Portrait of a backyard?

Our first new Frida Kahlo floribunda rose bloom! I bought this for its interesting color:

The first lilies

A few lilies have opened up in a sea of buds:

Cannot wait for all those colorful day-lilies to show their true colors :-)

A nested hypothesis

A juvenile finch (is it a house finch or a purple finch?) just days before it flew away. There are now two such nests atop our front door:

The Monarch of all Weeds

Hoping to see some Monarch butterflies at my Milkweed Row. I don't think there have been many these past few years! Could the interspersed day-lilies be scaring them away?

A Profusion of Peonies

Love these large blooms with their heavy scent and deer tolerance!

Bugged by weeds

I was pulling out weeds from the cracks in my driveway when I stopped after seeing this beautiful sight:

I pulled out my cell phone instead, and snapped a quick picture. Not that the ladybug was in any hurry to leave!

I left the weed alone, to fight another day.

For your irises only

Myriad iris blooms, brilliant but ephemeral:

Flocks of phlox, and other spring miscellania

These are recovering nicely along our stone wall after I shifted them out of the pots they inhabited unhappily for several years:

The alium bulbs I planted last year are alive and well! This is a minor miracle, since the rest of the bulbs I bought at Kmart last year were rotted in the bag and had to be returned:

Bleeding hearts resurrected. One of the small set of reliable shade-loving perennials that can add color without much light and tolerate New England winters:

It's Azalea-time!

I planted these azaleas right below the roof-line, which is perhaps not ideal. The snow sliding off the roof tends to flatten the plants, and they are still quite small. Yet they have bloomed a bit this year. I'll perhaps have to engineer some contraptions to keep the snow away from them for a while: