Rumor has we’re in for a cold patch in the Pacific Northwest, and so many are already experiencing the vagaries of weather. Here’s hoping we all get through relatively unscathed–with gobs of green goodness on the other side. (more…)
A never fail line my daughter uses on me, “It’s so handy to tuck in.” It doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny Bolax gummifera or a Stewartia chinensis, I fall for it every time. The good news, I’ve never been sorry. Megan is right: so many plants are handy for tucking in. (more…)
Gardeners have been known brake hard when they happen upon this scene. It’s an ordinary city lot in the Alameda neighborhood located in northeast Portland. As you can well see, the gardener here employs stealth and magic in the tiniest spaces.
You know when you have the thought that there is no room for your latest horticultural heartthrob? Well I’m here to tell you, there’s always room–as evidenced by Skidmore Woods. (more…)
It’s hitting that time of year when my gardening enthusiasm wanes. Is that going on with everyone?
When I feel first hints of fall, my thoughts turn to “holiday season.” I love the lights and parties and activities–though in truth, my notions are far more complex that my execution. Especially since the fall and winter season always go so fast–similar to that scene in Romancing the Stone, wherein Joan Wilder and Jack T. Colton take a wild ride down a mud chute. Kinda like that.
Occasionally, Xera Plants in Portland hosts a plant sale from Gossler Farms, which means we get to shop two excellent nurseries at once. Gossler Farms is worth the trip, but it’s a two hour trek from Portland, so I don’t get over there as often as I might like.
I’ve been holding out for rain, garden on pause. Avoiding the temptation of nursery visits. Averting my eyes to avoid confronting the sight of plants unquenched from my unreliable hose offerings. The weeds, they’ll have to stay until the soil more willingly releases them.
Could it be, the wait is finally over? Do I fall for the meteorologists’s sweet lies this time? The promise of precipitation? The return of workable soil, hospitable to new nursery spoils? Even though there remains another week of our typically hot, dry August to endure enjoy? Might our hottest, driest summer ever be prepared to yield, even briefly, to warm rains?
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