BLOOMTOWN

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - April 2009

Garden is starting to get rolling, finally! I hope you enjoy this collection of photos showing some of today's highlights.

Pulmonaria - an unknown variety that was a gift from a friend

Heuchera 'Georgia Peach' - loving the color, the leaves are quite large

Primula 'April Rose' - this has been happy in my garden for several years

Libertia peregrinans - strongly upright, wonderful foliage color

Beesia deltophylla - a wonderful foliage plant for shady spots, delicate white blooms are a bonus

Tulips - these hybrid tulips have been reliably returning for me for more years than I would expect; keep expecting them to fizzle out

Thalictrum aquilegifolium 'Thundercloud' - frothy purple blooms of this meadow rue are just getting going

Paeonia suffruticosa foliage - buds are just now forming on this tree peony; the real show is yet to come but I find the foliage very attractive

Polygala dalmaisiana - growing this Zone 9 shrub in a container so that I can protect it during coldest days of the year

Tiarella - this unknown variety of the foam flower is growing along a shady path on the north side of my house

Mustard greens - too beautiful to eat (almost)

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - February 2009

A very, very quick Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post today -- I've been working at the farm all day getting ready for spring, so I'm whupped and ready to call it a day.

Garden is still pretty much asleep around here flower-wise, but signs of spring are beginning to pop up. A few things in bloom now -- snowdrops have been blooming for a week or so, crocus are just getting going and the hellebores are well under way. By the time I got home today, it was too dark to get a shot of the hellebores outside so I brought a few blossoms in to photograph. Bonus; a better view of their pretty faces.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - January 2009

Not much in bloom here today ...horticulturally speaking it's a bit more like a Garden Blogger's "Gloom Day" vs. "Bloom Day" around here. We've had some severe, record-shattering weather in our area over the last month or so. We were just getting rolling, weather-wise, about the time of last month's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day post. Then in December we had sustained, low temps at levels we haven't seen in quite a while around here and snow accumulations that were pretty darn incredible for our area. And yes, it was beautiful and really quite fun; if one could overlook thinking about what was happening in their gardens as a result.

I'll have another post here shortly which focuses more on some of the plants that were damaged in my garden. And I will be posting my interview with Paul Bonine at Xera Plants in which we talk about some of the weather damage we've experienced and get some advice on how to deal with it.

But with that said ...there are of course lovely things to be seen in the garden at any time of year. Not much flowering, per se but some wonderful foliage and seed heads. Here's a sampling, taken moments ago in my garden.

Phlomis fruticosa seed head

 

Allium seed head

 

Berberis thunbergii berries

 

Pinus strobus looking especially blue this morning

 

Won't be terribly long now before the Daphne odora blooms and provides the unmistakable olfactory announcement: spring will come, spring is on the way!

 

Thanks for stopping by ... hope to see you again next month on the 15th for another peek at what's happening in my garden!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - December 2008

What a day for my inaugural participation in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day (the brain child of Carol at May Dreams Gardens; read up on it here). We're having what may be one of the coldest days of the year, in the beginning of what's expected to be the most prolonged and pronounced cold snap that we've seen in the Portland area for quite some time. See my recent weather-related posts for the skinny on that.

But what the heck, here we go!

Bud of an unnamed abutilon variety dusted in snow; up until yesterday all of my abutilons were covered in bloom. I am confident that most will make it through this cold snap, though they'll surely be killed to the ground.

Euphorbia 'Tasmanian Tiger' and his close cousins such as E x martinii and E. wulfenii look great with a dusting of snow and should hold up to this just fine.

This fuchsia will also take the weather in stride but like the abutilons, it'll die back to the ground this year for sure.

I'm sure there's more to show, but it's way too cold for me to be interested in going outside to take more pictures.

Hope you're staying warm, wherever you are!