Earthly Delight

.........02.23
Cherries and flowering plums blooming everywhere.

I found the sketchy journal I started last year  in the last place I looked, as they say.  It starts in late April, and laments an 'extraordinaryily cold' winter and very late Spring.  Such a contrast! The notes quite apologetically chronicle slow progress over the preceding three years:

 - two years of complete neglect, followed by a year of ripping trees, bushes, roots, heavy pruning and starting to renovate the soil.  The front tier was planted out with brass buttons, sweet woodruff, vinca, spike moss, black mondo grass, heath, sarcococca....these have survived. The bergenia was eaten by slugs, the creeping jenny hid and whimpered to its death, the nandina dropped leaves,  the crocosmia never flowered, and the cistus grew leggy and ratty.   The end of this and every garden year, began in July with the fall of leaves from the cottonwoods and a most willing withdrawl in hopeless defeat from the heavy wet trampeled piles of leaves lining the driveway.

-In 2008 the log speaks of wonder over the peristence of a bowl of violets under the Rhodedendron, more stump and bush removal, more reconstructive surgery on the rhodedendron, the addition of more vinca, new nandina, nine bark, more heath and mondo grass.  Hostas, hellebores, brunnera, solomon's seal, more heath.  and mondo grass went in along with a coral bark maple and alpine spruce.  This was my first container garden, a summer annual affair, but a start.

- Last year, 2009, I found a few weak hostas and hellbores, crocosmia and sarcococas and rooted them out.  The spike moss had a hard time with the cold snap. The last stumps came out, the final pruning on the rhodedendron and peiris was completed and the fern renovation and removal was nearly completed.

A few views of the garden  

Bears breech , skimmia, acuba, jacobs lader, wild ginger, painted ferns, autmun fern, salal, huckleberry, the most beautiful dahlias I've ever seen, balck eyed susans, heucheras, grasses, more crocosmia, more mondo, black clover, blue star creeper, speedwell, ajuga, more vinca, another oakleaf hydrangea, sedums from Portugal, english daisies, rock cress, maidenhair fern, Oenothera odorata 'Apricot delight', (the most beautiful of all) Ligularia, more nandina, clematis, and pacific lilies a long with a few more hellebores were planted.

- In addition to a dozen houseplants, I attmepted to create hanging baskets and failed, punting to 8 or 9 container plantings.  The rhodedendron pathway was finished and the little garden patio was completed.  Plants I used in the containers that did really well, heliotrope, bocapa, lamium, coleus, dracena, heuchera'we, vinca, grass, tuberous begonia, wireplant, fragrant geraniums.  But it was a wonderful satisfying garden year, and for the most part I not only held my own against the leaves, but managed to get Christmas lights up in Allison's little spruce tree as I planted out flowering kales, asters, little ferns, and x plant.

- I had sketched plans to develop spheres in the garden for earth, air, fire, water and spirit.  Balls hanging from arbor, rock, riverbed, candleholder; waxed poetic about the heliotrope, and underscored that Meg is at the very core of my heart. By mid-summer I was lamenting the legginess of speedwell, violas and evening primrose, my mismanagement of the clematis,  the difficulty of keying mosses and lichens and the strange 'weed' clinging and thriving in a mat on the rocks and the need to give  up on the hucheras that had rust - var. Peach Melba is not hardy in this climate. The ligularia and Solomon's seal seem to be a favorite bug food :(  The tradescantia, I noted for yet another year, needs to be moved.

- In the fall, I took the time to berate myself for bad journal keeping....and then made a few notes:  The Rhody had been dropping yellowed leaves and wondered if it always did so in the fall.  Despite the deluge of fuel oil at the last filling, it seemed otherwise happy with its ongoing reconstruction and looked sweet with the hanging tea lanternes in it.  I had fallen in love with the Blue Star Creeper for between the between the path stones.  I had pulled the jacobs ladder for bad placement although it had done beautifully. The dwarf bear's breech never flowered, and the impatiens container died for lack of watering.  I noted that I was less fond of the yellow Brunnera than the silver.  I made plans to plant bulbs that I never had the courage to follow through with. 

-The garden in winter is still not where I'd like it to be. Although the oakleaf hydrangea, and grasses were beautiful especially when the later was cutback. Several plants stood as annuals, mostly those in the containers (lamium, bocapa, and heliotrope are amazingly hardy), most perrenials disappear, a few I treated as annuals, I should cut off the old leaves of the hellebores but don't.  However the sarcocca is getting stronger despite one plant that dropped its leaves in horror at the cold snap.  In the process of cleaning up fading perrenials and hardy annuals that I gambled on it is hard for me know what I pulled out completely with prejudice.  Time will certainly tell.  I did bring some of the container hardy annaul/perrenials in as houseplants...dracena, coleus, saxigraga, ....and if I had not killed all the houseplants this winter..it would have been good to have brought in the heliotrope and wireplant.  Although I didn't get far with hard-scaping last year, we did get the deck demo'd and will be able to start rebuilding it this year.

.........02.21

Its very late now. In fact, I've already missed the Northwest Flower and Garden Show.

There are forsythia and Italian plums in boom, and the thimbleberries have small magenta petals emerging from their leafy chrysalises. A week of clear cold freezing nights and bright sunny clear days is almost cruel in its seductive wonder and beautry. It has been a long time since I've seen such ferocious penetration of starlight.

Thinking about next steps:
1. drag out last year's journal, a drawing pad and pen, and the camera and binoculars.
2. Make an inventory of where you are, sketch out where you want to go.
3. Evaluate gardening tools and supplies.
4. Conduct spring renovation
5. Run around to Hayes, Shaw, and Swansons and look at plants

2010.02.20

So it begins. The start of the garden year in this mild Pacific Northwest climate is such a personal choice.  For me it coincides with the appearance of pieris, periwinkle and hellebore blooms. Once noticed, confirming events rush in around us with such a force that we are sent scurrying off like the White Rabbit already late for a very important date.  This week I've witnessed the landing of advance cadres of robins, shuffled past  stray bud cases from the cottonwoods, seen leaves breaking out on the oakleaf hydrangea, and watched flowers trace lines along the branches of  autumnalis cherries and flowering plums.