Bonney Lassie

The Aftermath of the Storm

2012-01-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have heard about the crazy weather we've had in the PNW this past week. The week started with on-and-off snow, which changed over on Thursday to an ice storm, which brought down trees and power lines all over the region. For a while over 250,000 customers (individual and business) in Washington state were without electricity and/or heat. That included us. Our power came back on Friday night at about 10:30, after being off for about 40 hours.

The back garden early in the week (pretty, huh?)

Fortunately we had a gas stove, which we could light with a match to cook and to warm up the kitchen area (it's an open plan house more or less, so kitchen area means a fairly large space). Some of that warmth made it up to the second floor of the house, but unfortunately, not into the bedroom. But I had a nice fluffy duvet and a husband to snuggle with in there at night.

And for entertainment I had my Kindle during the daylight hours, which was fully powered up with a couple of books that I hadn't read before.

During the ice storm, ornamental grasses and perennials in the front garden became encased in ice.

A hanging basket in the front, which until the storm had kinda sorta been hanging onto life

English laurel bent over by the heavy weight of the ice

All day Friday, as things thawed, we could hear all around the snap, crackle, plop of huge chunks of ice, snow, limbs and small branches falling off trees. A lot of them landed in my back yard, littering the stream.

Douglas fir branches -- they smell like Christmas, but what a mess!

The stream, running again now that the power's back on, but clogged with twigs and branches

Another corner of the garden where branches fell in abundance

And in the front, I lost a tree between us and the neighbors. Do you know that cutting off the leader trunk of a tree is called topping it? And in England, committing suicide is called "topping oneself?" Well, this tree topped itself.

Top half on the right -- bottom half, the rest of the trunk, on the left.

This is the same tree that I lost a couple of limbs from earlier this year. So although technically the bottom half of the tree is still alive, it's truly not long for this world. I figure I now have a good excuse to replace it.

Well, if you don't hear from me in a while, it's because I'm on clean-up duty. I prefer a somewhat tidy garden.

In the meantime -- Hurry up, Spring!

About My Mom

2012-01-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

A warning to readers: This is a very personal, family-related post. If you came here looking for gardening info, then you might not be interested in reading this post.

Still here? Good. Give me a big hug.

Some of you may remember my series of family-related posts from a couple of months ago, when I visited my mom in Massachusetts to celebrate her 90th birthday. We all had a good time, and at the party we managed to surprise her with a bagpipe player.

Well, my mom passed away on Christmas Day, December 25, 2011, at the Kaplan Hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts, surrounded by family members that she loved. I wasn't there, unfortunately, although I have no doubt that she loved me, and that she knew I loved her too.

Despite the fact that she never smoked a single day of her life, she had been suffering from COPD for a few years now. She awoke one night a couple of weeks before Christmas, unable to breathe, and asked my brother-in-law to take her to the hospital. She was there for a couple of weeks, while they tried to adjust the many medicines that she was taking. She was given a choice of going to rehab or to a local hospice to try to recuperate. Finally, she requested that they send her to the hospice. I truly thought she would be there for only a few days, and would be home again with my sister perhaps by Christmas Day.

But instead, her condition declined. My sister called me here in Washington to let me know she was not getting better. But my mind rebelled. I thought she would rally, and I didn't want to believe the worst. I was in shock. I felt paralyzed. Maybe I should have gotten on a plane immediately. But I didn't, and I wasn't there when she passed.

My mom, Margaret (Withers) Scott, exploring a garden. I think she looks about three years old here.

My mom didn't believe in making a fuss about anything. You know how sometimes people talk of someone's temper having a short fuse? Well, I'm not sure my mom's temper even had a fuse. She seldom talked of her own feelings -- in fact, she was the type who denied having them. I spoke with my brother-in-law while I was at my sister's sorting my mom's things, and he mentioned that whenever she went with them to Bible study, and the talk turned to how she felt, she would always speak in the third person. "Well, people sometimes feel..." Never "I feel..." That was her way of distancing herself from her own anger, doubt, fear, even love. And she seldom if ever asked how other people felt. I don't think she wanted to know, but not because she didn't care. Because it would have brought her own feelings too close to the surface.

I don't know if that was a result of her upbringing, or her nature. I do know I am like her, except for the temper part. I have a very long fuse, but when it goes, it really explodes over something that appears to be minor. I do remember once -- when I was being a typical moody teenager -- my dad saying that he wished I was more even-tempered like her.

My mom is on the bottom right, with school friends.

Growing up, sometimes her motherly advice was hard to take, and often contradictory. Here's an example. Both sentences came up in the same conversation. "You're not smart enough to attract a smart man." "Men don't like smart women." I got that advice when I was in my early 20s, and I still don't quite know what to make of it. I think I did attract a smart man, and I don't think he minds that I'm not a dumb blonde (although he would like me to lose some weight).

My mom in a raccoon coat

I found a little slip of paper in one of my mom's dresser drawers, amongst the myriad addresses of friends and other random papers, including some that were completely empty. I don't know where she got it, but she kept it because she thought it was important. Here's what it said.

"Speaking of the tongue, that tiny portion of the human anatomy which is so hard for many people to control, there are a couple of proverbs it would be wise to heed. The first says: 'A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.' A harsh or false word, a confidence revealed, an unkind remark, once expressed cannot be taken back. The second proverb says: 'Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.' A gently clever bit of good advice!"

It seemed to me that passage epitomized my mom, and was her final piece of motherly advice.

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For info about the Kaplan Family Hospice House, click here. By all accounts, they gave great care to my mother in her last days.

For info about COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), click here.

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And to my dear brother-in-law, if you're reading this (and I know you are), don't worry about my grieving process. It's private, and it's buried deep, but it will surface eventually (this post is part of it). Just take good care of my sister, I know she's stressed right now beyond measure.

A Christmas Video

2011-12-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

Cause what says Merry Christmas better than half-nekkid British sailors singing a Christmas song?

What I Did on My Birthday

2011-12-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Today, December 22, is my birthday. Shall I tell how old I am? I'll whisper it. 56.

Me when I was cute.

I had a great birthday.

It started with being allowed to sleep late, till 9:30. I've been suffering from insomnia lately, so sleeping late was a sweet indulgence. On a normal day, despite my insomnia, I'm up at 6:40 to drive Nigel to the train station, but Nigel's group at work has started working at home on Thursdays, which -- hooray for me! -- coincided with my birthday.

So my day started with me stumbling downstairs into the kitchen, still a bit bleary-eyed, searching for coffee. What do I see but a card and a packet of chocolates waiting for me on the kitchen table. Fran's salted caramels, my favorite. Fran's is a Seattle institution.

My birthday breakfast (the Network World mug is a relic of my former life as an editor)

The card was perfect.

Not flowery and sentimental and overdone. Just simple wishes for a simple day. Which is just what I had.

What did I do on my birthday?

Did laundry. Cleaned the refrigerator (Ugh! It needed it). Cleaned the oven (It's self-cleaning, so all I had to do really was press some buttons and wipe the ash off at the end). Washed some dishes, and thoroughly scoured the kitchen sink when I was done. Went out in the garage to check on my latest projects. Wandered around the intarwebs (wasted time on Pinterest). Went out in the early afternoon with Nigel for a latte and a blueberry scone. Read a book (Blood Harvest by S.J. Bolton).

When I was young I would have been astounded if someone had told me that a perfect day for me would be one spent indulging in blissful domesticity. I thought finding enjoyment in housekeeping was a betrayal of my feminist principles (it isn't).

In the evening Nigel and I went out to a local restaurant called HG Bistro for a lovely meal.

Please forgive the bad cell phone photography.

My dinner companion

Our appetizer, crostini with Brie and smoked pork with cole slaw and balsamic reduction

My entree, lamb chops (medium rare) with bean and lentil ragout

Dessert, lemon lava cake (so good!)

Now, while I type up this blog post, Nigel is downstairs playing a video game. There is one last load of laundry waiting to be put away. And I'm hoping the "peaceful dreams to end the day" are in my future.

Happiness is a clean kitchen sink and a good night's sleep.

More of That Cement Craftiness

2011-12-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

Are you sick of my projects yet? Except for some lackluster preparations for Christmas, this is just about all that's going on here. I thought since it's winter and I can't do any real gardening anyway, I might as well concentrate on some craft projects.

I do have one plant still blooming out in my garden -- A Sheffield Mum. But they probably won't last much longer.

Here's how some of my last projects turned out.

The Medallions:

Can you see a lady's face in there?

Fleur-de-lis

The Hanging Ornaments: Only three of them came out of the molds in one piece, the fourth isn't going to come out without some persuasion by a hammer.

Lump with Leaf Impressions:

I have also done a couple of other projects with cement. I used a little glass bowl to make a round plant container.

I put the cement in, and then pushed a Styrofoam ball wrapped in plastic wrap into it.

The top edge is a bit wonky, I wonder if I can file it smooth?

The trouble with using glass bowls is you have to break them to get the item out, so they are one use only. Good thing they only cost a couple of dollars at the thrift store. I wrapped it in a trash bag, and then gave it a few whacks with a hammer. It released very easily. I put on leather gloves to lift it out of the bag. If you do this, be careful not to cut yourself on the broken glass shards.

The other item I made was a lump with a deep leaf impression in the center from the little leaf-shaped glass bowl I had, and then real leaf impressions along the edges. It didn't come out perfect, but it's ok.

I still have lots more ideas for things to make with cement, so I hope you're not all bored stiff yet...

What I Made Today With Portland Cement

2011-12-15T20:54:00.000-08:00

Actually, with stepping stone mix from the craft store.

I did manage to drag Nigel to Lowe's to pick up two 50-lb. bags of cement, but I also had a couple of packages of stepping stone mix, so I thought I would start out with some small projects first and see how they went. This mix is a combination of silica sand and Portland cement (I wore a dust mask when I mixed it).

I've been scouring the Internet lately for interesting craft projects, and ideas for things to make with cement. Actually, I've been on Pinterest, checking out lots of craft projects, and this one caught my eye. Making lace ornaments with Sculpey clay.

Not my photo, it belongs to the blog Whimsy Love

I wanted to try to adapt it for making ornaments with cement.

I poured/pressed the wet cement into round metal cookie cutters that I had smeared Vaseline all over as a release agent. I also put Vaseline on the plastic under the cookie cutters, and then pressed them into it, to keep the cement from oozing out under the metal ring.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the lace to make a good impression in the cement. So I just used a straw to make a hole for hanging and then pressed a flower stamp into it (the flower stamp was designed for making impressions in stepping stones). When they dry I hope to maybe hang them from my trees.

I also made some small stepping stones with small food storage containers.

The little butterfly shape on the left was a stepping stone stamp, and the one on the right was made using a butterfly-shaped cookie cutter. The little circle and leaf mosaic pieces came from the craft store, and the leaves came from a house plant (a false Aralia).

I used some soap molds to make cement medallions. Here's what they look like filled with cement.

You can probably tell that one in the middle is a fleur-de-lis.

Here's what it looks like on the other side. I had to call Nigel in from the other room to hold it up, I had forgotten to get a picture of it before I filled it.

Sorry it's such a bad pic, it was hard to get the light right and to get a good angle.

Close-up of the fleur-de-lis

One of the round shapes is a cameo

Another tray of soap molds

I hope some of this detail comes out in the cement.

I plan to use the medallions on cement pots, which I haven't even made yet. Wishful thinking, I guess.

And of course, my final project with this batch of cement was the inevitable lump of cement in a pizza box, with a leaf impression.

I didn't realize the cement would retain so much of its shape when patted out into a circle. I may try making more small hanging ornaments without the cookie cutters, just patting them out into small rounds.

They are now hanging out in the garage wrapped in plastic to slowly cure, along with my previous concrete projects. I better make sure I can still fit the car in.

I've been scouring thrift stores lately, looking for good bowls to make molds/pots. Here are some that I found for quite cheaply, between $1.99 and $6.99.

I think this basket/salad bowl will make a great hypertufa succulent bowl!

This one has great vertical sides for showing off all those medallions!

This is the bottom half of a salad spinner. The spinner mechanism no longer worked, so now I have a colander for the kitchen, and this for making pots. Two for the price of one!

I couldn't pass this up -- it's a great mold for another cool succulent container!

In a couple of days my projects will be ready for unmolding. I'm feeling much happier about this bunch!

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Have you heard of Pinterest, by the way? It's another way to waste time on the web. This link should take you to my Pin Boards.

Concrete Results

2011-12-10T12:05:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I unmolded all the concrete things I made earlier this week, that I posted about here. I left everything in plastic bags for three days. The instructions say you only need two, but I decided to give things an extra 24 hours. I started with the ones that I had made with the concrete that I added more water to.

Surprisingly, they did not crumble into dust, and the molds released them quite easily. They did produce quite a lot of dust, and a few chunks did come off them as well, in spots.

This little pot with a square hole lost a chunk off the rim when I took the square bottle out that made the impression.

And two of the bricks lost chunks off their corners.

I don't really like that Swiss cheese texture. Even though these were made with the much more runny mix, they still have lots of these holes.

One of the bricks had a butterfly-shaped mold pressed into it. You can see the butterfly shape, but it's crude and rough-edged. I really want something that allows for details to show more.

And the one that I made with the drier mix that I pressed a deep glass leaf-shaped bowl into didn't come out showing much detail either.

Can you tell this is a leaf shape?

The container that I made that was a plain bowl looks like just a lump of concrete.

The edges are really rough.

There is a small void in the bottom of it. I might have avoided this if I had really shaken the container and maybe poked it with a stick, but actually I just think the mix was so dry that nothing would have helped.

I made one star with the dry mix.

And then I made five more with the wetter mix.

Here's the small birdbath. It might look better once I adorn it a bit.

Here's the picture from the book Concrete Garden Projects that I based this birdbath on.

Interestingly, the project that I like the best is the throwaway one that I made at the end when I was just trying to use up the rest of the mix -- the lump of concrete in a pizza box.

You can see the veins from the leaf that I pressed into it.

But the leaf edges aren't so hot.

There is one thing that I am confused about. Many of the items are shiny where the concrete touched the air. (They were all wrapped up in plastic bags.) I'm not sure what's going on there, but I don't like the shininess.

Thanks to everyone for your encouragement! You have no idea how very much I appreciate it. Despite my tone of unhappiness with this batch of projects, I am actually pleasantly surprised that they didn't all crumble to nothing. I'm not sure what I'll do with them when they are finished. They are all wrapped up again in black plastic bags, and I intend to mist them every day to keep them in a humid environment. According to concrete "lore" that is the best way to make sure they cure and become as hard as possible.

Next up: Portland cement. I think that might be a better medium for the detail I want in the molds. So I am off today to Lowe's with the husband to buy some. Maybe I better take advantage of him, and get two bags. I'll ply him with coffee and a cookie.

My Hypertufa Projects -- Part Two and Beyond

2011-12-06T22:57:00.001-08:00

Have you been waiting with bated breath to see how my hypertufa projects came out?

On Sunday, this is what happened when I tried to unmold the birdbath.

Total Structural Discontinuity!

I don't know what went wrong. It didn't break, it just crumbled to pieces, looking much more like just plain damp peat moss than anything else. I was a bit worried that I had used too much water. I've read that less water is better, it makes for a stronger bond with the Portland cement. However, it is also true that I ordered this mix ready-made, so I don't really know what the proportions of Portland cement to peat moss and vermiculite were. All of the others crumbled in exactly the same way, so into the trash they went!

Aw -- pause here so you can all make a sad face with me...

Anyway, I immediately roped my husband Nigel into accompanying me to Lowe's, where he very kindly hoisted a 50-lb. bag of Quikrete concrete into the car and then into the garage for me. I swear there were about 10 or 20 different kinds of concrete, all in different colored bags and all saying fast-setting. I couldn't figure out what the differences were, and I didn't want to stand there in Lowe's reading each bag to figure it out. I like red so I picked that one.

Here's the problem with getting a 50-lb. bag -- the instructions say to add a half-gallon of water to the entire contents and mix. But how much can you make with 50 lbs of concrete? A lot! I didn't really want to mix all of it up, but I couldn't figure out how much water to add to, say, 4 measuring cups of mix. Have I mentioned that math is not my strong suit?

So I gathered up all the molds I could, and mixed up the entire bag. I redid the birdbath.

A few days ago at the thrift store I found a cute little glass bowl shaped like a leaf, with the veins on the outside of the bowl. Perfect for making a deep leaf impression!

Then I made a concrete bowl. I put a layer on the bottom and then put that smaller bowl inside the larger one, and then tried to smush the concrete in around it. It ended up a little off-center, and was very messy work. You know how much of a mess you make when you repot a plant, and have to try to fill all around the root ball of the plant with new soil? And it gets all over whatever surface you're working on?

Does it look dry to you?

The mix seemed very dry to me. It was more like wet gravel than the concrete that I think of as pouring out of a concrete truck or in a mixer. But I left it as it was in those three molds, and added a little more water to the rest that was in the bin where I had mixed it up.

Unfortunately, at this point I think I added too much water. It ended up very runny.

I made this, which will hopefully turn out to be a cute pot with a square center.

And then I made a big brick with a votive in it.

My plan originally was to use letter blocks to make words in the brick. I wanted to use a quote from a Dylan Thomas poem.

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower."

But when I pushed the letters into the mix, and pulled them out, the mix just slumped back into the space. So I gave up on that, and just made bricks. I had originally planned to break up the poetry quote into chunks, and put them on each brick.

A big brick

And a small brick

And another small brick

And I still hadn't used all the concrete. So I made a lump in a pizza box.

I went back a little while later and pressed a Brugmansia leaf into the lump.

I'm feeling a little discouraged. All the websites with cool concrete projects make it look so easy. It hasn't been, at least for me. It takes some learning, and refining.

In another two days, I'll know how successful today's experiments were. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Here's the entire Dylan Thomas poem.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

It's a bit morbid, isn't it? It suits my pessimistic feelings about today's concrete endeavors.

My Hypertufa Projects, Part One

2011-12-02T17:42:00.001-08:00

Well, I did it. I put on my big girl panties this afternoon, set up a folding table in the garage, and took a stab at making stuff with hypertufa. I decided to work in the garage because although we don't have any snow, it has been rather cold lately, with temps barely making it into the low 40s.

I've been gathering supplies for a while. My plan was to make a rectangular birdbath, similar to the one from the book Concrete Garden Projects.

This one is square, but I decided to make mine rectangular, and to offset the circular birdbath depression.

I started with buying some hypertufa mix from Dirt Couture. Concrete and Portland cement comes in 50-lb. bags at Lowe's or Home Depot, but I didn't want to bother trying to wrestle with that kind of weight. It was just easier to order a 7-lb. bag.

Hypertufa, sometimes just called tufa, is a mix of Portland cement, vermiculite and peat moss. When mixed with water and then molded into forms like troughs, it looks very much like a natural limestone rock called tufa. Natural tufa can be drilled into and used for rock garden plants. Hypertufa has a much rougher surface than cement or concrete, but it is much lighter and it also makes a good growing surface for moss.

Here are some of the other supplies I knew I'd need.

A clean dishwashing bin to mix the tufa in


Kitchen utensils for mixing and smoothing the surface (these will be dedicated for use with concrete and cement)

A silicone cupcake pan for making star shapes

Water, Pam and rubber gloves

A small cake pan to push into the mix to make a depression for the birdbath

Half marbles to make a mosaic design along the edges.

I dumped the dry hypertufa mix into the dishpan, and then gradually stirred water into it. I might have used a little too much water. The instructions said it should look like wet cookie dough, and should hold together when you squeeze a ball of it in your hand. It did, but a little bit of water also ran out when I squeezed it.

Doesn't really look like cookie dough to me. Brownie batter maybe.

I might have made it a little too wet, the water tended to pool in spots when it sat for a few minutes.

I started out by filling one star shape in the silicone mold, and then sprayed a good amount of Pam all over the bottom and sides of the rectangular container that I was using to make the birdbath.

I used way more Pam than I would ever use for a cake. I am so afraid that when the time comes, the mold won't release it.

Then I started patting handfuls of mix into the bottom of the mold. It seemed the more I patted it, the more slushy it became. Water would rise to the surface. I pressed the bottom layer of mix all around the mold, patting it well into every corner like I would with a buttery crumb crust on a cheesecake. Then I put more on top of that, adding it in handfuls and patting it down.

Once it was at a level I wanted, I tried leveling it a bit with the offset spatula. Finally I sprayed the bottom of the cake pan, and pressed it down into the mix, trying to keep the pan as level as possible. To hold it down I piled rocks into it (I had read that without a weight to hold it down, the mix might push the pan up as it dried.)

I tried adding the little half marbles around the edges, but the mix was so wet that they started to slip too far into it, under the surface. So I fished them out. I'll maybe try adding them after it dries, with some kind of adhesive.

I ended up with way more than I needed for the birdbath mold. I filled up all the rest of the star shapes in the silicone cupcake pan.

The birdbath in the book had a heart-shaped ornament balanced on the edge. But I'm not really a hearts/unicorns/rainbows kind of gal. I'm more into sci-fi/fantasy/swords and sorcery, so stars made more sense.

I still had even more mix to use up. Good thing I had been gathering a few other things to use as molds. The other day at the thrift store I picked up these little loaf pan things, and some votive holders. I sprayed them with Pam, plopped in some more mix, and then sprayed the bottoms of the votives with Pam and pushed them into the mix. I'm not real sure what I will use these for when they are done (provided they turn out usable). Maybe they'll hold a chunk of moss, or some little sedums or succulents. Or maybe I'll put a votive candle in them!

The last bit of mix went into one half of a cake mold, designed for making round cakes decorated like balls used for sports.

Into the middle of that I pushed a little silicone cupcake mold.

I finished up by pouring water into the dishpan and rinsing it out outside in the driveway. Never, ever wash utensils used for concrete or cement in your kitchen or bathroom sink, it could plug up your plumbing. I cleaned the utensils and my gloves in more water in the dishpan, which I then dumped outside.

I put all of the filled molds into large black trash bags, and pulled the drawstrings shut and folded them over. They will take 48 hours to dry to the point where I can unmold them.

I can't wait to see how they turn out! Can you?

A Review of Concrete Garden Projects from Timber Press

2011-11-29T20:42:00.001-08:00

A little over a month ago, Timber Press sent me a free copy of their book Concrete Garden Projects: Easy & Inexpensive Containers, Furniture, Water Features & More by Malin Nilsson and Camilla Arvidsson. You may remember I featured a giveaway of this book that Timber Press was having on their website. The giveaway is all over, but I’ve been looking through the book and thinking about making some concrete ornaments for my garden based on the info in the book.

The book covers many projects -- everything from small pots, big pots, stepping stones, small water features, and birdbaths, to larger projects such as a concrete barbecue stand, a potting bench and a large water feature. It’s divided in two parts. Part One, which takes up about three quarters of the book, tells about the various projects in general, talks about how to use them in the garden and shows photos of each finished project. Part Two, the final quarter of the book, contains detailed step-by-step instructions and photos showing exactly how to make each project.

The book contains instructions for making this hanging ornament

I’ve wanted to use concrete to make garden ornaments for years now, but have never gotten around to it. There is something intimidating about it for me. This book might have been just what I needed to get going. It’s a good book with an informal, encouraging tone for beginners like me. But it has more complicated and creative projects as well, for those who have been working with concrete already.

Here’s an excerpt:

“There is a lot of beauty in nature, and forests provide a wealth of material for making impressions in concrete, like interesting leaves, twigs or any other foliage. Leaves from hostas, hollyhocks and maple trees make great stamps. Simple tiles like the ones with a leaf print here (these leaves were picked from a garden) will look good leaning against a tree, a fence or a shed wall. Place them in a flowerbed for plants to grow around them or try laying the tile flat and filling the leaf impression with water to make a small garden mirror.”

If you’re a creative gardener trying to figure out what to put on your want list for Christmas, this book would be a good start. Or, if you know gardeners who might like a small concrete ornament for Christmas, buy the book now and get busy!

I really like this concrete birdbath with the galvanized planters!

I’m planning some time next week to make a project similar to the one in this last picture. Mine will be smaller. I’ve been gathering the materials for a couple of weeks now. If all goes well, I’ll write a blog post about it.

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Timber Press is a Portland, Oregon, publisher of books on gardening, ornamental and edible horticulture, garden design, sustainability, natural history, and the Pacific Northwest. They sent me the book for free, and didn't tell me what to say in my review. They didn't actually even require that I write a review.

A Thanksgiving Post With a Recipe

2011-11-23T17:48:00.001-08:00

American Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I went out earlier this week and bought a turkey breast for me and Nigel. After putting it in to brine this morning, I went back out to the grocery store and bought that last couple of things that I always seem to forget (cranberry sauce, yes, the canned kind). I think for Christmas I am going to experiment with making my own from fresh cranberries. They grow right here in Washington. Here's a link to the recipe I'm going to try.

Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce

I've never been much of a baker at the holidays. I'm not one of those people who starts baking pies and cakes and cookies every day for a week before the holiday. I love to eat all that stuff, but making it -- not so much (good thing too, or I'd be even bigger than I am). I didn't do that even when my son was still living at home. But I do often try to make one new dessert recipe every year. So today I made an apple galette. (That sounds so much fancier than free-form apple pie, doesn't it?) I read some recipes online, and then I just kind of made this one up. It's very easy, because I used a ready-made pie crust. There's no reason why you can't make this with your own pie crust. It has apples, and not much sugar in it, so it's kind of healthy too, for a holiday dessert. (I am still trying to lose weight, but I'm not obsessing about it now that the holidays are here. I'm in a kind of steady-state, not losing, but not gaining either.)

Apple Galette

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Take the ready-made crust out of the fridge and let it thaw for about 15 minutes on the counter. Peel two baking apples (I used Granny Smith).

Here's how I core apples. Slice the meat off one side of the apple, trying not to get any of the core.

Then do the same with the other side of the apple, which leaves you with a disk of apple and core.

Lay that disk flat and cut both sides off it, leaving the core. (Put the core and the peel in your compost.)

Sorry it's out of focus, but you get the idea.

Cut all the meat into slices, trying to keep them all about the same thickness.

Put all the slices in a bowl, and if you're worried about them browning before you get to use them, sprinkle them with a little lemon juice.

Line a cookie sheet or pizza pan with aluminum foil, and then roll out the premade crust.

Sprinkle some brown sugar and cinnamon on the apples and toss them in it.

Pile the apples in the center of the crust, leaving about 2-3 inches of clearance to the edge. If you want it to look more elegant, you can arrange the slices in a spiral, or a pattern of some kind. I prefer rustic, it's easier and quicker.

I'm going to fold the crust up over the apple slices, so to make sure I didn't poke any holes in the raw crust, I made a ring of apple slices with the rounded edges facing out, and then piled the rest in the center.

Fold the crust up over the apples.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, until it's nice and brown and flaky.

This is going to make four servings for tomorrow's dessert.

If you want to make this a little more complicated, you can brush the parts of crust that show with some egg or milk, and you can dot the apples with bits of butter too.

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

SAGBUTT at the Volunteer Park Conservatory

2011-11-21T20:00:00.001-08:00

This past Sunday, I met up with Paula, who writes Petunia's Garden, at the Volunteer Park Conservatory on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Paula and I are members of a group called SAGBUTT, a loosely organized group of garden bloggers in the Seattle area that gets together once a month for a local outing. SAGBUTT stands for Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United To Talk. I missed the last two meetings, one because I had friends visiting from out of town, and the other because I wasn't feeling well. But on Sunday, which dawned very cold and frosty, but sunny, I made it into town.

The Volunteer Park Conservatory was built in 1912 and was fashioned after London's Crystal Palace. It's located on Capitol Hill in Seattle, in Volunteer Park, which was designed by John Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. It is a Victorian glasshouse, manufactured in New York, shipped to Seattle and assembled by the Seattle Parks Department, at a now amazing cost of $5,000. The Conservatory is a historic landmark which is approaching its 100th anniversary. Its structural integrity has begun to fail over the years, and it is currently in the middle of a phased renovation process. The Conservatory works with the US Department of Fish and Wildlife as a rescue center for plants that have been illegally brought into the country (We didn't see any of those, I don't think they display them).

The Conservatory consists of five rooms or houses that represent five different growing environments -- The Palm House, the Seasonal Display House, the Cactus House (which was unfortunately closed, so no pictures), The Fern House and the Bromeliad House.

Well, I'll shut up now (mostly) and show you my photos. The first few are a bit foggy, the lens (and my glasses) fogged up immediately when I entered the building. It was warm and very humid inside.

There was a selection of beautiful orchids displayed in cages, probably to keep people from picking them. I managed to poke just the the lens of my little point-and-shoot camera through the openings for pictures.

There were a couple of enormous staghorn ferns on display.

The Fern House was a lesson in leaf texture and contrast.

This Epiphyllum oxypetalum was in a hanging pot. I had one several years ago, but it became too top-heavy and I ended up passing it along to another gardener back in Massachusetts.

This one had several buds, and looks like it's close to flowering. The flowers open only at night, and according to what I've heard, they can perfume a large area.

There was an interesting selection of very poky bromeliads.

I thought these looked like critters that could be crawling across the ocean floor.

The Seasonal Display managed to be evocative of autumn foliage, while not actually using any autumn leaves.

For a wonderful account of a 2011 summer visit to the Volunteer Park Conservatory, please visit a blog from Portland gardener Ann Amato-Buttitta, called The Amateur Bot-ann-ist.

Volunteer Park Conservatory (Seattle): Part One, The Seasonal Display House

Volunteer Park Conservatory (Seattle): Part Two, The Cactus House

Volunteer Park Conservatory (Seattle): Part Three, The Palm House

Volunteer Park Conservatory (Seattle): Part Four, The Fern House

Volunteer Park Conservatory (Seattle): Part Five, The Bromeliad House

Frosty Morn

2011-11-20T18:49:00.001-08:00

We had a heavy frost last night. I had to be up early-ish (for a Sunday) to go into town to visit the Volunteer Park Conservatory, so I took my camera outside and got some nice shots of the frost before it melted away. On my drive into town, the verges of the roadway were ghostly white grasses heavily frosted, amazing to look at. I didn't get any pictures of that, had to keep my attention on my driving, and didn't want to pull over. So here's some shots of my garden, and a couple of a tree outside Starbucks, where I stopped for a latte.

I left footprints in the grass

Little drops of ice on dead daylily foliage

Weigela foliage looks like it's covered in sugar

Outside Starbucks, fallen leaves and Arctostaphylos (I think)

Look at that blue sky! In the PNW, when we get blue sky like that in winter, it means the temps have dropped below freezing

Read 'Em All Tuesday -- A Garden Designer's Blog

2011-11-15T09:10:00.001-08:00

There are so many wonderful blogs out there that I read, not to mention all the ones I don't know about that others who participate in Tootsie Time's Read 'Em All Tuesday are posting about! It's hard to choose which one to highlight.

I am the first to admit I know nothing -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- about garden design. I try to be a good plant steward, and put my plants that like the same conditions together, and hopefully I don't make a mistake about what those conditions are, and where those conditions can be found in my garden. So I cherish any tips about new plants and where they thrive, or how to put combinations together, or how to use certain colors, of either foliage or flowers. A good blog I've found that offers all of that and more is Garden Adventures -- For Thumbs of All Colors, written by Karen Chapman. Here's what the tag line on her blog says: "Take a stroll through the garden with me as I share insights, tips and “I wish I had known better” thoughts. As a designer, container gardener and plantaholic I have learned by simply getting my hands dirty that thumbs really can go from brown to green. Join me on a fun adventure."

And here's a little something about her from the bio page on her blog.

"I have had a trowel in my hand and soil under my fingernails for as long as I can remember, but that is just the way it is in England where I grew up. Gardening is simply a part of everyday life where plants and produce are exchanged over a cup of tea and neighbors regularly stop to admire one another’s gardens. And so it was inevitable that when we moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1996 it wasn’t long before I was working at one of the leading nurseries where I could continue to feed my plant fix and share my enthusiasm and knowledge with others."

Her posts about plants and design are interspersed with posts about the progress she is making on her own new garden. Yes, she lives and gardens in the same area of the country where I live, and like me, started over with a completely new garden after moving. But any gardener anywhere in the country, or in fact, in the world, can benefit from her knowledge and insight.

Here are links to some recent interesting and informative posts:

Monochromatic Foliage Combinations - simple, elegant

Shades of Bronze

The REALLY Big & Bold

I hope you check out Karen's blog!

Free Tomato Seeds

2011-11-14T17:59:00.001-08:00

Most years I save my tomato seeds for the tomatoes that I liked best, to grow next year. I did that again this year, and I have so many that I want to share them with my readers. Some I have more of than others. Each packet will have about 15 seeds in it, and they are meant for home veggie gardeners only. In my experience, most home gardeners don't need more than 15 seeds. I did a germination test, and the germination rate was really good. I took pictures of the tiny little sprouts in their wet paper towels, and I'll include them at the end of the post.

Here are the varieties I have seeds for:

Gogoshari Striped -- Indeterminate 80 days to maturity (90% germination rate)

This knobbly fruit has few seeds and little juice, and open, empty spaces inside (kind of like my head when I haven't had a good night's sleep).

Tigerella -- Indeterminate 76 days to maturity (100% germination rate)

Tigerella, a very prolific variety for me

Black Krim -- Indeterminate 75 days to maturity (100% germination rate) -- these tomatoes do have a tendency to be cat-faced, so not all are as pretty as these.

Black Krim

Ukrainian Heart -- Indeterminate 85 days to maturity (100% germination rate)

Ukrainian Heart

Tigerella and Ukrainian Heart were my two favorite tomatoes for this growing season. I like Ukrainian Heart because the fruits are large, a good size for slicing and using on cheese and tomato sandwiches. I like Tigerella because it produced a lot of fruit, in big clusters rather like a cherry tomato, but the tomatoes themselves were bigger than cherry toms.

Send me an email (alison dot conliffe at gmail dot com, I think my profile on Blogger includes an email link too) with your address and I will send the seed packets out to you in the mail, at my postal expense. I don't know the rules for shipping internationally, even to Canada, so please, just U.S. residents. I don't want to get in trouble with the vegetable import/export authoritaries.

Here are my germination test pictures. To test germination I picked out ten good-looking, plump, healthy seeds and folded them up in a damp paper towel, then put the paper towel into a ziploc bag, zipped it closed, and set the bags on top of my fridge for about a week. At the end of the week, I opened them out and counted how many had sprouted. (When you're a math dunce like me, using ten seeds helps with figuring out the germination percentage.)

Only one failed to sprout

Ten sprouts -- Hurray!

It may be hard to see in the picture, but there are in fact ten sprouts here too.

And ten more!

Disclaimer: I don't know what kind of response I'll get, but keep in mind, when I run out, I run out. I'll try to let you know if I can't fulfill your request.

My Final Day in Massachusetts

2011-11-10T16:00:00.001-08:00

On my last day in Massachusetts I visited my older sister and her husband. While there, my niece dropped her three children off for a visit. The older two knew me before I moved away.

The Queen of All She Surveys holding Barnabas

Although she's only 8, she is a big fan of the Harry Potter books. She's making good progress on the final book.

According to my sister, the Queen loves reading, and despises math. A girl after my own heart. We talked while she read, and she was oblivious to us. Just like I was at her age. My parents used to say that when I was reading, the house could burn down around me and I wouldn't notice.

Little Man hiding in the shrubbery

Cutie-Pie

I'm home in Washington state now, had an excellent but long flight (five hours).

Thanks for all the enthusiasm about my days as a thespian. I actually gave all that up about 12 years ago. I don't miss it, but I do miss the good friends. There are a few amateur theatrical groups here, and some day maybe I will get back into it. I got tired of splitting my hobby interests between theatrics and gardening. Gardening won. I was self-aware enough to know that I was a less-than-skilled actress, and didn't really have the talent to get better.

But I know I'm good at gardening.

***********************

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

What I Do and Don't Miss About Massachusetts

2011-11-08T17:08:00.000-08:00

I've realized after only being here for a few days that there are things I miss about not living in Massachusetts any more (there are plenty of things that I don't miss too).

What I Miss:

1. Family

I visited my niece and her twins, Knight in Shining Armor and Ninja Princess on Monday. They were born after I moved, and do not know me. But I had a wonderful chance to get to know them better. They are so sweet, and despite being preemies, are talking up a storm.

My niece, holding Ninja Princess and reading to her from a book that I sent for their birthday.

My sister, holding her grandson, Knight in Shining Armor. Barnabas wants to get in on the action!

Maybe I should put together a picture book about me, Auntie Alison, so they will know who I am.

Today I visited another niece, the daughter of Middle Sister, and spent time with her and her little boy Peanut.

Peanut, thinking "Who is this crazy woman who wants to be my friend?"

Middle Sister, Peanut's Grandma

Peanut tries on Grandma's sunglasses

2. Friends

On Sunday, I went to see a play, put on by the Burlington Players, in Burlington, Mass., the town I used to live in. I was a member of the Players for many years, and appeared in several plays there, as well as taking a techie role, as props manager, stage manager, stage crew, costumier, etc. I saw a play called The Boys Next Door, which was directed by a friend who came to visit me in Washington in September. It was very well done, wonderful performances! After the play I had dinner with her and her husband.

My friend directed me when I played a murderous old auntie in Arsenic and Old Lace. That's me seated on the right, looking much older than my true age. (at least I hope so!)

3. Fried clams (they seem to be an East Coast thing)

4. Dunkin Donuts

I don't miss their good coffee, because amazing coffee in the PNW is plentiful. It's hard to find a good donut shop in the PNW. And the PNW can keep their overly sweet, nasty-smelling, faux-maple frosted maple bars. You can't put that stuff on a donut-shaped pastry and still call it a donut. One of the reasons I want to visit New Orleans some day is because I've never had a beignet, the Cadillac of donuts.

What I Don't Miss

1. Massachusetts drivers

If I stop at a four-way stop, and there are three cars waiting at one of the other stop signs, you are not all allowed to go before I do. We are supposed to take turns. You are not all allowed to go through the intersection one after the other, ignoring me. And, most especially, you are not supposed to play chicken with me. I learned to drive here, I'm in a rental car and I took the collision waiver. I don't chicken easy.

2. Snow. Piles of dirty snow in parking lots.

In November (it fell in October). Piles of dirty snow as big as the cars in the parking lot. By the end of winter, the piles will be the size of houses. No, office buildings.

A bad picture of the pile of snow still left in a parking lot from the early October snow a week ago. See the cars behind it?

Someone should invent a blue grit for sanding parking lots. Then maybe the piles would look like the pretty blue icebergs we saw in Alaska.

3. The state of the roads.

Until I moved to Washington, I never realized what roads could be like when they don't suffer through the freeze/thaw cycle of a harsh winter. Bumpity-bump bump.

4. Traffic.

Most especially, the traffic on Route One from Boston to Danvers, through Saugus. If you live here, you know what I mean. It is one long franchise alley.

5. Massachusetts drivers II

If you can't see a way clear to get out of an intersection because of heavy traffic, you are not supposed to just blithely roll out into it and block traffic for when the light changes. Even if your light is green. And if I hold back because I can't get through the intersection, you are not allowed to threaten to ram my rear-end.

Finally -- What I Love About Washington State

1. Rain.

I don't have to shovel it. By the time it ends at the beginning of July, and our two months of mostly non-stop sunshine begins, I am just starting to get sick of it. And it keeps my garden lush and green.

2. Mountains

One in particular.

Mt. Rainier from Lake Tapps

But really, technically, all of them. The Olympics and the Cascades.

3. Fresh, wild-caught Pacific salmon

Not only can you find fresh, fairly inexpensive salmon at the farmer's markets, but you can also find it in every grocery store.

Here are some gratuitous garden shots.

Hydrangea outside the hotel lobby

I eat breakfast on the other side of this window, with this hydrangea in view

Bright autumn foliage of a Japanese maple outside the hotel lobby

Read 'Em All Tuesday -- Gardening for Sustenance

2011-11-08T08:01:00.000-08:00

I follow more than just gardening blogs, I also follow cooking blogs (and a few craft blogs, but I don't have that much time or talent for crafts, I just like to think I do). The kind of cooking blogs that I follow and that I am most enthusiastic about are those that combine gardening for food and then cooking what you've produced.

A favorite lately is Northwest Edible Life, written by Erica. Here's a little bit of info about Erica, from the About page on her blog. (It's too long to quote the entire page, but please go to the link and read it.)

"I come to the suburban homestead life by way of really good food. I went to culinary school, and for 10 years worked in restaurant kitchens in and around Seattle. I worked with some amazing chefs, saw some amazing food, and even had a hand in making some of the good stuff myself. So my backyard veggie patch started as a way for me to have a few really fresh vegetables and salad greens to cook with. That was all I wanted: a really fresh head of lettuce.

And then, in a turn of events that will feel familiar to all gardeners, I got bit by the bug. I started looking at my nice green lawn as the enemy of productive space. I put in some espaliered fruit trees and a berry patch. I dragged my husband to Home Depot for banks of florescent tube lights so I could start my own seeds indoors. I spent entire Januaries with my nose in seed catalogs. I became....obsessed."

Erica now gardens and cooks a huge amount of her own food, and what she doesn't cook, she preserves. And she blogs about it, sometimes long and erudite posts about suburban homesteading, and sometimes photo-filled posts showing the steps of a recipe. Her latest is a recipe for mussels, and it's one I'd like to try. But don't make the mistake of thinking that all her recipes are that exotic. The post just before that demonstrated how to easily and quickly dice an onion.

She lives in the PNW, where I live, which is great for me, because I figure I can learn from her experience living, growing and cooking in the same part of the country where I live. But everything she blogs about can also apply to any gardener/cook/homemaker anywhere in the world.

There is also a tab on her blog with downloadable pdf files, that you can use to plan your garden or your monthly menus. But please please please follow her admonition to not sell these, but download them only for your own personal use.

Finally, and most enjoyable for me.....she has chickens. Swoon!

One of Erica's beautiful chickens

This post is part of Tootsie Time's new blogging meme, Read 'Em All Tuesday, where once a week bloggers share links and information about their favorite blogs. Please go there to find links to great blogs that you might not know about.

My Mother's Legacy

2011-11-06T06:30:00.000-08:00

The party for my mother's 90th birthday was yesterday. Family members came from as far away as the San Francisco area (and Seattle, of course) to celebrate. My mom was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and moved here when she was two with her parents and her older brother. Two more siblings -- a brother and then a sister -- were born after they immigrated. Both of her brothers, as well as my dad, have all passed on. But she and her sister continue to be close.

My Scottish grandmother's passport photo, showing my uncle on the left and my mother on the right

At first, when my sisters and I started planning the party, we tried to keep it a secret. But somehow she figured it out. No one spilled the beans, but despite being 90, she is still pretty sharp. Then we were going to surprise her with me showing up. But one day while talking to my oldest sister about the party, she said to her, "When Alison comes for the party..."

So, the one thing that we did manage to surprise her with yesterday was the arrival of a bagpipe player to play "Happy Birthday" to her. I grew up listening to bagpipes, and I know it may be hard to believe, but I find it very beautiful.

My mom on the left, her sister on the right, listening to the bagpiper

Pipers used to lead the Scottish army into battle, in hopes that the sound would frighten the opposing warriors. It probably did.

My mom has a bevy of great-grandchildren, all of them sweet, smart kids. They all call her GG.

(From left to right) Pony Girl, Little Man and Queen of All She Surveys (these three are the only ones who remember me)

Knight in Shining Armor, trying to figure out how to let Barnabas out of his kennel

Oldest Sister and brother-in-law holding Ninja Princess

Cutie-Pie (my brother-in-law's photo)

Peanut (my niece's photo)

I'm still in Massachusetts. I took a picture yesterday of a rose still blooming in my oldest sister's garden.

My Brother-in-Law Plays a Trick, and Tells a Joke

2011-11-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

I just want to warn you -- this post is a major departure for me. It has nothing to do with gardening. I am in Massachusetts (where I lived for over 50 years, until 3 years ago), on the other side of the USA from the PNW, visiting family. Actually, I am here to celebrate my mother’s 90th birthday. The party is today, Saturday. I know I seldom post about my family, but my garden is taking a vacation right now, and so am I.

On Friday night I had dinner with my oldest sister and brother-in-law (there is a middle sister, if I haven’t completely lost my audience by writing about family, you’ll get to meet her. We have no brothers. In case you haven’t figured it out, that makes me the baby). My sister and her husband do have a small vegetable garden, but I didn’t take any pictures of it. Maybe I should have taken a picture of the zucchini we had with dinner, it came from their garden.

What I will be showing pictures of is their young dog, Barnabas.

Barnabas

When Barnabas eats, he wears a snood, to keep his floppy ears out of his food.

Isn’t he cute? He’s just a little less than a year old, and already knows some tricks. He can sit, shake paws, lie down, roll over, and stay on command. He’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and he loves people. Well, he seems to like me anyway.

Oldest Sister and Brother-in-Law, many years ago. Teenage Me took this picture

My mother, who lives with them, was of course at dinner too, and she told a funny story about my brother-in-law. He recently got a new suit, but the pants were too long. So my mom, who sews (did I mention she’s turning 90?) offered to hem them. Her first try she just pinned, but she had made them too short, and she hadn’t cut the extra off yet, so she had him take them off. Then she took out the pins (a laborious process when you’re 90) and let them down the amount she figured they would need, and cut off the extra, and sewed the new hem. Then she had him try them on again.

But when he came out with the new pants on, they were way too short! Oh no! She was mortified. How on earth did they end up even shorter?

Then she got a look at my brother-in-law’s face, and realized she had been had. The dirty bugger had hiked his pants up way beyond his waist! Apparently then his wife hit him! So did I when I heard the story.

But my mom just laughed.

Mom, many, many, many years ago

At the end of the night, my brother-in-law told a joke (he’s a funny guy). And now I’m going to tell it to you.

This old man was lying on his deathbed. But he could smell chocolate chip cookies. And he loved chocolate chip cookies! So he dragged himself up to a sitting position, and sniffed. The smell was coming from the kitchen.

He dragged his weary, dying bones out of the bed, and onto the floor, and crawled on his hands and knees into the kitchen.

There was his wife, standing at the stove, making chocolate chip cookies! They smelled delicious! He dragged himself over to her, and slowly reached up to take one.

His wife swatted his hand away with a spatula!

“Stop that!” she said.

“Those are for the funeral.”

Oldest Sister and me. I was almost as cute as Barnabas.

Here’s another picture of their dog.

Stay tuned for more.

Read 'Em All Tuesday

2011-11-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I think about writing a post that showcases some of my favorite blogs. But somehow, I've never gotten around to it. Until now.

Some of you are probably familiar with Tootsie Time and her fun Friday meme, where bloggers gather to share posts that focus on their flowers. She calls it Fertilizer Friday. I participate in it when my flowers are particularly floriferous (not right now, they are pretty mushy and brown and disgusting, because we are heading into winter here in the Northern Hemisphere).

Tootsie has just started up a new meme called Read 'Em All Tuesday, which is an opportunity for bloggers to share some of their favorite blogs with her and her readers. All we have to do is write a post about a blog and blogger we admire and love to read, and then link the post to Tootsie Time. Well, it was really hard to choose one, because there are so many that I read and love. But right now, autumn heading into winter, is a perfect time to share this blog with you, because it is written from South Africa, where they are right now experiencing spring! So if you think you are about to go through garden and flower withdrawal, just take a look at Desiree's Driftwood Ramblings. (Click on the name of her blog, it will take you right to her!)

Here is what Desiree says in her own words about her wonderful blog:

"I live with my husband in the Western Cape of South Africa. Ever since childhood, I have felt a great affinity with nature and I'm especially drawn to ferns, forests, mosses, rocks and driftwood. I have tried to incorporate as many of these elements as I can into my garden. This comes with its own set of challenges as we live in a winter-rainfall region, so our summers are exceedingly hot, dry and often windy. Definitely not ideal for establishing the type of garden I crave! We started by planting lots of trees and over the years, it has all slowly come together. I use compost and bark mulch extensively, as our soil type is clay. I have many indigenous plant types in addition to some exotics and we have a thriving ecosystem, which attracts plenty of wildlife to the garden. Through these pages it is my hope to share some of the things I love with other gardeners and garden lovers, especially if you don't yet have one to call your own."

Besides long and rambling posts about her garden and the beautiful and exotic birds and other wildlife that visit it, Desiree also takes her readers on trips around the countryside of South Africa, on garden tours, to local nurseries, and she also posts about her sweet dogs which are full of personality, sometimes quirkily writing the post from their perspective. She has just written the first post of what promises to be a long series about a garden tour she recently took with her husband. It is just chock-full of the most beautiful pictures of the flowers and features in the first garden she visited. But you better like long posts full of photographs, because that is invariably her style. It's a good thing they are such good photographs!

Jungle Fever Exotics

2011-10-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to do another post about a local nursery for Pam Penick's Support Your Independent Nursery Month meme, which has been running every Wednesday for the month of October (I know, it's Saturday, I'm a few days late, but at least it's still October). To read Pam's final post in the series, go here.

I did one post earlier this month about Christianson's Nursery, but for most of the rest of the month the stars just haven't aligned for me to visit and write about another. Either the weather has been too cold and rainy, or I've been trying to take advantage of the confluence of a good night's sleep and good weather (i.e. no rain) to work on my own garden. But this morning I woke to blue skies, puffy clouds, and the cool, crisp, golden air of a perfect autumn day. After a quick planting of some seeds, and performing a few cursory chores in my garden, I decided it was time for a journey to Jungle Fever Exotics, in Tacoma, Washington, less than a half-hour drive from my house.

I first read about Jungle Fever Exotics over a year ago, when Loree of danger garden wrote about her visit there. Although I haven't actually started working on the gravel garden that I want to install, I've been doing plenty of research online about plants that might thrive there, and I thought Jungle Fever might be just the place to find some suitable plants. Although the nursery is small, taking up an urban plot in the center of Tacoma, the experience was overwhelming. It reminded me of my first visit to a nursery when we moved here to Washington. There were so many plants that I was unfamiliar with!

I was tempted by this girly pink Abutilon!

I really was drawn to this Abutilon, but I've been moving plants into the house lately to overwinter, and I didn't want to have to find yet more space indoors for another plant that wouldn't survive a full year outside.

I thought at first this was an Agave -- it's not, it's a Bromeliad! And it's not hardy either. But it's cool.

I might have to go back and buy this Ochagavia litoralis. I researched it after I got home, and it has a truly amazing flower! I am planning to leave space for potted plants in the gravel garden, that will have to be overwintered inside, so this one is not out of the question. The flower makes it worth finding the space.

I meant to buy this!

The first thing I did when I arrived was a circuit of the nursery with my camera out, taking photos of what I found interesting. I meant to go back and pick this Lobelia tupa up, but I forgot. Oh well, I just have to go back, I guess. We saw Lobelia tupa in flower during the Garden Bloggers' Fling in July, in more than one garden. My first Fling post included a picture of it flowering in Shelagh Tucker's garden. Even though it might not be hardy for me (I'm at a higher elevation than Seattle), it's such a striking plant, that I'm willing to take a chance on it.

Gingko biloba in autumn yellow

I've already bought two Trachycarpus fortunei for the gravel garden, but there is room for probably one more tree or shrub. I love the prehistoric foliage of gingko trees, but I'm afraid that it will just get way too big.

This Acacia pravissima caught my eye!

I was intrigued by the triangular foliage of this Australian native tree, but, once again, almost certainly not reliably hardy for my Zone 7b garden. While I'm willing to take a chance on a perennial, digging out a dead tree is not my cup of tea.

Are you beginning to sense a theme? Finding hardy plants for this gravel garden is going to be a challenge. I'm facing a steep learning curve. But learning is a large part of the fun of gardening.

So....what did I buy?

Agave parryi 'J. C. Raulston'

Agave parryi is one of the hardiest Agaves. Look at those red spikes! Do they not completely creep you out? What an appropriate purchase for Halloween weekend. They scare me.

This is protruding from the drainage hole. I thought at first it was a root, but I'm wondering if it might be a pup/offset.

Tetrapanax papyriferus

Love that leaf! But...it's going to have to go in a stock tank. According to what I've read, it's hardy, but it runs like crazy.

Kniphofia caulescens

I've been wanting a Kniphofia/Red hot poker for a while. This might not even go in the gravel garden. Plus, how could I resist that enormous seedhead?

That's only three plants, but according to my husband who was waiting for me in the car, as I made my way back to him, I looked like a kid who had just come from a visit to Santa.

So far, this look at Jungle Fever has been a very personal, close-up look. I'm afraid it hasn't really given you a true feel for the funky flavor of the place.

Maybe this will help set the scene.

Besides its specialty of drought-tolerant and exotic plants, the nursery also features some pretty exotic sculptures and garden art.

I want this Nessie head for my water feature. It might scare away the raccoons.

I love this Venus statue too.

This mosaic head was hard to ignore.

There was a plain vanilla version too.

I'm not quite sure what this is meant to represent, but something about its organic, wavy shapes appeals to me.

While I only participated twice now in Support Your Independent Nursery, I do have a couple of other looks at local nurseries from previous blog posts. In case you're interested, here are links to them.

A Visit to Windmill Gardens Nursery

A Visit to Dig Floral and Garden

My Autumn Garden

2011-10-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

My autumn garden doesn't just depend on foliage for interest, I do still have some flowers blooming.

Tricyrtis 'Taipei Silk'

Chocolate Eupatorium (Joe-Pye Weed)

Chocolate Joe Pye also provides a backdrop for a dark-leaved Cimicifuga/Actaea/whatever they're calling it now.

Red annual Coreopsis

Dianthus

Another Dianthus

A hardy Geranium called 'Confetti' has tiny flowers similar to G. robertianum, but wonderful variegated leaves.

Sheffield Pink Chrysanthemum, planted in the spring, with a backdrop of Agastache 'Golden Jubilee'

Salvia patens, started from seed, has enormous bright blue flowers, but may not be hardy here. We'll see.

I have some unknown Dahlias.

Unknown Dahlia, with the turning foliage of my oak tree

Dahlia 'Harlequin'

Dahlia 'Eveline'

Dahlia 'Arabian Night'

Buds on Mahonia 'Charity' mean I will have flowers this winter.

Autumn Foliage

Red Twig Dogwood

Cyclamen coum

Cyclamen hederifolium

Arum 'Jack Sprat'

Acer circinatum 'Pacific Fire'

Oak

And the ever-present ground cover in the PNW -- Moss.

What I Did With Too Many Tomatoes

2011-10-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

I can already hear all my fellow PNW garden bloggers gnashing their teeth over "too many tomatoes."

This was just the first wave!

The PNW, on the western side of the Cascade Mountains, is a notoriously bad climate for growing tomatoes, which like prolonged heat. We don't get prolonged heat here, even at the height of summer. Last summer, I got no tomatoes. None, nada, zip. Actually, not true. I did bring some tomatoes into the house to ripen, but they were, each and every one, afflicted with late blight. Horrible, black, disgusting lesions.

So, this year I decided to experiment with tomatoes. I planted a wide variety of cold-hardy types, and put seven indeterminate-type plants in one of my raised beds under a hoophouse. I documented the planting of them here and their growth here.

Ukrainian Heart, an oxheart type, was a favorite this year.

I planted several others in pots, and put some on the south side of my house, and others I lined up in the veggie garden in what I thought was a sunny area. The ones in pots did ok, not great, but the really big ones here all came from the hoophouse. I planted them all out early in April, with the ones in pots under Walls-o-Water. The potted ones produced the first fruit, but were not prolific. The ones in the hoophouse fruited late, but grew huge, and produced a lot of fruit.

Sun Gold -- as sweet as candy!

The early start, helped by the WoWs and the hoophouse, was a successful strategy that I will definitely repeat next year. In fact, next year I plan to put my basil and my peppers in the ground in the hoophouse too (I left both in pots this year, and they did not fare well.)

One major change that I will make next year with the tomatoes that I cover with the hoophouse is that I will support them better, probably with sturdy cages, rather than the stakes I used. I didn't use enough stakes, and the plants became so top-heavy with their robust growth that they actually bent the stakes right over, and ended up cascading over the side of the raised bed, putting many of the tomatoes within easy reach of slugs, and smothering others to the point where they rotted from lack of air circulation. I truly did not expect such rampant growth. Despite these problems, I did get more than enough to eat fresh and to process for sauce and other uses.

The top-heavy plant bent the stake right over!

In the darkness and closeness, these rotted, and became slug fodder. There is nothing like reaching in to get what you think is a ripe tomato, only to have your fingers sink into slime.

Gogoshari Striped -- a strange, knobbly, hollow tomato with very little pulp, made good sauce.

Despite the early start, we never got a long string of days all summer where the heat got much above 80. Until I went away at the beginning of September, when we got over a week's worth of hot, sunny days. The day I left, I had gotten maybe three ripe tomatoes. There were no red toms on the plants when I left. When we returned, they had started ripening like gangbusters!

Tigerella -- small fruit (bigger than cherry toms), but incredibly prolific.

They slowed down, but they didn't really stop ripening until yesterday, when I pulled all the plants in anticipation of frost, which will most likely hit some time in the next couple of weeks. The last few days we've had some nice weather, a string of not-rain and not-cold, so even though I'm not expecting a frost in the next few days, I took advantage of the comfortable weather and cut down all the plants, and brought in all the green ones that hadn't been chewed by slugs.

If I had chickens, I could feed this nasty bugger to them!

The aftermath of the tear-out is so disheartening. I have to come back soon and really clean up all the carnage.

So, what did I do with my embarrassment of ruby riches, once it became obvious that we could not keep up with eating them fresh?

Roasted them and turned them into sauce!

Sliced in half if small, or cut into chunks if large, then drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and roasted on a tray in a 450 degree F oven for about an hour.

Charred or caramelized, then scooped into a cup and given a whir with a stick blender, they make a great basic puree, which can then be turned into tomato soup or marinara.

Some of this became cream of tomato soup, the rest was portioned into smaller containers and frozen.

********
Cream of Tomato Soup

2 TB olive oil
2 leeks, washed well and chopped
4 cups of roasted pureed tomatoes
1 tsp dried thyme (or a handful of fresh thyme, stripped from the stems)
2 bay leaves
4 cups of vegetable broth (or 2 14-oz. cans)
12 oz. fat free evaporated milk
1 TB dried basil
1/8 tsp. salt (or to taste)
1/8 tsp. black pepper (or to taste)

Coat a large saucepan or soup-pot with the olive oil and set pan over medium heat. Add leeks and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and thyme, and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are heated through.

Add broth and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low nd simmer, covered for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

Puree tomatoes and leeks with a stick blender (or process in batches in a regular blender). Return to low heat.

Stir in milk and heat it just enough to where it is warm throughout (you don't want the milky mixture to boil). Remove from heat and stir in basil, season with salt and pepper. Serve with a garnish of herbed croutons, and shredded Parmesan cheese.

********

That first batch required a cooking marathon, about 6 or 7 hours of chopping and cooking and blending. I followed that up a week later with another 6-hour cooking spree. At that point, I thought I had enough sauce to last the winter, but I still had tomatoes. So, I made tomato jam.

I've never made it before, and it turned out sweeter than I thought it would. I was hoping for something with a savory, salty/sweet vibe to it, and it turned out very sweet, and not very tomatoe-y, with a stronger flavor from the spices and the brown sugar than from the tomatoes. It was yummy on a biscuit, though.

Here's the recipe I used. I actually used less chile powder and cayenne than called for here, cause I don't like things too hot.

********
Tomato Jam

1 pound tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 TB olive oil
1 TB red wine vinegar
1/4 cup plus 1 TB brown sugar
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chile powder
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground allspice

Add all the ingredients to a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have dissolved and what remains is a thick, jam-like consistency, about 1 hour. Cool before storing. The jam can be stored in an airtight mason jar for up to 2 weeks in the fridge.

********

My source for this recipe was actually the Food Network site, here. I've been looking for other recipes to try. Here are some I'm planning to have a go at, maybe over the weekend.

Panini with Fontina, Tapenade and Tomato Jam

Tomato Jam

Savoury Tomato Jam

And now that I've hauled in so many green tomatoes, I'm probably going to spend the weekend Googling recipes for Green Tomato Jam, Pickled Green Tomatoes, and Fried Green Tomatoes. If you know a good way to use green tomatoes, please let me know.

Timber Press Giveaway

2011-10-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the publication of their new book Concrete Garden Projects, Timber Press is hosting a giveaway!

Go to the link above and enter your email address, and you could win a copy of the new book, a $25 gift certificate to Home Depot, and a set of foam rubber molds for making numbers in concrete.

While you're there, check out the video that shows how to use the molds for making a set of house numbers. And there's a link to instructions for how to make tealight candle holders using silicone cupcake molds.

Concrete is a great medium for making garden ornaments. Especially if, like me, you remember how much fun it was when you were a kid to play in the mud!

The contest runs until October 21. Check it out!

My Garden is Tired -- And So Am I

2011-10-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

I always conveniently forget how tired the garden is by the time fall comes around.

Even the ornamental grasses are too whipped to stand up straight

How blown out and blowzy the plants are.

How they've crisped up from summer's lack of water.

Or they're mildewy.

I like to collect seeds, so I try to leave the seedheads on as long as possible.

Blackberry lily seedpods -- still waiting for them to open up

Same with daylilies

A sea of hardy geranium seedpods, waiting to fling their seeds far and wide

This was a Shasta daisy once...

But it's so hard to look at that stuff for long.

I need to leave the flowerless lily stalks up as long as possible, to nourish the bulbs for next year's growth

Fall's decline is as disheartening to me as spring's exuberance is invigorating. There's work to do out there, but it all involves cutting off dead flower stalks and tossing things into compost and yard waste bins.

What an appropriate season for Halloween to fall in

Or putting tools away. Now that October is here, our fall rains have returned, so it's time to start planting again.

But I don't want to.

It's not that I mind working in the garden in the rain, I do it every spring. I've just lost my appetite for it.

Christianson's Nursery...and Some Excuses

2011-10-05T21:33:00.000-07:00

Pam at the blog Digging says that October is Support Your Independent Nursery Month, and she is posting every Wednesday in October about a different nursery in the area of the country where she lives, which is Austin, Texas. (Check out her post today here.) So I thought I would join her and write a blog post about Christianson's Nursery in Mount Vernon, Washington, in the beautiful Skagit Valley. Christianson's Nursery contributes a display garden every year at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle, a display that often is a crowd favorite. My blog post last February showed vignettes of their garden at the show, titled A Day Well Spent. After my brief visit, I'm looking forward to seeing their display in 2012. I only had about an hour to spend here a little over a week ago. The Skagit Valley is about an hour and half's drive from my home south of Seattle, and I had dropped my husband off at the Tulalip Casino (a posh casino on the way), where he was celebrating his birthday by playing Blackjack (and where we celebrated together later with a wonderful evening meal).

The old-fashioned checkout counter in the Garden Store area of the nursery sets the tone for the rest of the visit.

The counter and much of the shelving in the Garden Store was reclaimed from another historical seed store in the area. The store also boasts an old fir floor and windows salvaged from Roosevelt High School in Seattle, as well as doors from various old structures including a church in Portland, Oregon.

The store is jam-packed full of interesting stuff!

Aren't these rather Gothic-looking hose guards cool?

I should have bought this clay chicken. Do you think it will still be there if I go back?

I could have spent a small fortune there, or in the Antique Shop next to it, which is also part of the nursery.

I loved how these branches went up and across the ceiling!

Every building and greenhouse had bird cages, with occupants. Despite the fact that it was a cool, blustery day, inside it was toasty warm.

These budgies were quite loud and chirpy, till I got ready to take their picture, then they gave me the stink-eye.

I was fascinated with this large aviary which was outside. It was covered with several different flowering vines.

Rhodochiton

Mina lobata

I don't know the name of this one, but I love its leaves!

There were doves inside the aviary.

The Propagation Greenhouse at Christianson's Nursery was built in 1946 and was originally used to propagate rhododendrons from cuttings. When I was there it was full of tropicals like Meyer Lemon trees and exotic annuals like angel wing begonias.

In the 1970′s the nursery lowered the roof to cut down on heating costs and the Greenhouse became a fiberglass house. In 2006 they restored it to its original proportions using vintage and salvaged materials, such as glass windows and salvaged greenhouse doors, shelving and a pantry cupboard from an old farmhouse in Mount Vernon.

Love the old sprockets and chains.

The nursery also uses the greenhouse in the winter to force plants for its Northwest Flower and Garden Show display.

Also on the grounds is the Meadow School, an old one-room schoolhouse built in 1888 near the Skagit River, and subsequently moved to the nursery in 1996 to be used for classes and events.

The Schoolhouse is surrounded by a lovely rose and perennial garden, but unfortunately, it was past its peak when I was there. I was fascinated by this border, fronted by espaliered apple trees, which still had fruit hanging on them.

I had a wonderful time wandering the nursery, taking photos. Unfortunately I didn't realize it at the time, but right next door to Christianson's is La Conner Flats, a farm stand and eleven-acre English country garden that is open to the public. Well, I'll just have to go back, in the spring or early summer, when everything is blooming!

And now for the excuses promised in the post title. You may have noticed that I have been MIA from the blogosphere for the past month. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Occasionally, when I do blog posts, I can knock them off relatively quickly. But most of the time, and especially for a post like this one about Christianson's, I like to do research, and take lots of pictures and then sort the pictures and upload them to a photo hosting site, etc., etc., etc. For me, writing blog posts is a lot of work and time-consuming. I just haven't had the time and energy to devote to it lately.

You may remember me mentioning that we were going away on an Alaskan cruise to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. We did that at the beginning of September. (If you want to see pictures and hear about the trip, you can visit my other blog The 40-Pound Chicken Challenge.) Right on the heels of that trip was a delightful visit from some old friends from Massachusetts, who were about to embark on their own 30th anniversary Alaska cruise. Following that was oral surgery for my husband, from which he is still recuperating (fortunately, the birthday dinner at Tulalip came just before the surgery). I will continue to post, I have plenty of pictures and lots of ideas, and I'm still busy in my garden.

When we went to Tulalip for my husband's birthday, he asked me what I wanted for my birthday, which is coming up in December (just 3 days before Christmas, in fact.) I told him for my birthday I wanted a trip to Portland, Oregon. "In December?" "No, I'll go in the spring, but it will be for my birthday..."

Well, we'll see. I hear the Portland area has some amazing nurseries.

Fertilizer Friday -- Stargazer Lilies, Dahlias and Others

2011-08-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have some flowers to flaunt for Fertilizer Friday! So let's get busy!

This Primrose is still green and flowering in my garden. That should give you some idea just how cool our summer has been.

Liatris in the back garden is flowering, although the one in the front is done.

Echinacea 'After Midnight' is flowering, love those dark stems!

Coreopsis 'Red Shift' has just started flowering. This is a tall, sturdy perennial Coreopsis.

The outer edges of the petals are actually much more yellow than the picture. As the fall weather cools, the flower should shift to all red.

My Lobelia cardinalis looks good with the dark foliage of Chocolate Joe-Pye Weed behind it.

Red is such a difficult color to capture, it always looks so bright. I know there are tricks, someday I'll haul out my camera manual and really learn how to use all my camera's features.

I bought this dark-leaved Angelica back in the spring at one of the spring sales. Now it's flowering.

Like the Lobelia, it also has the dark Joe-Pye leaves behind it.

Another species Echinacea in the sunny perennial bed. It is the only one there, so it gets kind of lost. Next year there will be lots more (at least, that's the current plan).

The single Rudbeckia in the same bed has just started flowering.

I'm wondering if I should just start thinking of this as a fall flower.

Panicum virgatum 'Rotstrahlbusch' is sending up seedheads. Soon the foliage should start to redden.


Snowberry/Symphoricapos albus sports a few of the white berries that give it its common name.

The flowers on this whitish Stokesia laevis 'Mary Gregory' never open any further than this. I'm kind of disappointed in it, I may shovel-prune it.

One of the Dahlias I got at a plant swap this spring is showing off pretty peach-colored flowers.

Love this Dahlia too, it's called 'Arabian Night.'

A long-time favorite, from the very first year I started gardening, my Stargazer lilies are looking and smelling pretty glorious.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. Although we have had some pretty hot days in the 80s lately, and warm nights, I do think the garden is winding down. As I posted previously, I am already thinking about next year!

Check out Tootsie Time's Fertilizer Friday post for lots more pictures of what's flowering all around the world!

Odds and Ends

2011-08-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

There are a few new flowers out in my garden. The Echinaceas have just started blooming, and the Rudbeckias are right on the verge. My Stargazer lilies are blooming too, and my daylilies are finishing up. I took a few pictures, but I didn't like the way they turned out. Maybe I'll try taking them again tomorrow and post them for Fertilizer Friday.

Instead of a post today that focuses on my own garden, I thought I would haul out some odds and ends of all the many garden tours I went on this past spring and summer, from gardens that I didn't have the energy or the creativity to do an entire post around. Even when a garden is beautiful, sometimes it's hard to come up with anything of substance to say.

So, this is basically a pictures-only post. Even when words fail me, usually my camera doesn't. Not that I'm a whiz with that either. Maybe I'll comment if the mood strikes.

Whew! Did you actually make it all the way to the end here? Bravo!

Those last two images are Abutilon flowers in the garden of PNW gardening guru Ciscoe Morris. Last Sunday, I got together with a great group of gardeners who all garden and blog in the Seattle area -- a group with the humorous name of SAGBUTT (Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United to Talk). First we met for conversation and food (and mimosas), and we followed it up with a visit to Ciscoe's garden, which was holding an Open House, via the Northwest Horticultural Society.

I first read about SAGBUTT online about 2 years ago, when I first started blogging. It was kind of defunct for a while, but when I met one of the founders, Melanthia Peterman, at the Fling last month, I encouraged her to start it up again. So she did. Melanthia writes a garden blog called Garden Muse. We had a lot of fun at the meeting, and planned many more monthly meetings and trips to area gardens.

If you garden and blog in the Seattle area, and are on Facebook, check out the group's Facebook presence here. Or if you're not on Facebook, and you're interested in joining us, send me an email at alison dot conliffe at gmail dot com.

Plans for Fall and Spring

2011-08-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about changes I want to make to my garden. Gardens are always changing, because they're full of living things. But mine especially, because it's new and there are so many new-to-me plants growing in it. And my ideas about what I like in the garden are also always changing, as I grow as a gardener, and see other gardens in the area where I live. I've been assessing what I think is working and what isn't. I spent a few days cutting back some of the floppiness, pulling out dead plants, all the while thinking about how I could improve things.

One area I worked on this week is the area I call the sunny perennial bed. I've posted about this bed before in the following posts:

Sunny Perennial Bed -- Back Garden "Sleep Year"

Sunny Perennial Bed -- Back Garden "Creep Year"

I had some vague ideas back in June about what was wrong here and what I needed to do to fix the problems, but now I have just what I need -- A Plan.

I'm going to edit the bed. There are too many different types of plants growing in it, all in their own little individual clumps. I want this bed to have visual impact, and the way to do that is to have a small number of types of plants, each planted en masse. I already did that somewhat this week by cutting back the plants that weren't working or that were flopping. Like the huge mass of Nepeta 'Walker's Low' that is on the right hand side of the bed. In June it looked like this.

I like it, but it takes up too much space in this bed. The base clump is actually small, but the flowering wands themselves hang all over the place, making the plant effectively about five feet wide. I thought the plants planted close to it would be able to pop up through the wands, but if they are too wimpy, they just end up being pushed over. The daylily and the Sweet William planted near it were fine, but the Coreopsis, the Persian Cornflower and the native Cornflower weren't. It may be the nature of cornflower to flop, but I have another clump of the same Coreopsis at the other end of the bed, and it's standing up nice and tall.

So, the first order of business in the fall is to move the Walker's Low Nepeta.

There is a blue grass growing in this bed as well, called Helictotrichon, which I also like, but it doesn't add what I want to the bed (flowers). And it's also a mounding shape which takes up too much space. So it's coming out as well. I have spots in mind for both the Nepeta and the grass.

Here's what is planted in this bed now:

Monarda Raspberry Wine
Shasta 'White Knight'
Shasta 'Crazy'
Echinacea (species)
Rudbeckia Cherokee Sunset
Rudbeckia (species)
Centaurea montana
Centaurea dealbata
Panicum
Chasmanthium
Iberis
Geum triflorum (Prairie Smoke)
Gaillardia 'Burgundy'
Daylilies (a couple of different ones, pink colors)
Red Oriental Poppies
White Oriental Poppies
Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue'
Two different kinds of Coreopsis (one short, one taller)
Artemisia
Persicaria 'Painter's palette'
Dianthus
Alchemilla mollis (Lady's Mantle)
Lilium (Stargazer?)
Blue Veronica
Two different hardy Fuchsias
Geranium Biokovo and Biokovo White
Several different Dahlias, some with dark foliage
Itea virginica (Virginia Sweetspire, a shrub)
Oemleria cerasiformis (Indian Plum, a PNW native shrub)
Joe-Pye Weed (Little Joe, but not really so little)
Penstemon 'Husker's red'

Too much! I need to simplify.

Here's the list of plants I want in this bed:
Joe-Pye Weed
Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' -- the hummers love it!
Rudbeckia (species, there is only one plant there right now, I need more)
Echinacea (species, again, just one plant, I need more)
Coreopsis (The slightly taller one, I can save seeds from it and sow more)
Daylilies (but I need more)
Red Poppies
White poppies
Shasta Daisies
Prairie Smoke (I have more of this in other beds, I can move it all and consolidate it)
Lady's Mantle (Same as with the Prairie Smoke, I can move it all into this one bed)
Panicum (no flowers, but it provides fall color and a strong vertical shape, and I have more clumps I can move here)
Rudbeckia 'Cherry Brandy'
Persicaria 'Painter's Palette'

Even that may be too much, we'll see. My plan involves removing the Indian plum, which is right in the middle of the bed. I hope I can move it without killing it. I'll have to find spots for many of the other plants. Some of them can move to the beds in the front.

And some of them can go here:

Seriously. Fall Project Number Two is to turn this into a gravel garden. Mostly just up against the wall. The wall is mine, but the mostly neglected rose bed on top of it belongs to my neighbor. This area gets a lot of sun, all day. I'm planning to move the Nepeta and the Helictotrichon here, and maybe some Centranthus ruber and all of my black mondo grass. I have black mondo grass planted in quite a few beds around the garden, and it always just disappears against the dark soil. It will stand out better against the gray gravel.

I can't take credit for this idea, I stole it from Loree at danger garden. You can see pictures in this post on her blog of the process of turning her Portland, Oregon front yard full of grass into a gravel garden. Her first picture shows black mondo grass. Her garden was also featured in this post on the blog Digging, by Pam Penick, who visited her just before the Garden Blogger's Fling. I was also inspired by one of the gardens we saw on the first day of the Garden Bloggers' Fling, the garden of Shelagh Tucker, which I showed pictures of in my post called I Think There's a Bottle (or Two) of Ibuprofen in My Future...

This gravel-covered area beside my driveway is actually meant for a boat or a travel trailer/camper. But we have neither. A future homeowner might use the space for a boat or camper. But it won't hurt to landscape it a little more nicely. The ugly gray wall needs something to soften it.

At the back is a huge English laurel. This past weekend I bought two Trachycarpus fortunei to plant near the laurel. I have no idea what the soil under the gravel is like, other than it has good drainage (we never have standing water here, even in winter when the rains are so frequent). The gravel is not as decorative as I would like, but it'll do.

My third project for the fall and spring is to do something with the bed I think of as my "neglected stepchild."

This little bed is in a far corner of the back garden, and often gets short shrift when it comes to care. It's beside the shed, near the compost bins. The hose just barely reaches back here, and I often forget to water. When I first started gardening here in the back, I was under the misconception that this was a shady spot, so I planted Astilbes and goatsbeard and other shade-loving perennials.

They haven't fared too well.

I'm kind of hoping that they will be restored somewhat when the fall rains come. If they do revive, I'll move them into more shade, and plant some sun-loving, drought tolerant perennials here instead.

But there's also a fair probability that this spot might eventually be home to a small flock of chickens. So we'll see. My husband favors the other side of the shed for the chicken coop, an idea that is appealing to me more as time goes on.

So I have my work cut out for me. I'll get to it, as soon as I finish planting all of these.

Plants I've been gathering all summer, waiting for the fall rains to return to plant them, so I won't have to water them in.

And these.

Seedlings I've been coddling all summer -- amazingly still alive.

A Trip to England -- Travels Near and Far

2011-08-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

For my post for Travels Near and Far, a brand new blogging meme hosted by Beth at Beyond the Garden Gate, I thought I would go far, not only in space but also back in time, to a trip I made to Leicestershire, England several years ago -- in late June, 2005, to be exact. My mother-in-law (who has since passed on) invited me to visit her (without my husband, her son), for a week. Some of you may remember I posted previously about her influence on my life and about her garden here.

One of the treats MIL planned for me that week was a trip to see the University of Leicester Botanic Garden. I apologize for my poor photography skills. My photography and the primitive point-and-shoot camera that I was using at the time can not do justice to the beauty of the garden. Despite that, I hope you can get the flavor of the place.

MIL (in the green skirt) and her neighbor, who accompanied us, admire a perennial border.

Contorted Filbert/Harry Lauder's Walking Stick

Gunneras get huge there too!

On another day, MIL and a friend took me to a local, very posh hotel restaurant called The Orangery at Kilworth House. We had an excellent meal, although I can't remember now what I ate. I wish I had pulled my camera out to photograph the meal and the interior of the restaurant, because it was quite amazing. I think MIL might have been appalled if I had photographed my food.

Kilworth House

The Orangery from outside

After our meal, we strolled the landscaped grounds.

And on yet another day, we took a trip to an amazing nursery, Woodlands Nursery and Garden Centre. This was the first time I ever saw a nursery with a restaurant/cafe inside. In England, just like in Washington state, the nurseries are open year-round, and so it is cost-effective to have a cafe inside where you can take a break from shopping and have a bite to eat. At the time of this visit I was living in Massachusetts, where the nurseries close for a good 5 months of the year.

This little faux ruin was for sale at the nursery. I'd love to find something like this here!

They had a wire frame to make a chicken topiary

They had some marvelous roses.

I'd like to make a bubbler like this for my back porch.

They also had some lovely statues.

As well as a selection of Tillandsias in tipped-over pots with little ceramic figurines.

And others in saucers planted in fine gravel.

At the time I loved these, but now they are just a little "twee" for my taste.

Except for maybe this fairy.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this trip to England with me! Check out Beyond the Garden Gate and see where others are waiting to take you!

New Garden Art From Glass Gardens NW

2011-08-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

Members of the Seattle Fling received a 10% discount on items ordered from the Glass Gardens NW website, so I decided to order some icicles.

I bought one large purple one and two small orange ones, and I "planted" them on the far side of my stream, with some plants that share their colors. What do you think?

They are attached to copper pipe, that came with them. Because my soil is so rocky, I wasn't sure I would be able to get the pipes deep enough into the ground for them to be stable. So I pounded rebar into the ground, and then slipped the pipes over that.

I'm thinking possibly that purple one needs to be pushed further into the ground, although it might look better once the plants around them grow up a bit. They are mostly new plantings, just planted this year, although the Karley Rose Pennisetum was planted last year.

I think they make a nice backdrop for this Agastache too.

I love 'em!

They arrived on Saturday, shipped via Priority Mail, packed very nicely in both bubble wrap and then packed again in a big box with styrofoam peanuts.

My husband couldn't resist "playing Harry Potter" with the big purple one.

"Expelliarmus!"

I need more. A handful of colorful orbs will look great in one of my beds. Or maybe the Fiddlesticks, in with some ferns....

A Visit to Windmill Gardens Nursery

2011-08-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

Windmill Gardens is a local nursery that at times can make you feel like you've been transported to the Netherlands. This past year the Northwest Flower and Garden Show used their not-yet-in-use greenhouses as a holding/growing on/forcing area for the plants that were going to be used for the displays at the show. I recently visited and took along my camera, because I knew they had a lovely display garden and lots of merchandise that others might want to see.

It's called Windmill Gardens because it has an actual windmill with turning blades, on top of one of the buildings. The nursery is set up almost like a little village, with several separate buildings that each house a different shop. There's a cute little bistro (where I had lunch), a tea shop (that only sells tea, but doesn't serve it), a spa and salon, a pond supply shop, a flower shop, and, of course, a nursery. I'm not sure how authentic the windmill is. Its arms turn without wind, so it must be motorized, and I bet it's much smaller than a real Dutch windmill. It's been a long time since I was in Holland (a little over 35 years), and to tell the truth I can't actually remember if I even saw any windmills when I was there (old age being what it is).

Many of the buildings are just dripping with lush annual hanging baskets.

But first, before we walk the display garden...lunch in the Bistro.

The pleasant verandah has tables.

And a large area outside at the back has tables with umbrellas.

Inside is quite nice too.

Sorry about the rotten pictures, I was using my cellphone.

What shall we order? How about a salad? If you've been following my other blog, The 40-Pound Chicken Challenge, you know that I've been eating a lot of salads lately.

I have the Sesame Chicken Salad -- greens, celery, and red pepper with sesame dressing and grilled chicken. Yum!

Now that we've eaten, we can tour the display garden. At just about every turn there are fuchsias trained as standards in pots.

As you enter the display garden, one of the first things you see is this gazebo with an enormous blooming Brugmansia.

Every so often you pass under an archway, each with a different saying on it.

Statues are placed throughout the garden, which has both shady and sunny gravel paths.

Roses bloom in the sunny areas.

The garden has a pond with a waterfall and an enormous Darmera peltata.

A little further on is an interesting shed, looking much older than it is, made of either stucco or concrete, with a green roof.

The flowers on the shed roof reach for the elusive PNW sun.

A climbing Hydrangea clings to the side of the shed.

Butterflies flit around, and alight on flowers long enough for me to snap a picture.

A river of blue flowers flows past a huge Phlox paniculata.

A quick peak into the tea shop

The Pond Store sits right next door, and has many treasures for sale.

I think this is California Arrowhead/Sagittaria montevidensis. I should get this for my stream.

A beautiful mottled Elephant ear

And of course outside the pond store, there has to be a pond!

Through the trees you can see the florist shop and nursery.

Let's head for the nursery.

On the way there we pass this bright display.

They have an interesting array of garden items on display, as well as the usual tools, boots, gloves and seeds.

Brightly painted cast leaves

Wire bird cages with bird figurines inside

Isn't this twig furniture the cutest? I doubt it would hold up to much use, though.

There are two large displays of Persicaria 'Painter's Palette', only $3.99.

Variegated Acanthus mollis. I want one badly, but they are $30.00 each!

Lots of trees and shrubs for sale!

I want this one too -- Chocolate Silk Tree -- but I'm not sure where I'd put it.

Metasequoia, a deciduous conifer, is tempting too.

I like this cute little dog statue, I wonder how the cats in the neighborhood would react.

Three bunnies for sale, I think I prefer the well-weathered one.

I notice this display, with its sort of autumnal colors. Hmmm.....

What's this?

Mums? Noooooooooooo...mums are for F-f-f-fall....

We haven't even really had summer yet. No fair. Ah well. With fall, come sales. Maybe all those plants I want, but didn't get, will be cheaper soon.

Fertilizer Friday -- California Annuals, Native Wildflowers, Fuchsia

2011-08-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

I skipped last Friday, so once again I have some catching up to do.

Clarkia elegans -- the last of my California annuals grown from seed to flower.

They are flowering in a variety of colors -- pink, purple and white

Gilia capitata, another California annual wildflower

Another native -- Castilleja/Indian Paintbrush -- that I planted last fall is flowering. I was worried it wouldn't thrive, but it seems to be doing ok.

Liatris, a native wildflower

This bee was apparently sound asleep on the Liatris

More of my Dahlias are flowering.

Fuchsia magellanica is just covered. It's a hummingbird favorite.

I have a few annual Fuchsias growing in pots on the back porch too. They remind me of dancing ballerinas.

Hydrangea 'Invincibelle Spirit'

The Filipendula 'Hakome' that I bought last year about this time is flowering. I planted it amidst a couple of different dark-leaved plants.


Here it is contrasted with a dark-leaved Cimicifuga.

And against chocolate Joe-Pye weed.

My Echinaceas and Rudbeckias have finally started to flower.

'After Midnight'

'Pow Wow Wild Berry' -- a bit drought-stressed.

Burgundy Gaillardia -- but not exactly what I'd call burgundy

Rudbeckia 'Cherry Brandy' started from seed last year.

I've read complaints about the color on seed-grown plants not looking dark enough, but I'm quite happy with the color on this plant.

I'll definitely be saving seeds from them, I want lots more of these next year.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this look at the flowers in my garden. To see more from all around the world, check out Tootsie Time's Fertilizer Friday post.

Hopes for August

2011-08-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well, back in July, I was hoping that the raccoon that has been haunting my garden wouldn't find my veggies. So far, she hasn't, although she is definitely still hanging around. I'm not actually getting much from my veggie garden at the moment either. I have lots of very small green tomatoes, but only one tiny red one. The last few days have been warm and sunny, but today it is cloudy and cool again, which doesn't bode well for the tomatoes. Ah well, I hope in August I get some ripe ones.

For August, I am also hoping that the string algae that has been plaguing my stream for the entire spring and summer finally dies and goes away. I have been pulling it and pulling it, and it just keeps growing back worse than ever. It is so hard to pull, I imagine it must be kind of like trying to grab a jellyfish (but without the sting).

Nasty, slimy stuff!

I just spent a good hour or so tromping around in the water over the rocks, pulling and scraping at the stones with my hands and feet. I'm not a fan of using chemicals at the drop of a hat in the garden, but I'm thinking I might order some chemicals over the internet to kill it once and for all. Short of taking the rocks out and scrubbing them with a scrub brush, I can't think of another solution.

Here are the results of my tromping around.

If you look closely, you can see there is still quite a lot clinging to the rocks. It just won't let go!

It does look better.

Before

After

Before

After

If you want to read about what other gardeners are hoping for in the month of August, check out Sweet Bean Gardening's Hope Grows post.

Fertilizer Friday -- Making up For Lost Time

2011-07-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't post for Fertilizer Friday last week, because of the Fling, so I have a lot of lost time to make up for! And in the four days that I was away from my garden, lots of new flowers emerged.

My front porch pots are looking good, but these two especially.

Tithonia 'Torch', also in pots, has finally started blooming. I grow it in pots in a protected spot, otherwise it would drown in our rain.

The lilies that I bought at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show have started flowering.

Asiatic lily 'Eyeliner' -- See the delicate dark edge on the petals?

Can't find the tag.

My daylilies are flowering up a storm too.

Going Bananas

I can't find the tag for this one either.

Barbara Mitchell

I thought I only sowed black HHs here, but I'll take pink!

My floppy Tidytips is flowering

The plants around the stream are looking quite lush and pretty.

Are these two Agastaches trying to muscle in on the red twig dogwood?

My Dahlias are starting to flower. I got this one from a spring swap. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the flower is enormous!

Dahlia 'Kelvin Floodlight'

Fuchsia magellanica

Penstemon 'Firebird'

The hummingbirds are loving the Jacob Kline Monarda.

The delicate flowers of a gold-leaved Filipendula, against chocolate Joe Pye foliage.

I have a whole row of Sempervivum that are flowering like mad. According to what I've read online, they will die after flowering. Bummer!

Coreopsis grown from seed last year

I have many clumps of Shasta daisies flowering all over the yard, a few different varieties.

Shasta 'Crazy Daisy'


Some are crazier than others. Kind of like gardeners.

Some new purchases, not yet planted.

Canna 'Tropical Bronze Scarlet'

Love the freckles on this Canna. There was no tag.

Please visit Tootsie Time for more Fertilizer Friday posts!

The 40-Pound Chicken Challenge

2011-07-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

I've started a new blog. It's called the 40-Pound Chicken Challenge. You can get to it by clicking on the scale on the left hand side of this blog.

It's going to chronicle my journey toward getting chickens when I've lost forty pounds. I hope you'll come with me on my journey.

Wildflower Wednesday -- Ocean spray

2011-07-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

This month for Wildflower Wednesday I'm featuring a PNW native flowering shrub that has been flowering up a storm on hillsides and roadsides everywhere. It's called Ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor).

I see it when I go for walks in my neighborhood.

I see it when I drive to the grocery store.

And, although the Epping garden, which I visited while on Garden Bloggers' Fling this past weekend, had many interesting, beautiful and exotic plants, the Ocean spray that ringed the garden in all the wild places beyond the edge of the cultivated areas was the very first thing I noticed.

Ocean spray is one of those plants that is the first to reclaim devastated areas after a burn or forest clear-cut (along with Fireweed, another PNW native flower). It is often found as an understory shrub to large stands of Douglas fir. The flowers have a faint scent and age to a chocolate brown.

The shrub grows throughout the Northwest and western parts of North America, from British Columbia to California and Arizona. It's a member of the rose family. The flowers attract swallowtail, azure, and Lorquin's admiral butterflies. It can be propagated from semi-hardwood cuttings, suckers and seeds and grows in either sun or part shade in moist but lean soil.

Native Americans used it in many ways -- the leaves, berries and flowers as medicine, the wood and bark for tools, furniture and weapons.

I have two specimens of this shrub growing in my newly established back garden. But the garden is too new and the plants too young to flower yet. Maybe next year.

Please check out Wildflower Wednesday, which is hosted by Gail of clay and limestone.

Final Fling Day Four -- The Bloedel Reserve and Dragonfly Farms Nursery

2011-07-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

On Day Four the group crossed the Sound on the Bainbridge Island ferry and visited The Bloedel Reserve, and then went on to Dragonfly Farms Nursery in Kingston, WA. The day started out overcast and cool, but as we arrived and alighted from our tour buses at Bloedel, the heavens opened, and it began to rain quite hard, precipitating a mad dash into the gift shop to borrow umbrellas.

I have visited Bloedel previously, this past spring for a tour and a marvelous plant sale. You can see photos from that visit and read about it here and here. Their spring woodland ephemerals such as trillium and trout lily were blooming (and it wasn't raining that day).

So this time I decided to try to see and photograph areas that I missed on that previous visit -- the wilder areas called the Bird Refuge and The Woods, as well as the Japanese Garden, which I strolled through briefly last time but got very few pictures.

While at Bloedel I also attended a short class/workshop on photography given by David Perry, a Pacific Northwest-based photographer. He had given us a "make believe' assignment for the day, to shoot a cover photograph for a magazine known as "Insert Your Blog Name Here," as well as a picture called an establishing shot, that could serve as a two-page spread. He was an entertaining speaker with lots of wonderful advice about f-stops and apertures and many other photography terms that unfortunately went right over my head. Anyway, many of the photos I took at first were all verticals.

Here's my cover shot. Dreadfully trite.

This time I took the road less traveled, at least by me.

This marvelous stump right beside the path was being eaten up by some colony of insects.

A nurse stump with two new trees growing from it.

The woodland path meandered through a wetland area that required raised wooden platforms.

And here's my establishing shot. It's not an overview, but I hope it gives you a sense of place.

This should give you some idea of how much it was raining.

Fungus and moss abound.

They say it's bad luck to cross paths with a black cat, but I've never heard any admonitions about slugs.

The view from the back of the visitor center (formerly the Bloedels' house).

This Japanese maple sits on the bank of the pond in the Japanese Garden.

It has fascinating, mossy, twisted branches.

The path to the teahouse is lined with ferns.

You can get an overview of the pond from the teahouse.

The second half of the afternoon was spent at Dragonfly Farms Nursery in Kingston, WA. Dragonfly is a marvelous nursery with an amazing selection of rare and choice plants. Yes, I bought some.

It also has stunningly beautiful display gardens, with an interesting mix of garden art.

Malva

Poppy

Why is it everyone's poppies stand straight and tall, but not mine?

This gorgeous Abutilon was for sale; one of my fellow Flingers snagged it..

Purple Angelica in the display garden; I hope mine looks this good next year.

Hardy Geranium

Isn't this the coolest rusty metal nest?

I love this bottle border, with the bottles laid on their sides, instead of stuck vertically in the ground.

Well, I am back home now. I had a blast, visiting all the gardens I've shared with you, and meeting other bloggers. It's time to check out my own gardens and see what flowered while I was gone. I'm sorry I am so behind in visiting other blogs, I will try to catch up!