Oh, my goodness . . . I needed that! Absolutely breathtaking!

I live in northern Indiana, on a large lake, and the ice on the lake just finally melted last week! I'm frustrated because spring is late this year and I have 200+ hostas to dig and prepare to move to our new house . . . before May 1, when we must be out. I've warned them that I may be digging after they move in. I was hoping for early spring, but no way!

Thanks for the tour!

daisy : WAR EAGLE !! Come visit from GA !

AuntJen : me too ! We need to connect on our Southwestern art.

Chi town" one of my fave places to visit . Thank you.

Superchick: Opelika Al. You are welcome anytime. Where are you?

Robyn: you will surpass me soon! PA has gorgeous weather for flowers.

Mammie thank you !

200 hostas !Whoa. I could never do that. I have a dozen and they never stop coming up. I dig and transplant and the Hostas are still here. Please post pics of your new space. c

Beautiful! Those azaleas are stunning. We're a little behind you here so it's great to see this "preview of coming attractions." :)

Here are a few pictures . . . the first two show a few of the hostas that will be moved, the last is the view we'll have in our new place in Tennessee! I'm dreading moving them but have invested too much time and energy in them to leave them behind! Thanks for asking!

Drool! Another chicagoan here who is ready to do some serious greenhouse hopping! My fave greenhouse is The Growing Place in Aurora. It's so cool. They always have something I've never seen anywhere else!

Love those lime green hostas!!

Lovely! Thank you.

Thanks trailrunner, what a great (and timely) slideshow! You're about a month ahead of us, I can hardly wait! Very pretty house. I completely agree with jen about older neighborhoods. There's just so much character and something so soothing about them! ;D

hostagrams: I don't blame you a bit for taking those with you! I am crazy about lime green hostas (I mixed August Moon in with my ferns). What's the large one to the left/rear of the raised bed? (Reminds me of a Guacamole I should have picked up last year, and will look for this year.) Slugs tear mine to bits. I've used the copper wire wrap around the base trick and Sluggo, it's helped some but not like I'd like. :/

Wow....what a way to greet spring. Being in an old area, even rambling, unplanned landscapes create wonders beyond.
Your neighborhood is so similar to mine it reminds me there is hope very soon. Well, about 6 weeks from now in Colorado. Our lawns are still brown and can't even think about planting until the key date of Mother's Day.

Hostagram, your pics are beautiful too. We can plant hostas here, but takes forever to grow. Actually, everything takes longer to grow and become well established.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks so much!! What a pretty neighborhood. Our bluebonnets aren't doing much this year so I needed a flower fix. Loved the hosta pictures, too.
Mary

Trailrunner, everything is just so beautiful, the flowers, homes, neighborhood and lovely blue sky. Thanks for sharing.

Hostagrams, your hostas are amazing, I'm so envious. I have several around my home but the deer around here think I'm planting a salad garden just for them. I enjoy seeing the deer so I just cross my fingers each year and hope that they will leave my hostas alone til late summer.

Very nice pics....GAWD I can't wait till NY sees some green! It snowed 2 days ago here....melted already but dang I have had enough! BRING ON THE SPRING!

Oceanna thank you, please post pics when you start bloomin"!

Hosta emagineer: please post pics of your neighborhood and plants I would love to see.

Mary and mry thank you !

Cindy I bet you will be glad when Spring gets there. Thank you. c

Thanks for the hosta comments . . . I do love 'em!

Moonshadow: that big guy is Blue Mammoth . . . I'm crazy about the blues!

MRY 193: Re deer: Try Liquid Fence. A lot of people have had success with it. I've used it to deter rabbits, but I'll be using it in the new place for deer, I'm sure. They've had the run of this property forever, and now we're taking over.

Trailrunner: I give them a spoon of Osmocote in the spring, then just LOTS of water. I also amend the soil by burying kitchen compost material between them . . . But I think the real secret is watering.

Moonshadow . . . just reread your post and think I gave you the wrong answer. The one not in the raised bed, but to the rear and left is Sum and Substance. That one will get WAY bigger with time!

Thank you for a lovely walk trailrunner! You have a beautiful neighborhood.

Beautiful... and I love your house. Yesterday, here in the Boston area it was 40 degrees and windy as can be! No sign of spring here just yet!

acoreana and sue you guys are very sweet ! 40 !! I have the house wide open. It was quite chilly here on the weekend but is warm and humid now.

Hosta...water is the problem...we are still in Drought 3 stage...oh well...do you have a very LONG hose ??

GORGEOUS GORGEOUS GORGEOUS!!! Thanks for sharing!

What a beautiful neighborhood! I love neighborhoods of that era, where each house is different and has all those charming details. There's still no sign of color here, in southern NY. We don't really get it till May :(

Love your pictures, the flowers, the homes, the neighborhood! Older homes absolutely make my heart melt.

I am another Chicagoan just glad that we have finally have signs of green!

hoosier, eggand dart and anele...we will soon be suffering drought again I am afraid...then you will be having lush blooms and I will have fried flowers.

I will be in NYC though so looking forward to the Botanical Gardens !

Thanks for the names, hostagrams, appreciate it! ;D

ahhhhh spring!!!!
but when will it arrive here in the northeast? seems like never....
thank you for sharing yours

Absolutely beautiful!! Still nothing here in Northern VA. Can't wait for the flowers to bloom. This gives me hope that it will come soon.

kas and klavr...rain and rain and more rain since last PM. We really need it. Of course I drug hoses around yesterday as they had promised rain for over a week...I hope you will post pics of your Spring when it gets there...and thank you for enjoying my walk. Caroline

trailrunner: thanks so much for the jolt of Spring flowers. I forgot AL was so much earlier with the blooms. I was born and raised in Eclectic close to Lake Martin...I've recently reconnected with some relatives there and had hoped to go down for a visit this Spring but that is not going to happen this year, with building a new house. I now live in upstate NY. Enjoy your NYC visit. It's a great place to VISIT...

Wow,Flower, I did homehealth nursing for 15 years. I worked in Eclectic for 3 of those, out of the Tallassee office. My old stomping grounds. I ran the Cotton Run one year and won 3rd over all. I have a great t-shirt that shows the track coaches "home place" on the front. Beautiful drawing and a fave of mine.

Let me know if you come this way and we will get together if you like.

DO you remember the great cafe that was in Eclectic years ago ? They had the best burgers and onion rings...it was right across from the fabric place. Fun to think of that. Caroline

Trailrunner-- at first I thought you were pulling my leg. How could anyone in the country have anything that gorgous this time of year? Doesn't everyone have brown grass and browner dirt like we do here in southeastern Montana??? We power raked the yard yesterday-- what a lovely pile of brown thatch we had in the back of our truck before we unloaded it at the dump. I bet you're all drooling over that sight LOL. Maybe in 6-8 weeks we'll have spring but I will never be able to grow the rhodies that you do :(
Your pics lifted my winter-weary spirits!

I love the enormous wisteria. I too am a big fan of old neighborhoods with the big rambling "piles" of flowers and well-grown trees.

We still have the better part of a foot of crunchy, dirty snow over most of our backyard. We're just starting to see bare ground, okay mud, much less any green. I don't think I've even seen any crocuses in my neighborhood yet! It's been a rather rough winter - don't think we'll have any problem with drought, what with all the snow we had this year! (Almost 10 feet total, which is quite a bit for SE NH.) I'm waiting with bated breath for the lilacs, although that'll be another month-plus. The city I live in is known as the "Lilac City" since wild and cultivated lilacs are EVERYWHERE. I am hoping to put a couple out in front of my house when we finally get around to doing anything with the exterior! I am pretty useless when it comes to plants and flowers (digging around in the dirt is a miserable chore IMO, holds no appeal for me whatsoever, and I'd rather scrub toilets than weed!) but the four lilacs we had planted did reasonably well at my old house with benign neglect. We'll have to have an outdoor spigot installed though. :-(

Trailrunner, how beautiful. Your neighborhood is very charming and looks storybook in character. Let me add congratulations to such a beautiful place and a big Dar Wamn Eagle.

I love Red Lodge Montana!! I have some great pics that my Mom and Dad took when they were there. They used to get up that way about every year in the late 70's and last visit was 1982.

Come on you guys you are going to have a gorgeous Spring...I know you will. But I am glad I don't live near snow anymoe. We got our requisite 1-2" this year...yup inches...johnmari_ I still remember the wonderful lilacs white and purple from my childhood in the country in Ohio. I love them. PLease post pics. Caroline

trailrunner--thanks for the pics. as i was looking at them, i thought, wow, that reminds me soooo much of my old home in mississippi. then i saw that you were in alabama. thanks for the walk down memory lane!

Very nice!!

Trailrunner, I can't believe you've ever heard of Red Lodge!! How cool. I moved to Billings when I was 20 years old and I am, ahem, a little older than that now. But my heart is where I was born and raised.
Spring will start showing in another 4 weeks or so here. I sort of lost my taste for gardening when my 100+ lb. Akita decided 2 years ago that he likes to sit on every shrub and perennial that I lovingly planted. Fences didn't work so now I enjoy other people's flowers :)

Trail,
I would love to post pics. It will take about a month from now to have the blooming. But when it happens, the place is a wonderland.

hellpaso: where in MS. ? My DH and his family were from Meridian. He still has cousins there. I grew up in N.O. Glad you like the pics.

Thank you lyfia

RedLodge. My Dad was in the hay business and supplied the feed to major thoroughbred racehorse owners at the big tracks. He came up there to Montana and WS and Wyoming and CN to get hay and grain deals made. He was President of the NAt'l Hay Assoc. I know some of the kids of his past suppliers are still farming up there...I say kids they are at least my age now !!

emagineer, I am waiting patiently...LOL. Thank you. C.

Those pictures are so beautiful and archetypal; I was thinking that they should be shared with the folks who live in those houses. Maybe your neighborhood could print them up and sell them to each other as a book to raise money for a neighborhood cause? It's a wonderful document of an area at a certain moment in time--looks like something folks would want to give their children so as to remember their serene (at least in these photos :)) hometown.

TRAILRUNNER: DO you remember the great cafe that was in Eclectic years ago ? They had the best burgers and onion rings...it was right across from the fabric place. Fun to think of that. Caroline

RESPONSE/INTERROGATIVE: Was that the one near Strickland Cloth Barn? :)

I must be the only one unable to view the photo's. When I click on Trailrunner's link I get a message saying there is no content in the album.

Patricia :YES ! That was the one. They closed a number of years ago. Sure did love those burgers and onion rings and an icy coke ina little glass bottle...I forgot you are close by here aren't you ?? I am glad you remember too.

fly: you are very sweet to suggest that. I will certainly see if there is any interst. We have the Christmas Porch tour too and there are photos that I post of that each year. Mine are not as good as ones that are pro as I am not good at night shots.

mareda here it is again...I don't know what could be wrong I just rechecked and it works fine. Please try again. Caroline

Here is a link that might be useful: Spring slideshow

Wow Caroline did you make me nostalgic! No one 'round here has rhododendrons / azaleas and I confess to not having thought about it until looking at your dreamy pictures ....

When we lived in the Himalayas there were rhododendron forests, and it almost hurt to look at them they were so beautiful. When we moved to the States (San Francisco) we planted an azalea / hydrangea mini-grove underneath one part of our Japanese maple grove ... and I was in heaven.

Where we live now no Japanese maples, no azaleas, but last autumn my three year-old "gardening assistant" (aka my eldest son) and I did go crazy planting bulbs (tulip, hyacinth, narcissus, crocus, iris ...) which we couldn't do with much (if any) success in SF.

I just loved your pictures!

Trailrunner, thank you - that was SOOOO worth the wait!

All the photo's are beautiful - your flower arrangements, the trees, the church, etc. And I really love your home.

Thanks for sharing these. I'm in the Chicago area like some of the others and I'm anxious for things to start blooming.

Caroline,

Exquisite! Now I am going to come visit you at Christmas and in the spring!

Your neighborhood reminds me of DH's aunt and uncle's in Tyler, Texas. They live in the Azalea District there which is filled with historic homes, dogwoods, azaleas, camellias, roses, etc.

Caroline, Thank you for sharing Spring with us! I loved the pictures and thank you for naming the flowering trees since now I know I love White Dogwood trees. In Northern NJ we usually have the beauty also of flowering trees but nothing has bloomed yet and your pictures reminded me to be patient and soon we will have beauty also. I love your neighborhood and your home's wonderful landscaping.

lynn: I made a mistake on the name of the one tree...it is Yoshinko Cherry not Flowering Crab ! I hope you will post NJ pics.

Texan I would love for you to come. Can you post pics of Tyler...I would love to see.

Mareda I am so glad you were able to access them . I hope you will post pics of Chi land in bloom .

rm: I have never heard of rhodi forests...do you have pics? Please post your bulbs blooming. Where are you? I don't have any planted but I am going to do so for next year. Thank you all for such sweet compliments.c

Just a guess: did you mean Yoshino Cherry? (just for the sake of anyone looking it up)

yep...I am not with it today at all ! Thanks flyleft :)

Thank you for posting those absolutely gorgeous pictures of your town in spring bloom. I live in Upstate, NY here and we have a few crocuses out front in bloom now. Can't wait for our big show to begin in the next month. Loved seeing yours!

trailrunner, there's a phenomenon more or less down in your neck of the woods called a "rhododendron hell" - it's a huge entangled growth of wild rhodies. I have read that they can cover literally acres in forested areas and that when they bloom it's just stunning.

We ripped out the enormous rhodies at our previous house. We had to have a guy come with a truck and a come-along tear them out! He replanted them at his house and when we moved away last fall they were still alive and happy. I hated them because except for about 3 weeks of the year they were pretty ugly, especially in winter when the leaves rolled up into brownish-green cigars. I even preferred the pits of dirt to those rhodies!

Zoe thank you , you are sweet, Please post your show when it happens...I love to see other's gardens and towns.

johnmari: I have run for many years in the forests of the South and have seen beautiful tunnels of rhododendrons and also laurel. It is heavenly to run up the trail in Spring and be in a tunnel of flowers. Everyone loves different flowers and plants. c