Time for a creative eye look was not forthcoming this morning. I woke up a little late and had to keep things low key. Thankfully, I took plenty of photos yesterday to get a blog post up this morning.

First of all, my spinning. I am working on the singles for a 3 ply. I have 6 ounces of this fiber, and I am spinning it as thin as the last progress. So, I am pretty certain I’ll have a nice sock weight yarn when I am done.

This is not a typical color combo for me, but I really like it. It’s so dark! I am about halfway through the third bobbin at this point.

After I grabbed these photos I decided to do a little walk around the yard and take photos. As you can see above, it was raining. But only a little rain. It was predicted that it would rain all last evening and all of today as well. That didn’t happen. But, I’d taken photos in anticipation that taking photos wouldn’t be possible today. (Who knows what kind of rain we’ll get this afternoon, hard to say.)

Anyhow, let’s take a look at what is blooming in my garden!

My two variations of columbine are blooming and looking lovely. I really want to put more in at some point, but I should really take a look at my seed stash to see if I have seeds. It’s so easy to grow from seed here, so I don’t want to buy a fully fledged plant if I don’t have to.

You’ll see a burgundy iris in the orange columbine photo. Here’s another gorgeous iris!

I think I picked up this one last year to go with my regular purple irises, but those are not blooming yet. I am still searching for the perfect yellow iris for this particular iris bed.

Mr. Ink’s allium is on the left and a gift from Mr. Ink on the right. I thought the right-hand flower was just so pretty and dramatic when I saw it at my favorite farmer’s market. Mr. Ink didn’t like the price so I didn’t purchase it. He apparently found it elsewhere for a price he preferred and brought it home for me. (I believe this is a Centaurea called amethyst in snow.)

Now for some ground cover:

On the left we have 4-year-old sweet woodruff in the front and two varieties of lamium in the back. This garden bed, when we moved in, was completely blank. When I dug down, I realized the bed was actually a thin layer of topsoil over the landsccaping fabric. When I dug through the landscaping fabric, it was just gravel and sand. So, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to plant much that wasn’t fairly hardy there. It’s on the very north side of the house, it’s always shady and wet, and the soil is crap. So, it’s amazing to me that 4 years later we’ve got ground cover that looks so lovely! I also have 3 varieties of astilbe in there that are doing just fine, though I did amend the soil around them so that they could grow appropriately.

On the right, that’s thyme as a ground cover and something else purple I can’t remember what. These are things which grew from seed that Mr. Ink planted just last year. All last year there was just the hint that the thyme would take, but this year it’s ALL over. Looking amazing.

And then there’s the garden anticipation. We should see flowering of the first of my peonies this week. My lovely clematis I planted JUST last year which stayed very small last year is now waist high and ready to bloom, I can’t believe it! We might be dealing with gloomy cool days and plenty of (needed) rain, but it is clear that around here, spring really has sprung.