What plant or plants make you smile?

What plant or plants make you smile?

I smile when I see my mealy blue sage.

I smile because it is a native plant growing among the tall grasses that have invaded my property.

Johnny Jump-Ups. They are our first flowers in spring, and they are such tough and cheerful little dudes, popping up in places where nothing else wants to grow.

Similarly, for me it always seems to be the unexpected native volunteers that just show up: the jack-in-the-pulpit, jewelweed with its orange flowers, the unexpected sassafras sapling grove, some sneezeweed that just popped up in the pasture, the little group of 7 pawpaw saplings that I just discovered peeking up out of that annoying patch of Japanese stiltgrass.

Mine's my old Bramley apple. It looks half-dead for about six months of the year and then suddenly it's covered in blossom and I can't help it.

I love my blue poppies when I get them to flower. I pretend I'm growing them for the seed, but I just love the colour!

blue poppies!

When my raspberries are in season (just now) I pick them as I'm going past.

Plants that I'd forgotten about that I suddenly find again! I've got a mallow surviving nicely in one area that is mainly dock, nettles, sea cabbage and blackcurrant bushes. I'm sure it wasn't there last year! and also down in my polycultures area a day lily I'd given up and thought had gone decided to flower!

Love me some toadflax.

Nancy Reading wrote:I love my blue poppies when I get them to flower. I pretend I'm growing them for the seed, but I just love the colour!

Say, those are gorgeous. Where'd you acquire the seed?

These came from the Hardy Plant Society (HPS) seed exchange - blue poppies are native to the Himalayas and like cool, humid conditions and acidic soil. Finally something that likes to grow on Skye! They are Meconopsis poppies, I forget which variety. I'm hoping the ones that flowered this year have set seed, as sometimes they do die after flowering, although they ought to be perennial. I'm not a member of the HPS at the moment, so would have to look elsewhere myself for replacements.

Chance Lunceford wrote:Love me some toadflax.

Toadflax and snapdragons have such funny little flowers! Pansies too have lovely faces.

All my fruit trees, they make me feel happy.
The plums in bloom are spectacular.

-Any flowers that are full of pollinators buzzing around (even radishes in bloom, so popular)!
-Big tall huge sunflowers. So cheerful.
-First flowers/plants to emerge in the spring. That first snowdrop, daffodil, early bloomers like forsythia.
-Things that I thought were dead, but are coming back.

My entire messy garden makes me smile. Right now my comfrey and marshmallow have towered over all other plants and it is time to start trimming the garden back into submission. I have grape vines that have climbed 8 ft to the top of the arbor. I just plucked a kohlrabi out of the garden and fried it up in olive oil. The potato plants are doing great despite many deer attempts. I have occasional trees in the garden, and this year we have a dozen apples headed into the final month or two before harvest. The trees are 3-4 years old. Lots of yellow native flowers of varying heights and brilliant orange butterfly weed are a highlight here. Each day I pluck a leave from a comfrey plant and feed it to one chicken who runs to the fence to get her treat.

Acacia pycnantha - aka "golden wattle"  -  prolific small yellow flowers in clusters - the sign that Spring can't be that far away.  Although it seems to be flowering much earlier in recent years.