Rudbeckia weeds loved by chickens, garden in April and hostas

Our Cherokee Rose bush will have white flowers in a few days.  This is what our goat was trying to eat behind the fence the other day.  When it blooms the flowers will be so fragrant.

  

Our little red chickens have been loving the 'rudbeckia' weed flowers I have been feeding them.  They are giving us four to six eggs per day, little brown ones and once in a while a bigger one.

 

 This is what they are eating.  I have called it 'white aster' in the past, but the Tennessee weed gallery I found a few weeks ago called it a relative of the black-eyed susan, or rudbeckia plant.

and this is what they look like from a bit back.. they are behind the area I tilled outside, so they are going to stay there and be good chicken fodder when I need a handful of something they can eat.

What the garden looks after my work yesterday

The 'Blue Angel' hosta

we have several of these coming up

The Frances Williams hosta, it will get a lot bigger!  

And Esme's lambs ear plant behind it.

The Blue Angel always 'gets up early' in the Spring.  The Frances Williams starts to come in behind it, about now, and the Aureomarginata won't wake up until the first week of June or so... and I am not sure why but it just is always a late riser.

Esme's dianthus plant from the Amish greenhouse, still strong!

My mom used to call the perennial version of this (biennial, I've actually learned) 'sweet william'.  That was in Minnesota.  We grew them around the side of the house in town, with lilies of the valley, blue grape hyacinth and tiger lilies.  She had bluebells on the other side of the house, and red Appledoorn tulips.  I was always so fascinated by gardens, even back then.

So this is actually a biennial - and then it reseeds itself every year from the first plant, and becomes 'almost a perennial'.  It is a fascinating little plant.  The edges can be fringed, like this one, or smooth - depending on the variety.  It can come in a wide array of pinks, reds, whites and purple combinations.

Shade Garden

 The shade garden is pretty full, now.
The two extra Frances Miller Hosta (clearance stuff) that we ordered with the daylilies (not planted yet) have been put on either side of the one that I planted four years ago.(or so).  Esme chose a new plant, Lamb's Ears, which I planted in the center back.  I found a columbine (Aquilegia) for a dollar on the clearance rack and I put it just below the white pipe.  The pipe is to mark the tiger lily bulbs I bought at the rain sale and as you see below, one of them is starting to come up, so that is amazing!

rain sale : There were carts and carts of bulbs that had been outside in a rain storm at the WM the other week and I bought two bags at two fifty each one of tiger lilies, the other of gladiolus.

 The tiger lily bulbs and the columbine plant

OK, and here is the real splurge.
I bought this and paid over twenty dollars for it.
It is a viburnum plant, also known as a Chinese Snowball.  And I have a mathematical love for this plant.  Years ago (I'll have to find the art) I stopped through on my way between classes at North Dakota State University NDSU and drew one of these as it emerged from winter dormancy all the way to flowering.  It was beautiful, seeing the way it unfolded day after day.  And I then made a printmaker's book called 'Are you a Viburnum?', because day after day I wrote a sentence or two asking what it was, noting things about it.. and finally, I found it in a plant book and knew the name.

I am excited to have one of our own!  I kind of made the puppy eyes at Mark to find one.. buy one, order one.. and then our local Lowe's store had one and he said 'go ahead'... I normally wouldn't pay that much for it.. but now we have a viburnum.  I hope it does well.  We have plans to make a new bed around our power pole and put elephant ears and this plant in it as the inaugural bits.  But, that won't be for a week or so.  So, I hope it does okay sitting next to our shade garden and getting watered until then.