This week has had some cold days (mid-40s) and even colder nights (high 20s).  I wandered around to see what might dare to bloom in this cold and snapped these pictures:

Here is the thug hardy geranium that I mostly rooted out this year.  I’ll need to tackle them again in late winter to really finish the job.  For now, this volunteer in one of the raised veggie beds is a brave delight.

Here is a close up of the geranium’s flower.

I grew the white version of borage several years ago.  Few of them remain, but this one popped up and is courageously blooming despite the cold.

The last hardy soul I found blooming is a mullein–a flower that would easily get missed any other time of year:

The greenhouse has a couple of showy bloomers right now, starting with the plectranthus:

But the big show stopper is the masdevallia orchid:

This orchid has done extremely well for me in the cool greenhouse, but normal bloom time is spring.  It will throw occasional flowers other times of year.  I have four divisions of the original plant now and they all produce many flowers.  They are super easy to grow, too–I just keep them moist in spring/summer/fall and not so much in winter, and I feed heaviest in the spring (when I remember).  They don’t really seem to care–they just bloom and bloom!

Back to outside, here are some scenes from under the red Japanese maple in the pond garden:

Leon’s ceramic mushroom creations surrounded by the red fallen leaves.  You can see Acanthus mollis at the top of the picture.

The freshness and delicate nature of ferns really shows to great effect when surrounded by the fallen maple leaves.  I’m pretty good at figuring out which plants are which, but I need to study my ferns for sure–I have no idea which ones are which.

Another shot of my beloved Hakone grass…this time with some autumn tints adding to the show.

Lastly, some fall color from a seedling–something in the barberry/mahonia family is my guess–started from collected seeds from the wilds of an arboretum or someplace:

It looked like we had a pretty hard frost on Tuesday morning, but my frost barometer, the dahlias, remain unimpressed.  They are still green and upright and not the black mush that is the truest sign that we’ve dipped below freezing.  There was frost on the ground again today and I took some pictures.

These were cherry leaves and the ribs were wonderfully outlined with frost crystals.  Only the shaded areas of the garden had much frost left by the time I made my way outside.  It turned out to be a beautiful day, and the perfect day for me to tackle the final 2015 lawn mow.  I love the final lawn mow of the year–it is like vacuuming the lawn!  All those leaves, blown in from all over the neighborhood, chewed up and spit back on the lawn to support it for next year.

I saw a mystery from the front window this morning–a white rose blooming out by the street.  This is one of the rose plants that Leon dug up from his late mother’s garden.  The  surprise is that this poor hybrid tea was one of the victims of Leon’s flash-weeding in the summer and I thought for sure it was dead!  Instead, it looks like this:

 

The veggie garden had some fun things to see–Borage flowers that I just can’t resist:

These were complemented beautifully by the yellow calendulas in the same bed:

The wonderberries are mostly ripe now and I’m thinking of picking a bunch of them and freezing them for smoothies:

I took some more Coral Bark Maple pics, too–just losing the last of their brilliant foliage, but still spectacular against the bluest skies you’ve ever seen:

Here are some pictures from inside the greenhouse.  It was so warm in there today, but I have the fans going and opened the door mid-day.

Stuffed completely (almost)!

For some reason, some of the Masdevallias are blooming:

The Cymbidium buds look healthy still and bug-free and I watered them well today.  I’ll fertilize them again next weekend.

The Pleione is beautifully deciduous, even in the greenhouse!

Some other random pics from the greenhouse/garden:

These potatoes came up in the veggie garden right where I had planted the alpine strawberries.  They seem a bit confused as to timing…

Matricarias  blooming in a pot near the Doug fir bed.  These are one of my favorite volunteer plants–cheerful and neat and easy to manage.

These don’t show too well, but they are Cotoneasters that I grew from seed several years ago and am training for bonsai.  They color up so brightly with yellow/red/orange mixed in with fresh green.

Here is the cold frame full of bulb pots for later forcing.  The mixed weather will help speed up root growth, but I will need to insulate these soon to keep them from trying to sprout before they have a good foundation.

It is a glorious, wet Seattle day and before noon I had tackled all the garden chores I had on my list!

First, I potted all the bulbs for forcing and the Hippeastrums.  I just use a good potting mix with a little organic fertilizer added.   For pots, I prefer clay for forcing, since the bulb growth tends toward top-heavy.  Besides, the bulbs are mostly grown for gifts, and a gift plant seems a lot more of a gift in a “real” pot.

I moved most of these to the drawer in the “extra” fridge in our laundry room, tightly wrapped in plastic bags.  I’ll need to revisit and water these every few weeks.  The others were moved into the cold frame just outside the greenhouse.  I’ll pack leaves around them when I rake up some leaves to insulate them.  In about 5-6 weeks, I can start moving them into the greenhouse/windowsills for some early spring beauty.

I planted some crocus in the Douglas fir bed in clumps and some Anemone blanda, as well.

The big project involved moving all the outside pots to the greenhouse.  This wasn’t as massive a chore as I anticipated–and to top it off, there were some fun surprises.

Here is the greenhouse stuffed to the gills with all the patio pots, Clivia and Cymbidiums.

The first happy surprise happened when I moved the first Cymbidium and realized that it had a near-mature flower spike coming out of the side of it!

And there were at least 6 other spikes in various stages on all the other Cymbidiums.  I am continuously surprised that these hardy orchids suffer through summers under that water-stealing Douglas fir giant and still manage to feel happy and healthy enough to set flowers.

The Clivias didn’t seem too worse for wear, either, though they have obviously gotten too much sun and were a bit bleached out.  I tucked them under the shelves and in shady spots hoping they will darken up and spike.  I also watered all the Cybidiums and Clivias with compost tea.  This will be the last water for the Clivias for several months, as I enforce a rest period to induce spiking.  I’ll watch the orchids and water/feed them along with everything else every few weeks during the dark time.

The Brugsmansia was blooming and I didn’t want to move it (a bit of a monster now that it is 7 feet tall!), but I shoved it into the greenhouse.  Luckily, the flowers moved just fine right along with it!

I’ll leave the greenhouse open and the heat off until the first frost threatens–the fresh air is needed to keep Botrytis in check and the plants need to know what season it is.  I’m not really sure that the winter growers appreciate this treatment, but they are mostly on the south side benefitting with the most light and heat, so they should be alright.

 

The title sounds rather Halloween-ish, but the reality is that now that our clocks have fallen back, I see more of the garden at night than during the day.  The bed near Burke Ave N has a very bright street light that keeps it lit all night, so I can sometimes get some interesting pictures.

Here is a shot of the witch hazel in full bloom.  You can still see the wires above the 15′ tree, but you can really see how many bright, spidery blooms are on this beauty.

A bit closer up.

Some shrubs have such a great show of flowers that no one talks about their foliage.  Forsythias can be like that.  Truth be told, my Forsythia is much more colorful in fall than in spring, and a prettier shade of yellow, too!  I love this particular shrub because I grew it from just a stick I found in the yard while we were putting our pond garden in 20 years ago.  I have no idea which cultivar this is, but it blooms beautifully, colors up nicely in fall, and has a graceful habit.

I managed to order some bulbs from Hirt’s Gardens last week and they were shipped quickly and in excellent shape.  This order includes Iris reticulata hybrids (for forcing), Crocus hybrids (for the garden) and Hyacinths (for forcing).  The big bulbs are the Hippeastrum bulbs I got for my brother Tim and friend Diane for holiday gifts.  They are a cultivar called Magnum and my only disappointment is that one of the bulbs is twice as big as the other, though, of course, they cost the same!

I’m set to pot all of these up or plant them outside tomorrow.  In addition, I plan to move all the patio pots, Clivias and Cymbidiums into the greenhouse.  I can’t wait!

Sometimes your garden makes you feel pretty stupid.  Nature is a bit that way, anyway–so perfectly designed that humility is the best attribute of any gardener.

Many years ago, I purchased a young witch hazel tree (Hamamelis hybrid) from Sky nursery in Shoreline–the tag is long since gone.  The tree already had a few flowers at four feet tall, so I knew it was a bright yellow one.  I planted it near the street and looked forward to its fast growth and lovely flowers in the late winter.

The sad reality is that the tree grew very slowly and only seemed to bloom rarely.  I would check it in the late winter and see no sign of flowers, save for maybe a few here or there.  I kept telling myself it just wasn’t mature enough.

Well, low and behold, as I perused the garden last week, what did I see in full bloom!?  My witch hazel!

So, the stupid part is that this tree has likely been blooming wonderfully every year, and I just never noticed because I was looking for flowers in January instead of November!  How sad that I missed it all this time!

It is tough to photograph, as the higher branches have wires above them that ruin the shots, but you get a feel for what this 15 foot teenage tree looks like right now.

There are a lot of flowers.  I am unable to smell them, though, but I’m pretty much nose-blind.  I’ll have to have someone else try.

Other November 1st (we should call it November Day, the opposite of May day) beauty nearby in the garden include the few remaining leaves of the Aronia:

This is nearly an all-season shrub, with nice white flowers in spring, tasty berries in summer and blazing leaves in autumn.

The Asian pear espalier also has some impressive color:

One late dahlia that had wintered over in the driveway bed finally is blooming.  I don’t know why the dahlias in that particular bed get such a late start, but they always do.  And the blooms don’t survive well in the weather and with the desperate, hungry bugs.

The last views below are of Hakone grass that we have in a pot near the front porch.  This grass never fails to please, and it is blooming now, which you can barely make out if you look closely.

I’m going to go out and look around some more to see what else I might have been missing all this time!