Blooming Stuff, Dead Stuff

Well, there are two magpies flitting around this morning, so whatever happened yesterday didn't seem to involve either of them dying. Assuming they're the same ones.

Nature is such a mystery, isn't it? Half the time you just have to guess at what's going on.

Olga seems to feel better. She eagerly ate her food last night and I persuaded her to take a treat, though it did take some persuading. So she's still not 100 percent. She went with her dog-walker yesterday, and this morning she was up with the sun, thumping her tail on the mattress and licking our hands and faces to make us get up too. (At roughly 5 a.m. -- we're at that time of year when she gets us up ridiculously early.)

Like nature, Olga's digestive system is a mystery.

These are flowers from the masterworts, or Astrantia, in our garden. They seem especially nice this year. I don't know if they're bigger or more colorful or what, but Dave and I both noticed and commented on them. Maybe all the rain we got early in the season gave them a boost.

Also blooming are some field poppies (top photo) that came up in one of our pots entirely on their own.

And here's one of our Asiatic lilies, right after I watered yesterday. I got it from the discount table at Homebase a year or two ago -- as I recall it didn't even have a pot. It was just a clump of dirt and bulbs with a somewhat mangled plant attached. I think the store gave it to me free. Anyway, as you can see, it has bounced back.

We only got a couple of iris flowers, at least that I could see. The irises are in a very bushy area so it's possible I missed some of them.

And it looks like we won't get any lupines. In May last year we had huge flowers, but this year two of the plants -- the Beefeater and the Gallery Red -- failed to come up at all. The other two -- the Persian Slipper and the Rachel de Thame -- produced meager leaves but no flowers. Apparently lupines only live a few years so my guess is they're all done. And although I love the blossoms, their tendency to attract aphids grosses me out, so I'm tempted not to grow any more.

Also dead is my pink dahlia, which I left outside for winter. It survived the previous winter in its pot outdoors, but last winter was colder and I guess that did it in. When it didn't sprout I dug into the soil and found that the tubers were entirely rotted away. The other dahlias survived because I put them all in the shed. Lesson learned -- dahlias really do need protection!