daffodils
Terri Webster Schrandt

Sunday Stills: What’s Growing in Your #Garden?

April’s National Garden Month may be over shortly, but the flowers and plants linger on, depending on where you live.

You do not have to have your own garden to participate in this week’s Sunday Stills challenge. We didn’t have a garden for the first two years we lived here. But these grow wild in our backyard.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot Sunflower
Arrowleaf Balsamroot Sunflower

Wildflowers Around the Neighborhood

I also took plenty of walks along the neighborhood trails and discovered many wildflowers that bloom from March to November.

Purple Grass Widows adorn forest floor
Grass Widows
yellow cone flowers
June’s Coneflowers AKA Gaillardia Aristata

Captured on my latest walk near the Centennial Trail. Arrowleaf Balsamroot Sunflowers cover the forest floor.

arrowroot sunflowers invade the forest

Arrowleaf balsamroot, a plant of the Asteraceae (sunflower family) is fairly common in cold, dry areas of the West from Colorado, west to the Sierra Nevada, and into Canada. SOURCE

arrowleaf balsamroot sunflower

“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.” —Eckhart Tolle

Who needs a garden if you are surrounded by nature?

If You Like Gardens…My Garden in April

Spring comes slowly to us in North Eastern Washington. But when it does, carefully planted bulbs planted in the fall give us this beautiful show in April!

tulips in the garden
orange and yellow daffodil
Pink Tulips

Both my husband and I have worked consistently over the last five years to turn this blank, empty property into a home with 27 trees and garden beds full of flowers and vegetables.

We even have a mini orchard with 8 fruit trees!

pink tree blooms
pink pear tree blossoms
Pear Tree Blossoms in the orchard
purple pansies

Sometimes random flowers volunteer next to the garden, like these pansies. I suppose they don’t like to be fenced in. 😉

Sharing for Dawn’s Spring Festival, Johnbo’s Cellpic Sunday, and Pepper’s One Step #6 challenges.

pink flower border

Sunday Stills Photo Challenge Reminders

The Sunday Stills weekly-themed photo challenge is easy to join. You have all week to share and link your post. Please use your own original images, whether new or from your archives.

  • Remember to title your blog post a little differently from mine.
  • Entries for this theme can be posted all week.
  • Tag your post “Sunday Stills.”
  • Don’t forget to create a pingback to this post so that other participants can read your post.
  • I also recommend adding your post’s URL to the comments.

Here is a look at May’s Sunday Stills’ themes.

  • May 3 NO CHALLENGE (Blog maintenance)
  • May 10 Monthly Color Challenge Pink and Pastels
  • May 17 Family and Friends (May 18 is National Visit Your Relatives Day)
  • May 24 Water
  • May 31 Bicycles and Biking (May is National Bike Month)

If you are participating in the photo challenge, I look forward to seeing how you interpret this week’s theme! Creativity is encouraged, so please share your own photographs (old or new), poems, original short stories, and music inspired by the theme. Join me again on May 10th for the Monthly Color Challenge as we explore the shades of pink and pastel colors.

If you haven’t discovered my weekly Flower Hour feature, which is published on Tuesdays, please join me!

Please note that I plan to take a very short break from May 2-4 while I switch my blog from a classic theme to a block theme.

See Deb’s World and Hugh’s Views and News for how they each switched seamlessly.

Spring in the Backyard

“Watching something grow is good for morale. It helps us believe in life.” — Myron Kaufmann

Have a great week!

cartoon graphic

© 2026 Copyright — Terri Webster Schrandt and secondwindleisure.com — All Rights Reserved

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40 comments

  7. My garden is totally white. I LOL when you said spring is slow where you live. The Engineer had to get the tractor out to blow out the driveway yesterday! Still in the freezing range night and day! Maybe Tuesday spring will arrive????

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  8. This is a beautifully grounded and nature-rich reflection—it feels like a gentle walk through the changing rhythms of the outdoors.

    What stands out is the way you bring attention to wild, often overlooked beauty. From Arrowleaf Balsamroot carpeting the forest floor, to the delicate presence of Grass Widow and vibrant Gaillardia aristata, each detail adds texture and color to the landscape you’re sharing.

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    • Thank you, Colleen! When the 10 acre property was developed by the land owner, all the pine trees were cut down. There are still countless acres of trees here. We’ve enjoyed planting everything. Doing so has brought the birds back too!

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  19. What a gorgeous selection of florals, Terri. I particularly love the pear tree blossom…absolutely stunning! I’m going to look out for that next time I visit the garden centre. Have a lovely week ahead!

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