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Posts Tagged ‘garden’

Suckered Again (and Other Garden Notes)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2012| 1 Comment »

Darn. My wallet is lighter this evening because I saw two perennials I just “had” to have for my garden. It’s an addiction.

First off, I want to say I did not intend to buy any plants this weekend unless I stumbled upon some sunflower starts. For some vague reason, my sunflowers are not coming up (again) this year. I had the same problem last year but I thought it was because I came home on Memorial Day weekend and I didn’t get any sunflower seeds in the ground until then. This year, I have planted sunflower seeds several times and nothing comes up. Either it’s too cold, the birds are getting my seeds, or…?

I only browsed the plants at the grocery store because I was looking for possible sunflower starts.

And this caught me eye. It’s beautiful. It’s a perennial. It was $6.99.

It’s a mullein and it is going right here, next to where the sunflowers are supposed to be coming up in my front yard. I lost the little plastic name tag, but I *think* it is verbascum ‘Southern Charm’. It’s beautiful.

I then stopped at the Farmer’s Market. I was looking for the hazelnut mulch stand. Yes, it is time to start buying bags of hazelnut mulch and finish mulching all my flower beds. I figure if I buy 5 bags at a time, I can manage this little project of mulching my garden all by myself.

I was only two booths in when I saw this.

Honeysuckle. A gallon plant for $10. I love honeysuckle. One of the first rentals Don and I lived in had an old honeysuckle vine over the front door. They smell amazing and hummingbirds love them.

I have looked for one off and on over the years. Usually, I haven’t had the money to buy one. Or I simply can’t find a mature-enough plant to make the purchase worthwhile. But there it was: a ten dollar mature honeysuckle.

Dang.

I picked up the hazelnut mulch, too.

Then I came home and hoped it wouldn’t rain.

I edged and weeded and dug and planted.

I planted my fothergilla in the back yard. I mulched it, too.

This is the flower bed I worked on Saturday. Too bad the Shasta daisies are not yet in bloom and the Oregon grape is past. I don’t know about that Oregon grape: I planted it expecting low shrubs and I got these huge commercial variety of Oregon Grape that seem to go viral. They are over 6′ tall!!

It’s peony season in my garden. Just a few of them are in the island flower bed. I have a lot more in peripheral flower beds.

This double-peony is stuck up against the garage. The photo doesn’t do it justice: it’s a soft purple shade that somehow translated to pink in the camera.

This double bloom translated nicely to the camera.

A single pink peony.

I have yellow, pink, burgundy, red, salmon, red-and yellow, single, double, triple, plain and tree peonies.

One can never get enough of peonies.

Except they are done blooming mid-June.

Another plant I love. I transplanted a few wild foxgloves (pink and white) to my garden. I love the wild ones, not the commercial ones. Foxglove is a biennial, meaning that the first year it is only a lot of leaves, but it blooms the second year and thereafter. It’s a great cut flower, will bloom all summer if you do cut it, and the bees go nuts over it.

Idaho blue-eyed grass. No, I do not know why it is named “Idaho” because it is an Oregon native as well. Not a great cut flower: the blooms are there in the day and close up at eventide. But the fragile beauty that is blue-eyed grass is appealing to me.

And, yes, I really have an old hanging basket frame turned upside down over the plant. That way, I know where it is. Doesn’t everyone mark their plants like that?

This lovely insect (according to my Audubon Field Guide to Insects & Spiders) is a Cottonwood Twig Borer (Oberea quadricallosa). I included the scientific name because when I tried to do an online search for the same insect, the Cottonwood Tree Borer came up with several different scientific names.

Whatever: it doesn’t harm peonies. It’s just tucking in for the night.

A dead wasp in the peony bud. No doubt there is a spider behind a petal.

Spider: 1. Wasp:0

A blood-red Lady Beetle. No doubt she is looking for an aphid snack.

Are there male Lady Beetles?

That was a rhetorical question.

I love the seed pods of my tree peonies. The bloom is past and the petals have fallen: this funny little item is what is left. They harden when they dry out.

All I can tell you about this critter is that it is a moth. It is most likely a bark moth of some sort. It is probably not a beneficial insect, but it is trapped inside my house and not in the litter under the rhododendrons. I usually find bark moths under the rhodies where their caterpillars have no doubt been wreaking some sort of havoc. I bear them no grudge since any apparent damage they do is minor.

At least as far as I can tell.

Last night, just as the sun began to set, the light graced the trees with a yellowish tinge. The dark clouds over Vancouver, Washington, were just beginning to build up and slowly roll southward. Shortly after all turned dark and we were settled down in front of the television to watch a movie, that cloud rolled over Portland and dumped an inch of rain in an hour’s time.

It dried out again today and I spent the afternoon digging, edging and mulching. It’s a full-time job that I love.

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Sunday’s Chores, Birds & Buds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 28, 2010| 8 Comments »

I took advantage of the quiet today and did way too much around the house. Now I am aching all over.

I washed the walls in the empty room upstairs in preparation for a coat of paint. Since the walls are canted (this is a bungalow-style house and the second-floor is actually the attic converted), washing the walls was a little tricky and a lot of up-and-down on the stool, and a lot of crawling along on my knees. But I got it done and I’m ready to paint. Except I can’t decide it I want to paint the baseboards white or paint them blue like the rest of the room? If I leave the door and door frame white, shouldn’t I paint the baseboard white? And what about the window sill?

Enough of that. It was another stunning day in the Pacific Northwest: high thin clouds, warm air, lots of sun breaks. I washed the sheets and hung them out to dry on the clothesline, all the while listening to the many birds. The song sparrow is the most vocal, but I could hear robins, a pileated woodpecker, the bushtits, a band-tailed pigeon, and grosbeaks. I looked for the grosbeaks, but they were in the tops of tall fir trees several houses from me and never flew my direction. But I know that’s what they were.

I planted sixteen more glads and covered the new plantings with the dog/cat repellent. Murphy will walk on the stuff, but he won’t dig in it.

I did my normal Sunday housework and watched the birds in my feeder and around the front yard. So many birds this weekend! Yesterday I noted two pine siskins! Today I was visited by an occasional traveler through here: a chipping sparrow (adult non-breeding, probably an immature bird). The house finches are back, too. We changed suet brands and worried that our suet eaters wouldn’t like it, but the Northern flicker (female) and two red-breasted nuthatches came and dined off of it.

I took my camera and tried to capture some of the more dramatic changes out in the yard.

The brilliant red stems of peonies unfurling. Not all of the peonies have red stems and the leaves will change color as the mature.

This peony is already leafing out.

And this peony has BUDS! I’m so excited! I will have peony blooms in March!

The Dragon Flower is sending up spikes. It won’t bloom until the first of June, but it looks like we’ll have several stinky blooms then!

I am going to be moving slowly tomorrow while my body works out the kinks from all the work I’ve done, but I think it was well worth it!

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Balmy February

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 20, 2010| 2 Comments »

Apologies to my friends and relatives who live east of the Rocky mountains: we are in an El Niño weather pattern here on the West Coast and February is downright balmy. I remember another February like this, back in 1983: we’d just moved to the Portland  metro area and I knew nothing of a temperate climate. The camellias and azaleas were opening in Portland: I remember the profusion of pinks and whites and the spring bulbs pushing upward, with the yellow accents of forsythia in bloom. I sat out on the ledge of the house where we were staying and tanned my legs in the low winter sun.

I have come to appreciate the El Niño years: more sunshine = less depression for me. The La Niña years mean more clouds.

This past week, it seems like every day was a new burst of color somewhere: a rhododendron along my commute home suddenly pink with flowers. Someone’s white camellia in full regalia. The median of I-205 just south of Oregon City and north of Willamette suddenly brilliant yellow with wild mustard. Pussywillows along the Willamette River are already turning into leaves, and some of the flowering fruit trees are opening up.

In my own yard, the forsythia I planted last year is just starting to open. The daffodils that were just stalks of green leaves a few days ago are now swelling with yellow buds and will be opening next week. Some of the crocuses are poking up out front.

Donald told me that the camellia had a flower or two open already.

It is the only time a camellia is pretty: when the very first flower opens, before any of the blooms have a chance to turn dirty brown and fall onto the ground below in a soggy heap. Delicate flowers that cannot be picked: they turn brown and soggy.

I decided to do some work in the yard. Too many years have passed since I planted my irises. The daylilies have been in their “temporary” location for five years. The Shasta daisy along the north fence had grown too large for its location.

I moved the day lilies out to the front yard where I’ve always wanted them to be, in front of the retaining wall. I planted half of them out there five years ago, but I wore myself out digging and planting, and so set the remainder in the temporary bed. Now they are all where I wanted them. I divided the irises and planted some of them in with the day lilies. And gave away a bunch to a neighbor woman who has never tried outdoor gardening.

(“But I kill houseplants,” she said. “So do I,” was my reply, “but it is darn near impossible to kill irises. These were my mom’s and grew out in the gravel driveway until she died.” I think the very idea that they survived in the gravel appealed to the neighbor because she agreed to take them.)

I was trying to pace myself, not do too much. Stop and enjoy the buzz of bumblebees and other insects happy to be warmed up enough to fly about. Listen to the birds: the song sparrow, the robins, the scrub jay, the English house sparrow next door. Count the blooms in my yard: periwinkle and wild violets and camellia and crocuses poking up.

The Saffron crocuses are in full bloom right now. It was a joy to discover them under the camellia.

I finally knocked the mud off of my garden shoes, put the shovel away, and gathered up my tools to bring back into the house. I brought in the laundry — did I mention it was nice enough to drag out the clothesline? In February? And my clothes dried?

And then I crashed. My muscles ache.

I have 45 gladiolus bulbs to plant. Not sure what possessed me to buy those, but I know right where I want them. I’ll plant them over the next three or four weeks, so that I have glads blooming at different intervals. Cut flowers all summer long is my ultimate goal.

I ordered seeds from Nichols Garden Nursery, too. Veggie and flower seeds. Balmy February went right to my head.

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