Chartreuse is loose!

It's almost peony time!  The trees coming down last year destroyed the huge bank of peonies I'd planted, but I still have four or five on the other side of the driveway.

There's actually a bit of debate over the ants/peony bud phenomenon.  Anyone who's ever had a peony knows that the buds are covered with ants for days before they open up, and then they're gone. The prevailing thought seems to be that nectar is produced by the buds, which draw the ants, which assist in the opening of the bud.  But - there's no definitive proof.

Deer got all of my muscari (grape hyacinth) this year...sigh!  I had a ton in Indiana and loved to pick them in the spring.

I did manage to save one lone white stalk from the pointy, venomous teeth of the local deer.

Camellias are shot...

...but the Japanese maple is in full color.  Love the white dogwood behind it.

We've got a few late-season azaleas nodding over the driveway, too.

One of my favorite plant colors is chartreuse...enter euphorbia, achemillia mollis, 'Envy' zinnias, etc. Most of the early spring growth is this color.  LOVE it!

I let a woody vine come all the way up the support on the sunroom and start to wrap around our porch railing.  It doesn't flower, but I love the leaves.

Remember how this was a bumper year for acorns?  Well, now we have millions of seedlings coming up everywhere!

Sometimes you can root out the whole acorn, but sometimes you just get the stem.  Fingers crossed that removing the leafy growth is enough to kill them.  We haven't had much time to weed and we'll have a forest here in a few months if we don't get them all up.

Not much time today, so I'll close and say - have a great week!