Boxes o' Plants

Almost as good as plant sale season is buying plants online from a vendor you know is tip-top.

First up is Annie's Annuals.

Oh boy, what's in the box?

Such perfect packaging -- everything fits snugly

Each side contains three plants and lifts out easily

After carefully taking the cardboard apart, you're left with a plant that is wrapped in a paper "diaper" rubber-banded in place

And the second box o' plants is from Far Reaches Farm.

Lots of paper keeps the contents from shifting

Every plant is individually wrapped in brown paper

Second layer

After removing the brown paper, each plant is also wrapped in a paper "diaper/shawl" and a plastic bag/sleeve

So, what did I buy?

From Annie's:

Ferraria schaeferi 'Dark Chocolate'

Verbascum olympicum

Lysimachia atropurpurea

And from Far Reaches Farm:

Saxifraga paniculata 'Rosea'

Monardella macrantha 'Marion Sampson'

Also, not pictured because they look like pots of dirt, which requires little imagination: Allium wallichii ex China and Rhodiola integrifolia, but you can follow the links to see what they look like in the garden.

Wednesday Vignette

For my Wednesday Vignette this week I'm sharing a photo from my garden of the blooms on my Jeffersonia diphylla, aka twinleaf. Jeffersonia is a spring ephemeral that I know has flowered in the past, but somehow I've always missed it. Spring is such a busy time for gardeners, with so much work to do and so much to captivate your attention. In the past I've seen this with seed capsules, so I know it has flowered. This year I caught it at the right time! Hooray for me.

Jeffersonia diphylla aka twinleaf

I went out the next day to see if I could capture a closeup of the flowers, and the petals of two of them had fallen away already.

Anna at Flutter & Hum hosts Wednesday Vignette, check out her post here.

In a Vase on Monday

The foliage in my vase today is the result of pruning my Rosa glauca over the weekend. But it isn't Rosa glauca foliage.

Let me explain.

I was weeding and digging and dividing plants in the bed where the Rosa glauca lives when I realized it really needed to be pruned. So I took a break from the weeding to give it a go. I started with the dead tips that had died back over the winter, or still had old prune-like rose hips hanging on. Then, of course, out came the miss-shapen branches. And the ones that were rubbing. That resulted in a nice shape. But it had three or four tall shoots that were interfering with the low-hanging branches of the eucalyptus tree nearby. So I was faced with a dilemma. I could cut back those nice tall canes of the rose, or I could cut the eucalyptus branches off.

Which is how I ended up with eucalyptus foliage in my vase arrangement today.

What goes with blue eucalyptus foliage? Yellow Forsythia!

It looks much more blue in reality than it looks in the photos

It was raining when I ran out to cut some Forsythia, so they are still a bit spattered by raindrops

I added some dying fronds from my Polypodium aureum aka Blue Star Fern, which lives out in the greenhouse. Out there, seen on its own and not against the eucalyptus foliage, it looked much more blue than it does in the photos.

Polypodium frond

I like the color added by the dying areas on the fern frond

Everything is gathered in this hexagonal vase with a yellowish tinge

I have a collection of more interesting vases that I could use for my In a Vase on Monday post, but for now I'm sticking with a pretty basic one, at least until I get a few more arrangements under my belt, and decide to change things up a notch.

Cathy at Rambling in the Garden hosts this very popular meme, go to her blog and check out her post today, to see what she and other bloggers are plonking in vases.

Seed Starting Update

In late February (a little over a month ago) I posted about my seed starting, both inside the greenhouse and outside in plastic storage bins. You can read about that here. I figured it was time for a progress report.

I've managed to pot up many of the seedlings that sprouted in the greenhouse, although I'm running out of room, as well as pots. I still haven't sowed all I bought.

All my blue Echinops have been potted up and most are thriving

Since my last post I sowed 'New Zealand Purple' Castor Bean and they are shooting up like mad

Cardoons took their sweet time germinating, but I finally have some good size seedlings potted on

The huge amount of Lupine 'My Castle,' Dahlia 'Black Beauty,' and Erysimum 'Blood Red' that I sowed and potted on were taking up too much shelf space so I moved them into storage bins with transpiration holes drilled into them, and have set them outside for hardening off. On hot, sunny days I'll take the lids off and let them get some fresh air.

Please ignore the horribly weedy gravel

Lupine 'My Castle'

Erysimum 'Blood Red'

Dahlia 'Black Beauty,' which would be taller but I pinched them back a couple of days ago to encourage side shoots, and I'm actually starting to wonder if they need slightly larger pots

So, let's take a look inside the storage bins to see if there is any germination going on inside. These seeds have been sowed without any heat mats or lights, just using whatever heat is generated by being in the enclosed space of the translucent storage bin on the south side of the greenhouse on sunny days.

There are holes drilled in the lids to let air out and water in. You can see there is lots of condensation on the inside of the lid

Hmmm..not a lot of sprouting here

A few Butterflyweed babies

Some Knautia 'Mars Midget' but they have true leaves

So, that was a bit disappointing. What will we find in the next one?

Much better!

Rumex sanguineus aka bloody dock

Scabiosa 'Black Knight'

Eryngium 'Blue Glitter'

And the next?

Lots of babies!

Dianthus 'Black Adder'  -- a Sweet William with a dark purple/black flower like 'Sooty'

Oodles of Verbascum 'Shades of Summer'

Coreopsis 'Mahogany Midget'

Erysimum 'Blood Red'

The next bin has quite a lot of sprouts too.

Ruby Swiss Chard

Salvia nemorosa 'Violet Blue'

Let's keep going.
 

Plenty more sprouts

Centaurea cyanus 'Black Boy'

Ruby Red Orach

And one final look.

Sprouts in every pot

More Salvia nemorosa than I know what to do with -- actually I plan to fill a drought-tolerant bed with it

Some Shasta 'Crazy Daisy'

That's my seed report for March. It's only been a month since I sowed most of those seeds, some even sooner, and they've been outside in the cold for that entire time. We did have some sunny days recently, but for a few weeks in February we had some nasty, snowy, cold, unseasonal (for us) weather. Some of those seedlings have true leaves, and you may have noticed there is no legginess on most of those sprouts as well.

I'm pretty happy with them. I can't wait to get them in the ground.

Wednesday Vignette -- Never Can Say Good-Bye

For my Wednesday Vignette this week, I'm sharing the view out my front window when I woke up on Saturday. Like Gloria Gaynor, Winter never can say Good-Bye.

Good old Mother Nature, keeping gardeners (and everyone else) guessing. Making sure I remember I came from the East Coast, where they're dealing with much worse than this, and won't be spared a little bit of winter's last hissy fit.

Gloria Gaynor -- Never Can Say Good-Bye

Anna at Flutter & Hum hosts Wednesday Vignette. Check out her post here.

You Can Fly!

Do you read my blog or that of my blogging buddy Peter The Outlaw Gardener and sometimes wonder how to start a blog of your own? Do you take pictures of your garden in order to keep track of what's happening there? Or of gardens that you visit, maybe as part of the NPA's Open Gardens scheme? Maybe you even share them with family and friends occasionally, by emails, or on Facebook or Instagram.

Are you an introvert who's more comfortable around plants, tongue-tied when talking about your garden in front of others, who becomes more eloquent when given time to think and write out what you want to say?

You could write a blog!

Peter The Outlaw Gardener and I are going to be telling all our blog writing secrets and teaching a class for the Northwest Perennial Alliance on starting a blog. You should come and learn as much as you can, so you can start your own blog and join the garden blogging community.

Find out all the details here. Be sprinkled with our very own pixie dust. Become a high-flying garden blogger like Peter and I.

Peter Pan "You Can Fly"

In A Vase On Monday

The main feature in my vase arrangement today was the result of an accident -- I won't say a happy accident, because when it happened I was not at all happy about it. In fact, I was really pretty peeved.

The large Daffodil in the center of my arrangement is British Gamble, and it was rescued from one of my front beds after one of the guys who cuts my grass stepped on it with his big feet. I don't know what it is about landscape maintenance guys, for some reason they get this kind of tunnel vision when they cut the lawn and don't seem to realize that they are in the midst of a big garden full of plants that don't react well to big clumsy feet. Not only did he step on the Daffodil, he managed to actually mow over a handful of Muscari in front of the Daffodil. I watched him for a few minutes and then just couldn't stop myself from running out the door and yelling at him.

Yes. I hate that I am that person, but I am that person.

After they left I went out with the secateurs and cut the unopened Daff, brought it inside and put it in a vase, hoping it would open.

Fortunately it did, but so far it lacks the pinkish tinge to the cup that British Gamble normally sports. I went out on Saturday and cut a few more items to go with it -- a handful of stems of flowering currant and two more small Daffodils that had opened (and hadn't been stepped on).

I've never brought flowering currant into the house before. It has an interesting scent -- kind of a cross between lilac and something unpleasant.

Cathy at Rambling in the Garden hosts In a Vase on Monday. Check out her post here, and see what she has plonked in a vase for today, along with all the other bloggers who participate.