About a month ago, my Ebay seed order landed and I got them planted.  They are growing well.

Here are the pelargonium seeds I received:

“Cola Purple”

“Cola Mix”

“Cola Appleblossom”

My Pinetree Garden seed order landed this week.  I’ll plant the seeds this weekend.

Nepitella…an herb.

Petunia “Multiflora Hurrah Mix”

Petunia “Blue Wave”

Viola “Brush Strokes”

Pansy “Cool Wave Series Pastel Mix”

Pansy “Cool Wave Series Berries & Cream Mix”

Geranium “Multibloom Salmon”

Geranium “Multibloom Lavender”

Geranium “Multibloom Mix”

I had started the Ebay seeds several weeks ago and they are growing really well.  I’ll move them to the greenhouse this weekend, then will plant the Pinetree seeds.  I plan to have lots of geraniums for pots around the house and then a dozen or two for brother Tim’s plant sale.  Same with the pansies.

 

 

 

Some of the prettiest things in the garden aren’t plants–these ceramic mushrooms are pretty awesome.  Leon made them all and he continues to add to the grouping.  These are a great solution for this area that hasn’t been easy for growing anything very ornamental.

More toadstools along the fence.

A different view, showing all the different fungi.

The old Hellebore that friends Bonnie and Pam gave us maybe fifteen years ago still blooms reliably.  It is an amazing deep red color.

I take entirely too many pictures of the Masdevallias in the greenhouse, but how can I resist.  Especially welcome this time of year, when dreary days pile one on top of the other, I love stepping in to see these electric wonders.

Close-up.

 

Clivia miniata is a beautiful spring burst of color.  A few of them are early this year, but the rest are just budding now, so I should have flowers February through April.

Holiday cacti are still blooming, too.

 

Mom’s Cymbidium blooming in the greenhouse.

Older flowers on a different plant of Mom’s Cymbidium.  At least four of these plants have bloomed or are blooming in the greenhouse.

The pastel Clivia clone hasn’t opened any new flowers lately.  I watered everything in the greenhouse today.

A different holiday cacti flower.

Slightly different view.

Veltheimia budding up in the greenhouse.

Aloinopsis rubrolineata, grown from seed four or five years ago–getting a flower for the very first time!

Osmanthus in a pot starting to bloom.  The fragrance isn’t out yet, though–maybe all the rain washed the sweet smell away!

I pulled a few pots out of the cold frame of forced bulbs–they are looking pretty yellow, but should green up in the next few days and they should all bloom nicely.

Kalettes have finally formed on this odd plant.  I’m not exactly sure what to do with these!

Close up of the Kalettes.  They are kind of cool…

One of the veggie raised beds.  This one has all the garlic in it, including the elephant garlic I planted last fall.

Species crocus budding up in the Doug fir bed.

A different species tulip in the Doug fir bed–amazing color.

Another crocus bloom with Baltic ivy behind.

 

Group of species crocus in the Doug fir bed.  They weren’t open because the sun wasn’t bright enough.

Hellebore from Plant Delights blooming in the Doug fir bed.

Unfortunately, the flowers face down and the soil has sunk in that garden, so it isn’t easy to look in the flowers.  Maybe on a sunnier day they will open up more.

Stepping back with the camera, you can see that the plant is about two and a half feet wide.

Daphniphyllum seedling looking cold, but alive in the Doug fir bed.  This seedling is at least five years old and was planted out about two years ago.

The Hellebore from brother Tim is just getting flowers near the drain pipe at the front of the house.  This plant is easily two feet across.

Crocus next to the planting bed in the front of the house.

More crocus pics.

Another view.  These beauties weren’t shy today, despite the spotty sunshine.

Stepping back, the bloomiferous crocus against the brick.

I pruned the clematis and the climbing rose on the Jeff Tangen arbor today, and I have the scars to prove it!  This rose is very vigorous and I cut it back pretty viciously to get it to stick closer to the arbor and bloom better.

Tag to record the type of cherry in the right driveway bed–this is Vandalay.

Not a clear picture, but you can make out the many flower buds expanding on Vandalay.

Tag of the Morello cherry in the right driveway bed.

Flower buds on Morello.

Tag for Tangy Green apple.

Tangy Green columnar apple.

Slugs have have been after the primroses in the garden, but a few flowers are still showing.

Flower buds on the Beauty plum in the orchard bed.

Swelling buds on the Glacier cherry in the orchard bed.

Daphne laureola blooming under the Camellia near the north fence.  I rooted out about five or six seedlings from these weedy daphnes, but I do love the fresh leaves and the flowers.  I think they would be great for containers.

Blackberry bud on Apache.

Another shot of crocus flowers.  These were tough to ignore.

Bodhi and Mona were helping me out in the garden by warning me whenever any dog or person (or leaf) moved within their sight.  They got cold, though, and I had to let them in the house after an hour or so.

Close-up of Bodhi.

 

Ready to go inside–and letting me know about it.

Here are the three domes I’m using as terrariums to keep some mini gesneriads happy at work.  The plants are from the Violet Barn.

One of the plants even arrived with a perfect little flower–and it lasted for a month before it fell off this week.  No sign of new flowers, but the plants seem to be doing okay.

Another picture of the little Sinningia blooming under a dome.

There were a lot of great flowers at Sky today when brother Tim and I visited.  Above is an amazing primrose.

Narcissus with a wonderful fragrance.

More narcissus…

Cheery tulips.

Pot after pot of hyacinths.

Sweet violas.

And more…

 

Coming off multiple snowy weeks and wind/rain storms, today dawned bright and warm.  My goal was to get out there and spend a few hours cleaning up the orchard garden–and I made it!  It felt wonderful!

I tackled the shrubs along the fence today–including the tatarian honeysuckle in the corner.  This is the only shrub that I actually pollard.  Because of the aggressive growth, its really the only way to keep it in line.  You can see to the right of it, there are three trunks.  These were suckers from the black locust tree that is haunting that fence.  The tree was cut down over 20 years ago by our neighbor.  It suckered a bit after being removed, but I kept on top of it pretty good for many years.  Somehow, one of the suckers snuck up and reached about 25 feet tall, with a six inch diameter trunk.  I had it cut down last year when the bitter cherry was cut out.  These three suckers were the result–ten to fifteen feet tall each!  I have a love/hate relationship with black locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacia).  I love them in other people’s yards and hate them in mine!  I’m still bleeding from fighting those three suckers–they bite back with stout thorns!  And it is even tougher to cut them down, knowing they will be back!

I pruned the David Austen roses, too, but not much.  Most of them look pretty good–one of them (Ebb Tide) looks a little sickly.  You can see what Ebb Tide looks like here.  It is so beautiful, it is definitely worth babying a bit.  I pruned everything around it so it should get more sun.

The espaliered Asian pear with five cultivars looks pretty good.  Some of the grafts are more vigorous than the others.  I pruned it a bit to eliminate growth that was headed the wrong way.

Here is a Chester blackberry start that I purchased online last year from Raintree Nursery.  It isn’t in a great place for a small plant, but once it gets some growth on it, I think it will do fine here, between the Asian pear and the Santa Rosa plum.

The wallflowers that I grew from seed two years ago didn’t die back at all–they seem very healthy and happy near the plum tree.  I should get good flowers from these this year.

View towards the street.  The large tree in the foreground is a Glacier cherry on Gisela 5 rootstock from Raintree.  The tree is approaching ten feet, which should be its max.  The challenge is keeping the birds away from the cherries.  I planted a few wild cherry trees and two other cultivars last year so that there would be cross pollination.  This tree is supposed to be self fertile, but it only seems to produce ripe cherries every other year so far.  It was planted five years ago.  The other berries, the goumi and the aronia are all in this photo.  Things look pretty clean at this point–just need to wait for warmer weather to fertilize things a bit and enjoy the show of flowers and fruit that will hopefully follow.

Here are two containers of prunings from the orchard bed.  You can also see the trunk-like end of a branch that came down from the Douglas fir tree late last year.

You get more of a sense of the side of the branch that fell into the Doug fir bed.  I didn’t have the energy to saw it up today–will tackle it next weekend.

 

Things have been busy and I haven’t had a chance to update for a while.  I have taken some photos every week and I’ll do a bit of catching up here, however brief.

We’ve had snow several times already this year, and it continues even tonight.  Above, a squirrel enjoys the view from our Jim Heltsley sculpture in the front yard.

More snow pics…

The squirrel enjoying some treats we set out for the crows.

  

The Masdevallia orchids in the greenhouse are setting flowers–not as many as last year, but they seem healthy, nonetheless.

The Persicaria capitata in the greenhouse is blooming better than I ever remember.  I cut it way back in the fall and that has paid off.  The cold doesn’t faze this plant at all.

Cymbidium flowers.

And more of Mom’s Cymbidium flowers.

Holiday cactus flower in the greenhouse.

The giant Huffbauer Cymbidium is setting flowers, too.  I was worried, since the buds weren’t visible when I moved it to the greenhouse.  But here it is with multiple spikes.

A few weeks later, the Masdevallias are opening.  The flowers are an amazing color and a fascinating shape.

Not the clearest photo, but the color and shape are discernible.

I love this photo of a Mas. flower and the leaves of Geranium maderense nearby.

More Mom’s Cymbidium flowers.

The Clivia miniata clones started to spike several weeks ago.

More Clivia buds.

And more Mom’s Cymbidium flowers.

Cardinal tree is still throwing a flower here and there through the winter.

Lot’s of buds coming on the Hellebore from Plant Delights in the Doug Fir bed.

The leaves of the Hellebore hybrid–big and showy.

Our sculptor friend Elaine MacKay passed away in January after a long battle with lung disease.  This is her sculpture on our back patio, complete with its own worry stone.

Another view.

I moved the forced hyacinth bulbs out of the refrigerator and into the windowsill in the kitchen.  This is an unusual color for me–lavender with a soft fragrance.

 

Close-up.

Another view.

  

This is an awesome Clivia hybrid–a pastel with whitish center and pinkish outside.  Some bugs obviously have nibbled it, but you can still see the great color.

Another view.

Another view.

The more classic Clivia flowers–likely to be orange and yellow.

Another view of Cardinal.

Brugs blooming still in the greenhouse, despite the snow.

You can really see the bounty of the Persicaria capitata here–lots and lots of flowers.

More Mas. flower pics.  As bright as these appear, the camera can’t capture the electric nature of this magenta.

And again…

More Mas. buds–love the way they appear like cranes amid the leaves and then open like even more exotic birds.

More holiday cactus flowers.

Inherited from the neighbors when they moved away, this jungle cactus looked anemic all last year, but I fed it with compost tea and pulled it down into a shadier spot.  It seems happier–blooming better than it ever has.

‘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!

 

 

A tradition that Brother Tim and I have honored through the years is to take an inventory of what’s blooming on the fall/winter holidays.  So, for Thanksgiving, the below blooms are some bright spots that I’m thankful for.

The yellow snapdragon in the pot just outside the front door is still blooming a bit in the wet, cool weather.  It hasn’t been cold yet and nowhere near frosting.  I went quite a few years having neglected Antirrhinums as garden flowers, but they are workhorses and they bring an optimism that few of the borderline hardy perennials possess.

Not a great photo (it was pouring rain all day, so I was worried about getting the camera wet), but this is the seed-grown hardy geranium that I started last winter.  It is still trying hard to bloom after about five months of putting out flowers.

The arboretum rose on the Jeff Tangen arbor is still blooming.  I couldn’t smell it through all the rain, but my memories of the fragrance are still strong from its summer-long blooms.

I think the rain was affecting my photographic abilities.  Here is a late dahlia.  The flowers of dahlias change colors with the weather–they get mellower and more pastel as the weather cools.

A better photo of the same dahlia flower.

I think these are the annual form of dianthus, but they are sticking around through the cold and wet.

Brother Tim and I both like the single-flowered Matricaria cultivars best.  These stalwarts are throwing a few blooms here and there.

Probably the biggest surprise in the garden is the wonderberry blooms.  These plants don’t seem to have any clue that winter is just a month away.

The strawberries are all breathing a sigh of relief for the cool/wet weather.

Fuchsia “Machu Picchu” blooming in the greenhouse.  This has been a favorite of mine for  nearly thirty years.  The original plant came from Brother Tim many years ago.

A few Streptocarpus flowers are poking up in the greenhouse.  The plants look ratty, but the color of the flowers is a welcomed contrast to the green, yellows and browns as winter approaches.

Mom’s Cymbidium blooming big in the greenhouse.  There are three or four more orchids with spikes in various states of expansion.

This Euphorbia from Brother Tim keeps expanding and blooming in the greenhouse as it goes.

Fantastic flowering maple (Abutilon megapotamicum) from Brother Tim.  I pruned the mother plant last year and stuck all the trimmings into a pot and they rooted…so now I have two pots of these great plants!

Another picture of this festive flower.

Persicaria capitata has a few blooms in the greenhouse.  I want to try this plant as a hanging basket, as the leaves and growth pattern would be perfect for that.

Another rotten photo, but this is documentation of the blooms of a scented pelargonium.

Plectranthus blooming in the greenhouse.  The flowers are intricate, white with maroon mottling on the lips.

A holiday cactus blooming in the greenhouse.  This bloom isn’t quite open–I should be able to get a better photo in the next few days.

Another Machu Picchu pic–you can see some Botrytis on a leaf.  I noticed a lot of it around the greenhouse today, so will go in this weekend and do some clean-up and get another fan going for air circulation.

A cheery Verbascum in the orchard garden.

Not flowers, but worth noting:  Prime Ark blackberries trying very hard to ripen before frost.  I don’t think they’ll make it, but their effort is impressive!

 

I spent ten days on Oahu and saw some beautiful things.  The pictures are below:

It is impossible to ignore the sunsets on this beautiful island.  Even cell phone pictures look like postcards.

I’m not great at identifying the tropical plants, but they are spectacular.  This shrub was prevalent in the city, planted in beds around shops, hotels and other businesses.

The paddle boarders, the hugging couple, and the subdued light make this one of my favorite pictures from this trip.

Crinum plants are incredibly amazing–they spring from enormous bulbs and reach eight feet or more.  And the fragrance of these graceful flowers is delightful.  And after the flowers fade, giant seed pods balloon up.

 

Kigelia africana is an easy tree to remember.  The flowers always end up on the ground in the morning–big, fleshy and bright.

There were hundreds of birds screaming in this banyan tree.  I didn’t see exactly what kinds–possibly mynas.  Impressive, noisy tree!

 

Hibiscus are found everywhere throughout Hawaii.  This was a simple, lovely pink one in Fort Derussy Park.

This hibiscus flaunts itself like a tropical sunset.

Plumeria trees starting to bloom.

Another sunset photo.

This milkweed relative is an interesting shrub.  I like the flowers–and the leaves have a nice substance.

The star of this photo isn’t the sunset, it is the 129-year-old Kiawe tree that toppled recently at the Halekulani Hotel’s patio.  Find more info here about this tree and how they are trying to save it.  It looked pretty good when we were there.

Another great sunset photo.

 

The plectranthus in the greenhouse started to bloom–always super late, but cherry for thanksgiving!

I was surprised that one of Mom’s Cymbidiums had opened its buds in the ten days since I’ve been home.

Brugsmansia also helped me transition to Seattle from the tropics with its best flowering all year in the greenhouse.  I couldn’t smell it, though, but I know the flowers do have a great fragrance–they were just too tall for me to get at!