Unknown prairie flowers

One of the exciting things about growing our native prairie is finding the new plants that come up each year. This year, with a second-year prairie planting in bloom, is no exception. Allow me to introduce...the two newest mystery plants. 

This red-orange flower is on a tall spike with tiny leaves. 

This short purple flower is connected to the awesome 9-loved leaves below. 

Pollinator Paradise

I love our backyard prairie. 

More signs of spring

Photos courtesy of Novak. 

Gumdrops!

Novak loves Gumdrops! Gumdrops is a Friday play group we have been attending this spring. It's an hour of play, stories, songs, a craft, and a snack. He loves it all - but what he remembers afterward are the songs.

Today at Gumdrops we got to make flower pots!

Prairie Progress

This is year 3 of our prairie creation project. It's supposed to be a minimum of a 5 year process, but finally we are starting to see progress. Last night I went out to the prairie to see lots of new variety!

Bluebird eggs in our bluebird house

Gray headed coneflower

Evening primrose

Blue false indigo

Black eyed Susan

Rough Blazing Star

Aster

Wild black raspberries!

Foxglove

Landscaping

I spent the day today planting (about 4 or so hours of work!). These are two of the beds - we've now got something other than just brown mulch in them! Thanks to friends and family, we didn't have to purchase any of this - these are all things we were able to dig up from other people's gardens.

This area is a mix of grasses, prairie wildflowers (like coneflowers and black-eyed susans) and a few other blooming plants.

This bed is almost all daylilies, most of them we kept from our old house and stored them in Mom and Dad's garden over the last year. A few are new.

Tucked in the corner of the bed above is another grass.

What I didn't take pictures of are the beds that run the entire length of the house on the north side (all shady and still very much a work in progress) and the rear of the house (completely empty).

I love spring so much!

Gardening helper

Nate helped me plant some prairie wildflowers for a butterfly garden. We planted 15 different types of prairie wildflowers, thanks to Dad for driving all the way to Missouri to get them!

I especially love the top picture - he was pretty proud of the work he did!

(Nile, by the way, was hiding on the porch because he was freaked out by the bugs...)