Gardening Gifts From the New House

This week, we stopped-by the new house to check-up on it.  We haven't been there in a few weeks and while we were gone, nature dropped by and left her mark.  Things are starting to grow and bloom and we're beginning to find out what surprises the previous owners left for us.

Surprise #1 was a flowering dogwood in the front yard (at least that's what the neighbor said it was...I haven't looked it up).

I've been talking about having some sort of flowering tree since we signed the agreement on the house.  It never occurred to me that there might already be one there.  While I'm not the biggest fan of pink, I do love the shape of the flowers.  They're perfect...big and bold, like a tree full of tulips or roses.

What a gorgeous way to greet guests as they pull into the yard.

We also have not one, but THREE red maples.  I don't have any decent photos of them but two of them look like traditional maples with three-pointed leaves.  The second has a multi-point leaf.  I believe it's a Japanese maple.

One of the biggest surprises was tucked into a corner.  We found a rather hidden and unkempt bush of Bleeding Hearts.

If it's possible to move these to a more prominent position without killing the bush, you can be sure that'll be one of my goals for this season.  It always amazes me when Nature creates a plant that perfectly mimic's something else entirely.  The small heart-shaped flowers that come out of this plant almost look man-made.

If this is what spring brought us, I can't wait to see what comes out in the summer and fall.