Spring Fever?

I know that it sounds crazy, but the temperature here keeps fluctuating from highs being in the 30's to highs in the 60's or higher.  It is playing havoc with me.  It isn't even Christmas, and I am starting to feel a little spring fever.  I guess I just need a good snowfall to snap me back into my winter spirit.  Winter has always been my favorite season, because I love snow and the crisp clean air and look to the world after a heavy snowfall.  Ice can be beautiful too, especially when you get just enough to cover tree limbs but not cause them to break.  One of my favorite sights on my commute to work on a winter morning is having a clear sunny winter morning following a day of ice accumulation on the trees.  I drive east to work in the morning, and the sun sparkling through the ice on the trees is breathtaking.  Anyway, before I ramble off topic any more, back to spring fever...I also can't wait for summer when my landscape is in bloom again.  We've all heard of Christmas in July; well, today I'm doing July at Christmastime.

One of the first challenges that I tackled after I moved into the house was removing years of neglected landscaping and starting over from scratch.  My goal has been to try to keep the front of the house more formal looking, and have the back be more like Granny's country garden, with my favorites planted intermixed with each other to give a very old-fashioned country kind of look.  Much like my grandma had on the farm.

This is the first year that my bee balm has done well.  I wish that I had been able to get a picture of it a few days earlier...it looked much better than it does here.

I love my hibiscus.  I even planted some more this year.  Hopefully it will do well next year as well.  In the first two pictures you can see the Lutheran Church behind my house and the parking lot in the third picture.  They are very quiet neighbors! :)  You can also see my white honeysuckle covering the fence in the third picture.  The fence isn't very nice looking, but I need it for my dogs, so I have been working on hiding it as much as possible with large plants such as the hibiscus, and with vines, such as the honeysuckle.

Speaking of the honeysuckle, I have planted both white and pink.  The pink blooms forever, but doesn't smell that well.  The white smells amazing.  I wanted to live outdoors while it was blooming!  Actually, because the weather was so cool this summer, the white honeysuckle never stopped blooming, and it is usually done by the beginning of July.

Also in the back yard is my clematis.  No yard would be complete without one!  I took this just as it was beginning to bloom, but it was loaded this summer.  If you keep them deadheaded, they'll bloom most of the summer.

Now that I have finished with my plants in the back yard, I'll move along the side toward the front.  I love my butterfly bush.  My foresight in planting it next to the cream colored house wasn't the greatest since it has white blooms, but it always looks great.  It was just starting to bloom in these pictures.  It is just outside my bedroom window (which is to the right of the bush in the bottom picture).  I keep my computer desk in the corner of the room so that I can look out this window in the summer and enjoy the butterflies (yes it really attracts butterflies!) and humming birds.

Moving to the front of the house, I planted simple evergreen shrubs in front of the bedroom to the left, with taller evergreen shrubs at the corners of the house.  In the planter box in front of the living room I planted yellow marigolds and red salvia.  The colors for the university that I attended were red and yellow (sorry, crimson and gold, to be more exact) and all of the flower beds on campus were always filled with red and yellow flowers.  I have kept the tradition going now with the shack.  These colors just really work well together.  In the spring I have red and yellow tulips planted in a red / yellow alternating pattern along the sidewalk.

Well, this did absolutely nothing to curb my spring fever...ugh.  Have a great Wednesday!