Flowers Galore.

5-4-24 SHORT HILLS: It’s cold again, I’m wearing a jacket when outside. The race to flower is on, I’m limping around with the camera trying to keep up with all the action. I did cut up some large dead fall, one big enough to make it to the wood pile.

The grass is lush and green and growing with vigor, it hasn’t looked this good for years. It might be due to lots of clover growing in the lawn. In our freedom lawn everything is welcome that is OK with being three inches tall—clover being one of the welcomed plants. Clover is a legume. Legumes are nitrogen fixers, taking nitrogen out of the air for their growth and leaving it in the soil. There’s an old adage, “Where clover grows, grass will follow.” The grass using the nitrogen left by the clover, better than using fertilizer.

New blooms: early rhododendron, double-file viburnum, chestnut, bridal wreath spirea, deutzia, burning bush, leuclothoue. 

One of the azaleas now in bloom.

Another azalea, this one in magenta.

This azalea defines red.

  

Early rhododendron opens weeks before the others.

The chestnut tree has popped open.

Siebold viburnum bushes rival the small trees. That's a redbud tree in the backround.