Birdie Tracks in the Snow

Junco on the porch feeder

Waiting for a turn.

Snow on my beak.

He was there a second ago....Ah well, not fast enough with the camera.

Snowy Pictures

We've had our first snowfall, in fact, it's still coming down. Judging by what I can see on the fence, it's about 3 or 4 inches. Enough to make driving a horror show, considering that it doesn't get plowed or even sanded here on the side streets. I am not a fan of snow. I lived for over 50 years in Massachusetts, where this would be considered little more than a dusting. Driving on it scares the bejesus out of me!

But it is pretty when it first falls on the garden.

I'm sure the Douglas firs have seen it all before.

I'm wondering how long it will take for ice to form on the stream and waterfall.

 

The shed looks pretty.

 

The oak tree still has nearly all its leaves.

Fertilizer Friday -- Some Seed-Grown Dahlias and a Couple of Others

Will this be my last Fertilizer Friday? We haven't had a frost here yet. I figure it should come any day (or night actually). A couple of nights ago it got down to 34. Many of my fall-blooming perennials are still going strong. My last FF post was Oct. 22, and my Dahlias were blooming then. My first FF post to feature them was Sept. 2, so they have been blooming for a long time!

I'm not going to dig them up. I'm hoping they will survive in the ground here in Zone 7. I will probably start more from seed, just in case. I winter sow, so if they don't appear in the spring, I know I'll have something else I can pop into their spots.

Here are more of them.

Pennisetum 'Karley Rose' is also still producing lots of her pretty pink seedheads, although they are  not all standing upright after some major wind and rain. Here a Dahlia has one draped over her shoulders like a pink boa.

Dahlias aren't the only blooms in my garden.

Agastache grows by the stream. It gets tall and floppy, but I love the color. And they have a nice smell. I've heard they smell like bubble gum, but that's not quite what comes to mind.

 

And a hardy Geranium that I got from a swap, without a name. I think it might be Rozanne, because it has scrambled over the other plants around it, which is very "Rozanne-like" behavior.  Geraniums are supposed to provide good fall leaf color, but as you can see from the leaves behind it, mine are still green.

Fuschia magellanica is still producing flowers, although the leaves are yellowing. I've never grown this before. Does it drop its leaves? I'll have to Google it.

Many months ago I bought some Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue' on sale at Lowe's. It has been blooming ever since. I hope it survives our winter, which all the weather pundits claim will be much harsher than usual. (I was going to say "than we are used to," but coming from Massachusetts, I am used to pretty harsh winter weather.)

Well, that's it for this week. There are still quite a few people posting at Tootsie Time! Thanks for looking at my flowers!

New Plants and Plans in the Native Bed

I promised photos of the native area behind the waterfall, so here they are.

When I first started putting shrubs into this bed, I didn't have any vision of what I wanted it to look like other than to provide cover and food for birds. I realized after plunking shrubs and a couple of perennials here and there, that it needed some structure, as well as organized access. It was such a deep bed, and I couldn't just keep planting it and stepping all over the soil. So I decided to add a stone path that goes into the bed and around one of the Douglas firs. Right now I'm just trying to find larger (fist-size to head-size) rocks to run along the edges.

I have a lot of river rock under the dark compost in all the beds. The previous owners had used it as mulch in a lot of areas, and when we had the back garden redone, all that river rock got incorporated into the beds. So I dig it up, every time I plant. I've been saving it, figuring I might find a use for it, and I have.

 

I'm probably just going to dig out the top layer of compost from the pathway, and then scatter the rocks, but every once in a while I entertain the idea of embedding them in the soil, like a mosaic, with maybe a nice cushiony ground cover between the rocks. That will be a lot of work, but so will digging out the compost. I've been working on this since about the middle of September.

In the bed I've planted a bunch of native perennials. On the left side of the path, I planted Cornus canadensis, yellow-eyed grass, Sedum spathifolium, Heuchera, Lilium pardelinum, Tolmiea menziesii (also called piggyback plant) and many of the bulbs that I posted about yesterday. This spot gets more sun than the area farther in, right under the trees, so I tried to use plants that would take part sun here.

 On the right side of the path, I planted a variety of ferns, Asarum caudatum, Heuchera, Lewisia, Armeria maritima, Vancouveria hexandra (also called inside-out flower), more Cornus canadensis, a couple of heathers (Oops, not natives), a Sitka burnet, Lilium columbianum, and in the blank spaces, many of the bulbs mentioned yesterday.

Some closeups. Leatherleaf fern

Asarum caudatum

Lewisia and Sedum

Sitka burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis)

Far in the back, directly under the trees near the fence, are the plants that take pretty much unrelieved shade. They might get an hour of dappled shade in the morning, but the rest of the time it is deep shade. Planted here are Dicentra formosa, Aquilegia formosa, sword ferns, deer ferns, goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus), Veronicastrum, Tellima grandiflorum (also called Fringecups), and the two kinds of Erythronium that I mentioned yesterday. The Dicentra and Aquilegia are so fragile, I have them planted under hardware cloth, to keep the lawn crew from raking them to pieces.

Dicentra formosa

A tiny goatsbeard

Deer fern

A row of large healthy sword ferns, and some Fringecups

I had several sources for all of the plant material that I've put into this bed. For bulbs, I used Brent and Becky's Bulbs and John Scheepers. For the perennials, I got some of the plants from a GardenWeb swap. Others came from Fall sales at Watson's Greenhouse and Nursery, Windmill Gardens, Northwest Perennial Alliance, and MetroParks Tacoma Nature Center. I also bought some of the plants online from Bluestone Perennials and Santa Rosa Gardens.

There's more new plants in other beds in my garden. I'll be posting about that soon.

Finished Putting Bulbs in Today

Well, it took me three days to get my bulbs in. I started last week, worked on them off and on, and then finished up today. I bought a bunch of PNW/West Coast natives, for the area behind the waterfall that I'm turning into a native-ish wildflower walk. I planted:

Calochortus superbus
Calochortus venustus
Allium cernuum (nodding onions)
Brodiaea coccinea
Brodiaea californica
Brodiaea 'Pink Diamond'
Camassia
Dichelostemma ida-maia
Dichelostemma congestum
Fritillaria meleagris
Erythronium dens-canis 'Rose Queen'
Erythronium tuolomense

Technically the Fritillaria isn't a native, but there is a native Fritillaria that looks similar, so I included it. I go back and forth on how far I want to go with the native thing in that bed. Although most of those bulbs are natives, I doubt you will find them all growing together in the wild. It's a garden (an artificial construct), ten feet away there is a fence and a neighbor's back yard. It's not a situation where I have to be a purist.....Right?


In the front foundation bed, I planted 'Red Hunter' Tulips, Stargazer lilies, oxblood lilies, snowdrops, and Siberian Squill.

Today was a beautiful sunny day. I had a hard time believing the weather forecast this time yesterday, because we were having torrential rain. One reason why it took me three un-contiguous days to get my bulbs in was because of the rain. We've been having a sequence of rainy days, followed by either a partly cloudy or actually sunny afternoon.


I found an excellent book that helped me quite a lot in my research on PNW natives -- Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes, by Kathleen A. Robson, Alice Richter and Marianne Filbert. If you need info about PNW natives, check it out.


Sorry, no pictures. I'll take some tomorrow, it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow again. In that native bed, I've also planted a bunch of other native plants that I bought at recent sales, so next post I'll document them.

Fertilizer Friday -- Still a Few Pretties

A week ago, when I left for the East Coast, there was hardly any color in the leaves of my oak tree. Now there's lots of orange-brown and yellow.

I also still have quite a few Dahlias blooming. Interestingly, all three of these came from seed from a single plant that I bought last year, called Dahlia Harlequin.

My Vitex is blooming. I've heard that butterflies like the flowers, but it seems to me that it is way too late in the season for butterflies.

My chocolate Joe-Pye Weed is flowering. From across the lawn, it looks like a pretty white froth floating above the plant.

There are still plenty of folks from all around the world, posting to Tootsie's Fertilizer Friday post on Tootsie Time. Go take a look!

Getting Back Into It

The thing with blogging is -- the longer you put off writing, the harder it is to get back into it.

I've been reading and commenting on many of the blogs that I follow, but not posting to my own blog. And I've been working in my garden, when the weather is good and I have the time. Sometimes Life gets in the way.

I  caught a bad cold after my son visited.

Then my mother-in-law passed away, and my husband went to England for about a week and a half to deal with that. I don't think I've talked about my husband much here. I've noticed a lot of bloggers give their families pseudonyms, to protect their anonymity. What shall I call my husband? The Brit? The Financier (that's his role in the garden)? The Computer Geek? The Love of My Life?

I think I'll just call him Nigel. He wholeheartedly supports my plant addiction and garden obsession, and I love him for it (well, for lots of other things too). He doesn't understand it, but he knows it makes me happy. I try to do the same for his hobbies.

Less than a week after he returned from that unplanned trip to England, I went back East on a planned trip, to see family and to meet the four new babies that have been born in my family since we moved out here to Washington. That was a lovely treat! I also saw some beautiful foliage while I was out there. I'd forgotten about that, how you can just walk down the street there in the fall, and see so many different leaf colors, and none of them green! We don't get that here in Washington -- there's a reason it's called The Evergreen State.

So...now I'm back, back to working in the garden, when weather permits. I have lots of changes to show. I've been to two plant sales, where I bought new plants. I've got lots of bulbs to get in the ground.

And blog posts to write.