Stop and Smell the Clematis

We have been waiting for months and our Clematis vine has finally bloomed!  Hooray!  We purchased it this past spring and it carried with it a pretty hefty price tag for something that I would probably kill, but the color of the flowers was so beautiful.  So we brought it home and planted it as we were revamping the area around our mailbox.

Then all of the flowers fell off.  For a really long time...

Then a couple of weeks ago we saw this:

Hooray for the clematis!  It survived it's initiation to the land of the red clay.  We have certainly enjoyed seeing it thrive a long last!  As for stopping to smell the Clematis, I really didn't.  Those of you who know me know I would have sneezed and blown all of the flowers away again!  ;)