Exceedingly boring ...

In my last post, I mentioned the blooming trees in our sub-division.

I think the main ones coming into the neighborhood are Dogwood trees. Although the images I find online don't really match what I'm seeing out of our windows. These are much fuller, rounder, than the images I'm finding. I still think they're Dogwood, but I should probably ask someone who'd know.

Edit: Patrick is right. They're bradford pears, not Dogwoods.

The smaller trees and plants in our own yard are coming to life, too.

Our side yard has 4 trees planted several feet apart from each other -

There is a small tree that's bloomed some pretty, white flowers. No idea what it is.

There's another small tree near that one that's blooming bright, yellow leaves. Again, no idea what it is.

Down a few feet is a small magnolia. No flowers yet, but the color of them when they bloom should give me a clue as to which version it is. Magnolias have leaves year round and the leaves usually look the same from type to type, so those aren't any help at all.

There's another small tree, a bit larger and more mature than the others, a down from the magnolia and it's starting to bud ... I think. I haven't gone to take a closer look, but it looks like there's some nubs on the branches.

Our back yard has 2 large trees that are standing there and doing a bunch of nothing. One is definitely full grown and the other ... no clue. Not much action happening with either of them.

There's a small japanese red maple near the back corner in full view of our deck. If it can survive Hoss removing branches, I think it'll be really pretty when it blooms. It's still small, though, so it won't be as big as in the pictures on that link.

Then we have the leaning tower of a pussy willow that's right off our deck. From what I can find (and I was able to discover what it was thanks to google), it's a grafted tree. I don't know what that means, but our tree has a much thicker trunk and thicker branches than the pictures I can find. It's a very full tree and about 4 - 5 ft tall. But I do know it's male as right now the fuzzy white things have grown yellow pollen stems.

This tree grew funny from the roots, so the trunk is at an angle and a couple of really windy storms have all but toppled it. It needs to be replanted before it dies. Although I do think some branches have already made their exits as there are absolutely no blooms on them. Either that or the dogs conspired to eat the fuzzy white blooms so those branches just look dead. I'll have to take a closer look at it. When it's standing upright again, that is.

Like I said, the 2 large shade trees in the back have yet to bud anything. I thought they were, but closer inspection proved me wrong. I consider them lazy compared to the rest of the foilage.

Along the back of the house, there's a few plants that I recognize but I don't really know what they are. I recognize them, though, because I know I've seen gobs of them in the garden sections of various stores. Those never really went away, though. Their leaves and flowers held on through the winter. Now they're just larger versions.

There are a couple of plants that I don't recognize. When we moved in, there were long stems with some dead, flowery things at the top. Marc said something about thornless cactus or something. I don't know. All I know is he said I have to pull the dead stems if I want more to grow. Which I did. And discovered a thick plant with waxy, dark green leaves growing. Those have gotten a bit larger in the last couple of weeks, but no new stem growth. I think I'm going to just wait and see what happens with those two. As long as they don't grow enough to try and take over other areas, they can stay.

Around front are some tuplips. Marc said something about them being not your normal tulips and called them something (are you guys getting the hint that gardening just isn't my thing?). And they don't look like average tuplips with the typical scoop tops. They're this pretty yellow and red color and have bloomed wide open with sharper leaves. If that makes sense.

There are some other flowers out front that I, once again, have no idea about. But they're blooming, too.

So most of my yard has the idea that spring is pretty much at hand. I wish they'd tell the shade trees, though. Hoss's dog house is positioned in the yard where it'll get sun during the cold, but that also means it gets sun when it's warm. And while it's insulated and never fully exposed, I imagine the front can get pretty warm to something covered in fur. The largest shade tree would help with that quite a bit.

And that's it. Exceedingly boring as promised, but not bad for a Sunday morning.