All posts by tonyjoe

August update

I’ve been working a lot and just trying to keep the garden and greenhouse plants alive! Due to the lack of rain, it is quite a struggle.

There are always highlights, though, so below are a few.

Hippeastrum seedlings from the bright red-flowered clone that bloomed this spring.
Scutellaria of some type, I believe.
The whole plant.
Texas striped sweat bee on Douglas aster.
Amaryllis belladonna in the orchard garden.
Heliotope–love the color and the smell.
Fuchsia “Cardinal”
Incarvillea “Cheron”–only one of the many seedlings went on to bloom.

July Updates

The flowers start to wane by mid-July, but there are still some summer stalwarts that carry the garden into the autumn. We have had very little rain all spring and summer so any flowers seem somewhat miraculous at this point. I have been supplementing with hand watering, but as little as I feel I can get away with knowing we are looking at a potentially serious drought.

I’ll just dump a bunch of photos here and label them as I have time.

My clone of Glaucium flavum usually sports reddish-orange flowers, but due to heat/drought stress, this year the flowers were light orange.
Eryngium “Blaukappe”
Nicotiana sylvestris, which came back for a strong second year. The yarrow behind has grown and bloomed really well this year, though it is mousy shade of pink.
Campanula with goumi berries behind.
Silene seedlings–they started out spindly, but then started filling out.
The clematis bloomed late this year, but bloomed well. I think this is Polish Spirit.
A beautiful red-flowered Hippeastrum set seeds. This pod eventually popped open and I immediately planted the fresh seeds in some 4″ pots in the greenhouse. I’m not sure I have room for more Hippeastrums, but I couldn’t resist.
Sinningia leucotricha blooming in the greenhouse. They flowers are less showy than some years but the leaves are world-class.
Daylily flowers and grass blooms near the driveway.
The Dahlia “Bishop’s Children” seedlings finally filled out a bit and set flowers. And the Silene here is really proving its worth.
Love the shape on this Dahlia bud–wouldn’t that make a great sculpture?
The Phlox paniculata is blooming near the driveway; Marigold seedlings are just starting to flower, too, providing a brazen contrast.
Blackberry season is just starting .
Dahlia “Bishop’s Children” seedling flower. Nice, deep magenta color.
Another “Bishop’s Children” seedling–nice color, but it bleaches in the sun to almost white at the tips.
The fragrance of this Phlox is so sweet and cheering.
Propagation efforts on the dwarf form of Euphorbia characias.
Sinningia flowers faded fast this year, maybe due to high heat–but the leaves are impressive.
This fortnight lily finally opened a flower when I was around to see it–such intricate, elegant beauty!
Begonia boliviensis got a late start, but that didn’t stop it from putting on a brilliant display on the patio.
Oxalis triangularis blooming on the patio with Pelargonium “Petals” nearby.
Lily hybrids blooming in the memory garden. I haven’t created a garden around these yet, but they are getting bigger and stronger every year.

Hippeastrums and More

The extra care I gave to my Hippeastrum bulbs last year paid off this year with a bounty of blooms. I wasn’t sure that would be the case because I felt very late in sorting them out and starting to water them. But an excellent trait of the bulbous plants is that they have the reserves in their bulbs to be very forgiving. Hurray for geophytes. It certainly explains why I’m somewhat successful with them!

You can tell some of these are seedlings because of the differences in the blossoms. I love that no two of them are alike, even thought they are mostly red and white.

I just noticed yesterday that my Brugmansia “Charles Grimaldi” is blooming with just a couple of lovely trumpets. We just cleaned up our patio and got new furniture. Today, we sat out there and ate dinner with the angel’s trumpet wafting its sweet fragrance our way.

Another flower that just started opening some blossoms is the annual Silene pendula ‘Sibella Carmine’ I grew from seeds this year for the patio pots. In the photos I’ve seen, this is a very full plant, but for me, it is a little wimpy. However, the flowers are fun. I’ve always been a sucker for a swollen ovary and the ovaries of each of these flowers is not only swollen but decoratively striped.

Mid-June Updates

As always, May and June are the busiest garden months with dozens of plants in bloom. So, I’ll just drop some photos and captions here to try to stay on top of some of the highlights.

Sinningia leuchotricha just getting going in the greenhouse.
Fantastic leaves! So much shiny hair on their surface as they unfurl.
The caudex has gotten really large on this plant. It makes me worry because this plant’s parent was about this big when it decided to not come out of dormancy ever again.
There should be a good crop of orangy-red flowers in a month.
Only one of the peonies in the memory garden bloomed this year–this single white one.
I took a new job at Cardea Services and inherited this sad plant, left pretty helpless through the COVID-19 lockdown. I’ve pruned it back and watered it well–we’ll see whether it will be resurrected.
Always impressive, this Epiphyllum from brother Tim had three big flowers this year. It doesn’t bloom very often for me–I don’t have the culture quite right.
This Antirrhinum was a surprise, providing all these flowers this year. It has bloomed before, but usually just a few mousy flowers. I fed it pretty well last year and left it outside all winter in a dry spot under the eaves. That seemed to suit it.
Possibly the worst-photographing rose in t he world. This bright orange-red hybrid is blooming well again this year. It puts on a great show consistently. Neon bright!
The phone camera just doesn’t know what to do with this color!
The Peony almost fully blown–but still lovely.
All three orchid cactus flowers opened at once.
Culinary sage flowers blooming in the same bed as the neon rose.
A brilliant red Hippeastrum blooming. I don’t remember the cultivar name of this one, but it is gorgeous and graceful.
It’s voodoo lily season–blooming in the Douglas fir bed and spreading its carrion smell along the sidewalk. Neighbors must wonder what we’re up to.
A rose from Leon’s mother. No idea which cultivar this might be. It is not very fragrant, but the memories are the important thing.

Final Entry of May

Foxglove, like so many plants and people, have a mixed reputation. I grew up seeing them growing wild in various settings and in gardens and I’ve always liked them. I’ve grown them from seed in various varieties and species, too, but they haven’t really taken hold here in the garden.

I started seedlings two years ago, though, from a mix bought from Chiltern’s in the UK. I planted them among the bulbs in the memory garden thinking they would be the second act after the tulips and hyacinths finish. For once, I didn’t get that wrong. They are blooming now and they are SPECTACULAR!

There are myriad other blooming beauties in the garden and greenhouse right now.

Vancouveria (Inside-Out Flower)
These Tulipa turkestanica seed pods are almost as beautiful as the flowers. I wonder if I’ll get seeds/seedlings?
Neon color clash–Dianthus and Heuchera fighting it out in the memory garden.
Maybe Dianthus “Zing Rose”–I don’t remember buying these but I’m glad they got added to the memory garden–they really shine.
Gorgeous cactus blooming in the greenhouse. Maybe a Lobivia?
Geranium pratense–really putting on a show.
The flowers are a nice size and color.
Eryngium blooming for the first time. This is supposed to be a very blue seed strain, but I don’t see any blue yet.
Oriental poppy in a nice pink shade. Several of the seedlings I put in the memory garden bloomed this year and are pink varieties.
Erigeron, Santa Barbara Daisy, blooming in the memory garden. They seem very perennial there, likely due to the excellent drainage.
Abutilon vitifolium blooming on the south side of the house. This is a white seedling–about five years old, that is as bushy a shrub as I’ve ever seen from this variety.
I found this late bloomer on a shelf in the greenhouse today as I was migrating the Clivia and Cymbidium plants to the native plant garden.
There are over forty Clivias and about ten Cymbidiums that migrated from the greenhouse to the garden today. This was a late migration but I’m happy I got it done–these plants need to be gone over, repotted and fertilized in the next month or two. They will enjoy four-five months outside under the Douglas fir.

Happy Valley and Back Home

Spring is so overwhelming with all the exquisite flowers and the burst of leaves around us here in the Northwest. I took a trip to Happy Valley, Oregon to visit friends this weekend and saw some gorgeous blooms.

Clematis glimpsed on a neighborhood walk.
Parrot tulip I planted back in late November.
Lovely ornamental hawthorn.

I landed home and the garden jumped ahead of me again–so many things blooming or preparing to bloom.

These gorgeous bouquet tulips in my yard are over three weeks old and still very showy.
These opened as soft yellow flowers and have aged to this fiery magenta hue.
Eryngium “Blaukappe” seedling blooming in its third year.
Native Nootka rose in the memory garden.
Veronica in the memory garden.
Many columbines are blooming in the memory garden, but this is probably my favorite–a big, clean-looking white one.
The golden chain tree in the pot by the greenhouse (likely rooted through the pot and into the ground) is blooming. These plants are pretty invasive. Pretty, and invasive.

May Day Photos

May is a prolific blooming month in the garden. I took a few photos today as I wandered around and did some spot-weeding. The tulips are still amazing, including the big patch of new bulbs, but also the individual left-over artist’s tulips in white and deep pink.

Interesting palette of colors: sun roses and two types of hardy geranium.

Above is a drastic houseplant rescue. I had purchased two dwarf peace lily plants for employees at work prior to the pandemic shuttering the office. I moved them to my office and tried to keep them watered over the past year. However, because they were so pot bound, it was impossible to keep them appropriately watered and fed during weeks when I didn’t venture to the office. I brought them home yesterday and potted them up today. The first one I put in a larger pot with fresh soil. The second one, I split in half and potted back in the two pots the plants came in. I was ruthless in cutting back their roots and their mostly dead leaves. We’ll see if they can recover from this drastic treatment. If they do, I’ll give them away.

A favorite Clivia seedling–pastel orange flowers in wide open form and a nice, full umbel.
A nice yellowish apricot Clivia seedling.
I bought some new heavier-duty edging for the memory garden where the edging had been torn out/up. Leon took the time to install it yesterday–it looks amazing!
My favorite May Day combination–the yellow senna blooming next to a volunteer violet.

Where are the April Showers?

Well, it did rain yesterday. All day. But it feels like it has been a dry spring so far. I cleaned out and planted the (formerly) raised veggie garden today and after I put in spinach, radish, arugula, cress, lettuce and carrot seeds, I watered it really well. There isn’t any rain in the forecast in the next ten days.

I may need to water the memory garden this week, as well, since much of it is under the Douglas fir and none of yesterday’s rain actually reached it.

This was a seed-heavy weekend. I planted a bunch of pots of seeds yesterday. The seeds included veggies destined for the veggie bed or pots in the greenhouse or on the patio including tomatoes, peppers, spinach, eggplants, zucchini, cucumbers, kale, and pumpkins. There were also flowers, including a second batch of Nicotiana langsdorfii, petunias, sunflowers (two types), and marigolds. Some of the seeds ended up on the heat mat under lights and the rest are sitting outside on the potting bench.

The other seeds I planted were morning glory vine seeds of a Mt. Fuji Lavender strain. I put these in a couple of pots alongside Leon’s “Pods” sculpture. This was brother Tim’s idea for a fun way to grow a vine. I did this several years ago, but the vines only made it half way up the sculpture. I’m hoping with an earlier start and some fertilizer, I can get these vines all the way up the sculpture.

Below are some photos from the garden today–lots of beauty and colors!

Late tulips replacing the earlier ones–love these that change color from yellow to pink.
You can see the cleaned out veggie bed on the right. The tulips in front here have set seed–I may try to grow some from seed to see what I get.
Fringecups blooming in the native plant garden.
Trillium ovatum in the native plant garden.
Another view.
Another color-changing tulip! These started as yellow and red and ended up white and red.
Another bunch of these tulips. I had planted them in batches in the memory garden.
Geraniums, tulips, and candytuft.
I want to be mad at ‘Bill Wallis’ Geranium for being a marauder, but they look great right now and there wasn’t anything else where they grew (that I remember), so their enthusiasm hasn’t caused any harm.
My favorite Clivia this year–this one started a nice light yellow and is aging to a milky cream–so close to white!
Clivia ‘Light of Buddha’ in flower. The variegation is stunning this time of year.
A nice Clivia umbel.
This peachy pastel Clivia has flowers that stay more closed than most of my others.
Single artist tulip left in the garden in front of the greenhouse. Exquisite form!
Another view.
And yet another…

Radical Streptocarpectomy and tulips

Last weekend I was able to tackle the Streptocarpus plants. Several of them did not survive the winter–tough to know why. But most of them were just dormant and looking terrible. So, I tipped them all out of their pots and trimmed an inch off the bottom of their roots, put fresh soil and Jobe’s organic fertilizer spikes in each pot (1/3 beneath the plant and 1/3 each in two places next to the plants.

The before and after of a Streptocarpectomy.

I cut all the leaves and stems away with scissors rather than trying to pull the dead growth away. Pulling flower stems also pulls some of the new divisions away from the mother plant and I wasn’t in propagation mode.

Tulips have long been a favorite of mine and this year they reinforced my admiration by putting on a long and brilliant flower show in and around the memory garden.