Plant Talk

The Challenge to See What's Gone Right In Our Gardens, Instead of All That's Gone Wrong...

It is such a satisfaction to find an absorbing book written so well that you read passages over and over just to hear them in your head....I'm loving a memoir by Oregon State University Creative Writing Professor Marjorie Sandor called The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction (the link is to amazon, but I got the book quite quickly from the public library...can't resist a plug for libraries....). It's the story of Sandor's remarriage, the purchase and care of a very old house, a fight for historic preservation in her Corvallis neighborhood...through it all runs the strong thread of her garden journal.

As in all the best chronicles of dailiness (M.F.K. Fisher and May Sarton come to mind), Sandor's garden journal is about the immediacy of life; she writes about the details of weather, bloom, digging in the dirt, changes of season. Her garden renews her, ties her to nature's rhythms, and at times discourages her.

Like with her list of all that's going wrong with her garden at the moment. Isn't that just like a gardener??? After such a lousy spring, along with the latest explosion of weeds, slugs and snails, it's so much easier to focus on how our gardens don't match our expectations. Take this slug-riddled hosta leaf - I promised myself I wouldn't let it happen this year, but here's proof the mollusks are winning yet again.

Sunshine magnifies what's going well out there, so I took my camera out into the garden last weekend in search of joyful incidents......wishing you happy moments in your own garden this week as we draw closer to the longest day of the year....

Busy honey bees on the allium....

The intrigue, mystery and pure potential of beautiful buds, like this poppy I can't remember planting (I think it's a poppy....)

The first salads of the year fresh from the garden...

And even though my sweet peas are lagging in this cold spring, the edible peas are blooming....

Rain-Soaked Greenlake Shows Signs of Spring to Revive the Spirit

I've never been so grateful to see the sun as I was yesterday afternoon; I literally ran to put on my sneakers and get to Greenlake for a walk with Bridget before the deluge set in again. On these last soggy days of winter, with increasingly devastating news from Japan, even an hour of sunlight felt like a blessing.

Spring arrives in the northern hemisphere this coming Sunday, when the sun crosses the celestial equator and for a brief moment day and night are of equal length. We've been reminded how connected we all are by the destruction and humanitarian disaster in Japan, let alone radiation released from its nuclear plants drifting our way. In times of grief and worry, nature's ancient rhythm of day and night being in balance all over the world is comforting.

As were the crocus, daffodils and ducks at Greenlake today. It's too chilly for the turtles to be out, but ducks wallowed in the new rain pond engulfing the golf greens, a heron meditated on the watery shores. The trees are still bare, but flowers are opening to remind us spring is nearly here...

On the cusp of spring, this still heron looks as if he might be contemplating warmer days to come...

Happy ducks paddle around on the golf course at the north end of the lake.

And yet...daffodils are opening and the crocus are in full and beautiful purple bloom in the soggy grass.

 

 

 

 

Edinburgh Springtime....Almost

My niece Hilary and her boyfriend Phil hit the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh in search of springtime; their photos look like Seattle did six to eight weeks ago in terms of bloom. Europe has had a chilly spring (and this was before the ash cloud), and Edinburgh is way up north at latitude 55, while we're basking down here at latitude 47. I spent a week in Edinburgh a couple of Mays ago, and have plenty of respect for the cold wind and volatile weather of that gorgeous and ancient city.

Hilary wrote "Unfortunately, it's still a bit scruffy over here... we're still waiting for spring to hit in full". In the meantime, the camellias and azaleas are at their peak...

 

Turtle Spring

The turtles of Greenlake have emerged from winter dormancy to reassure Seattleites that spring has truly, dependably arrived.

These self-contained, quiet creatures are steeped in mythology; for centuries, turtles have been considered to magically unite heaven and earth. They symbolize longevity, for they are long-lived and seemingly ageless. Turtles represent female energies and the primal Mother Earth. It is said that four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle hold up the world.

 All winter as Bridget and I circumnavigate the lake early in the morning, I keep watch for turtles on the logs near the shore. I saw my first sunbathing turtle just yesterday morning; a celebratory event captured on film by musician and fellow early-morning-lake-walker Lauralee Smith. The waters of Greenlake are warming up, the sun is sufficiently strong to coax the turtles out onto the logs - I hope we can all take a cue from these basking turtles and find a moment to revel in the pleasures of springtime. 

 

 

Spring on Whidbey

From this truck parked at the Island County Master Gardener's workshop in Coupeville yesterday, to Lynn Swanson's tiny red lamb, spring has arrived on the island...the workshop was a big success with more than 300 eager gardener participants, and the five- day-old lamb, one of several pairs of darling twins, is thriving nicely......

 

Spring Promenade

For at least a century, Seattleites have been celebrating spring with a promenade along Highland Drive on  Queen Anne Hill. With Kerry Park viewpoint at one end, and the lovely little hellebore-filled Parsons Garden at the other, with dozens of mature cherries in bloom in-between, this historic street is at its peak of beauty. The top of Queen Anne, with its many street trees, wide parking strips and older houses and gardens offers great gardening lessons and inspirations.

Set against the pale froth of cherries and plums, saturated colors warm up a spring morning; Dark purple hyacinths ('Kronos') golden daffodils with orange centers, rusty-red wallflowers (Erysimum ssp.) and the intense chartreuse of euphorbia are perfect foils to all the sweetness of spring. This shade of scented wallflower was used by Vita Sackville-West in her Sunset Garden at Sissinghurst Caste.

 

 

And from the sublime to the just plain wrong: An entire city block of rat-trap, aggressively spreading English ivy, sure to infest nearby parks. There are many old gardens plagued with ivy, but this is a brand new house, the "garden" planted a year or so ago...

 

And in the spirit of Plant Amnesty asking "What the.......???" Just because an older house, like so many on Queen Anne, is formal doesn't mean the garden needs to be sterile, trees tortured, or flowers lined up as if by a drill sergeant. What's with the alternating red-and-white, let alone those colors with the rusty brick?  The tree trunk you see tied up here is an unfortunate lollipop of a magnolia. It's like the homeowners set out to strip nature of any possible naturalness...

 

And here's formality done right - a cherry tree allowed to claim its magnificence, its full, glorious shape enhanced by the hedging.

Spring in Langley

Spring has heartrendingly beautiful moments everywhere, but especially in the country. My daughter and I took a long walk last weekend in Langley, and between the lambs, flowering trees, and near 60 degree weather, we were smitten with spring fever. Here, take a look - the lambs alone are enough to get us through the 3 weeks until the spring equinox...

Fruit tree in full bloom, its white blossoms matching the trim on the house

Daffodils in a garden on Al Anderson road

The convoluted architecture of an old Camperdown Elm in the cemetery

Mama sheep and a pile of lambs in the pasture along Park Avenue

Two adorable black and white babies born a couple of weeks ago

6 More Weeks of Winter?

No matter whether the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow this morning, spring has arrived early this year in our part of the country.  January was the warmest on record (kept since 1891) - Cliff Mass blogged that it was "April in January", supplies high temp numbers that spin your brain, and notes our average temps were warmer than those of Tallahassee, Florida!

I've lived in the Seattle area my entire life (I know, how dull....) and I never remember seeing forsythia in full flower by now, let alone daffodils budded and Iris reticulata blooming away. We're having average March temperatures, so no wonder Clematis armandii has been fooled into blooming.  I picked my first sprig on the last day of January....the narcissus in the photo are forced, the sweetly fragrant clematis just picked, its flowers open nearly two months ahead of normal bloom time...

 

Take a look at what really gives me hope for spring -  lambs in the Langley pastures already. We better hope we don't have terrible cold that'll harm these babies, born just last week....

Lilacs, birds, dogs and springtime

Right now is the moment lilac lovers wait for all year. For a brief few days (a bit extended this year because the weather remains so chilly) all the colors of lilacs are in bloom at once. As the white lilacs come on, the dark purples are opening and the paler purple ones are beginning to fade. It's the time to pick bouquets with all three major colors - what a delight. Nurseries are full of miniature lilacs ('Miss Kim') and novelty lilacs that bloom in summer, like the new Syringa x prestoniae 'Redwine', but my heart belongs to the big old-fashioned lilacs blooming around town.

I probably moved to Langley because it has more lilacs than any town I've ever seen.  You can walk anywhere around town this time of year and inhale the near-overpoweringly sweet scent of lilacs. Or you could if it ever warmed up a bit - the sun brings out lilac perfume.

Speaking of, the sun finally broke through the clouds Thursday afternoon, and here's my puppy Bridget sniffing the wind and enjoying the breeze blowing through her whiskers. There's nothing like a dog or cat to remind us how delicious spring can be if we pause long enough to enjoy it.

Would you say I'm crazy if I suggested that my new bird art, a glass piece by Whidbey artist Meredith MacLeod, purchased at Museo Gallery in Langley, is drawing more birds to my garden this year? Maybe they come to admire themselves in the piece's luminous reflectivity, or perhaps they take it as a sign of a bird-friendly garden....I saw my first goldfinch of the season last week, and now the garden is filled with hummers, goldfinches, sparrows and robins, all busily going about the business of singing, sipping, fluffing, and nest building. Meredith made the piece to go outdoors - that cool frame is solid cedar, and it's hung on the outside of the house.....

Coming Back to the Garden

There are  drawbacks to living elsewhere than in your own garden half the time. I commute between Seattle and my Langley garden, and many days I so want to duck outdoors and pick a bouquet, check on what's budding, or pull a few weeds.

Arriving in Langley on a sunny Wednesday afternoon made up for many moments of garden deprivation.  When your garden is right outside your windows every day, it's easy for your senses to dull a bit...to lose track of spring's slow unfolding. But when you're away for more than a week, springtime hits you over the head with its magic.

When I last left Langley, it was like winter - cold and wet, the garden bleak and nearly dormant. What a difference a few warm days in April makes...it was a great joy to find drifts of bright daffodils, 'Princess Irene' tulips opening to the sun, and ruffled Crown Imperial fritillaria finally bursting into bloom when I arrived back in Langley this afternoon. The peas are growing, the lettuces plumping up nicely. Well, see for yourself - the daffodils are mostly the orange-cupped Narcissus 'Serola'; the tulips 'Princess Irene' surrounding a little trellis of 'Sugar Snap' peas in the feed trough. The bottom photo is of the peacock-like Crown Imperial frittilaria just opening its orange bells.