Category: gardening

Nothing happier than crocuses in sunlight.

I love their orange innards – such a cheery burst of color.

Our ornamental plum tree on the patio is such a pathetic thing most of the year – one side is all scarred and lacks branches, and the rest of the tree still suffers from a horrendous pruning job years ago. But this is definitely the time of the year when you can look past all of its ugliness and focus on the beauty:

The blossoms are just so pretty.

All of the bulbs and plants in our yard are continuing to give me great joy. Last year, our yard was sort of overwhelming to me. This year, I feel slightly behind on the upkeep, but my sense of potential is back full force and I’m excited about all of the growing and planting and doing. Here’s a view of three minutes walking around the yard with a camera on the way to work this morning:

The minidaffodils in the rock wall continue to delight. I need to plant more of these. (This is the third year I’m saying this, but I’m actually writing it in my calendar for October this year, so maybe I will remember.)

Note also the periwinkle (one patch of about fifty).

You can see this crocus/tulip mix from our bedroom – gorgeous.

There are actually two groups of it (one in front of each pine tree) which is probably just as well, since one or the other seems to be in a state of perpetual carnage.

Dumb squirrels.

Our tree by the patio is all pink and blooming! Impossible to photograph (maybe Kevin would have more luck with fancy lenses?) but it’s such a pretty thing to look at when you come into the living room first thing in the morning or at the end of the workday.

Back through the house: the daffodils on the side of the house are starting to bloom! My policy is if they get top heavy and fall into the dirt, then I cut them and put them by the kitchen sink in the vase from our wedding reception. 🙂

Cheerful as all get out. I planted another 40 last fall, but still more would be awesome. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as too many daffodils.

In the front yard on the way to the car, the camellias are blooming!!!

That deserves a multitude of exclamation points, since both of the last two springs we’ve gotten a bloom or two max. Looks like pruning them when I did last year was the right time – I think that was June? Right now most of the blooms are tucked in against the house, but there’s a great view of them from the baby’s room. The white bush is also loaded with buds.

And our “once every three weeks whether it needs it or not” style of mowing is utterly insufficient.

Close up, with morning dew, it looks awfully pretty though.

I took an afternoon trip over to Molbak’s (the enormous nursery and garden center in Woodinville) since all of their bulbs were 25% off. They have a café, so I got H to sleep in the Moby wrap while I walked around, then I had a Salmon Pesto Goat Cheese Pizza (yum), and then I did a second pass to actually collect my purchases.

I’d been vaguely hoping to do some winter vegetable container gardening, but it seems like most of the things I’d be most interested in eating should have been planted in the summer. Oops. I’ll do some onions and garlic, and I got some pretty ornamental cabbages to fill the remainder of the space.

I am so, so excited about the bulbs. There are more daffodils to add to the patch outside the kitchen window, since those were so cheery and happy last year. I‘m going to put the pink and yellow Blushing Beauty tulips in a container along with the Pink Frosting tulip/daffodil mix. They‘ll go on the patio. The purple crocuses will go with the purple tulips and white mini daffodils in small groups around the patio and possibly in our rock wall. And then the bright Early Spring bulbs can go in groups under the pines outside our bedroom window. I‘m not sure how they‘ll like the acidic soil, but it‘s worth a shot.

I’m always better at buying bulbs than actually getting them into the ground, but my goal is to have them in sometime in the next two weekends. The daffodils are supposed to be relatively squirrel proof, and then I just have my fingers crossed on the tulips and crocuses — if they ever make it, it will be a gorgeous welcome to spring next year.

It’s quickly starting to feel like fall, but our rose bushes are continuing to bloom, undaunted. The pink ones set forth a whole cascade of blooms two weeks ago.

They’re hard to see from the house, since they’re at a hidden spot between windows, so I was so happy that we caught them as the blooms all burst.

And then the yellow rose budded and bloomed again.

I’m so glad I didn’t tear out these bushes last summer – they are zero work and such a happy surprise whenever the flowers appear.

Meanwhile, the hydrangeas are still going. The two in the front yard are slowly fading (they started blooming in late June and early July!), but the lace hydrangea in our sideyard is beautifully blooming still. I’ve been cutting flowers from the back face of it to bring into the house – in a bowl they look so pretty, and they last for weeks.

This one’s been on the coffee table in the family room since Kevin’s family visited, and we have another that’s been going strong in the kitchen for over a week. I keep checking, sure that they must be moldering in the water, only to find that they’re still beautiful.

PS: Kevin took all of these photos, plus one of his two-flash photo set up. Neat!

More awesome flower photography from Kevin!

We have rose bushes on the back side of the house. They’re in a slightly odd position because you can’t really see them from indoors – it’s only when you’re doing yard work at the back corner that you notice they’re there. Last year, I’d debated pulling them out and replacing them with something a little bit more productive. But several people pled for sparing them after seeing photos, so I left them in. With all the hot weather this year, they seem so much happier and they just exploded in flowers last week.

It seems that near-total neglect suits them. This bush had grown to about 10 feet tall last year in two spindly branches, so I cut it back to about 5’ at the beginning of the fall, and cut back again to the highest buds of new growth in the early spring. Otherwise, I haven’t touch them (including watering).

The flowers are the prettiest salmon color, with accents of yellow and pale pink when the sun shines through them. They’re completely spectacular, and I’m so glad I didn’t tear them out.

The plants on the patio are actually producing! The first bit of a crop, picked while Sharon was here:

The strawberries are doing great in their pot. Last year they didn’t really produce, but there are a lot more berries and flowers in the wings, and I’m feeling very pleased with them.

The beans are a bit confusing to me. I feel like the plants should be spending their energy growing and they can produce later, but I don’t know how to convey this to them. Each plant (I have two) put out a few beans when it was so hot a few weeks ago. The plants are still mid-to-small in size, and now they each have several more baby beans. Any ideas on whether to cut off the baby beans now, or just let them grow?

The pea vines are the most pathetic. They’re each about a foot tall, and they also produced 1-2 peas each during our hot streak. So you have these sad little vines (with half dead leaves from our hot week) with a big plump peapod on the upper end.

They seem happy (green, firm) in a stunted kind of way, but if anyone has thoughts on magical pea growing tricks, I’m all ears.

10 points to anyone who can tell me the name of this flower:

They’re big (a good 8-10 inches across), and the name has been on the tip of my tongue for weeks now. Whatever they are, they’re beautiful. The blooms are far too heavy for the stalks, so they tend to drape themselves languorously over the nearby azaleas, and in some cases just rest their heads directly on the driveway.

Sensational, showy things, and such a pretty color.