Lots of new blooms and Nancy has been busy with the camera.

Magic Carpet spirea is new in the past five or six years and is a staple in the landscape, going where people used to use pygmy red barberry.

While it is in bloom, the leaves are chartreuse and the contrast of the purple blossoms and the yellow-green leaves is striking.

Early in the year the leaves are bicolor, with chartreuse and auburn. It is just a good, quick-changing plant.

A plant that has bloomed for us for the first time this year is Rodgersia.

We put this in two or three summers ago, and it had been just good big foliage. It is a shade tolerant plant , and the bloom lasts a long time.

Lady's mantle is a great plant. Here we show it toward the back with some white perennial geranium or cranesbill in the front.

We noticed this year that about half of our lady's mantle, or alchemilla, is upright and about half flops onto the ground. Does anyone know if they are different varieties?

The daylilies started coming a couple of weeks ago. This is a rebloomer, probably Stella d'Oro, along with some campanula at the entrance of our house.

I hope the color on this next photo shows up well. But this Nikko blue hydrangea has blossoms coming in both pink and blue on this one plant.

That's it for the plants now.

Check this Sunday's paper and I give a tutorial about how to prune some of your spring bloomers. And there is another picture from Nancy of me searching for the right lilac stem to cut.

I'll give a report after the weekend about how the vegetable picking went. We have already purchased wild, never-frozen, flown-in Alaskan sockeye salmon and I am looking forward to it with our peas and Cape Elizabeth strawberries.

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