‘Tis the Day After Christmas, so thought I would see what I can see around the garden, greenhouse and neighborhood.

It snowed on Friday–not enough to really impact travel, but it was enough to light up the lawn and give a nice holiday feel to everything.

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I took Bodhi for a quick walk today and found the following at Ingraham High School:

The gorgeous form of this pine tree really stands out in winter.

I believe this is Cotoneaster lacteus.  This photo is of berries on what I believe is probably the original shrub planted around the school.

A close-up of the brilliant berries.

This is one of my favorite Ingraham trees–I think it may be a weeping white spruce.  It’s graceful leaning trunk, bright blue color and beautiful cones make it a stand-out.

Close-up to show the color and cones.

A seedling of the cotoneaster–there are several large seedlings around the school now.  I took some berries to see if I can get some starts, as this would make a great bonsai/pot plant.

Hollies are a bit despised here in Seattle, except maybe the last six weeks of the year.  Nothing says Christmas like a well-berried holly tree.

The leaves and berries are wonderfully shiny on a dull day.

Winter forces us to really see the beauty of plants that we’ve missed the rest of the year.  This is likely Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, with its distinctive cones and graceful foliage sprays.

The driveway display isn’t fresh, for sure, but it has an artistic flair provided by the Hakone grass and Leon’s beautiful sculpture.

Close-up of the forest grass.  It has turned a tan/yellow for winter.  The hardy fern next to it is laughing at winter.

Leon installed a new bird feeder.  We don’t have a lot of different species at this point–mostly chickadees and juncos.  The jays haven’t figured out how to reach the seeds yet.  The crows pick seeds up that have spilled.  And the squirrels steal seeds, too, having figured out how to climb the stone sculpture that serves as the feeder’s stand.

Junco checking things out.

One camellia flower decided to open for Christmas!  It was fully opened for the snowy weather.  Tucked back at the bottom of the shrub, it didn’t get totally ruined by the snow/rain.

Sadly, the Prime Ark blackberries didn’t make it to black before the cold weather hit.  The berries are still there, but they are brown and squishy.  Sad.

I was worried about how the pineapple guava (Feijoa) would fare in the cold weather, but it isn’t even fazed at this point.

The Plant Delights hellebore is throwing buds up.  These plants are so incredibly hardy–the freezing and snow didn’t even slow this one down.

Aucuba glowing bright in the Doug Fir bed.

The elephant garlic I was gifted by friend and artist Janet Still.  There are two of these monsters and they both are showing growth–not afraid of winter at all.

Plectranthus showing December what for in the greenhouse.

Persicaria capitata perking up the greenhouse shelves.

I couldn’t reach these pelargoniums easily to get a good picture, but they are pretty impressive with their clear pink blooms.

The cymbidiums in the greenhouse are blooming wonderfully this year.  It is safe to say they thrive on neglect.  I pulled them out of the greenhouse in spring and put them around the edge of the Doug Fir bed, watered sporadically, fertilized maybe twice…and here we are!  These generous plants don’t ask for much.  These are all from the clone (divisions) we call “Mom’s.”

Close-up of a freshly opened flower.

More buds ready to burst…about 18 more flowers from these two spikes.

Just days from being opened, these buds hold so much promise!

Fuchsia “Machu Picchu” blooming, oblivious to the cold and low light.

The brugmansia in the greenhouse is putting out one flower at a time now.  There are two more buds coming along–so could have flowers through February!

The holiday cactus has an impressive flower open.

I was very close to this chickadee.  It was hiding in on the Jeff Tangen arbor and I was underneath trying to get shots of the birdfeeder.

This is when it realized how close it was to me!

I won’t say it was a guilt-free process, but I threw out the four Phalaenopsis orchids that were in the window garden today.  The Paphiopedilums were spared (this time), as one of them looks so incredibly healthy–even though it hasn’t bloomed for a few years, I couldn’t just throw it out!

In the open space of that south-facing window tray, I planted a  batch of seeds today, including the following:

Onixotis stricta (this is a water-lover, so the seeds were planted in mud.

Freesia laxa “Blue”

Leucocoryne vittata

Phaenocoma prolifera

Dorstenia mix

Marlothistella stenophylla

Dorotheanthus bellidiformis

Pink Rain Lily

Massonia depressa

Tritonia crispa

Gasteria liliputana (photo from worldofsucculents.com)

Lithops optica “Rubra” (photo from worldofsucculents.com)

Kniphofia multiflora (photo from biodiversityexplorer.org)

Hesperaloe parviflora (collected seeds from Arizona) (photo from xeraplants.com)

All of these seeds were from several years ago, so I don’t anticipate I’ll get many seedlings.  I’m giving them my best shot, though, to see what surprises might appear in the next few months.  Come March, the pots and trays will get moved to the greenhouse and I’ll start some annual and veggie seeds in the window tray.

 

It isn’t technically winter until next week, but we have had frost for two weeks now.  This has slowed the garden down appropriately.

Leon raked up the leaves on the lawn just in time for me to stuff leaves around the pots of forcing bulbs in the coldframe.  Hopefully, it was enough insulation so their new white roots didn’t freeze.

Since the fruit trees in the orchard garden fruited so poorly this year (the cherry, apples and plum), I wonder if chill hours were the culprit.  I am not clear on chill hour science, so I’ll explore it now/here.

Here is what Raintree Nursery (where most of my fruit trees came from) has to say:

“Chill hours are roughly the number of hours between the temperatures of 32-45 degrees fahrenheit. Winter hours above 60 degrees are subtracted from the totals.

The idea is that a deciduous plant goes dormant in the cold winter to protect itself from the cold. The plant needs to stay dormant while the weather is freezing and then know how soon after it gets above freezing it can safely start growing. It must do it late enough so it doesn’t get frozen back by a late frost but early enough so it can get a full season of growth and fruiting in before it must go dormant for the next year. The plant has a process, refined over millennia of evolution that tells it when to start growing in the spring and that process accounts for the amount of above freezing temperature (chilling hours) it needs.

Of course when we play with mother nature and grow plants in climates where they are not native, we run into lots of problems and this is one of them.”

And here is a list they provide of approximate chill hour requirements:

“CHILL REQUIREMENTS
TYPE OF FRUIT CHILL HOURS
Almond 500-600
Apple 400-1000 (Low chill varieties are less)
Apricot 500-600
Japanese Pear 400-500
Blackberry 200-500
Blueberry (Northern) 800
Chestnut 400-500
Cherry 700-800
Citrus 0
Currant 800-1000
European Pear 600-800
European plum 800-900
Fig 100-200
Filbert 800
Gooseberry 800-1000
Grape 100+
Japanese Plum 300-500
Kiwi 600-800
Mulberry 400
Peach 600-800
Persimmon 200-400
Plum Cot 400
Pomegranate 100-200
Quince 300-500
Strawberry 200-300
Raspberries 700-800
Walnut 600-700″

One site I found says that Seattle averages 3,000 chill hours, so no reason that the fruit trees, given the numbers above, would have been ill-chill affected.  I guess it must have been something else.

Brother Tim and I took a late November trek through the Washington Park Arboretum.  A few hundred seeds found their way into the house soon after.  I put them in plastic bags with moist soil and popped them in the fridge to stratify.  Normally, I plant them in pots right outside, but I thought I’d give this method a try for once and see how it works.

Seed catalogs have landed and I’ve done some shopping and organizing.   My goal for this weekend is to clear out all the Phalaenopsis orchids in the guest room and replace them with a seed tray.  I plan to try a lot of older seeds that I have left over of various bulbs, succulents and cacti.  I don’t expect much success, but need to get them started soon so they can transfer to the greenhouse when the weather warms.

I bought seeds from Seeds ‘n Such and some unusual vegetable seeds from Baker Creek.

One goal for next year is to really focus on producing some vegetables.  I struggle every year with this and I know it shouldn’t be this hard!