I like Thankful Thursday

I like watching the garden grow.

A few years ago, the Thoughtful Man came home with bush after bush, tree after tree mostly from plants at various grocery stores! Now our garden has a wide variety of things, but as, for some reason, he doesn't keep the labels...well, we don't know what a lot of them are!
Still they are all interesting! Lots of different flowers and lots of different leaf shapes.
Not sure what this is, but we have a row of them...or what is left of a row after last summer when a black dog removed about half of them in order to make a place to lay in the shade.

And then while I was trying to position this pink one, I broke it off...😕 We have mostly white and some pink.

An Acer

A blueberry bush in bud


The Bleeding Heart bush beginning to grow for this year.

detail

The heather is doing brilliantly this year


The Star Magnolia tree with flower buds

a closer look at the flowers. If you compare the bush behind it with the first photo in this post, you can see how the acer looks with leaf bud and up above in full leaf.

Now the flowers of the magnolia have blown away and it is also full leaf. Interestingly, the leaves have a similar shape to the petals of the flowers.

Just a couple weeks can make quite a difference.

This is a forest pansy. I looked it up and sometimes it is called Chinese Red Bud.

a week or so later - With and without flash. and now the flowers are gone and it is in full leaf.

I can't remember what this bush is called, but these photos were taken about 2 weeks apart.

The new leaves are a bright red, then they begin to change until they are green like the rest of the bush.

Eucalyptus tree
At the ends of the little branches, it has little buds that make you think they will be flowers...

But instead, they grow into more leaves!

The new grown leaves are slightly pink.

And to finish, a black tulip.

Up close  you can see it is very deep purple, but from a distance it looks black.
My Mom read a book one time about a search for a black tulip. She told me some of the story. So, when these tulips came up from one of the Thoughtful Man's bulb planting moments, it gave me quite a thrill that we have some! I shall have to look for the book, I think.
Edit: Wow! I just looked up the Black Tulip and found it is by Alexander Dumas! So, I am definitely going to look for it to read.

So, anyway, that is enough for today. This week, with the back door open to the glorious weather, I have enjoyed the smell of the lilacs by the shed wafting through. Ours is lilac colour (of course) but Next Door have a white one, so I can enjoy both when I open my curtains in the morning. Usually it comes before ours and then finishes before ours. But with the weird weather this spring, they have both come around the same time.

If you want to see what some of the other likes are, check them out at LeeAnna's blog.