After repotting the rest of the Tonsai plants and updating the blog inventory, there are now 88 tonsai starts logged! Each one has so much potential to become a wonderful little tree.

I have big plans for the garden space to the south of the greenhouse but I haven’t had the time or money to implement them yet. That area was covered with weeds and looked pretty sad.

My weekend travel plans were interrupted by a covid exposure so I hunkered down and started cleaning up the area. I got about 2/3 of it done.

Below are some flower/plant photos from the garden/greenhouse this week.

Every day something else blooms in the yard! Seattle has a potential of snow this weekend but the plants are laughing at the forecast and just doing their thing.

Here are a bunch of photos from the last few days.

Today Leon installed an amazing dragonfly sculpture he created on the Douglas fir trunk! It is very cool!

Today I transplanted over 200 petunias–they are a scented, climbing variety and I’m hoping they get enough growth to be valuable for patio pots and filling in around the garden. And lots will be given away.

The memory garden is filling in quickly. The growth is miraculous, really. Where does it all come from? The photo on the left was from 2/26, and the one on the right is from today.

One of my favorite bulbs has reappeared for about the twelfth year in a row–my Fritillaria imperialis. The form is so interesting and the color is a bright spot in a shady spot under the Douglas fir.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Camellia in our garden. It has gotten completely out of hand in size and has adopted a poor shape. The flowers don’t make a nice show, typically, because I’ve neglected the shrub as a whole. But taken individually, I can find beauty in the flowers. It has two kinds–smaller ones that are less than double, and huge blooms that are very double. This year it must be stressed because most of the flowers are the smaller type.

Below are some Pleine flower pictures from the greenhouse this week–so fantastic and showy, somewhere between starlets and harlots.

For holiday gifts this year I took organic seed orders from two friends and pledged to provide them with starter plants in the spring. This is helping to motivate me to carefully time my seed starting and transplanting so I don’t have to go back on my word.

Today, I transplanted the first batch of seedlings–over 200 of them! They included some viola, nicotiana, leek, onion, shallot, cosmos, calendula, and two types of salvia.

To keep up with my commitments I had to start more seeds today, too, including kale, collards, spinach, two kinds of tomato, cucumbers, dill, and cilantro. There are other seeds that I will start tomorrow and next weekend.

I took a few more photos of things around the garden and greenhouse today, including the first open Cymbidium flower.

There are some beautiful things blooming in the garden and the neighborhood. Even downtown, I came across a beautiful magnolia street tree in full bloom.

Here at home, there are a few things budding and blooming in the greenhouse.

There are flowers outside, too, of course. Early March is pretty calm with just a few bright flowers here and there. But late March is a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors and interesting shapes. They don’t all get along tastefully but they provide a wake-up call after the gray and dreary winter.

I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday and I noticed some things blooming. Despite some very cold spells this past winter the flowers are coming fast and furious.

While my main focus for current and future gardening is native plants there are non-native ornamentals that add color in the winter.

Very few things bloom in January. Snowdrops are often starting to flower then. In mild years, some crocus, Pieris japonica, and hardy calendulas might be blooming. Hellebores also start blooming for us in January some years.

By the time February rolls through the snowdrops, hellebores, and Pieris are in full bloom. Toward the end of the month, Forsythia might be blooming and the winter hazels are starting to open. Crocus make a big show in February and the early narcissi are right behind. Camellias love a dry, warm February–they will burst into a riot of sometimes obnoxious color. Daphne laureola might be in bloom and might be adding a sweet fragrance as it colonizes innocent ground. Bergenia plants, usually hideously ragged after the winter wind and rain, throw up bright pink spikes in February. The rarer white and light pink forms are much prettier in flower but equally hideous in leaf.

Recently, the Erodium ‘Sweetheart’ plants I grew from Chiltern seeds are blooming shyly in February. Iberis will bloom this month, too, and Aubrieta. Corydalis solida will sometimes get some flowers open just at the end of the month, setting off the beautiful fresh mass of blue-green leaves.

My admiration of Pleione orchids has increased over the years as my original plants have increased and one new hybrid came into my life. Given that, I decided to add some new varieties to my collection. I found an excellent seller on eBay (787paulm) who offers different clones of these wonderful orchids. I ordered two new ones and when they arrived, Paul had thrown in a gift bulb for free.

Paul is local here and the bulbs landed very quickly–huge and healthy–bigger than any of my bulbs, and all of them have buds developing. I have no idea if they will actually flower. I potted them in moss gathered from the lawn with potting mix underneath. I’m particularly excited about the yellow hybrid, Golden Gate, as that will be very different from the pinks that I already own.

Pleione bulbs reproduce rapidly when they are happy. My bulbs produce multiple new bulbs and bulblets every year. The bulbs bloom the following year while the bulblets take several years to reach blooming size. There are enough of them for me to try some outside this year; they are hardy here (zone 8, 10 degrees). They would look nice in the woodland garden. Stay tuned for that experiment.