At our new house, we were delighted to discover that there were a lot of flowers already planted. We knew about the orange flowers that would bloom later in the summer, as we'd seen them before we moved in, but it was fun to see that there were other surprises that popped up in the spring!
There were some dark purple irises, some bright purple flowers that might have a relation to wild onions? There were some tiny hyacinths as well.
We had a few small trees with some spring blooms on them
but nothing as spectacular as I saw in Pierre in April! Those trees were amazing. It was like St. George on steroids.
We also planted some flowers of our own behind our garage. For Mother's Day, Josh gave me a packet of seeds from school that had a wide variety meant to attract pollinators. They didn't grow that great (I think the soil isn't very good,even with the added soil we bought) but we had fun growing them! There were a few varieties of sunflowers, and several plants I'd never seen before. I hope some of them come back next year, and maybe they'll spread out more.
Joseph tried to grow a little garden too; he had some potato plants, an onion, and a handful of herbs. He spent a lot on new soil and they started out well, but in the end the plants died because there was some kind of grub getting at them- we think they might be June bugs. He got a small handful of potatoes in the end.
\
Even though our little gardens weren't perfect, it was fun to spend some time outside this summer. Bonus: there were several birds nests in our yard early in the summer! These two were particularly easy to see.
Yay for summer gardens!
