White Diamonds

April is for diamonds. Diamonds are many colors, even white. So this month's project can be anything. I'll do white.
Here's an old picture of a sunrise. Beautiful, I say. I wonder when I got up early enough to see a sunrise? Must have stayed up all night for that one.


I did work on my white garden. It is on the west side in that narrow space between my house and the neighbor's house.


(a very old picture, before nice camera)

I knew it could be a forgotten area so I planned for it to be special. Only white flowers are allowed here.

A white bird feeder was a gift from SAJ. It is perfect for my white garden and is seen full of thistle seed hanging from a branch of my ivy covered Chinese fringe tree.


Several years later it is still hanging but is empty and the tree trunk is even more covered by the ivy.

My poor azalea. She came with us from the Bay Area and is struggling. The soil is just too alkaline for her needs, but she makes a valiant effort and blooms every year anyway. I'll have to try some soil amendments before she succumbs, coffee grounds are not enough.



Onyx thinks she is white. Don't tell her she is not.

The Chinese fringe tree! I read about this tree in the Sunset Garden Book and had to have one. My local nursery was able to procure one for me after searching all their suppliers. I stressed how it had to be a female tree, not male. The first few years I had it I despaired that they had given me a male tree after all as it did not bloom. I was disappointed.

But this year it really surprised me. It is blooming just like the Sunset book said, like a giant lilac. It is so pretty I'm kind of sad it is not in a more prominant place and more visible. It is a perfect tree for a white garden, though. You must click on the pictures to see its true beauty and glimpse the pink balloon and streamer it caught.

Not in my white garden but still in my yard are the Lady Banks roses. They cover the east fence on my slope. There is not enough sun for them in the white garden.

A baby geranium. My grown-up geranium all but died in the freeze we had a year ago so I told him I would get another one to help him fill his space.

Home Depot had geraniums on sale for 50 cents each. This one cost a little more because the ones on sale were on sale because they didn't know what color they would bloom. I needed white. I got the sale ones for the dog yard, I don't care what color blooms there, just so they are hardy and do bloom.


These Chinese chives were a gift from Gramma. They faithfully bloom every year. So delicate.

I thought I had gotten rid of the white potato vine but I guess not. I love the flower but the vine is so tenacious. It sprawls over everything and smothers the weaker plants. It killed my white clematis and denuded a thuja I was using as a divider. It covered my white wooden arch and created a sail which caused the arch to break out of its cement footing in a windstorm. It tried to grow down the slope which is a good thirty feet away from its roots. So I removed it. It came back. I haven't decided what to do with it.

I have not been very good at doing the right color project for each month's birthstone--or even writing about one, at least. Forgive me, Knittery.