The thing I love the most about Spring is the beauty of the blooming fruit trees. I recently took my camera on a lunch run with me simply so I could take pictures of some of the beautiful blooms presenting in Manchester, New Hampshire. I wanted to share some of them with you. But here’s the catch, I want you to name/guess what kind of tree/fruit/flower produces the blossoms I’ve seen on my run. No prizes but comment away

Mystery Blossom #1

Mystery Blossom #2 (hint it hasn’t bloomed yet and it it’s really more of a flower than a blossom)

Mystery Blossom #3

Mystery Blossom #4

Mystery Blossom #5

Mystery Blossom #6 (A little tricky because taken from below)

I would love to understand plant biology a little better.

I live on a main road. My section of the road is a little windy but there are no major hills or elevation changes. I can’t imagine the soil composition changes very much from one yard to the next. Yet I appear to have developmentally delayed daffodils.

I’ve noticed this before, and I feel that it’s more apparent now that I run the road.

My daffodils are beautiful green stems reaching out of the ground. Run half a mile either direction down the road, and every yard is a field of yellow. And they have been that way all week.

IMGP8736 by candiacrew

Are my neighbours (and I use that term losely as I think of anyone within a couple miles is my neighbour) secretly fertilizing their daffodils and not telling me? Do I just have terrible soil composition? Are my daffodils simply moking me because I care when they emmerge?

I know I should have patience, because when the daffodils came out to play last year they were spectacular.

IMGP8732 by candiacrew

In the Winter time I feed the wild birds with a generic bird seed mix. I enjoy watching the birds come by to eat but I also feel good that I’m helping them make it through the rough New Hampshire Winters.

And now an unexpected result. I noticed a weed growing in my hydrangea bush (which is right below the bird feeder). The birds and squirrels had missed some seeds and I had Sunflowers growing in my front yard.

So I help out the birds in the winter and in exchange the birds help me by growing pretty flowers in my garden.

I really love Portsmouth New Hampshire. I go there from time to time to bring the pup to the Dog Park and to Pierce Island which has off-leash sections. But Saturday I didn’t bring the pup with me to Portsmouth. So I was able to do some things I wouldn’t normally have a chance to do.

Such as visiting the flower gardens of Prescott Park. Prescott Park is a pretty park between the Strawberry Banke Museum and the River. It has beautiful gardens full of name tags to identify the flowers. If you have more time than I did they also have concerts in the park during the summer.

The flowers are so perfect and so beautiful that you could just walk around taking perfect pictures of flowers and they would turn out to be frameable no matter your technique (at least if using an auto function camera).

Rather than post a hundred pictures of flowers I made a mosaic of a random selection of the flowers.

You can see the Mosaic full sized here.

Full set of Flowers from Saturday is in this Flickr set (It also includes some of the pigeons from the previous post).

So while I’m in Vermont helping out my nutty husband and Ben is home alone probably having a massive party, I figured I would fill the computer screen with pictures of flowers found in my in-laws’ garden during the month of July. I seriously don’t know why most of her stuff is flourishing while my garden is languishing. I think I have to add a lot more manure into the mix so that I have a richer soil or something.

Without further ado:

Lilies – I used to think of these as Tiger Lilies when I was a kid. Probably because they were black and orange?

Petunias still surviving the summer heat.

I really should ask my mother In-Law to write down the names of the flowers she grows, she has a head for that kind of thing. But these flowers were just the most beautiful iridescent purplish blue .

Maybe it’s a sign that I was too much of a tomboy growing up that I don’t know flower names beyond Petunia, Morning Glory, Rose, Carnation, Tulip, Forget-me-nots, and Impatients?

I have lived in states that border the Ocean for over 7 years now. And for many of those years I have visited beaches on a regular basis. From Maine to Cape Cod, I have always associated these flowers with the salt spray, the sound of waves and dogs and people running along the sand. I never knew what they were.

I recently listened to Anita Shreve’s Strange Fits of Passion as an audiobook. At one point, while describing a cottage on a cove in a remote part of Maine, the author mentions the cottage is surrounded only by “wild beach roses”. I decided to look up the plant to see if I had seen the flower before. Sure enough, the pretty pink, red and white flowers I have seen and known on the beaches of my adulthood are Beach Roses.

What surprised me most? They are not native to North America. They originate in Asia.

I’m not sure if these flowers that survive the sometimes brutal climate of the New England seaboard are planted as low maintenance ornamental plants along the coast or if they actually do grow wild now. But they are a beautiful addition to the coastal areas.

Does anyone know what kind of flower this flower bud will become? It’s been a bud for over a week and the flower has yet to bloom. The ants certainly seem to love the flower bud.

Another pleasant surprise in my front garden after the daffodils these the big purple buds showed up.

I was excited because I had been seeing big beautiful irises blooming everywhere in Southern New Hampshire. Mine seemed to bloom several weeks after my neighbours irises. Perhaps I just had a late blooming variety. Or maybe the area in which they were didn’t get enough light.

Domestic irises seem huge and lush. This weekend I found some other irises in Pawtuckaway State Park. Are these wild irises? Are Irises native to New Hampshire?

I ask because the are of Pawtuckaway used to be a populated area, so perhaps many years ago they were planted there. I found them on the shore of Round Pond right off old Round Pond Rd.

Flowers are so short lived.

My mother-in-law has great flowers in her garden. They are a little more north than we are so they still have daffodils:

Their lilacs are just starting to bloom:

I don’t know what these are but they are pretty:

I also don’t know what this is but I adore it:

And my all time favorite, bleeding hearts:

Happy Mother’s day to all mothers of all kinds.

Anyone sick of seeing flowers yet? The amazing weather lately had left me craving even more spring flowers. When I was in Boston last weekend we went for a stroll in the Boston Public Gardens. When I lived in Boston this was one of my favorite parks to run through.

Not only are there interesting statues in the park and swan boats full of tourists, but the flowers are constantly being changed to match what is in season.

If you find yourself in Boston be sure to take a stroll through the Public Gardens. They are free and they are beautiful.