This is a banner year for roses, I can tell. One of my top fave roses is Double Delight with its strong, sweet and spicy fragrance. This elegant rose bud in the late-day light poses with some Proud Land red roses blooming their heads off behind.

Double Delight rose bud begins to open

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Oh, the peonies. I picked a huge bunch of them, just for me.

Pink peony opening in a bouquet

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My next door neighbor has a Chinese dogwood tree planted on our common property line, and we are lucky to enjoy the blossoms every spring. This tree is getting pretty big already and I’ve read that they can get to 30 feet tall. Whew.

White Chinese dogwood tree blossoms in close up, about 3″ or 10 cm. across

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A young friend is graduating high school and I am so happy with how my roses are coming along that I went and cut these for her as a gift. There are lots and lots more out there for more bouquets very soon. Cut your roses and enjoy them!

Many colors in a rose bouquet, with a Double Delight in the middle; yellow with magenta edges

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Finally, those fat peony buds are opening. We’ve had two warm days and the peonies and the roses have leapt into bloom. We are happy.

A pink peony blooms in my Seattle garden

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This photo was taken exactly one year ago at the Volunteer Park Conservatory in Seattle. Orchid cactus plants have the showiest blooms, many times a few inches across, but for some reason red flowers are the very hardest for my Canon camera’s sensor to capture accurately, and I wish the petals looked more like the actual plant did instead of like a finger painting. But the white center parts make this flower photo pretty special anyway.

Red orchid cactus, or epicactus, blooms at the Volunteer Park Conservatory in Seattle, WA

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Bulbs are great. When you find some that are happy where you put them, their return each year is such a gift. These white Dutch irises are such a pretty sight in my May garden.

Simple yellow and white Dutch iris with moisture from a recent shower on its petals

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This year my garden is looking good. We didn’t have any hard frosts or unusual amount of rain and the plants are relieved. Purple and red is a fine color combination, in my opinion. The red is geum, a perennial, and the mauvy-purple ball is a kind of allium, a bulb. In the back are white Dutch irises, and in the upper right, the peas are climbing.

Red geum flowers plus purple allium light up this flowerbed in Seattle

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Rhododendrons, or rhodies as we call them affectionately, bloom extremely well here in the Pacific Northwest. They reach their peak about now. If you live in the Seattle area, you can probably see ones as tall as houses, here and there. This old one is blooming right in front of my house. Lucky me!

Many shades of pink in this rhododendron blooming in the spring sunshine

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This exquisite yellow and magenta pink phalaenopsis orchid was blooming in the Volunteer Park Conservatory in Seattle last time I was there. I love the warm colors and the exciting dots in the center. Come here, little pollinating insect!

Yellow and magenta moth orchid at the Volunteer Park Conservatory in Seattle

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