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I still haven’t caught up with the garden chores. Still, there is always something to celebrate around the yard.

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Office plants are interesting to me–they often have a history longer than any employees that remain. At my last job, there was a philodendron plant that was left behind by a long-time employee. I inherited it and kept it going for 19 years. When I left that workplace, I left the plant behind. It felt like it belonged to the business and never to me, and I hoped that someone else would connect with that plant the way I had. It always reminded me of that first boss who was an amazing mentor.

At my current job, an employee left and his office was vacant for a month or so. When I went in to clean the office up for a new employee, there was a tree inside looking pretty sad. I wasn’t familiar with the species, except I knew people called it a Money Tree. It had five trunks, all braided together.

The tree was very leggy, with few green leaves. I decided to take some drastic action, so I cut two of the trunks down significantly and made cuttings of the pieces that I removed. I knew that the tree needed to be repotted, so I decided to make some compost right in my office to help kick-start the tree when I moved it to a new pot.

For the compost, I took a large ziplock bag and filled it halfway with potting soil, then I put in a little organic fertilizer and then I cut up all those brown leaves from the Pachira and put them in the bag, along with orange peels and apple cores from my lunches. As leaves died on the tree, I kept cutting them up and adding them to the bag. I was amazed at how fast bacteria developed and decay began. And the smell wasn’t bad because of the orange peels, although my coworkers were always accusing me of eating oranges, even when I wasn’t. The smell was pretty strong.

In the meantime, the tree struggled along. With regular watering and a little feeding, it started to put out new leaves and the trunks that had been shortened sprouted new leaves, as well. In addition, the cuttings from the tree seemed to be doing pretty well.

After about two months of the soil composting, I ordered a plastic pot off of Amazon and some good Espoma soil. I put a thin layer of soil in the bottom of the new pot, then added a bit more organic fertilizer and the compost bag contents. I yanked the tree out of its clay pot (not easy) and moved it to the new pot, filling in with more potting soil.

After a month in the new pot, this is what the tree looks like.

The tree is now a rich, dark green and the leaves are three times as big as they were when I first found the tree. As the pruned trunks grow, they will fill in the canopy and make it even more handsome.

My boss informed me that this tree has been around the office, including in her office and others. I may return it to her office and then grow the cuttings on for my own office. It has been fun to make this tree over and trust my instincts to cut it back and repot it. The office compost was especially fun and interesting, though I would double-bag it if I did it again!

After our friend Armando passed away in early 2017, I wanted to channel my grief into something meaningful. I imagined a memory garden planted in the parking strip on the south side of our property. I pictured a cottage-type garden crowded with blooming plants and attracting pollinators, especially bees and butterflies.

In the spring and summer of 2017, I planted perennial seeds to grow a volume of plants to set out in the spring of 2018.

In the autumn of 2017, we had a large load of bark delivered. We laid down various weed barriers and then piled about 8″ to 10″ of bark on top of that to kill all the weeds and grass.

HERE is a video showing where all the bark ended up.

I needed to be absolutely sure the grass was dead, so we left the deep bark on all fall/winter of 2017/2018. Mistakenly, I thought the best place to keep the perennial seedlings would be in nursery beds outside, so I planted many of them in the raised vegetable beds.

HERE is a video showing all the little seedlings tucked into their veggie bed winter home.

When I went to dig up the seedlings that were wintered over in the veggie beds, many of them had disappeared. There were still enough to plant about 1/3 of the parking strip, which I got done in spring. The seedlings included columbine, campion, catmint, lupine, licorice mint, coreopsis, oriental poppy, verbena, echinacea, dianthus, and more. I had purchased tiny starts of asters and sedums, as well, and those were planted out in spring. The other purchased plants included peonies, calceolaria, hardy geraniums, and blue-eyed grass. I started planting in March.

We left the bark and covers in place through the fall and winter. Leon helped me with some hardscaping–we put in a little patio for the garbage, recycle and yard waste cans.

By May, the garden looked like THIS and THIS already!

I kept planting seedlings and purchased plants through early summer to get the garden about 1/2 completed. Additions included more campions, columbines, peonies, asters, Santa Barbara daisies, dianthus and a wild rose I grew from seed. Further additions were put off until fall.

HERE is what the garden looked like by September 8th.

In the fall, I planted most of the other perennial seedlings and some other purchased plants, including daylilies, kniphofia, gluacium, asters, thyme, oregano, veronica, rose, abelia, lysimachia and more. I also purchased some tulips, hyacinths, camassias, and corydalis bulbs for the eastern end of the bed.

I’ll just post more photos and videos here showing how the garden has progressed since last fall.

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I’m out of school finally and realizing just how much I’ve neglected everything else for 3+ years! The garden is no exception. Luckly, I spent enough time on maintenance to keep it going, but if I had neglected the yard another three months, I’m not sure whether it could have been saved.

The plum tree and two apple trees in the orchard garden are full of fruit. I was late in protecting them but took the time this week to put little nylon bags over about 50 plums and 50 apples. I tied the bags that went over the plums to the branches they are attached to in the hopes that squirrels, who’ve stolen every last plum the last two years, won’t be able to make off with my juicy treasures this year.

If I am able to eat a ripe plum from this tree, it will be my first one ever!

This gorgeous daylily opened today in the driveway bed.

I spent most of the day yesterday cleaning up the orchard garden. I pruned the sweet cherry, pruned roses, tied things up and back out of the pathways. There is more to do, like ripping out all the bindweed and thinning out the raspberries, but at least I can get to all the plants now! The timing worked perfectly for me to harvest some tayberries that were ripe and the very first black raspberry. Some blueberries are ripening on two bushes, as well–they weren’t quite ready to eat.

Some disappointments in that garden that will require some extra thought/work:

1. Pear rust on some cultivars of the grafted Asian pear tree–I need to research and mitigate. This tree isn’t getting enough sun, so it isn’t producing well/at all. I may need to move it.
2. The sweet cherry set quite a few fruits, but then dropped them all. I can’t tell if this has to do with pollination, lack of water, or what?
3. The camellia along the fenceline has overgrown its space by about four times. I need to prune it back to make room for all the things nearby and underneath it, including blackberries and the tree peony.

Leon and I both tackled the front of that garden, as well, that abuts the street. The snow back in winter had bent a few shrubs. Things were simply overgrown, too, having not been pruned in over a year. The toughest customer was a “broom” plant (Cytisus), a hybrid volunteer seedling from a crop I had grown 20 years ago. This one was ten feet tall and had bent over into the street. I took the pruning saw to it, but the wood was extremely hard. It took a lot more time than I imagined, and then I had to cut the severed branches further into four-foot lengths so the yard waste folks will pick them up.

The memory garden continues to shine–it has been attractive features since April and looked especially good mid-June.

This is Kniphofia thompsonii, which is an intersting contrast to the more cushiony plants that predominate in the memory garden.

The Acanthus spinosus in the Douglas fir bed is blooming big-time right now. It has impressive, architectural leaves and the blooms are great, too.

Close up of the scape showing the veined bracts and spines. I am hoping to get seeds this year, but last time it bloomed there weren’t any…

Not in the garden, but noteworthy nonetheless. These live in my office at work. I purchased some seeds off of eBay for Sinningias. I wasn’t too hopeful that the dustlike seeds would make it. I made little greenhouses out of Solo cups, with a decent hole in the top so that they breathe. Three miniscule seedlings came up and grew really quickly after they got going. These are ready to transplant, but it looks like there are fern prothallium in the cups, as well, so I am trying to wait until the ferns get leaves–I’m really curious what kind of ferns they are. The sinningias look a lot like “Gloxinia,” which is Sinningia speciosa. When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow one, so it is fantastic to have the chance now.