365/44 Longing for Spring

While outside playing Frisbee with Danan, I noticed my butterfly garden and wished I'd finished working on it before winter hit. I laid newspapers on all my other flower beds and applied new mulch with my husbands assistance. We made the butterfly garden smaller (it's over the property line anyway), but that's as much as we accomplished. Plants and rocks were moved and we weeded it, but I didn't get things trimmed back or the mulch laid. Now it's covered under a layer of snow. The vine you see climbing the tree stump and trellis is a trumpet vine.




Here are some of the beautiful blooms I took photos of last summer. It was just loaded with these beautiful trumpet shaped flowers. These flowers attract hummingbirds and yes I've seen ruby-throated ones near my vines.

Before you get too excited and run out and buy some, a word of caution. These creepers can be invasive. I will once again have to weed them out of the bed, because they multiply like wildfire, especially when you fail to trim them back in the fall. Oh! Well! I took a trip to Maine instead, it was well worth the weeding I will have to do in the spring and summer.

And a bit of trivia for you gardening buffs. This vine is also sometimes called "Cow's Itch", because the leaves have a toxic substance (they belong to the night shade family) which can cause itching and rash. I always pick some and bring them in the house, and they've never caused me any grief, but I'll be more careful now that I know it could.