Well, the sun is stimulating me, for one. Sadly, I’m trapped indoors with the stay-at-home order, but I wander around on my breaks and on weekends. Below is a gallery of photos from the greenhouse and garden over the last few weeks.

The reality of tulip planting in Seattle for me is that the plants usually only last a year. I have tried many of the tulips that are noted for perennializing and found them only slightly permanent than the other types. I have planted hundreds of tulips over my 25 years on this property and aside from the most recently planted ones, only about five bulbs remain, sad and lonely, spread out all over the yard.

Could Flaming Purissima be different? I planted a row of clumps of these tulips in the fall of 2018 and they provided a wonderful show in the spring of 2019. And as I write this in April of 2020, they are back again in full force and blooming wonderfully well. Lately, I’m attracted to tulips that don’t just feature one color, and those that change color over time–they just seem to give a little more than the single-tone and stagnant colors. Flaming Purissima is a combination of every color between white and carmine, and the flowers look different every day. They open wide and happy when the Seattle sun peaks out, giving us even more to celebrate.

I plan to feed these bulbs a few times in the spring with a general organic fertilizer and bulb food. We’ll see if they continue to impress next year.

I have rarely met a tulip I didn’t like, and I have never met a tulip I like more than this one. Antoinette is phenomenal. The flowers are an ever-changing kaleidoscope of pinks and whites and yellows and carmine. Each flower turns to a different color each day. I purchased these from John Scheepers in 2018 and they put on a huge show last year but only a few of them have returned this year, which is a huge disappointment.

My 2020 plans for these tulips are to feed the ones that returned and to add a few more in the fall for 2021.

Another online purchase with an unknown vendor, I’ve had this vine for at least a dozen years. For the longest time, I didn’t know what it was, but recently I saw it featured online. The stand-out feature of this plant is its aggressive, rampant growth. The social media post I saw recently started as an innocent request for identification and devolved into stern warnings about how this plant has escaped and taken over parts of the world!

I don’t actually directly take care of this plant at all. I honestly have no idea where it is rooted at this point, Yet every year its dangerous tendrils creep to the roof of the greenhouse, clambering over neighbors as they go.

One year, I gave a cutting to brother Tim for his balcony, and with all the heat and sun he gets, the plant actually bloomed. The flowers were not showy, but they had a light pleasant fragrance.

Above is the vine as of 4.10.20.

About twenty years ago, I had a side hustle of doing garden chores for a homeowner in Fremont, the neighbor of a friend of mine who spent a lot of time out of town. One of the plants I tended there was this Bigroot geranium. The house had an entire border of these plants and I had to clean them up and root out the extra starts and a few found their way home with me. I planted a few in the Douglas fir bed and thanks to their generous nature, I’ve been able to add some to the bed next to the driveway and also a few to the memory garden. They make a good groundcover with interest for much of the year, with attractive leaves, pleasant flowers, and bright fall colors before they go dormant late in the year.

The plants spread quickly, but I wouldn’t call them invasive. They are easy to root out and move to another garden or pot up for sales or for friends. They also seed around a bit. I’ve had them pop up in pots near the house, but never in any alarming quantities.

Here are some current photos of the plants in the Douglas fir bed.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to trim back/clear out any extra starts to keep a little control of these in the various beds. I’ll pot up a few for plant sales or to give to neighbors, too.

About ten years ago, at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show (now Festival), I purchased a pot of Freesia laxa from a vendor I don’t remember. I was able to keep the plants alive and blooming for a couple of years. , Eventually, they died out in that pot. But, like a frisky little phoenix, they have risen from myriad other pots in the greenhouse and beyond. It turns out their beautiful seeds jump happily around and sprout and bloom and then seed and die out and so on…

The plants themselves are fine–very iris-y and somewhat floppy in the greenhouse without full sun. The flowers are bright and lovely–a rather noisy scarlet red with some darker markings inside.

After having success the first year, I ordered seeds for the clone “Joan Evans” and grew them to flowering size. Joan Evans was a delicate beauty–gorgeous white flowers with dark markings, but weak growth and none of the rampant reproduction of the straight species.

Freesia laxa seeds looking for a pot to infiltrate.

This might be a mid-range seedling between “Joan Evans” and the species.

I had heard that these bulbs are borderline hardy, so I planted a few outside one year, but they disappeared almost immediately and never came back.

My 2020 plans for Fressia laxa is to enjoy the few plants that have sprung up again in the greenhouse this year and try to give them what they need to produce some nice flowers.

With a common name of “Morning Widow,” I expected my clone of this plant to have dark, depressing flowers. However, whichever clone it is, the flowers are a nice purple shade. The plant is impressively floriferous, too.

I don’t remember where I got this plant. I think I’ve had it about ten years. It is planted amid its cousin, Geranium macrorrhizum, so I don’t even notice it until it soars above the shorter cranes bill with its flower spikes.

My 2020 plans for this plant include trying to grow some seeds I harvested from it last year, and to feed it a bit and enjoy its flowers, and probably take a bunch of photos of it–that seems to be what I do!

Years ago, brother Tim and I were very involved in the Northwest Fuchsia Society. Part of that involvement included working on plant sales and selling our own plants.

One year, member Sally Abella let me loose in her yard with a trowel to gather plants for the annual fundraising plant sale. She had a well-established yard with some very interesting plants, many of which were volunteering around generously. Geranium nodosum was one of those plants. I ended up with a few that didn’t sell, and some other plants, as well, that will get counted later in Plant-A-Day.

This is an elegant plant, with shiny, maple-like leaves and pink flowers that never overwhelm. It seeds around a bit, but in my yard is not invasive. However, I shared it with a friend for a new garden and this plant went berserk!

I don’t have any 2020 plans for these plants, other to enjoy them wherever they volunteer in the garden.

Two of my favorite things about snowdrops is that they are very early-blooming and they are not yellow. Bright yellow daffodils and bright yellow forsythia are cheerful, for sure, but there is something almost too bright about the color in early spring. Unassuming snowdrops make a subtler, more welcoming entree to the changing seasons.

Gardening books talk about “sheets” of snowdrops that have spread so fast and quickly they need to be dug up and moved frequently, apparently to prevent a garden takeover. We may never know if my snowdrops reproduce less because of their DNA, their situation in the garden, or the lack of proper care from this gardener himself. After at least a dozen years, my clump is still relatively small–maybe with a dozen total offsets. Regardless, they give me a lot of pleasure when they poke up through dead leaves and bark to bloom in January/February.

Below are a couple of pictures of the clump today (4.4.20).

The spot that I chose for these bulbs is pretty shady, and I think that has slowed their growth. Most years, the slugs or snails find the flowers before I do. I often forget to tear away the old clematis vines above the snowdrops in time for them to make a show. The fact that they still survive and bloom and slowly spread is a testament to the flexibility of this plant.

Last fall, I planted a bunch more snowdrops into the memory garden, which is much sunnier open. We’ll see if they grow better than my original clump.

My 2020 plans for these plants is to feed them with organic fertilizer while they are in growth and to set a calendar notice to clear the way for them in December so they can grow and bloom unfettered.

Here is a hardier version of the flowering maples listed earlier. I grew these shrubs from seed about six years ago. There are peppered about in the orchard bed, next to the house in the dog run, and in a pot on the back patio.

The flowers of these plants are gorgeous–large and silky, in small clusters at the end of branches. The leaves are handsome, as well. Like their more tender cousins, I have the toughest time growing these into handsome specimens. They have long internodes and long, whippy branches atop spindly trunks.

One of the seedlings has beautiful pure white flowers. They are slightly smaller than those of its lavender siblings, but they light up a dark corner next to the lilac bush in the dog run. I will work to add flowers here of that seedling.