Along with almost everything else in the garden this year, our Crape Myrtles have now started blooming about a month early. After the mild winter that we had in Kansas, the die-back on the Crape Myrtles was almost non-existent. Some years the die-back is quite severe and we have to cut the trees/bushes to the ground. We received 1.27″ of rain last night. This as made everyone happy, especially the farmers, as prior to that we had received only .01″ of precipitation this month. With the garden all wet this morning, I tried to get a couple of pictures. These are of are buds and blooms on Crape Myrtle “Royalty” – one of my favorite plantings.