Plant Talk

Halloween Scenes from Crows to Country Pumpkin Stands

Happy Halloween - The south end of Whidbey Island's rural roots are clearly on show this time of year...

Langley decks itself out for Halloween, from a road-side pumpkin stand to a murder of crows for the holiday....

 

 

 

An honor system pumpkin stand - You put your money in the box , and help yourself...

A metal crow, as slim and dark as a shadow, by island artist Tim Leonard seemingly gloats over his pile of pumpkins in Sharen Heath's front garden.

A murder of crows, so real looking you expect them to flutter and caw, at Useless Bay Coffee Company on 2nd Street...

And my favorite pumpkin scene, at a house up the hill from town on Third Street...see the nasturtium winding its way through the woodpile?

 

Fall Color Just off the Freeway? Lake Sacajawea Park in Longview is Ablaze...

You don't have to drive up into the mountains to relish the color of changing leaves - just veer off I-5 on your way to or from Portland and enjoy a walk around Lake Sacajawea in the heart of....Longview? This logging town at the confluence of the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers might not strike you as a tourist destination, but it was one of the first planned communities in the country, and it's 120 acre park is a beauty.

Lake Sacajawea Park is a little like Seattle's Greenlake, with a trail leading around a lake, and plenty of majestic trees. Right now, brilliant leaves are blowing everywhere, herons and cormorants, ducks and geese are flying overhead and hanging out on the islands in the lake. The park is beautifully cared for, and the well-groomed trail leads over bridges, past fountains, and a fenced Japanese garden on a little promontory. Unlike Greenlake, the trail isn't at lake-level, but offers an elevated view of the lake sunken below it. Lawns slope down to the water, and the trail is a perfect perch to admire watery reflections of huge maples blazing orange and red - fall color doubled in intensity.

On a recent wet and blustery day I walked around the lake...here are a few scenes that might tempt you south for a visit....the leaves were so multi-colored and freshly blown that the scene beneath our feet was nearly as brilliant as the one overhead and all around us...

Moody skies and trees reflected in the lake looks like a quintessentially English Capability Brown landscape

The Buddha at the entry gate to the little Japanese garden

A maple tree doing its thing

The view from the trail...

This cormorant seems to enjoy its view of the fountain...it sat here preening and spreading its wings for much of our walk

 

Check out Whidbey Institute's Upcoming Food Conference, Today on Crosscut...

“Food is a way into our souls,” says Whidbey Institute Executive Director Jerry Millhon. “We’re taking on food first, because it’s important to get the gut taken care of with dignity.”

Read my story about the Whidbey Institute's first Thriving Communities Conference, planned to help small communities build local, sustainable food systems....it's posted on Crosscut this morning...and if you're not a Crosscut subscriber and supporter...here's your chance..

Homecoming - Settling Into the House with Flowers and Foliage

Every week when I arrive on Whidbey Island from Seattle - usually first thing on Thursday morning - I head out into the garden. I know I should put away the groceries, check the mail, unload the dishwasher....but I can never wait even a moment to see what's happened in the few days I've been gone. While it's frustrating and sometimes sad not to live with my garden full-time, this thrill of discovery, of returning, never dims...I come to the garden fresh every week.

Today I still found raspberries, which have grown small but very sweet as if they contain all of summer's concentrated sunshine, and a few 'Sungold' tomatoes still hanging on the vine. I'm surprised at the flowers; helenium, hydrangea, an abundance of nasturtiums, hardy fuchsia, Verbena bonariensis, a dahlia or two and agastache are still blooming despite the cold nights...I've brought along some bright orange puffs of Japanese lantern (Physalis alkekengi), bought in Seattle, to add to the mix.

I smooth the transition from condo to house with a ritual of picking flowers, foliage, pods, branches - whatever I can find. I bring them in, plunk them into a big jug of water to hydrate, then think about how I'll arrange them while I go about all the tasks of settling back into the little Whidbey house. Then I make a cup of tea, and arrange a few bouquets so that I feel like the house is inhabited....it's a comfort ritual, pure and simple and as effective as lighting a candle, reading a book in bed, or taking a hot bath...are these left over from childhood? Probably, which is why they are soothing...

Between a spray of coral bark maple leaves in a slim black vase on the kitchen windowsill and a trio of bouquets for the bookshelves, coffee table, and bedroom, I feel at home, and can, finally, concentrate on finishing up my column for the week...

 

 

My Mother's Garden

My mother always grew a winter flowering cherry (Prunus autumnalis) outside of her kitchen window so she could be cheered by its pale pink flowers while she worked at the sink. With four kids, she spent more time than she would have liked to in the kitchen.

She was a dedicated gardener, ahead of her time in her love of drought-tolerant and native plants. But I most remember her colorful exbury azalea hedge at the top of the rockery, her prolific hydrangeas grown huge on a diet of manure from my Dad's racing pigeons, and the Sweet William she uncharacteristically loved and always grew.

My Mom died before I became much of a gardener myself - she would have been 91 years old today - Happy Birthday Mom...I never told you how your garden forms my earliest memories, how I carry it in my heart and my very bones....

 

Time To Bring Tender Plants Indoors for Winter

Want to keep your tender succulents, begonias, scented-leaf geraniums and brugmansias safe through the winter? None of these plants can take a hard freeze, and even a light frost can be fatal...so it's time to cut back, dig up, re-pot, and drag indoors. We usually don't get a frost until mid-November, but if the last few winters have taught us anything it's to expect the unexpected...One recent autumn, when temperatures were predicted to plunge, I missed an important meeting because I had to drive up to Whidbey Island to wrap my tree fern...now I try not to be lulled by 50 degree days and plan a little further ahead.

I keep most succulents on the windowsill or near a window in the house and enjoy them as houseplants through the winter - just don't overwater. The scented-leaf geraniums spend the winter months by the window in the bathroom, where they release their spicy perfume when the room is warm and steamy. They usually look pretty ratty by spring, but they survive. I cut the brugmansia way back, drag it into the garage and let it go dormant (meaning water it about once a month). Dahlias, gunnera, and melianthus just get a thick mulch; I've given up on tree ferns.

It's well worth the trouble to bring favorite plants inside - this showy Aeonium arboreum var. atropurpureum 'Schwarzkopf' has spent the last couple of winters indoors by a window, where it's grown tall, leggy and ostrich-like. It happily summers outside holding pride of place on the front porch...

Winning Photos from Renee's Garden Seeds

Glaring sun, passing clouds, gloomy dark days and wind, most of all, are daily challenges faced by garden photographers. After spending years following professional photographers around gardens, and now taking photos myself for this blog, my respect for the skill, patience and intuitive feeling for nature needed to take really good photos has only grown. I can't tell you how often I've just given up and come back indoors, discouraged. Thank goodness for iPhoto to get rid of shadows, blurry edges and too much contrast...but even the program on my brand new computer can't work miracles....

The winners of Renee's Garden Seeds photography contest don't appear to have needed any such help - their photos are really impressive. Maggie Ferguson of Auburn Hills, MI was the first place winner with Torch Tithonia, a butterfly magnet of an heirloom annual. Her photo, showing the sunflower's orange petals from the underside, is as luminous as a stained glass window.

Sunzilla sunflower by Kimberly Diffenderfer of Sunbury, PA, showcased crisply against a background of sky and clouds....can you spot the tiny flying bug (is it a bee?) heading toward the flower?

Bright Lights Chard, shot by Meighan Makarchuk of New Westminster B.C., Canada, proves how beautiful edibles can be...

Sunflowers must be particularly inspiring...this 'Lemon Queen', shot by Lorrie Cook of Farmingdale, NY, looks more sci fi than garden-esque, showing how photos can draw us in to look closely and see familiar flowers in new ways...

Isn't that gorgeous? Thanks to Renee for sponsoring the contest, and to her Seattle sister and webmaster Sue Shecket for sharing the photos for this post...

 

A Few Flowers for a Bouquet as the Garden Fades Away

It takes awhile to pick a bouquet now it's October, for it means poking about in every corner of the garden to fill even a medium-sized vase. A flower here, a flowering grass there, to tuck into a square, green glass vase.

One of the last mophead hydrangea heads, a bronze Rudbeckia hirta 'Autumn Colors' and a bright golden, chocolate-centered R. hirta are the showy elements. These brazen flowers are fluffed out and blended with the leaves and flat seed heads of sea oats grass (Chasmanthium latifolium) and the stiff spikes of violet-flowered Verbena bonariensis. The colors, shape, and chocolate centers of the rudbeckias are echoed in the much smaller Helenium autumnale.....

 

 

Folk Art Sculpture - But Will The Tree Survive?

   I'll just start by admitting I was hiking up Queen Anne hill for a scoop of  the salted caramel ice cream at the new Molly Moon's on Galer Street, when I spotted this very cool wooden sculpture encasing the trunk of a maple sapling. It was obviously built with great care, layer upon wooden layer artistically askewed. There's even a little birdhouse...but will the tree live enshrouded in wood? Will it get enough water penetrating its roots, and will there be enough air circulation to keep the trunk healthy?

Maybe because wood breathes and absorbs water, the tree will be okay....I hope so, because I love seeing such creativity expressed on a parking strip, with a tree as centerpeice...

And the salted caramel was delicious, but the Vivace coffee ice cream was even more amazing...and then there's the Theo chocolate, let alone the watermelon sorbet...the new Molly Moon's is at 321 Galer atop Queen Anne.

 

A Mellow Hydrangea and Dahlia Bouquet

Japanese maples and smoke bushes may be turning to flame, but the rest of the garden is gently (or not so gently depending on wind, rain and cold) fading away. It was only after I picked these dahlias, 'Annabelle' hydrangeas, grass spikes and snake root, and pulled them together with a few cherry tomatoes to dangle down the side of the vase, that I realized how much the colors had mellowed from the hot autumn hues of a few weeks ago. These gentler colors seem to reflect the pearly light, soft mists and gray skies of mid-October.

The rich bordeau color of the wooden vase (lined with a glass so it won't leak), and the bright little orbs of 'Sungold' tomatoes, as well as the golden dahlias from my neighbor's garden (a trade for the last of my raspberries) warm up the white coneflowers, fragrant pale flower wands and dark foliage of Actea simplex 'Brunette' and the fading-to-green hydrangea heads. The spiky striped grass is a dwarf Miscanthus sinensus 'Zebrinus' from Joy Creek Nursery, and the burgundy leaves are from a lacecap hydrangea that's finished blooming..