Seattle’s fall and winter have been mild so far, with no hard frosts yet and stretches of mild, wet weather.

Here are some of the flowers and leaves around the garden in December.

We are in mid-November and have not experienced a frost yet, though the weather has gotten cold and wet. Many leaves have dropped and some tender annuals have turned to mush. But other plants are toughing it out and some continue to bloom despite the gloom.

My bulb order landed from John Scheepers this week. I divided them up to share with friends/family. The rest I planted myself, including tulips, lilies, narcissus, scilla, camas, and corydalis. I planted some reticulated iris, scilla, and narcissus in pots to force in the winter if the cold and rats do not get them. There are some alliums, tulips, and narcissus that I will plant in large pots tomorrow. It always seems like a huge number of bulbs and a big job to plant them, but when you bunch them together in groups of seven, which I do, they do not take long to plant and they do not cover the amount of ground you might think! It was easy digging in the moist soil today and tomorrow’s rain will welcome them into prodigious root growth in their new home. Looking forward to the first iris pot being forced in January and hundreds of beautiful blooms following through August when I expect the lilies will bloom.

The 2024 garden year has been an interesting one. As always, I started with grand designs and maintained my momentum better than usual this year. It was not perfect, of course, but there were some great successes and important lessons.

I had two main areas of focus this year with my seed-starting efforts. First, I wanted lots of flowering plants for containers to provide a long season of bloom. Second, I wanted some backup plants to poke into the memory garden when the perennials there faded.

The following seed starting was very successful: violas, cosmos, nicotiana, impatiens, rudbeckia, china asters, and black-eyed Susan vines. I also had a lot of success with parsley, thyme, oregano, and marjoram. Nasturtium seeds were planted directly in most of the pots in the driveway, as well. Geraniums were grown from cuttings last fall and in early spring.

Lessons:

• Repeat the violas, cosmos, and nicotianas, but time the seed starting and transplanting a bit better.
• Repeat the impatiens but pick a color mix with fewer loud oranges and reds–obnoxious!
• Repeat the rudbeckias but time the seed starting and transplanting better–keep up with their growth (fast!)
• Repeat the china asters, but keep them in smaller pots longer before putting them out into larger containers–they did not fare well on their own
• Repeat the black-eyed Susan vines, but pick the reddish or white cultivars
• Repeat geranium cuttings but focus most on Petals, the variegated one that looks good all year.

My biggest successes in the patio pots along the driveway were not propagated from seed–they were the Douglas asters I started from cuttings back in the spring. It turns out they are fantastic in pots!

These cutting-grown starts have been blooming for a month and look to have another month or more to go. Native pollinators love them!

Here are some other plants blooming around the garden this week.

We spent some time east of the Cascades over Labor Day and stopped in Omak at a plant shop (a “grow” shop is possibly more accurate, as their focus seemed to be 90% on cannabis). I looked around at the sad houseplant display and found two near-dead streptocarpus and a tiny hoya that I adopted.

Here they are after a brief resuscitation:

The last new item in the house is a pot full of seeds that I found in my backpack that had to be washed after an exploding kiwi incident. Here is the pot. Not exciting now, but full of promise and mystery!

The May garden was so boisterous and that exuberance is extending into June thanks to cool, wettish weather.

I took the macro lens out and got some great photos today. It is so amazing to get close up with that lens. You see aphids and spiders and all the intricacy of the flower parts.

May is always the busiest month for flowers in the garden. As the tulips wane, the perennials burst on the scene. Below is just a sampling of blooms from the greenhouse and garden.

Here are some flower photos from around the greenhouse and garden. The spring rush is on!

The number of clivia flower spikes in the greenhouse is pretty low this year, but some of the spikes themselves are immense. The classic “Miss Clivia” passed from my brother many years ago has especially large umbels this year.

Fantastic weather and a mostly clear schedule helped me find my way deep into the garden today. It seemed like the perfect time to propagate some perennials. Specifically, the phlox and the catmint seemed primed for softwood cuttings. I took about 24 cuttings of each. I hope I got the timing right.

Tulips seem to be blooming early this year. Every year they surprise me with their beauty.

There are a lot of gorgeous things that caught my eye today.

I was not alone in the garden today–I had the best assistant ever, Rafa the wonder dog.

The weather was perfect this weekend for some Saturday kayaking and some Sunday gardening. I sorted through the 60+ clivia plants and pulled those with spikes into the display area. Only thirteen spikes were found. There are bound to be a few more as the season warms.

One clivia was already blooming–this interspecific hybrid.

A few other plants have February blooms in the greenhouse, including the orchid we call Mom’s Cymbidium that we’ve had in the family for over thirty years now.

And this sad holiday cactus with just one flower open.

I set up a heat tray and lights. I planted a bunch of seeds, including the following:

Petunia “Lavender Sky Blue”

Viola “Johnny Jump Up”

Thunbergia “Black-Eyed Susan”

Petunia “Easy Wave Burgundy Star”

Impatiens “Accent Star Mix”

Viola “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow”

Aster “Single Rainbow Mix”

Coleus “Coral Candy”

Viola “Sorbet Mix”

Petunia “Tidal Wave Silver”

Petunia “Purple Wave”

Petunia “White Easy Wave”

Alpine Strawberry “Alexandria”

Alpine Strawberry “Yellow”

Red Shiso

Nicotiana “Sensation Mix”

Petunia “Lavender Sky Blue”

Petunia “Lavendar Sky Blue”

Cosmos “Psyche Mix”

We are in for some cold weather, but with the thermostat set at 45 degrees and the heat mat raising the soil temperature even more, I think most of these seeds should germinate and grow in the next two weeks. Most are destined for patio pots and to fill in blanks in the memory garden.

As I get older, I feel winter’s negative drain more intensely and notice spring’s positive push. This weekend, there was no denying spring is coming. The Pacific wren in our yard has been singing incessantly his beautiful, somewhat desperate song. And the native plant seeds have started to pop up in the pots outside. My mood is lifting a little more every day.

Seattle experienced multiple days in a row in January below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. It seemed like this would stall out the anxious spring growers like the crocus, tulips, and hyacinths in the garden.

During the freeze, I moved the iris and crocus bulbs that I am forcing in pots to the greenhouse. I saved them from freezing solid, but then the greenhouse heated up in the sun and we experienced a spell of warm weather. Normally, I would move the pots in the house to force them one pot at a time, but the cold/hot/warm treatment caused them all to bloom at once when I moved them out to the shelves again! The crocus did not make it–rats ate them all in the greenhouse except the one pot I have already moved into the house! But the iris flowers are spectacular.

The bulbs in the memory garden are also blooming beautifully with the unseasonably warm weather.

Last year, the Veltheimia bracteata in the greenhouse failed to bloom for the first time in several years. But I noticed, way back in the greenhouse, that there is a spike coming this year!