~ Happy May garden days ~

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! I can't believe my long May vacation is almost over and it's back to the office and work on Monday, but before that I want to at least share some May garden pictures with you. This was an unusual cold and wet May for us here in Northern Germany but I know it was like that for most of us even in the South of Europe and in many parts of the United States. What has happened to my favorite Spring month? Well nevertheless I used every sunny moment there was outside on my little piece of earth.

On my deck I planted lot's of Spring flowers like violas/pansies and bleeding hearts at first in April and then started to plant Summer blooms in my pots in May and I'm still not finished with it. I also sowed sweet peas, cosmos, zinnias etc. in my zinc cold frame box and pots in hope of getting pretty summer flowers to bloom all Summer long, but they're all taking longer than usual to grow:

 I love to watch them grow so, don't you? The sweat peas I always leave them in the cold frame and let them climb up the trellis I put in it.

In April we still had bare trees without leaves because of the long frosty period, but came May the green literally exploded and finally every bush, rose and tree in my garden was green once again. I especially love my maple tree sitting right smack there in the middle of my back yard, blocking the view to the houses behind my garden which I think is good!

Then the sweet blue "forget me nots" started to bloom everywhere in my borders as you can see in the next photo:

And the pink tulips I planted new last autumn started to bloom in the other big border under the roses:

And it is so nice to see all the alliums and perennials grow again, after we had freed the border from weeds:

My crabapple tree got lots of buds and flowers this year, while last year there wasn't so many so I can look forward to lots of tiny red apples this autumn:

The hostas also came out beautiful again. Since I do not have enough space in my borders for these beauties I planted them in pots. This one sits on my potting bench in front of a mirror:

When the sun came out the tulips in my rose garden opened their flowers really wide:

Below is my favorite tulip called Angelique:

Of course Riley enjoyd the rare warm and sunny happy Spring garden times outside with me:

 

He abandoned his favorite blue chair this season and now prefers to lie on top of the blue garden table:

Our neighbors cat Tommy is never far from him, you can spot him under the table:

The next photo is a close up of my favorite little pansie the Viola cornuta:

My auricala also survived the long Winter outside and bloomed again beautifully as seen below:

A closer auricula shot:

And a macro shot, I so love this dark reddish pink color:

I found a verbena in that same color and planted it in one of my hanging baskets:

In the photo below it is wet from rain and looks like it is varnished, don't you think?

Of course I also had to take another birdseye view shot of my small garden now that finally everything is green again:

I love to see my patio and borders from above and I'm so thankful for my little paradise. Do you see in the next picture how the English rose "Constance Spry" in the white rose arc has grown all through and around it? Can you imagine how wonderful she is going to be when she opens her pretty shaped pink blossoms in June? In this rose boarder are also Heritage, Rokkoko, Abraham Darby and two big Eden roses that will all bloom very soon and I'm so looking forward to see them all bloom again:

I really like the red flat stones we put around the border last year it makes the shape pop more and is so much easier to mow around it now.

Next is a view of my patio on a sunny day here I could actually sit in my deckchair and enjoy the warm Spring sun:

 

And this below is the view of my garden from the back of it. All the boxwood hedges got fresh green sprouts by now and I have to cut them again soon so that they'll stay in shape:

The clematis Montana rubens below still in buds is meanwhile blooming beautifully too:

And my pure white bleeding heart also still blooms so great that I had to share another shot of it:

It's also nice to lo look right through it on to my deck as seen in the next shot:

So now tell me please how's your garden growing this season?

I'm going to leave you for today with this picture of my deck and hope to be back very soon with pictures of a belated birthday party I have had a week ago.

Until then I'm wishing y'all a very happy start of Summer in June with hopefully more sunshine for all of us!

xoxo~ Carola