Garden Review

I will need to cut down all the branches of the hydrangeas since that late frost zapped the buds. This means no beautiful blue hydrangea pompom flowers this year. I noticed that the crepe myrtle trees are making a comeback. Their spring flush of new leaves got zapped, but they are all now putting out a second flush and so hopefully we will still get some flowers this summer but I would guess it will just be a little later than normal.
On the other hand, some plants are doing just great. The white clematis is blooming its head off right now, clearly the flower buds were not bothered by the late freeze. My shrubs and purple verbena by the mailbox are doing just fine. I spread out some new mulch around the plants up there and now need to get some more to finish it all off. I still have a lot of planting to do in that front yard area. I'm figuring on planting some trees and more shrubs since they take up a lot of space and are very low maintenance (apart from watering that is).
The pink dianthus 'microchip' is blooming very pretty right now. It is a rather ratty looking plant for me all year except for the few weeks that it blooms. So I am on the verge of yanking it all out but when I see it bloom like this I think, well maybe one more year. I also noticed that I've got 2 holly volunteer plants coming up so I might transplant those and wait 10 years for the free shrubs. That seems like a long time but I've already been in this yard for 9 years now and the time seems to fly by.
Andrew made it home safe late Friday night from San Jose. Yesterday we went to the Keowee Sailing Club to see our new slip spot. The first picture is the view out to the lake from our slip, and the second picture is of our slip, so you can see how we will be backing out and then turning to the right to make our way out into the lake. Then we went to Big Water Marina to arrange transport of the sailboat. We took down the mainsail and the boom, removed the anchor and solar panel to get the boat prepped. We are scheduled for moving the weekend of the 19th so if all goes well the next time we sail it will be in a new lake for us. While we were working on the boat, a family of Canada geese came by. The adults were opening their mouths like they were begging for food so I guess lots of people must be feeding them. The 5 baby chicks were so cute with their little peeping noises. I didn't realize the babies were so yellow in color - I guess that helps them blend in. A pair of ducks came over to see us too. Today it is a very windy day. We had excellent rains yesterday and so after grocery shopping today I'll be going outside to weed in the damp ground. It is cooler today, around 72 degrees, but they are predicting by Thursday we will back to 87 degrees. Hot tamales!!