Flowering shrubs and retaining wall

With most of the garden planted, we spent much of this week admiring the flowing shrubs. The alpine currant hedge we have on the south side of the yard has such understated blooms that you can miss them if you don't look carefully.

That is less of a problem with the Saskatoon bushes which have a nice early showing before getting down to work making berries.

About the only thing to come up in the yard this week was the early planting of beets. Good old reliable beets!

We walked around the neighbourhood a lot this week and the edge of the valley has lots in bloom. I can't recall what this bush produces. I'd guess soap berries.

 The crab apple trees are also in full bloom (regular apples seem a touch behind).

The cherries are almost done as are whatever these pretty blossoms are.

The MayDay trees are really going great guns (albeit several week later than last year!). The grape-y smell is lovely.

We've also seem the raspberry bushes fill out.

About 15 year ago I built a small retaining wall in the back yard to hep level the ground out. It needed replacement and was on my list of things to do this fall. Unfortunately, the east-west part of the wall that keeps the potato bed off the path gave out on Wednesday.

So I pulled the old wood out and replaced it. I've left the near end uneven so I can interlace the north-south part of the wall when I get around to replacing it this fall. I have a bit more clean up to do on this today and then some weeding.

I noticed the red elder berry on my evening walk is also about to bloom. I've made a yucky jelly from the berries before but I hear you can make a delicious syrup from the blossoms. I'll see how ambitious I get in the next week.