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Water Feature

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , on October 27, 2025| 1 Comment »

Welp, the rains are here for the duration. I’ll still get in some gardening on the few days of sunshine and dry that intersperse the gray, depressing, and very, very, wet days. The rain isn’t what is depressing: the cloud cover and long, gray, days is. I tried those blue anti-depression lights, once. Blah. I’d rather coerce my husband into building a fire in the fire pit and bundle up in layers on those days that are dry (the clouds can still be there, but a fire, the outdoors, and wood smoke alleviate depression better than a lamp that pretends to be the sun).

Microsoft Word doesn’t like that I refer to our winter weather as “the rains” (plural) but it is an accurate description: it isn’t one single rain but many such storms and sprinkles that come overhead throughout October to June. Rains. Multiple rain storms. With lots of thick, gray, clouds. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a snow storm tossed in there. If we’re unlucky, it will be an ice storm that comes down in the guise of rain: freezing rain. Fun times.

Before the weather turned and the cloud pattern changed, I finished up my second water feature. It needs a little fine tuning that won’t get done until the weather begins to warm back up, but I’m still pretty proud of what I created.

The rock that is the centerpiece came with the house. We live on top of a rocky bluff where tons (literally) of these sedimentary rocks formed when volcanoes were young and glaciers were receding. Boulders atop layers of lava rock, bluffs upon bluffs above the Willamette River, Our yard was cleared and farmed in the early 1900’s and most of the very large rocks were removed or sit buried under several feet of topsoil and clay. The corner of yard where my newest water feature is happens to be an area least developed and used as a rock and concrete dump for at least thirty years. I still find fat pieces of asphalt and broken concrete in the ground when I dig.

The native rocks are red, like the clay that makes up most of the earth around here. We just happen to be blessed with at least a foot of good topsoil atop that clay due to the farm that was established here in the 1930’s. At least everywhere except in this particular corner where everything was dumped before we moved in.

We removed most of the large chunks of concrete and asphalt and I started turning the area into a small garden. Don moved this big concave rock in the hopes of “someday” building a water feature in the corner. Twenty some years later, I built that water feature. I could say I got tired of waiting for him but the truth is more nuanced than that: he has his projects, the vegetable garden, a new shed, and more. I love to garden flowers, dig in the dirt, build walls, and rearranged things. It is only natural that I should take on the task of building a water feature after waiting for him to find time to do it.

I have the time and the will; he has neither.

I bought the round rubber animal trough at the local feed store. I ordered the solar pump. I dug the hole in the ground.

I didn’t find a lot of rocks in the way: I found the roots from the neighbor’s tall pine tree running through the ground, none of them larger than 1.5” diameter. I cut them out knowing they wouldn’t impact the life of the tree (which is dying anyway, but slowly, and due to a beetle infestation). I leveled the ground and installed the trough, planted the yellow flag irises in tubs, and filled the crater with water.

Oh, and sometime along the road, I made the semi-solid concrete feature that forms the second rock in the waterfall: concrete and a rhubarb leaf.

Me, me, me. And I’m only bragging about it because I will be 69 years old in a week and I’m still playing in the dirt and digging holes. Also, the birds already love it.

And, yes, I took a couple days off to recover after all that work.

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Catching Up on Posting

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2025| 2 Comments »

I’m ashamed: I have not kept up on the blog. Well, I’m not really ashamed, but I am a tad bit regretful that I haven’t kept up. I think of things to write during the day when I am elbows deep in something, but evening comes, and all that inspiration has evaporated. Poof! Gone! Dissipated into the Nether.

We put in a new shed, replacing the homemade one that came with the house when we moved in here over 20 years ago.

I have been busy canning enough for the two of us: salsa, compote, conserve, chutney. Herbs have been dried or are drying for herbal teas. We foraged huckleberries and elderberries from the National Forest (those are in the freezer, awaiting a moment of inspiration).

We also foraged some more native plants for the yard, some of which have already been planted in the ground and some which are waiting for me. They won’t have to wait long: I have been busy moving plants around and tilling new sites for more plants. I’m waiting for the next round of rain to pass through and will use the ensuing dry days to my advantage.

I have filled the hummingbird feeders and hung them out: I took them down during the hot days of late August when honeybees get lazy and swarm the nectar. I melted and mixed up a new batch of bird suet. That came down when the weather warmed up and the starlings started coming around. The starlings are gone now, moved to parking lots. The weather is cooler and the suet won’t melt or mold now. We’ve started feeding the corvids and small songbirds again. (Corvids: California scrub jays, Steller’s jay, and crows.)

I have cleaned up the space between our shed and the neighbor’s lawn. That’s a bit of a sore point: our garage is set back three feet as per the law, but the yard maintenance person insists on mowing our portion, including over my ferns and day lilies. ARGH. I have tried little fences, cardboard, and now I am merely tilling up the strip to plant more flowers. When we first moved in, the elderly woman who lived in that house asked me to do that so her lawn person wouldn’t have to mow that (because we aren’t the best at keeping up the lawn mowing, preferring to let our yard go “natural”). I wasn’t in a place to do it then, but I am in a place to do it now.

Too bad that Selma died several years ago and we have had renters living next door since. Renters who did not mess with our three feet until the landlord hired this current lawn guy. I have even posted a sign on the side of the garage: DO NOT MOW OVER THE FERNS, PLEASE. He still hits them. So I am in a passive-aggressive war with him (and by extension, the landlady to the property). Yes, I could make a phone call, but it is infinitely more fun doing it this way. Don’t judge me.

(If you’re thinking I’m afraid of confrontation, you’d be very, very wrong. Most people are afraid of confrontation with me. When I come into a confrontation, I come with both barrels loaded and a back-up cannon. The world is much safer when I resort to passive-aggressive flower planting.)

I hacked my poor hydrangea back by at least two feet. It used to be planted under the pine tree (Nature rest its branches and rotting roots). The pine tree fell over some seven or eight years ago. The hydrangea is now in full sun, and summers have heated up the past five or six years. I have covered it with umbrellas, sheets, and tablecloths, but it still gets sunburned. The flowers fade too quickly. It has grown spindly. I could either kill it outright or prune it way back and see if it survives.

A woman walking her dog by the house commented on it. I told her I hopes I hadn’t killed it by my merciless hacking. She said she’d watch it and if it lives, she’s hacking back her overgrown hydrangea next fall. That’s me: inspiring neighbors to bush cruelty.

I also cut the Rose of Sharon back quite a bit, the forsythia, and the mock orange. They aren’t as noticeable a hack job as the hydrangea that was five feet tall one day and less than three feet tall the next. Turn me loose with pruners and a saw…

I meant to do a blog on sprinklers, highlighting our eclectic collection, most of which we don’t actually use. I may still do that. It sounds like a wintertime post. Meanwhile, I am considering this post finished.

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I Cut the Milkweed Down

Posted in dracunculus vulgaris, gardening, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

It is time to cut the milkweed out of my garden.

I planted it many years ago. It never sprouted. Four years later, there was a tiny plant that looked suspiciously like a milkweed growing next to some peonies. I clipped a leaf off to see if it would ooze the sticky white sap that gives milkweed its name: it oozed. Excited, I let it grow. The milkweed plants are limited to a “triangle” between the garage and two sidewalks. I cut them down when the seed pods appear: I don’t need more plants. Also, I don’t want to wait another four years for the seeds to sprout when the plant does just fine by sending out runners from those very sturdy rhizomes.

I was afraid the milkweed would crowd out the peonies and the asters. It doesn’t. The three plants grow together happily. What the milkweed did affect was my arum, dracunculus vulgaris, or “Dragon Lily”. The milkweed runners take up the space the lily’s bulbs are in and I’ve slowly lost many plants in that tiny garden space. There are a few left and this fall I will dig them up and move them to a better location, free of water- and space- hogging competition.

Unfortunately, milkweed does nothing to impede the growth of grape hyacinth, I don’t think anything short of a heavy-duty herbicide affects grape hyacinth (and I refuse to go that route). Every year I pull several hundred bulbs out of the ground and compost them. (Sometimes, I will give them away to a desperate gardener who doesn’t know better than to start them in their yard. I’m pretty sure I’m digging up bulbs to send to my brother in Reno this fall. “Hey, Bro, your yard needs some early spring color. I promise you won’t hate me in ten years…”)

Now, when the first purple grape flowers begin to bloom, I do my first – and only – weeding of the space. I cut hyacinths for a bud vase. I toss the ones that pull up with the ever-present grass. I do my best to rid the space of grape hyacinth bulbs while enjoying the aroma and color. Of course, I fail and the hyacinth prevails.

In the Spring, I cut back the old stalks of peony and aster just as the first new stems begin to push their way skyward around the fading hyacinth. Purple stems of peonies, green stems of aster, the spotted stems of Dragon Lily rise above the fading green and brown stems of faded hyacinth. Buds form on the peonies and soon the area bursts with pink and red peonies so thick I have to tie them to stakes to keep them upright.

The peonies fade and drop their petals just as the aster and the milkweed stalks begin to mature. The green of the aster is first to top out at 2-3’ tall. Milkweed will soon tower over the asters and all one will see will be the green stalks of milkweed.

But before it does, at the end of May and always on our anniversary on the 7th of June, the aroma of rotten hamburger wafts in the air: the Dragon Lilies have opened. Flies and beetles rush in to await their demise in bowl of this carnivorous beauty. The smell lasts a couple days. The flowers wilt and the entire plant begins to wilt and turn yellow.

Now it is the milkweed’s turn.

I have two varieties: Showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa – native to Oregon) with pink florets and California milkweed (A. Californica) with white florets. The latter isn’t a native to Oregon, and it doesn’t grow as prolifically as the Showy milkweed does, but the blooms are pretty and the aroma is the same: sweet and enticing, the polar opposite of the faded Dragon lily.

I planted milkweed thinking I could attract migrating Monarch butterflies. I didn’t know then that this part of the lower end of the Willamette Valley is not on the migratory path for these beautiful and endangered butterflies. No worries: the value blooming milkweed has for other pollinators outweigh my misplaced intentions. Every early bee, butterfly, and tiny wasp brave the sticky edges of the flowers to get at the pollen inside. Occasionally, a honeybee will get stuck and will have to struggle free. A few plants wilt and die, host to the milkweed beetle which does exist in this half of the valley.

Below the tall stems that now tower between four and six feet, a junco might build a ground nest. The nests are soft grass circles, now much larger than the palm of my hand. We won’t know there’s a nest there until a fledgling bird hops out of the cover while the parent birds hover nearby.

The bloom of milkweed lasts a couple weeks giving us quite a show of pink and white, and busy pollinator insects. But then the flowers fade and the few that were pollinated will start developing seed pods. These are green and soft, and quite edible if you are not allergic (I am). When the pods ripen, they turn brown and hard then pop open to release thousands of sees hanging from wispy “umbrellas”. The wind catches the seeds and like the dandelion – well, you know the rest of the story! The ground is soon covered in tiny, milkweed parachutes looking for a home.

But I mow down the milkweed, not simply to avoid the parachutes, but because the milkweed towers above the asters. And the asters put on a late show of color lasting through August and into September. The tall asters are a riot of magenta pink. The aster that grows in the crack in the sidewalk puts out lilac-colored flowers. The tiny bees – those mining bees and other ground dwellers – love the asters.

The milkweed is gone now, and I wait for that last eruption of color. Too soon, the rain will come and everything will turn brown. (Photo is of a year I did not cut down the milkweed stalks and the seeds flew everywhere.)

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Oregano. Plant it and More Will Come.

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , on July 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Weed Called Oregano.           

I don’t remember when I first planted oregano in my yard. We moved here in 2002 and I started carving out the “island” in 2003, so it was probably 21 years ago?

The “bed” of oregano has gone through some changes over the years: choked with that pesky grass, fenced off from dogs and to keep it upright, and it’s current incarnation that is 10x the original plant. I didn’t bother to rein it in this summer, but I did get rid of (most) of the pestilence grass.

We don’t purchase dried oregano in jars. Sometimes, I cut a handful of sprigs before it blooms, hang them upside down to dry, and scrape the dry leaves into an old jar that still has the original label on it: “Oregano”. We use it fresh during the spring and summer months when we can step outside and clip what we need off the plant. By Autumn it is fading and come winter, only dead stalks remain that I cut down and compost.

In spring, the cycle begins again.

I find new plants growing everywhere in the yard: oregano is self-seeding. I pull it with the other weeds, savoring the aroma as I do. I could allow it to grow everywhere and some day when I am too old to do my weeding by hand, that is probably what will happen: it will grow around the peonies, the rosemary, the lavenders, and the evening primroses.

I wouldn’t mind and the pollinators would certainly benefit from the profuse tiny purple blooms. I wonder what oregano honey tastes like? Some honeybee keeper must know: as soon as it begins to bloom, the bed is covered with honeybees and other pollinators.

Our dogs (one at a time over the years) will stand with their noses deep in the aroma, snapping at whatever bees they see. They get stung and jump back, shaking the head furiously before wading back in to snap at another bee. Our mantra is, “Leave the bees alone <Ruger, Murphy, Harvey, Sadie>!” They leave, but they always return to the scene of the crime.

I wonder if the bees taste like honey or like a good Italian dish spiced generously with oregano?

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A Few Herbs in my Garden

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , on July 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I have a surprising number of herbs growing in my garden, some wild and treated like weeds, some I have purchased with intention, and some that I purchased but didn’t have a clue they could be used medicinally or otherwise. I knew there were four herbs in the picture, but when I started looking up the different plants and uses, I discovered that ALL the plants around the fountain bird bath are useful herbs. I’m always learning new things in the garden and often kicking myself for the mistakes I make. But mistakes and learning are what make gardening an adventure!

As a side note: the plants in pots won’t always be leaning like that: we’re staining the deck and I had to move them temporarily. What we do for a photo op, right?

Bugleweed (Lycopus europeus) (Ajuga is another name). I bought the Bugleweed as a ground cover a couple decades ago and have been trying to get rid of it ever since. I had no idea it was an herb and had medicinal uses: hyperthyroidism, coughs, sleeplessness. I’m still on the fence about eradicating it entirely as a mistake or trying to fine a place where I want it to work its magic of crowding out other plants. It has a pretty blue/purple flower in the spring.

The tickweed (bidens)was purchased for color and length of blooming period. I’d never noticed them before at plant sales but when I was shopping for plants to put around the birdbath, it stood out for color and the fact it will bloom all summer, no dead-heading necessary. It apparently has seeds that cling to your pants like ticks cling to deer. I didn’t know that when I bought it, but it’s only one plant… Right? As an herb it has antibiotic properties. I probably will never use it.

Serbian bellflower (Campanula Poscharskyana). I just recently traded it out of a pot where it wasn’t doing well and put it in the ground by the birdbath. I learned the flowers are edible along with the leaves, making it more than just a pretty blue flower: it is a salad green! Of course it isn’t blooming right now, but maybe I can revive it! (The bloom is from another bellflower in the yard.)

Curry plant  (Helichrysum italicum): We bought that for the aroma, the sage colored leaves, and the pretty flowers. Curry plant is not the same as the spice curry which is a blend of spices, but it smells like the spice. It has minimal uses in the kitchen as an edible as it only imparts a very light curry taste to food.

I purchased the blue hyssop (hyssopus officinalis) a few years ago thinking I would use the leaves in tea some day. It grows scraggly, rather like an English thyme, and the leaves are tiny like the thyme. I currently have some drying – not enough to make a cup of tea, but it is a start. It has little blue flowers and is a great addition to a pollinator garden. There are a variety of kitchen uses for this herb as well as the medicinal uses (hyssop is mentioned several times in the Bible as a “cleansing” herb). It can be used to treat ulcers, asthma, and head colds. It is a great antioxidant!

Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa). Medicinal uses are antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory. Culinary uses include teas and as a spice added to soups. It is also a pollinator plant and it is a native to North America. The bees and I are waiting for it to bloom.

Last is the Mystery Plant. I was looking for a ground cover at a garden sale and this one jumped out at me: it blooms all summer, giving me the color I want. So I bought it, brought it home, and discovered the identifying tag had been removed at the point of sale, presumably for the seller’s inventory purposes, but now I had no idea what I purchased! I had to wait for it to flower to key it out. “Mystery Plant” is Self Heal (prunella vulgaris) is also known as Heal All. You can use the leaves and flowers in salads or tea. It has much the same properties as the Blue Hyssop. Pretty all summer AND useful!

Finally, a disclaimer:

I do not know enough about herbs to encourage the reader to use them and as with any new thing you add to your diet or healing regimen, do so with caution. I am writing about these herbs as much to learn about them as to show off my garden. ALWAYS research first. And certainly don’t trust ME. I’m only in it for the pretty flowers.

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A Little History of How I Came to the Garden Path

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2025| 1 Comment »

I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging. It’s a mental health issue: I struggle with anxiety, sensitivity, and depression. Sometimes, no matter how wonderful life is, I get sidelined psychologically. Emotionally. Whatever – I simply get sidelined.

I have stayed busy, and I have not forgotten that I was going to write about my adventures in herbs next. I do think I will bounce back and forth between herbs and other things gardening, because I am just (re)learning about herbs and I have several other projects going on in the yard as well (hint: water features!).

To write about herbs, I need to revisit the past. I started out gardening with the intention of becoming an herbalist way back in the 1980’s. I’d just landscaped my first yard, a project that was more about digging out unwanted periwinkle overgrowth and discovering what was underneath that mat of ground cover than it was about actually designing a garden of flower beds. I was also a young mother, unemployed, and a volunteer at a local birth center. We were poor and heading deeply into debt, living on the edge of losing the first house we attempted to buy. Life comes at you hard.

We started attending a small Pentecostal church. The pastors and most of the congregation were our generation, so lots of little kids, nursery duty, and spiritual changes all happened at the same time. For the record, I hate nursery duty: I loved my kids but am not so fond of other people’s tots. You know how it goes: “from a distance and only when I can give them back to their rightful owner”. I never minded teaching Sunday School or Vacation Bible School with older children, but those little wobbly-legged creatures – and especially those that cannot walk yet – are cute from a distance but not when you have to care for them in a group.

The ”Church” frowned on a lot of things. The pastors were just coming out of legalism, but the tentacles of bad teaching were wrapped around a lot of hearts and minds. Herbalism equals witchcraft and witchcraft is bad. Witchcraft is Satanism. Heck, midwifery is bordering on witchcraft. I gave up volunteering at the birth center and I gave away my books on herbalism. I embraced the theology of the day. Eventually we split away from the whole movement and that’s a story in itself and one I am not going to tell, at least not now and not in this forum. I still have a lot of friends from those days and they weren’t all bad and cultish.

I – We – have been “unchurched” now for nearly fifteen years. My husband slipped out the door long before I did and I left reluctantly. There was no place for me without my husband. We were paying off the last of our bad debts, we’d moved into the house we live in currently, I was working full time, and our children were moving into adulthood. During that time period I landscaped my second yard. It was a full-on landscaping job but a very small trailer park yard.

I started working on this yard with all the energy of a much younger woman (twenty plus years can age a body). The last couple years, I have begun to look into growing herbs and becoming an herbalist after all. A dream deferred and now there’s time to work on it. I have the space, the time, and no critics to listen to. I’m in a different place spiritually although I would argue I am just as strong a Believer as I was then – I merely choose to follow a different path, a path I believe is one that God set before me. The garden path.

I never fully gave up on growing herbs. I’ve always had a few in the yard and I’ve frequently dried flowers and herbs somewhere in the house by hanging them from the ceiling in bunches. I’ve planted oregano, borage, lavender, rosemary, parsley, chervil, sage – all the culinary herbs. Now I am branching out into some of the medicinal herbs and the foraged herbs. I will attempt, over the next few posts, to elaborate on what herbs I am growing, some uses, and how I have used them (or intend to use them). Some are surprising to me, some I have always known, some are new, some are old, and some I have had to eradicate from my garden (comfrey comes to mind).

So – here’s a patch of oregano to spice your appetite and I promise to write again soon.

Oregano is basically a weed, IMO. A tasty bee-friendly weed, but a prolific and self-seeding one all the same.

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Native Plants in the Garden (Part 3)

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Oregon checkermallow
Oregon checkermallow – sidalcea oregana

Tiny pinks on long stems. This mallow started life in out garden as a tiny free specimen. I put it in a planter and it thrived. Moved it into the ground and it nearly died. It is in a large planter, soil mixed with sand, and it is happy once again. It is a bee favorite & common on the Coast.

stinging nettle – urtica dioica

I hope you know what plant that is without the ID below it: run into this without enough clothes on and you’ll wish you had never met it. I crawled into it once when I was a child. Nettle stings all over my face! Fortunately, the damage is never serious and the sting can be dealt with (in my case, I probably smeared mud all over my face. I was a clever child – HA!). I started growing it for the medicinal benefits of nettle tea. It is in a pot so it doesn’t escape into the yard and I deadhead the flowers before they produce seeds: this is all the nettle I need in my yard. Harvest with care: garden gloves, long sleeves. I dry the leaves in the dehydrator instead of hanging them to dry. I’ve read you can cook the leaves as a spinach substitute (I’m not fond of cooked spinach except on pizza). The leaves lose their sting when dry. I mix the leaves with feverfew and yarrow for a green tea that I can drink without sweetener.

Nettle may lower your blood pressure, help with blood sugar, hay fever, reduce inflammation, and help with enlarged prostate, and contains antioxidants and many vitamins. (I may write more on nettle in another post on herbs in the future.)

Oregon blue-eyed grass – stsyrinchium bellum
Oregon flag iris – iris tenax
Douglas iris – iris douglasiana

Wild irises.

I love irises! These are my wild native irises (I have “domestic” irises as well). The first two iridacea shown love moist soil and are planted in a little shady swale next to the south fence of our yard along with the camassia. I need to divide the flag iris this fall. The Douglas iris is more like its commercial counterparts: dry soil is fine. They love sunshine. The blooms are larger than the flag iris but still delicate.

wild camas – camassia quamish

Wild camas (which is related to asparagus) is a beloved forage plant for the Indigenous peoples of the PNW. I loves marshy areas. I have not tried eating it: I have too few of the plants to forage just yet.

false Solom0n’s Seal (m. stellatum) & bear grass (xerophyllum tenax)
bear grass – xeropyllum tenax
false Solomon’s seal – m. stellatum

My husband brought me a gift of bear grass one year along with the deer ferns. Falso Solomon’s seal hitched a ride. My bear grass has never failed to bloom: the spikes tower above the heavy leaves. I think one of my plants is showing its age and beginning to die out, but it produced three beautiful spikes of flowers this year. And the false Solomon’s seal never disappoints, but it is gone by summer and the ground bare where it flourished in the wet of spring.

“poached egg” flower/Douglas’ meadowfoam – limnanthes douglasii
“poached egg” flower/Douglas’ meadowfoam – limnanthes douglasii

This beautiful ground cover was also a hitch hiker. I think it came with the yew and maple (long gone now). It spreads quickly, covers the ground beautifully, and attracts every bee, bee fly, and wasp. It greens up in the Autumn, overwinters green, and blooms in the spring – and then it is gone. The ground bare.

I have not tried too many other plants mixed in with the false Solomon’s seal to cover the bare spot in summer, but I have tried where the meadowfoam is. And meadowfoam does not like to be shaded out during the dormant stage! The bare spots in the photo are where i removed plants that shaded out the meadowfoam and it died back. However… it seems to love peonies and grows profusely around them despite the shade of summer, so I may try putting a couple peonies in there.

vine maple – acer circinatum

Don dug this out of a bar pit one year. he intended to make it into a Bonsai tree, but vane maple grows too quickly and he had to put it into the ground. It is as large as it is ever going to get. The leaves turn brilliant red in the autumn. The squirrels love the helicopter seeds. Very little grows under it but I am hoping some huechera (coral bells) will take off.

narrowleaf milkweed – asclepias fascicularis

Milkweed. I could write a blog post on this, the last of my Natives to show off. I planted it by seed: two kinds of native milkweeds, the showy (pink flowers) and a few of the narrowleaf. They didn’t grow. Well, to heck with that idea, right? I could purchase some starts but it just never seemed to happen. And four years after I tossed those seeds in the garden, I had a thick stem poking out of the ground. Suspicious, I broke a leaf off and watched as it oozed thick milky sap. Eureka! It only took four years for those seeds to grow! And grow they did: I now have to fight the plants to keep them contained in the corner of garden where I planted them: milkweed spreads by runners underground.

Bees, flies, butterflies (but never Monarchs – so far), and milkweed beetles love the plants. Invasive as the plant is, it grows well in the little corner of yard where it is, sharing space with peonies, asters, Voodoo lilies, and grape hyacinth. The hyacinth blooms first, then the peonies, followed by the voodoo lily. The milkweed rises up and blooms, fades and dies, and the asters bloom. A perfect full summer garden of bloom.

That is it for my native plants! My next posts will be about herbs in the garden, uses, recipes, and cautions. I’m excited for those posts!

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Native Plants in the Garden Part 2

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2025| 2 Comments »

wild ginger – asarum canadense

One small plant Don dug up in the forest has turned into a spreading clump of wild ginger ground cover. It is nestled beneath the forsythia, one of the rhododendrons, and a sword fern. I don’t think there is any use for it (I could be wrong, but it is not the same thing as the ginger root used in cooking – that’s from Asia). It does smell the same!

bunchberry – cornus canadensis

We just purchased this. I’ve tried to grow bunchberry several times and failed miserably, but this time I hope to succeed! Planted in a shady place with lots of rotten wood to latch onto. It has pretty white flowers like a Dogwood tree, but is a wild ground cover.

California poppy – escholzia californica

It is not blooming yet. But I have quite a little collection of this – one of my favorite roadside wildflowers. My husband is not a fan, but what does he know?

?big leaf lupine – lupinus polyphyllus lindl (?)
?big leaf lupine – lupinus polyphyllus lindl (?)

I can’t swear to the identification. It came in the same wildflower seed packet as the California poppy, and was just labeled “lupine”. Lupines are among my favorite wildflowers, and there are so many varieties! Unfortunately, it was infested with white aphids earlier and I sprayed it with an herbal concoction that burned the leaves (dang!). A better solution was to spray the nasty things off with a small stream of water. I keep checking and they have not re-infested, so… Here’s hoping. I have several of these throughout the yard as well.

woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca)

Another little ground cover that has exceeded! Don brought this home and I was dubious because of how quickly it spreads, but it hasn’t crowded out anything and sometimes there are actual tiny berries on it.

pearly everlasting – anaphalis margaritacea

I wish I had a photo of this in bloom! This makes a great dried flower in the fall with its tiny white flowers with yellow centers. It spreads through rhizomes and I have to be careful weeding out the insidious grass that entangles it in the winter and spring. But when it blooms, the flowers are well worth it.

Columbia Plateau Pricklypear – Opunta columbiana

This one is a bit of a stray. I have moved it several times, trying to find the right spot for it to thrive – and maybe bloom! Those long thorns are nasty little suckers! We dug this baby out of the roadside between Arlington and Hermiston, Oregon, on the Columbia Plateau. It is planted in sand, in a well-draining planter. I moved it to its present location (very carefully!) a year ago, and it seems very happy here. Whether or not it will ever bloom is a question: we might get too much rain for it to be that happy,

Western larch ( larix occidentalis) & Western sword fern (polystich munitum)
Lady fern – athryzim fillx-femina
deer fern – blechnum spicant
hazelnut (corlyus cornuta) & Western sword fern (polystichum munitum)

I don’t think you can have a yard or garden in Western Oregon without having to fend off the Western Sword fern! It can grow quite large. I have several that came with the house and I am slowly moving some of the off-spring to the north side of the garage where we have a rather inaccesible 3′ set back. It was lawn, but who wants to mow a lawn you can’t get to easily? Ferns are an easy answer: they grow naturally in this part of the world, they fill in the space, and don’t need extra watering! They can be ignored.

The Lady fern came from a single plant my husband brought home. It dies back completely every fall and comes back even bigger every spring. The deer fern is just an interesting border plant, also something my husband dragged home for me to adopt. I think I helped him with that one. ;P

And the western larch (known colloquially as a Tamarack) is just one of those Bonsai trees Don dug up in the middle of a USFS road and made into a Bonsai. I added it to this gallery because of the fern in the pot: how easily the Western sword fern attaches itself!

Pacific bleeding hearts – dicenta formosa

Where ferns grow, Pacific bleeding hearts grow. They spread via rhizomes and they spread profusely. Some may even refer to them as weeds. I rip them out enthusiastically when they grow into areas where I don’t want them. They look best in late winter and early summer, then the heat comes and they fade quickly: wild bleeding hearts like the moist, cool, shade of the Western half of Oregon. And I happen to like them better than their commercial cousins with the larger and more colorful blooms.

Blue elderberry – sambuca nigra subsp. cerulea

It is easy to get a red elderberry around here, but I grew up with blue ones. I don’t know if there is any use for red elderberry outside of herbal ones (I could be so very wrong on this, just speaking from my experience, not knowledge). Blue elderberries: syrup, wine, jelly… My husband swears they make the best syrup, I swear by chokecherry syrup (but we don’t have chokecherries in this climate). I’m not going to go into the benefits, but a great place to start looking is on WebMD. I do think I will try dyeing with my elderberry this year (hoping I get flowers and berries! It looks very healthy).

oregon hazelnut – corylus cornuta

I am going to stop this post with this plant: Oregon hazelnut. A filbert tree. Oregon and Turkey are the leading producers of hazelnuts. Roast them, dip them in chocolate, use them in your beer brewing. This bush planted by birds. It is around 20′ in height, has been pruned back by neighbors and us, and all the shells are empty of meat. You need two trees to have nuts form inside the shells, something we learned after watching this on take over our corner for nearly 20 years. A year ago, my husband brought home two small hazelnut starts from the woods, and (hopefully) (the squirrels and jays are praying) we will eventually get nuts.

I have more Natives in the yard. I just planted several. And I haven’t started on the herbs. 🙂

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Native Plants in the Garden (Part 1)

Posted in gardening, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Lewis’ or Oregon mock orange – philadelphus lewisii

It has not bloomed yet, but I’ve only had it since 2023. It grows rather spindly – perhaps too much good soil and water and growing too quickly? But I found if i staked those spindly branches, they were much stronger the next year. One of my favorite wild bushes, blooms in June – July, smells amazing, and reminds me of rattlesnake draws in Eastern Oregon or Nevada where it commonly grows along a spring in the basalt.

Large flowered colloma – collomia grandiflora
large flowered collomia – colomia grandiflora

We discovered this growing along the roadside after a fire. It grows about 3-4′ tall. It is a native annual and we could purchase seeds (we tried seed collecting last fall, but beetles had devoured most of them!). This year, we dug one up (you can get a permit at the USFS). Hopefully, it makes it. Pic on the left is the one we dug up, pic on the right is a photo from last summer.

penstemmon – what variety??
?Little flower penstemmon – penstemon procerus (?)

Penstemmons are hard to identify without a field guide and a key, but we love them. The one on the left is one we dug up on Saturday (we dug up two, we won’t know if they are the same species or not until they bloom. There’s a fourth one in the front garden, but it is still very tiny and hasn’t bloomed. The one on the right – I am fairly certain it is the Little Flower penstemmon: the flowers are tiny. It came with a yew and Rocky Mountain maple (both dead and gone now). Penstemmons make great ground covers, especially in those dry, rocky spots.

Note: we don’t know what killed the trees, but all the plants that came with survived. The trees thrived for about five years, the maple died off first. The yew lived a couple more years before suddenly dying on us.

Indian paintbrush – castelleja affinis
crimson paintbrush – castilleja

Who doesn’t love paintbrush? It is parasitic which I didn’t know (and which explains why I’ve never succeeded in growing it in the past). The plant on the right is one I just purchased from a native plant nursery, complete with instructions on how/where to plant it and what plants it might want to attach to. The second one is one we just dug up. Unfortunately, it is attached to an oxeye daisy – a native daisy, but one that is a bit of a weed. I prefer my Shasta daisies which stay in their place, but they aren’t natives, so…

I planted the purchased paintbrush near a large leaf arnica (also a native, no photo). I will plant the new one nearby as well.

?dense sedge – corex densa (?)
? dense sedge – corex densa (?)

I’ll be honest: this could be an ornamental sedge. I don’t know. Birds planted it in our yard. I made the decision not only to keep it, but to move it to a better spot. I’d be happy if I learned it was a native dense sedge as my husband thinks.

black hawthorne – cretaegus douglasii

Ah – the Hawthorne! Long ago we lived in a trailer park next to a large open space full of nasty Himalayan blackberries (very invasive) and a lot of native plants (including the afore-mentioned oxeye daisy). This little tree was bulldozed a couple times by our landlord and chewed on a lot by the local black tail deer population. When we purchased our house, my husband dug this up (it was about 3′ tall at the time) and planted it in the ground. I believe he was planning on making a Bonsai out of it, but it just loved its new location.

trumpet honeysuckle – lonecera cilosa

I bought a honeysuckle from a nursery. It is pretty. The aphids love it. But I *really* wanted a native one. Last summer, my husband and I made a foraging trip into the Cascades and found this growing there. No, I don’t have pics of the flowers (yet), but we know it is a hummingbird plant and it is what I wanted.

But the real story is about the bear. I have only seen one in real life, and that was a grizzly in Yellowstone when I was ten (1965). I take that back: I saw a black bear once as it raced across the road in front of us in Central Oregon. I was in a car. I’ve hiked, camped, and hiked some more, and never seen a bear in the wild that I could count. Until we were digging the honeysuckle. A young black bear was making its way downhill toward us as we finished up our lunch. Not a scary thing, but we had the dog with us (unleashed – we weren’t anywhere near other people or dogs). So we quickly packed up to leave and we let the bear wander off in another direction as we secreted the dog out of the area.

fireweed – amaenerion angustifoliam

I have seen this for sale at garden shows. That factoid makes me laugh: fireweed is invasive. Once you have it in your yard, you will never get rid of it. I know: I planted it. And I ripped it out. It is pretty, I will grant you that. Alaska’s State flower (my daughter tells me that you can tell when winter is near because the fireweed quits blooming in Alaska). It blooms all summer. I found this survivor of the fireweed I killed nearly ten years ago (hahaha!) hiding behind the shed. And I am letting it go because it is better than English Ivy, black nightshade (Solanum americanum), and Himalayn blackberries – all of which we also have (only the nightshade is native).

California bay – umbelluria californica

The birds planted this. I fell in love with it. I trim it up and will allow it to grow, It is not the same as a Bay Laurel, but it smells the same and you can use the leaves the same. Pretty yellow flowers in the early spring. Easy keeper.

This is just the beginning of a blog post I have been mulling for quite some time: what native plants do we already have in our garden? It began as a small idea but I soon discovered I have more native plants than I previously thought – and some plants I thought were native are really “naturalized” introductions (foxglove, common mullein, ground or creeping juniper). It also grew with the photos ♥

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Allergies, the Dog, and Me

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

      A quick post tonight: my right eye is beginning to itch, and I will have to give it a rest soon. With all this sunny unseasonably dry weather, pollen has been high. The kind of pollen I am allergic to, to be exact: some pollen doesn’t affect me at all. But let it be haying season somewhere up the Valley and my nose knows. Or when the cottonwood fluffs are in the air – my eyes swell shut.

I have been taking OTC meds, eye drops, and drinking herbal teas. I have been putting cool compresses on my eyes (I learned a cottonball soaked in milk on the closed eyes for ten minutes works wonders at stopping the itch. Conversely, used chamomile tea bags are hell on my eyes: my eyes are apparently allergic to chamomile tea leaves). I’ve been getting in some gardening in mornings and heading to bed early to rest my eyes, blow my nose, and check out mentally. ‘Tis the season to go through boxes of tissues AND carry a hanky around the garden, even after taking the prescribed dosage of “24-hour relief” antihistamines. More like 12 hours, if I’m lucky.

 Toss in the dog’s antics this past week, and life has truly been a riot.

Yes, he is wearing the Cone of Shame. On Easter Sunday he decided socks were a better treat than hard-boiled eggs hidden by a bunny. Two socks came right back up, covered in undigested dog food and bile. But he didn’t get better and by Tuesday we were headed to the vet and a huge surgery bill. The THIRD sock was stuck in Ruger’s gut and had to be carefully removed.

The Cone of Shame really is FOR SHAME. Bad Ruger.

Socks now must be placed as high as possible when not on the feet they were made for. Also tissue and toilet paper, but at least those don’t come back up or block the intestines: he merely poops those out.

Still and all, I planted my herb plants out front. Spread some early seeds out as well (we’re pretty much past the last frost date – we hope). I need to edge my new beds. Plants need to grow a bit. The yard art is just what I do: I consider it “faerie gardening” and hope it entices some of those wee creatures along with the pollinators and birds. You never know.

I found a third plant to put around the base of the pedestal birdbath: a tickseed (the yellow and red flower). A Bidens something – I’d never heard of this perennial, but I’m excited to add it to the base of the pedestal along with the bugleweed (ajuga) and my mystery plant.

I love the faerie lights in the little garden statuette at the base. 😊

(Cover photo: my bottle bush (fothergilla) is looking very nice this year!)

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