Snow During Spring Break, Part II

Yesterday I reported on the state of my yard after the snow started. Today I'm here to show you how the neighborhood held up during the snow. All of this has since melted, but it's still cold. There weren't any flowers except the depressed daffodils and fake flowers (a disturbingly common trend around here), but there were plenty of plants of note.

We'll begin with a couple of pictures of the yard around an interesting house. It's interesting because I uesd to live there. I spent the first year of my life in this house. The current owners are from out west, and they have removed all grass from the yard. Instead they have a gravel lawn chock-full of holly bushes, paths, and statues. Most residents of my hometown find this rather odd. I find it slightly distasteful. I understand not wanting to have much lawn when you could have a garden, but I don't understand stuffing your space with holly and gravel. The whole yard basically looks like this:

At least their sidewalk strip has some deciduous shrubbery and rocks on it. Not pictured: the small holly bushes on this strip.

Next, as I was walking down the street, I saw this. Why does this clump of trees excite me? Because of all the yuccas under it. I recently discovered that the flowers of Yucca glauca were edible. I believe this is the species that's popular around here. I'm not sure why yuccas are so prevalent in the midwest, but they are, and I saw at least forty individuals on my mile-long walk.

When the yuccas are in bloom, I'm going to come home, sneak around town, and gather up all the blooms I can find. Then I'm going to fry them, a la this.

As you might have guessed, I'm not the biggest fan of holly. But I do enjoy other evergreen shrubs. I don't know what kind these are, but they are holding up very well in this weather, and every bit of color helps.

After that I came upon a most unusual tree: a wine tree! It's been a long time since I've seen one of these. This one is very colorful.

My final picture during this outing was outside of an old, ornate house. The house is flanked by two of these trees, each of which is sporting buds. They look delicate.

After that shot, my camera batteries got tired, so I couldn't take any more pictures. But after I got home, I spotted this.

It seems I have six swiss chard plants now! Since these three are all together, I'm probably going to have to transplant them to distribute them more evenly. That should be simple enough to do.

What landscaping or horticultural trends are common in your neck of the woods? What's holding up well around you during winter's last hurrah?

Next post: yucca and wildflowers around the neighborhood.