Week 16 and 17- Late.. .but here it goes.

For these weeks I decided to work a bit in the garden - pulling lots of weeds and getting an idea of what I need to replace and what I can leave longer hoping it makes it.  Last year we planted a lot of new plants so I am still hopeful that most of them will make it... but so far one hydrangea seems not to :(  Combining gardening I decided to take a few pictures of how my garden is looking so far  - so that gives me 2 of my hobbies - flowers and photography and after having a very 2-3 busy weeks I managed to download the pictures...

This is the tree in front of our house :) It gives this beautiful purple flowers around May then the leaves turn green :)

We have a couple "renting" in our property.  Here is the girl!

This is a new guest moving in the house.. Can you see what it has in his mouth?

This picture looks magical!  Sun and flash... Can you see my purple irises coming up? (Well, no flowers yet)

This is a lilac that I planted last year.  I did not expect flowers, but it is doing better than I thought.

This bush was here when we bought the house, but it has grown quite a bit in the last 3 years... the birds love it, and this year it gave us a lot more flowers than normal. 

Our burning bush help us to protect the birds when they are eating from the bird feeders and in September - October it turns into a super nice red...

This side has a lot of new plants.. the "mini tree" in the corner is a Tiger's eye (planted 2 years ago) and the strawberry bush next to it in the right was planted last year.  Plus, my water bath is new since our previous one broke.  We are still trying to find the perfect bench...

Mike's favorite evergreen tree is a lollipop bush and when we bought it looked down in its luck - the poor thing.  They were practically given it away for 35 dls from the 135 or so regular price.  We figure we did not have much to lose and took a chance.  Well, it has thrive and looks so lovely.  It is one of my favorites now :)

One of my two Japanese maples.  This one was planted last year and it is bigger now than the one I planted 2 years ago! 

Lots of rhododendron and azaleas were planted last year.  So far, 1-2 seemed dead but the other eight are doing great!  I am still giving them a chance for the other 2... Once I thought one of my clematis had died, left it one more year and the next year came back more beautiful than ever... goes to show you :)

And here ends some shots of our backyard !