spectacular, covered in white blossoms early in the year. It is now showing an inclination towards berries in a few months. The birds will be delighted.



Last winter's red berries on this Nandina cheered up my garden on even the dreariest days; the coming crop looks equally promising.

If you planted a Zinnia seed . . .

. . . and this popped up, would you be surprised?

I was! Here I was, watering trays with Zinnia, Butterfly Weed, Ageratum and Nicotiana and when I came to this 9-cell black-plastic one and saw something move, I knew it was not a Zinnia seed that had germinated!

Not the first toad of the year to make its appearance in my garden, but this is probably the last place I would have expected one.

When you live in the country . . .

. . .wildlife is everywhere! The other week, I saw a fox crossing the road (had it been a second slower or I a second faster, there would have been a collision!), a neighbor recently had a large opossum as roadkill in front of her driveway, last year one of my photographs of a Black Widow spider won an award in a photography contest. And yesterday, there was this hare in my garden! Plant damage and droppings had indicated the presence of rabbits for a long time, but a hare? In broad daylight? It ate for a while from the seed birds had dropped on the ground from one of the feeders, then hopped around, disappeared, came back and left.