I had been looking for my clump of snowdrops for several months to no avail, and assumed they had somehow been killed or absconded by some stealthy varmint.  Today, however, on my way out for a quick MLK celebratory run, I spotted them in their usual place–and with flowers, too!  They were late coming up this year, but they grew very quickly!

It was a bit worrisome finding a mole hill right next to these precious bulbs, but I don’t see any harm that came of it.

I will work to add some more clumps around the orchard bed and in other areas in the years to come.

Leon and I have befriended the neighborhood crows, and in particular one that has a damaged beak.  We call her “Half Beak” and she comes when we caw to her and set food out to make sure she has something nutritious in lean times.  Her mate is ultimately patient, letting her eat what we set out while he forages on the lawn.  It isn’t easy for her to eat, but she is a survivor–we’ve been feeding her at least three years.

Some of the seedlings are coming up in the pots on heat in the window.  The larger seedlings appear to be Freesias, and the smaller ones all look like Gladiolus.

A happy accident occurred when Hirt’s gardens sent me a plant I hadn’t ordered.  The description for Bergenia ciliata (the plant I wanted) stated that it was an African violet relative.  I’m not sure why.  And when they pulled the order, they sent an African violet instead of the Bergenia!  I was disappointed at the time, so I threw the violet on a shelf and ignored it.  Hirt’s was awesome in giving me an instant refund for the Bergenia.  But now, I feel like I should pay them back.  The African violet has lovely double white flowers.  I’m not a huge fan of these plants, but this one is gorgeous:

I ran out and took a few pictures to share on this wet, gloomy day.  The only bright spots in the greenhouse are the orchids.

Mom’s Cymbidium never disappoints–this photo with flash.

Softer shot without flash.  This same plant has more spikes coming, and the other divisions of this plant are spiking, too.  Hard to know why some flowers open earlier than others…

Here are two flats of seed pots I planted yesterday.  Lots of perennials here–very hopeful to get some decent germination ultimately some amazing new plants for the garden.

Another timing mystery–this Masdevallia usually blooms in spring.  But it has been blooming since November.  There are four divisions of this plant from the original.  One of the parent’s names is M. ignea “Bean”, which I think is funny.

A pretty clear shot showing the amazing colors of this cultivar.

Part of the beauty of Masdevallia orchids is the way the blooms open–fantastic grace and sculptural beauty at every step.

I have inherited a few Cymbidiums over the years, so it is tough to keep track of which ones are which.  On top of that, labeling is my weak point.  This division is about to open–should be open in the next week or ten days.  It appears to be larger and lighter than “Mom’s”, but we’ll see.

 

This fuzzy picture shows a spike on the full-sized Cymbidium that we received from Karl Huffbauer.  This cultivar has nearly-white flowers with maroon spots.

 

I’m working hard to get all of the seeds planted that are left over from previous years.  Today, I planted two flats-worth of seedling pots.  Here are the seeds I planted:

Alstroemeria aurantiaca–these would go nicely in the bed in front of the greenhouse near the monster Echinops ritro there

Photo from Chillerton seeds–and also the exact same picture that appears on the Plant World Seeds packet:

Geranium “Mountain Cranesbill Summer Snow”

Geranium “Meadow Cranesbill Purple Haze”

Photo from http://www.plantamera.se/mainFro4.htm

White Heath Aster

White Forget-Me-Not

Geranium pretense

Tennessee Coneflower

Heuchera “Firefly”

Columbine “Crystal Star”

Campanula Cottage Mix

http://www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/248

Hardy Bulbs Tall Mixed

http://www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/701

Hardy Bulbs Small Mixed

http://www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/700?actionName=search_for_item&itemname=HARDY+BULBS+SMALL+MIXED&search_string=hardy+bulbs+small

Salvia Selection

http://www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/1180?actionName=search_for_item&itemname=SALVIA+SELECTION&search_string=salvia+selection

Purple Prairie Asters

Pink New England Aster

Lady in Black Calico Aster

Columbine McKana’s Giants

 

 

Over a year of blogging about the garden and greenhouse!  Here we are on New Year’s Eve and things are pretty quiet from a gardening standpoint.  It is truly winter, and you can see that in the following frost pictures.  I couldn’t resist!

Temperatures dropped a bit below freezing, but not super cold.  The next few days are projected to be sunny and clear.

In my walk around the property, I saw a few things preparing to bloom or blooming.  The cherry tree has lots of great-looking buds:

The Lenten rose that brother Tim gave me years ago has some buds showing amidst the ring of foliage:

It will be a few months before these open up, but cheerful to see them popping up, for sure.

The precocious blackberry still has its buds–hoping it will hold them until a more suitable time so we get some berries!

For winter interest, the black raspberry is stunning with the whitish bloom on its canes:

You can also see the alpine strawberries in these pictures and how hardy they are–not fazed at all by the frost!

A few plants are blooming on this last day of the year:

Calendulas act like they have no idea that it is cold and the days are short:

A few borage plants are still attempting to bloom, as well, and the feverfew in the pot under the Douglas fir:

The thug geranium on the sunny side of the house is blooming and the wonderberries still have some edible berries:

The greenhouse has a few orchids blooming and a holiday cactus:

 

I did manage to plant about 20 different kinds of seeds and set them on the heat pad in the window in the house.  We’ll see if any of them germinate.  I used seed mix mixed with cactus/succulent mix for drainage, as many of the seeds are cactus and succulents and bulbs.  I am not super optimistic that any of them will be come up, since the seeds are mostly older, but it seems likely I’ll get a few seedlings and end up with a few greenhouse treasures from this investment.

I’m doing some planning, as well, and looking through catalogs.  I love the looks of David Austin roses:  http://www.davidaustinroses.com/american/advanced.asp

I picked out five of them that I would like to plant around the edges of the orchard garden, once I cut the butterfly bushes that live there now way back.

I’m looking at these (photos from davidaustinroses.com):

Olivia Rose Austin

Boscobel

Fighting Temeraire

Kew Gardens

Lady of Shalott

Brother Tim is looking for a local source of the beautiful Austin rose “Eddie’s Jewel”:

I also have decided to dedicate more of the veggie beds to perennial food plants in 2016, so I’m looking at adding some rhubarb and strawberries.  I plan to order these two berries:

Mara de Bois from Gurney’s nursery:

Mara Des Bois Everbearing Strawberry

Intensely Fragrant and Flavorful

One of the tastiest berries we’ve tried! Developed by a French breeding program, this everbearing, day-neutral variety produces attractive red, small to medium berries that are intensely fragrant and flavorful. Enjoy a heavy set of berries in early summer followed by several more light flushes in late summer and fall. Good choice for terraced beds, barrels or pyramids. Zones 4-7.

And the strawberry, Tristan, from Farmer’s Seed:  https://www.directgardening.com/144-edibles/3501-tristan-strawberry#/quantity-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I woke up to a spring-like day today, despite the fact that winter hasn’t actually started yet!  Now is the perfect time for shopping, for planning, and for ordering things online!

To combat the seed hoarder in me, I’m not allowing myself to order any more ornamental plant seeds until I plant each and every seed that I already have.  Today I inventoried those seeds and I have 85 different kinds that have either not been sown at all, or that were plentiful enough that I had lots of extras!

Here are a few of the more interesting seeds I have that I’ll plant for 2016, along with links to photos of them:

Ligularia dentata “Dark Beauty”           Gladiolus carinatus

Eupatorium “Blue Mist Flower”              Watsonia knysnana

Hesperantha vaginata                        Sparaxis grandiflora v Grandiflora

Dierama latifolia                                              Lapeirousia fabricii

Gladiolus splendens                                             Babiana patula

Kniphofia multiflora                                    Massonia depressa

Freesia laxa Blue                                                  Rogeria adenophylla

Dorotheanthus bellidiformis                           Tritoniopsis pulchella

Chasmanthe floribunda Duckenii                        Tritonia crispa

Cortus matthioli                                                         Lapeirousia jacquinii

Dietes bicolor                                                            Cyrtanthus epiphyticus

Carmichaelia sp.  “Ribbon Tree”                         Amoreuxia wrightii

Lithops optica Rubra                                                    Gasteria liliputana

Talinum caffrum                                                                Rebutia minuscula

Senecio macrocephalus                                                   Onixotis stricta

Phaenocoma prolifera                                                   Frithia pulchra

Marlothistella stenophylla                                     Cheiridopsis pillansii

Hesperantha schizostylis                                            Solaria brevicoalita

Ideally, with seeds, they should be planted right away.  But even if only a small percentage of these older seeds germinate, I’ll have plenty of new treasures for the greenhouse and around!

Speaking of greenhouse, here are some pics from there from today:

The first open Cymbidium flowers–this is the dwarf orchid that brother Tim passed to me that we just call Mom’s.

Another flower, part way opened.

The Masdevallias are off to the races with flowers–completely off season.  I’m not sure what I did right or wrong this year, but usually these are March/April bloomers!

Other plants that are off season include this potted Hyacinth, sitting on the shelves outside the greenhouse.  This and another blue one are both blooming now in the fall, when normally they would bloom in April.

I was very surprised to see flowers on this Prime-Ark Blackberry here towards the end of December!  I’m not expecting berries, but it is funny to see this apparently very hardy plant blooming so close to Christmas!

Here are some other garden highlights:

This Canary Island Ivy is a show-stopper in winter.  Another excellent plant from brother Tim, this large vine lives in the Doug fir bed and is much less thuggish than the English ivy that shares that bed.

Each leaf is different and lovely.

Below is the Calanthe orchid that I planted out this year after several years in the greenhouse where it did not bloom.  This interesting plant is in the Doug fir bed and doesn’t seem phased at all so far by the cold.

In the Asian Pear bed, the Beladonna lilies have fresh leaves popping up.  I’ve yet to get flowers from these bulbs, but they live on year after year.  I’m not positive if the problem is exposure, depth or what, but they just haven’t bloomed yet.

The Camellia near the orchard bed is budding up nicely–should have lots of huge pink flowers in a few months.

Here is the Hakone grass in winter–it becomes an attractive tan color and maintains its graceful habit until the weather tatters it to pieces.

Close up showing the seed stems mixed with the leaf blades.

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!