Fall Round Up

Our summer was a bit of a dud here in the NW due to El Niño. What's funny is that I remember another summer like this during the 80s when I was a young girl. My family lived on a medium-sized creek and each summer I was able to purchase a new raft for my own use. Usually I just tied it up under some overarching bushes, and with my trusted radio by my side, I'd read all day. That summer, it was just too cold to hang out in the creek all day, and I feel the disappointed feelings of that memory creeping over me as I write this. I don't think I like El Niño a lot.

Yesterday, while cleaning up my overgrown jungle with a weekender foster child, I saw these blooms and I knew what they meant. Ah, how I adore my Cyclamen, but they are the bellwether of autumn whether I like it or not.

Cyclamen hederifolium

This little darling popped up and I have no idea what it is, but I would love to find out if any of you have and idea. I am sure that I planted it, and that it is in my database, but I just need a hint to figure it out. There are at least 729 entries in my spreadsheet now. Yikes! 

Sedums and the like are some of my favorite little garden friends. This is an image of Old Man's Bones. 

Sedum globosum

Another thing I have become more and more proud of are my ivy topiary items. Since ivy is considered the ultimate evil in these parts, even if you just have the completely non-agressive type, I keep it around just in case. The leaves on this are the tiniest I have ever seen. 

Hedera helix 'spetchley'

I only have one of these that's made it through my neglectful care this past season. I purchased the seeds from Thompson and Morgan and I intend to grow more of these next season. I have never seen such amazing dark leaves on an annual snapdragon. 

Antirrhinum majus nanum 'bronze dragon'

The last single specimen plant in my garden that I am showing is my dwarf pomegranate shrub. I am really sad that it did not make it very far this year. We have tons of blooms, but nothing resembling a small fruit is anywhere near making it. It is a true perennial in this climate though, and I don't regret planting it at all. Last year I had two small pomegranates so I can wait another year to try again. (I have harvested about 50 figs from my dwarf fig tree so I am quite happy with the fruits of my labors.)

Punica granatum var nana

Here is the pomegranate in context. It is to the bottom left in the corner of this picture. The grapes are escaping their supports in this picture and are about to reach out to strangle their neighbors. (These are Italian wine grapes. I planted them to remind me of all the hard work my husband does making wine down in California.)

This picture is meant to show how unremarkable our porch is this year. Typically, the porch would be lit up with late summer color. I have color, but it just didn't really grow enough. Better luck next season. I WILL be back.

Here is the cleaned up front area. In my mind, it is the least attractive area in our garden. I think it is due to the heat during the summer. The Provence lavender was finally harvested at least for crafts and gifts. It had eaten the sidewalk and folks would walk around it to avoid it. Now I will be able to watch more neighbors walk by since they won't avoid our side of the street anymore. 

The backyard and I have a love/hate relationship. The greatest accomplishment back there this past season though was the additional growth of items that block our view of the small apartment building behind us. I have hated the view of this building for some time, and I really don't like the walkway that is frequently used by the tenants and their continued curiosity, as well as their loud cell conversations. Maybe I should add that I would also like a sound buffer from the busy street a house away from me, and that maybe next summer, I might like to have an outdoor movie setup but I have to protect them from my noise then too so it is a two-way street, right? I want to be a good neighbor, really I do. 

Oh, and this is my big boy Maurice. He has had a rough summer with the foster kids and has taken to living privately in the basement with his friend Mona. He has been mishandled by too many kids these past few months and today we spent several hours alone together in the garden. He was very happy.

Oregon Native Plant Nursery, Part One

A week ago today, my friend and I drove south of Portland to our friend's nursery in Woodburn, Oregon to pick some of his delicious blackberries. Located in the middle of the Willamette Valley, Douglas's 10-acre spread had more than enough un-sprayed berries to suit both of our needs, so of course, as can be expected after an hour of two of hard work, I started to wander around with my camera. 

His is a small nursery, and as he states in his catalogs he is a: "Propagator and purveryor of wild seed source-crafted perennial and bulbous native plant materials of Oregon, and, of the West and Far West."

A view of my spoils.

The plant below is the native Meadow Checker-mallow Sidalcea campestris. Once mature, they are about 6 feet tall with single orchid pink blooms. I can assure you that next year I will have a few of these added to my garden. Douglas will bring back into production, starting next year, eight superb Oregon native Sidalcea species (False Mallows), including Sidalcea campestris. 

(Note the link below posted on OregonLive. I read it the day after our trip to Woodburn. Talk about good timing!)

http://blog.oregonlive.com/homesandgardens/2010/08/false_mallows_are_true_charmer.html

Here are a few of the things that we saw that day:

Sidalcea campestris, Meadow Checker-mallow.

Navarretia squarrosa, Skunkweed and Gnaphalium stramineum, Chilean Everlasting or Cotton-batting plant. 

Erigeron speciosus, Showy Erigeron. 

Artemisia suksdorfii, Coastal sagebrush, an herbaceous perennial.

Inflorescences of Artemisia suksdorfii.

Solidago gigantea, Golden rod and native grass.

Current production in the shade house. 

Aquilegia eximia

Aquilegia eximia, before the bloom opens.

Sisyrinchium californicum, Yellow-eyed grass (and my foot).

Prosartes smithii, Smith's Fairy Lanterns.

Anaphalis margaritacea, Pearly everlasting. 

Phacelia bolanderi.

Many of the Sedum offered at the nursery.

Lewisia columbiana var. wallowensis (Wallowa Bitter-Root)

If you are interested in any of these plants, or if you are interested in more information, please send Douglas Chadwick of Oregon Native Plant Nursery an email. The nursery does not currently have a Web site, but there is an electronic catalog available that he can send to you online. He has many, many more rare and unusual native plants available. (oregonnativeplant@yahoo.com)

The Block Party & The Garden

This is not the most important of garden blogging posts, but I had to add these pictures since they involve our garden. I promised myself on that day I would not be giving garden tours, and I didn't! Instead, we spent hours and hours directly across the street, and in the street, spending quality time with one another. It was a great party and we will certainly do it again next year!

So who knew that you could invite the fire station around the corner and they'd ride a truck on over for the kids? I had no idea, but a neighbor knew, and she invited them. We were not disappointed, especially when it parked in front of our house! (Red really does go with green doesn't it?)

Also, later on in the evening, the two most daring cats crawled out to stake their claim to our feline friendly pad. This was quite shocking seeing as there were several large dogs off leash roaming around directly across from them. Out in front is my old lady, Macavity, and Meng, the neighbor cat with two homes, is in the back. They made me so proud.

Random Arts & Crafts Progress

It is getting late and my husband is in the kitchen making preparations for our street's first block party tomorrow. He is the trained chef, I am not, and I am grateful that he is here for a visit from the vineyard in CA because I have needed his help dearly in the last few weeks. As much as I love the summer, and I love my garden, this time of the year is always very hard for me physically here in the NW, especially with little physical help available to me, but this has been the best summer I've had in many years so I am not complaining.

In the garden there are a few special blooms to share right now. One is the first bloom I've seen on an unusual plant in our collection while the other is purely a sentimental bloom from a pass-along I purchased seeds for at a museum in Los Angeles. 

This is the only bloom on the Crinodendron hookerianum (aka Chilean Lantern Tree) in the backyard and it is our first. This is a shrub I planted 2 or 3 years ago and I'd forgotten about since it nearly dies every winter but then it springs back to life just in time for winter to slam it down hard again so it's easy to miss in the mess. Maybe we've turned the corner on those days though since there are more blooms to come; they just haven't reached maturity yet. I like what I see though.

The other bloom I wanted to post is on a hollyhock in my garden, single and white, planted from seeds I purchased at Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House in Los Angeles. The plant itself is pretty roughed up with rust, but I just couldn't yank it out. It is one of those sentimental things for me, reminding me of a time not that long ago when I was well enough to work, albeit briefly, doing something I'd studied for, and which I loved a great deal. 

Back when I worked at The Gordon House I applied for one of the small scholarships offered by the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy in Chicago to attend an annual Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy Conference and I was granted that dream. It is a city I have visited many times now, both before and after, but that visit was very special since I attended many events and I saw the interiors of homes that very few members of the public are ever allowed to see. I also met Dion Neutra in his home in Silver Lake—the son of the architect Richard Neutra—and he was a really kind man who inspired me with his humility and kindness. 

At night, after the conference tours, I'd wander off by myself to Pasadena for their annual Craftsmen Weekend with events organized around the designs of Greene & Greene. I was experiencing the best of both worlds in my mind, and I even skipped a party with Hollywood producer Joel Silver so that I could spend an evening dining at the Gamble House. I have never regretted that choice and I will always remember that event as well as the smashing party at the home once owned by Ernest Batchelder, a leading tile designer during the American Arts & Crafts Movement. 

At that party I stayed late, wandering in circles around the property, between the house and the old artisan's studio, lingering near the tiled fountain grotto at the far edge of the property in the back corner of the garden, and then finally in the kitchen, dining room, and living room with the magnificent fireplace. Eventually I spoke with the homeowner, a retired professor who'd spoken that day at my conference, and he was overjoyed that I was such a turncoat. I'd left Frank, and his cult, to spend an evening with someone else's designs, and we both knew that I would live to tell about it. 

This beaten up hollyhock is there to remind me now of my past and of my future, but mostly of my past and I am sad about that. Gardens are so often designed with such sentimental tales attached to their owner's plant choices and this often drives those among us "nuts" when nothing makes sense in the design or is too disorganized for us to understand what the person was thinking or saying. There is often order to such gardens, but is is not often apparent, or it is written in a language that we do not understand, or were never intended to understand. These gardens are the most private, since they do not communicate to us, and are written in code. They are the gardens meant for only a few, sometimes only one, and I am beginning to think that we are folk gardeners creating outsider art as we call it in the art world. This just may not be what I want to communicate though and I have been spending a lot of time thinking over this recently. 

Sometimes I really struggle with what my garden is saying, if it is saying anything at all to others. Writing this has elucidated a great deal to me though and I look forward now to thinking about it some more. All of this was also stirred up by my still not having spun together a name for the place, because this  kind of a vision is really required and necessary at this point. 

I guess it's back to the midnight drawing board with the smoking panda up at the park above my house. That is unless they have banned graffiti from smoking too. Life is simply too short to make gardens so serious and staid.