A winter day's bouquet for you

Gray is not my favorite color.  Nor is brown or tan.

Green is!  But since this is usually not a very green time of year around here, I thought I'd cheer us both up with remembrances of a few months ago, some lovely flowers in my yard.

The first brave posies that pop their heads up, usually in March, are Grape Hyacinths.  In case you've never had a whiff--yes, they smell just like grapes!

Then in early May my favorites bloom in happy profusion all along our fence, lilacs.  Wish I could bottle that smell!  I love to open my kitchen windows and fill the room with it.

In my terrace garden, I have some lovely, old-fashioned Canterbury Bells.  They reseed themselves every year (they're actually biannuals) and I discovered I can get a second blooming from them if I cut the stalk down by two-thirds when they're beginning to fade.  I caught these one morning just as the sun was rising:

And I love the old stand-bys of every gardener, geraniums.  My only regret is that I don't a have a south-exposure window for them to winter in, so I have to replace them every year.

And as summer comes on, my clematis vine goes crazy.  What's nice about this one is that it thrives in a complete-shade environment, which this north side of our patio is.

There you have it.  A walk in the garden in the middle of winter!  Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!  :-)