More great shots from professional garden planner Dan B:
Bonus fauna!
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: (Premature) Spring in the Pacific NorthwestPost + Comments (28)
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More great shots from professional garden planner Dan B:
Bonus fauna!
Our new kitty Miss Milly. She was dumped in the greenbelt across from Mike’s house. She had some painful blisters on her back. We got her treated and she’s much happier.
She wants to play with our boy cats. She runs up to them and they panic.
She’ll probably be ruling the roost soon.
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I need to call my favorite heirloom tomato plant source with a (very!) short list of must-haves, but I’m superstitiously afraid of triggering another ‘April Surprise’ snowstorm. Snow coverage here north of Boston has verged on the nonexistent; I wouldn’t complain, except that the draggled remnants of last year’s garden warm me we’ll pay when the bugs come out and the cold-loving perennials don’t…
What’s going on in your garden (planning / prep / notes), this week?
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: (Premature) Spring in the Pacific NorthwestPost + Comments (28)
This post is in: Garden Chats
From ace gardener and photographer Ozark Hillbilly:
Last year I was able to catch a number of my DiL’s 5K runs. Mostly I stand around waiting for her at the finish line (maybe even catch the beginning of the race!) and be a familiar face when she crosses the finish line (she only competes with herself).
Then we sit and visit for 15 or 30 mins and she heads for home to her family and I wander the back roads to our place.
The bonus is I get to see some places I would otherwise never go to. These pics are from a St Charles County park that is heavily invested in prairie restoration. (Sorry, I have forgotten which one and when I searched their website, nothing rang a bell — they have some really nice parks to visit!)
The grasses were glorious.
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What’s going on in your garden (planning / prep / memories), this weekend?
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Fields of GloryPost + Comments (52)
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From professional garden planner & ace photographer Dan B:
This dwarf Jonquil [top photo] starts out with a lemon yellow trumpet and turns white in a day. It started blooming the last day of January, about a month early. El Nino and warming are making things very wacky. It’s surrounded by a hybrid of Arum italicum Marmoratum which leafs out in mid Fall and goes dormant in mid Spring. Fleshy spikes with fleshy orange berries the size of cranberries appear in summer.
Every Fall Garyya x Issaquahensis puts on a show of golden catkins. It’s grown to 12 feet in 14 years. This evergreen shrub is native to coastal California and is a hybrid with a variety from farther north which is hardier.
It was made by a couple of gardeners, Nan and Pat Ballard, who lived in an Eastern suburb of Seattle — Issaquah, home of Costco. It’s colder than Seattle so hardiness was important. That’s changed as the climate warms. Now the standard Garrya elliptica is hardy.
This is the front bed just inside the gate. Since it’s seen by us every day, including winter, it has more evergreen plants, although the miniature Daphne is doing a lot of work here. Three Hellebores are filling in slowly.
I planted this double Hellebore ‘Blushing Bridesmaids’ last year. It will catch up with the others soon. I believe these doubles were all hybridized by a gardening couple in Eugene. I visited their garden 25 or 30 years ago. They’d already selected a dozen forms by then.
Up the walk is this bed with thorough evergreen planting, with the exception of the silver leaved Cyclamen which goes dormant in summer. The Hellebore is Amber Gem which is two years old. Fifteen blooms in just its second year put its younger neighbor on notice.
Hellebore that I believe is Ivory Prince came from Home Depot. The foliage is nicely marbled.
Arctostaphylos, another coastal California native, looks great up close. This is a hybrid named Sunset after Sunset Magazine. It’s quite rounded which is not common in Arctostaphylos. It’s completely drought tolerant which is great for this garden since the closest spigot is sixty feet away.
Next to this is Podocarpos, likely Red Tip, but don’t quote me. It us green in summer and rich brown in winter, a contrast against the Garrya and Rose of Sharon branches. Podocarpus originated in Gondwana and are distributed in seemingly random ways around the globe after the super-continent broke up.
By the front stairs is a German selection of Sarcoccoca. These tiny flowers are intensely fragrant to attract gnats in winter. The fragrance is somewhat lemony with a back scent that’s a touch funky to keep it from being too sweet. One client could not smell the sweet citrus fragrance. I had to make a change to the planting scheme.
The back garden is only seen from two high bedroom windows so there are big areas that are completely deciduous. But there are low evergreen shrubs and perennials among them. We had a hard freeze in December that blackened most of the perennials so they look like mulch. Oh well, it was the coldest since the 90’s.
The pond gets water from the roof and from the roof of the toolshed. We use the water for the garden. There are plans for adding an upper layer that will stay full all year while we drain the lower level. We’ve got a big collection of water plants – emergents – that grow partially submerged on pond and wetland margins. The Dragonflies love to perch on them and scan for mosquitoes. We have a waterfall so there are few mosquitoes.
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What’s going on in your garden (planning / prep / winter), this week?
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Early February in the Pacific NorthwestPost + Comments (31)
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“… I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” I somehow misplaced this second batch of great NYC flower market photos from December — thank you, Ema:
I am inundated with garden catalogs, and discovering I can’t focus on them when there’s no snow on the ground — probably because of the visual reminder I haven’t kept up with the *existing* garden, sigh.
But the first of the daffodil clumps are a good four inches tall and starting to swell buds… just in time for a predicted 9-12″ of snow Monday night…
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What’s going on in your garden (planning / prep / memories), this week?
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: <em>In the Midst of Winter… </em>Post + Comments (41)
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Thank you, commentor JeffG166:
2.3.2024
I haven’t seen these for years. I thought they died out. Found them as I was cleaning up the garden. They were here when I moved in 26 years ago.
Per Wikipedia:
… Snowdrops are hardy herbaceous plants that perennate by underground bulbs. They are among the earliest spring bulbs to bloom, although a few forms of G. nivalis are autumn flowering. In colder climates, they will emerge through snow. They naturalise relatively easily forming large drifts. These are often sterile, found near human habitation, and also former monastic sites. The leaves die back a few weeks after the flowers have faded. Galanthus plants are relatively vigorous and may spread rapidly by forming bulb offsets. They also spread by dispersal of seed, animals disturbing bulbs, and water if disturbed by floods…
In 1983, Andreas Plaitakis and Roger Duvoisin suggested that the mysterious magical herb, moly, that appears in Homer’s Odyssey is the snowdrop. One of the active principles present in the snowdrop is the alkaloid galantamine, which, as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, could have acted as an antidote to Circe’s poisons. Further supporting this notion are notes made during the fourth century BC by the Greek scholar Theophrastus who wrote in Historia plantarum that moly was “used as an antidote against poisons” although which specific poisons it was effective against remains unclear. Galantamine (or galanthamine) may be helpful in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, although it is not a cure; the substance also occurs naturally in daffodils and other narcissi…
Early names refer to the association with the religious feast of Candlemas (February 2) – the optimum flowering time of the plant – at which young women, robed in white, would walk in solemn procession in commemoration of the Purification of the Virgin, an alternative name for the feast day. The French name of violette de la chandaleur refers to Candlemas, while an Italian name, fiore della purificazione, refers to purification. The German name of Schneeglöckchen (little snow bells) invokes the symbol of bells.
In the language of flowers, the snowdrop is synonymous with ‘hope’ (and the goddess Persephone’s/Proserpina’s return from Hades), as it blooms in early springtime, just before the vernal equinox, and so, is seen as ‘heralding’ the new spring and new year….
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In case y’all missed my previous hints — Yes, I need more photos!
That being said:
What’s going on in your gardens (hoping / planning / memories / indoor), this week?
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Turning Towards SpringPost + Comments (25)
by Betty Cracker| 128 Comments
This post is in: Garden Chats, Open Threads, Politics
I’m in charge of fauna in our household. Bill handles the flora. He’s the landscaper and gardener who has been nurturing seedlings for peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, etc., for more than a month now.
But in December 2022, someone gave me a flowering phalaenopsis orchid, and it was so pretty I decided to see if I could not only keep it alive but maybe get it to flower again. A year and change later, success!
After the initial blooms dropped off, I repotted it. It got a spike before the holidays, then acquired buds that stubbornly refused to open. According to Google, it may have been because I was protecting it from the cold a little too well. It lives on the porch, but I was whisking it indoors when the temps dropped below 60 F.
Apparently exposing it to temps in the 50s triggers blooms. I left it out one night and voila! I probably should have saved this for a garden chat, but I was so excited I had to share.
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Now for the bums portion of the post. I thought Donald Trump had a planet-sized ego, and he does, but Joe Manchin’s self-regard is similarly scaled, and I’m not sure he has Trump’s excuse of being a deranged narcissist with a compulsion to cultivate external validation lest he confront the existential truth of his own utter worthlessness. Or maybe he does, I dunno:
CNN — Sen. Joe Manchin says he “absolutely” can see himself as president…
You don’t say…
In public, during stops in states such as New Hampshire, South Carolina and Georgia, Manchin says he believes there’s a role for him as a national icon in the “fiscally responsible and socially compassionate” middle, comparable with the role Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders plays for the progressive left…
We already have “a national icon in the ‘fiscally responsible and socially compassionate’ middle” — he lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. He is reducing the debt that exploded under Trump and doing what he can to protect people’s rights in states run by members of the fascist cult party.
Manchin is hoping to get a meeting with Biden to urge the president to change the way he’s campaigning – for example, to focus more on how inflation declined after the more fiscally constrained Inflation Reduction Act that he forced Biden to retrench; or to talk less about climate change and more about energy security…
So Joe Biden — who was a U.S. senator for as long as he wanted the job because he kept getting reelected, who was twice elected VP and who beat an incumbent president to earn the top job — is supposed to listen to Paw-Paw BlackLung, who is retiring now because his home state’s governor, a folksy buffoon whose primary asset is Babydog, was definitely going to bounce Manchin out of his senate seat?
As Biden tries to assert the success of his presidency, Manchin says he shaped “everything” in the president’s agenda. In an interview with CNN as he drove in New Hampshire, Manchin said the country would have been worse off if he hadn’t used the 50-50 Senate to force Biden to do things his way, arguing, “The way it was presented and the way it ended up are two different things.”
Good lord, what an egotistical prick. It sucks that someone from the fascist cult party will replace him, but I look forward to the day when no one gives a shit what Joe Manchin thinks anymore. I hope he wilts like a neglected orchid when denied the attention he so desperately craves.
Open thread.
This post is in: Garden Chats
My bad; I had a Garden Chat submission queued up, only to discover that my ‘permission’ to view the photos from the new-to-me file sharing system had ‘expired’. So here’s an abject apology to JeffG166 — I hope I’ll be able to share his pics *next* week — and some random links I’ve been hoarding…
Gardening can be a physical challenge. These tips make it accessible. “Gardening can be extremely accessible if it is set up correctly” https://t.co/hydP74ImBT
— JasonsConnection (@JasonConnection) September 30, 2023
I may have shared this one already, but I suspect it will be broadly useful — “Gardening can be a physical challenge. These tips make it accessible”:[gift link]:
… [G]ardening can be made more accessible to those with physical challenges like arthritic knees, chronic pain or severe fatigue, said Jay Schulz, a disability and health researcher at the University of Vermont…
The Washington Post spoke to gardeners with disabilities and other experts for their best advice on making gardening more accessible. Here’s what they had to say.
– Limit kneeling and bending with raised beds or containers
For gardeners who use a wheelchair, a bed can be raised high enough that the wheelchair can be rolled directly up to the garden, she said. A U-shaped raised bed can be particularly useful, she said, because someone can sit in the middle and reach all 3 sides from the same location.Instead of gardening on the ground, try container gardening, which involves growing plants in pots or bins. Put the container at a height that is easy to reach, and make sure you can move the container easily, said Phyllis Turner, 77, a Virginia Cooperative Extension master gardener with arthritis who teaches seminars on adaptive gardening…
– Use a garden stool or rolling gardening chair…
[The price range & utility of such aids keeps improving. But even a makeshift can improve your ability to keep gardening; I drag a cheap plastic patio chair around our mostly-hardscaped / raised bed yard, which looks tacky but works for me]– Get extendible or long handle tools…
– Find ergonomic tools with easy grips…
– Reduce strain on joints with orthopedic aids
Hill wears prescription knee braces and notes that wearing orthopedic aids provide stability and reduces joint strain while gardening.“Wear braces even when you don’t think you need them,” Hill said. “I’ll often put them on as a reminder to not squat so low because it’s painful. When I’m in the groove, I’m not thinking about the ramifications of what I’m doing.”…
– Utilize free public resources…
If you’ve been struggling, or have an older loved one who is, well worth reading the whole thing.
Most of the world's #crop varieties are preserved by small holders who plant, harvest and carefully save their #seeds.
In #Peru, a group of #Indigenous communities is protecting the more than 1,300 potatoes varieties of the country.https://t.co/u6EGq2NdYJ
— A Growing Culture (@agcconnect) October 13, 2023
The potatoes that grow in the Andes of South America are far more than a starchy staple of the local diet. They are a rich part of the culture.
“There’s one really wonderfully beautiful potato, it looks almost like a rose. And the name of that one is ‘the-one-that-makes-the-daughter-in-law-cry’,” says Tammy Stenner, executive assistant at Asociación Andes, a non-profit organisation in Cusco, Peru, that works to protect biodiversity and indigenous rights in the region. “A potential mother-in-law would ask the young woman who wants to marry her son to peel this potato, but she has to peel it with care, so not wasting the flesh, not ruining the shape.”
It is just one of more than 1,300 varieties of potato to be found growing in the mountains of the Andes, somewhere between 3,200m and 5,000m (10,500ft-16,500ft) above sea level. These are not the smooth-skinned russets or pale Maris Pipers that can be found on supermarket shelves in Europe and the US. Instead, they come in shades of purple, pink, red, and black, as well as white and yellow. Some have so many lumps and bumps that peeling them is enough to bring tears to the eyes.
Others require special methods of preparation. There are some that have to be freeze-dried (using one of two different methods for doing so), some that should only be cooked whole, and those that can be peeled and cut up for cooking. Individual varieties often have wonderfully descriptive names that describe their shape: one name translates to “puma’s paw”, another to “llama’s nose”. Then there are the potatoes named according to the role they play in the field, like the wild relatives of the cultivated potatoes known as the “grandfathers”, or the role they play in local customs.
But now these beguiling vegetables have a new and vital role to play – helping to ensure potato crops can adapt to the challenges of climate change.
Potato Park, located near the Peruvian town of Pisac, was founded by six indigenous communities in 2002 to preserve the genetic diversity of potatoes grown in the region, as well as the cultural heritage of the people that grow them. Other native Andean crops grow here, too, from maize to quinoa. The agricultural methods used in the park have been developed over thousands of years, and resilience to extreme weather, such as that caused by El Niño, is built in. Farmers also vary planting locations within the almost 10,000-hectare (38 sq miles) reserve, and harvest at multiple times across the year.
As well as preserving many varieties of potatoes that might otherwise be lost – along with the agricultural knowledge and traditions involved in growing potatoes at high altitude – farmers are testing which of the existing varieties can best adapt to the kind of extreme conditions that are expected to become more common as the global climate changes…
In fact, you don’t need to be a farmer to save seeds and steward a diverse range of crops for the future. Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit organisation based in Iowa, US, dedicated to the preservation of heirloom seeds. The organisation uses a combination of ex situ conservation (long-term storage of seeds in their gene bank) and in situ conservation (sharing their seeds with gardeners and farmers to grow). All of their seeds are open-pollinated, which means that growers can save their own seed year after year.
As well as holding information on the cultural heritage of their heirloom seeds – gathered by specialist seed historians – Seed Savers Exchange is working with a network of 700 gardeners across the US to help it learn which varieties might best adapt to different environments. Those gardeners grow seeds that the organisation would like more information on, then report back on aspects like germination rate, growth habit, and how the plants are doing in their climate. “These are people that are all across the country, so it allows us to be able to start to see what sort of environments some of these crops are thriving in,” says Mike Bollinger, executive director of Seed Savers Exchange…
#Sewers are overflowing everywhere. One solution is right in your #backyard. https://t.co/lcfad2JAom
— Matthew O. Harbour (@MOHarbour) December 10, 2023
… When water is captured by a rain garden, it infiltrates into the ground, evaporates, or is absorbed by plants and eventually returns to the atmosphere. The city is also installing permeable pavement.
The goal is to slowly absorb storm water to keep it out of the combined sewer, said Seth Charde, D.C. Water’s green infrastructure manager…
D.C. is promoting rain gardens in other ways. For $100, the city will design and install a rain garden through an incentive program for homeowners. The city is also helping private projects get federal money.
Less than half a mile from the White House, the streets of the Golden Triangle district are lined with restaurants, businesses, and lots of greenery. The wide sidewalks host tree boxes, pollinator plants, and enough rain gardens to capture 48,000 gallons of water…