Hosta Alley Tour - 6/15/2022

Sigrid and I were invited to join the Raintree Lake Garden Club in touring the Hosta Alley gardens in Pleasant Hill, MO on 6/15/2022.  We are not members but are close friends of one of the club members who was hosting the tour that evening.

The gardens are actually a part of the home of Gayle and Phil Alley.  Their house and the gardens sit on 150 acres of old growth timber that forms a canopy to shade the Hosta's from direct sunlight. There are over 1,000 varieties of Hosta's in their garden along with other plants and specialty trees.

Phil purchased the property in 1983 when single.  Gale and Phil married in 1999 and started the expansion of the gardens as well as building a new house, a garage, and a saw mill that was used to cut lumber from their property to be used for the building projects.  It is a truly amazing story which you can read by going to their website at http://www.hostaalley.com/home.html

Here are photos taken on our tour.  The gardens are absolutely magical.  I was particularly fascinated by the sunlight streaming through the trees providing illumination to highlight the textures of the plant leaves

More 2022 Backyard Birds

Here are a few more photos taken in our backyard this spring.  I tried to get some new species to go with interesting photos from our most common birds in the Kansas City area.  We are still waiting for the Hummingbirds to arrive in numbers.  We keep the feeder full of fresh food.

Blue Jays are plentiful but they are so nervous that they don't sit still very long.

Bluebirds are among my favorites.

Black-capped Chickadee

A Nuttall Woodpecker

Female Cardinal

A Mourning Dove stretching its wings.

Red Winged Blackbird

Baltimore Oriole

A snoozing dove

Why did you wake me up?

Turkey Vulture