Late Spring in Harrogate

We had a fairly long winter this year which led to a late and drawn out spring season full of all sorts of exciting blooms around our house. The lady who used to live here really put a lot of love into every part of our yard because the season was full of continuous surprises. 

It started with lots of tree blooms, daffodils (fairly common around here), and tulips. Didn't get pics of the daffs but I did get one of these two lone dark red tulips in the back. I've never seen tulips this color. they were such a deep rich red:

Then came the azaleas, lilly of the valley, and irises (TN state flower) a week or two later. I wish I got a good pic of the white blooms of the lilly of the valley, they are the green plant on the right in the pic:

My good friend walked around my yard one evening and identified most of our plants before any even bloomed and I was so excited when she told me I had lots of peony plants. I was so anxious for them to bloom and when they finally did, they did not disappoint! This was probably my favorite part of our yard. So gorgeous:

The right pic is from my phone, what the plants looked like after most of them finally bloomed:

 Then came the rose bushes. Just a few in the back and they were beautiful:

And finally just the other day I noticed a couple more amazing surprises.. Some little orchids popped up in the same bush where the peonies were, at least I think they are orchids of some sort. And some orange lilies also bloomed on the side of our house:

I feel so lucky to have such beauty around us without even putting any work into it. We do have a small garden area next to our house that we planted marigold's and a few other flowers. (as well as some zucchini plants). They are just starting to bloom so I will have to do a post on that later..  I am amazed at the type of flowers that people are able to grow here.. There are even a couple hydrangea bushes in our neighborhood that I just love driving past. 

And just because she's cute, had to include a couple pics of Ivy. She would explore the yard with me whenever I went out to take pics. The big tree stump is one of her favorite spots to play: