The heat has started . . .

Up to 87 both today and tomorrow, and I say phooey, I’m day-tripping down to Astoria tomorrow. Serendipitously enough, Mark and Jan are driving back from Manzanita at the same time, so we’ll have lunch there at a Bosnian restaurant, which should be a new experience.
Still waiting to get the contract and timeline from Todd, but I’ve pretty much decided not to do the work on the raised beds until fall, especially if it ends up being the extra-hot summer they’re forecasting.
I did get quite a bit of mulch on the existing beds last weekend, when it was blessedly cool and cloudy. Put a special heap of compost around the new clematis, who is looking rather peaked:

More text than photos here

[originally posted 5/25/15 on WordPress blog]

Jeezus keeee-rist, figuring out how to get photos a) from camera into computer, and b) from computer into Picasa, and c) resized in Picasa (their way of doing this makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to me), and d) into WordPress … I am exhausted.
Just wanted to add a few notes on the planning front:  first of all, I have found (I think/hope) a guy to redo the patio!  TA-DAA!  Turns out he’s an Evergreen grad and seems like a really nice guy, and the bid to have the whole thing done is manageable for me.
Then I am inching into the vicinity of the neighborhood of making up my mind about the raised beds and actually taking ACTION.  I’ve computed lumber needed and just have to get someone with a strong back.  It would actually make the most sense to hold off and do this in the fall, but I may get too impatient.
In front — all I know is I want a tree, and probably a spreading crabapple (Donald Wyman for example) with white blossoms and good fruit color and holding in winter and disease resistant.  Of course, the only place I can find Donald Wyman is at ForestFarm, and I would really really rather choose my own sapling, rather than just have something random shipped.
I’ve been thinking about putting a katsura in the back yard, right about where the yellowjacket-dirt-mound now reposes.  But this of course will wait until the patio is done.

I suck at consistency… [originally posed 5/25/15 on WP blog]

…and at journaling, and at keeping records, but we’ll give this another go.
FIRST:  new arrivals in the garden, due to an impetuous trip to Portland Ave Nursery:

• a couple of foxgloves
• another dianthus
• a gaura

Also, from the Farmers Market

• some salpiglossis
• a nasturtium that I put in a hanging basket
• some poppies?  can’t remember where they are now

NEXT:  let’s tally all the the stuff that started blooming in late April/early May:  (NOTE this is no doubt earlier than usual due to the extremely warm winter):
Foxgloves:  Lo, the clump of mysterious and weedy-looking foliage did indeed turn out to be foxgloves, and there was rejoicing across the land.

And the cistus and flax did their usual simultaneous gorgeousness.

But the stars of the late spring and early summer have been my two David Austin climbing roses.  They are currently not so much climbing as sprawling, due to my ineptitude/cowardice at getting them tied up, but they are still gorgeous.



This is Crocus Rose, absolutely beautiful pale cream, and lovely at all stages, from first budding to blowsy-and-about-to-drop-petals.

She is ready for her close-up:



And her companion is The Generous Gardener, which actually I saw a glorious specimen of Saturday at the Portland Rose Gardens, growing up a lamppost.  I could not figure out how in the hell they actually got it to stay up–the supports were invisible.  (I have a picture of this on my other camera that I should download and insert here.)

     

Some things I would like to get

[Originally posteed 4/12/15 on the WordPress blog]

I stopped at Bark & Garden this morning, and saw several things that I would like to grab once I’ve figured out where to put them:

• some more salvia patens (Yay!)
• various coreopsis
• aconitum (monks hood)
• and, um, I know there was some other stuff.  Did I bother to take notes?  No, I did not.

Another try at clematis, and a spring assessment of the state of the troops

The Pope John Paul II clematis having swiftly died last summer, I'm trying again, this time with First Lady, who was planted out on a mild April day of high dim clouds.  After I got her in the ground, I spent a fair amount of time weeding the back bed, which is sort of a catastrophe at this point.

Things that appear to have not made it to this spring (some of which, I suspect, succumbed during the summer when I got uber-depressed and stopped watering) :

• Distant Drums rose
• Salvia patens (no surprise)
• Oriental poppy
• most of the non-verticillata coreopsis (dammit)
• foxgloves
• the dianthus--which have, technically speaking, survived, but look awfully ratty
• the big blue aster in the side bed

What has been wildly successful:

• the fucking mint
• coreopsis verticillata
• the cistus

Other things that I like which have made it and that I may need to move around once I've figured out what the hell I'm doing with the configuration of the beds:

• daylilies (Hyperion, 2 in number)
• one of the anemones
• those asters that bloom in the fall with the tiny white flowers
• the hebe, which is a whole other deal
• astonishingly enough, the peony which spends its life smothered by the cistus
• the climbing roses
• a couple of the things in the side bed--um, Jacob's Ladder, a geum, a monarda, and a bunch of miscellaneous sedum (actually, those last I might dig up and take to Jean's plant sale)