Oregon Tree Huggerflower » Oregon Tree Hugger

9 feet, 8 inches

Nikole — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:26:25 +0000

9′ 8″ … this is how tall my daughter’s sunflower now is. It was about 2 inches tall when we bought it at the Lane County Extension plant sale in the spring for a quarter, and now it towers over my fence at over 10 feet off the ground. (The top of the garden bed it is in is about 18-24 inches from the ground.) I’m not sure what happens at this point — will it make seeds, fall over (it is sort of leaning), or just keep getting bigger? The one next to it is quite a bit smaller and not yet flowering.

Click on any image for a larger view and slideshow.

Some Growing, Some Not

Nikole — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:00:18 +0000

The plants can’t seem to figure out what month it is, thanks to the weather. One day it’s hot and one of my broccoli plants bolted into pretty flowers, the next it’s cool and the radishes and cauliflower are happy but the melons keeled over and died.

Click on any picture to see the gallery.

The Variety of Iris

Nikole — Thu, 20 May 2010 08:44:01 +0000

We actually have four colors of Iris this year that I did not see last year. The things that come up here continue to amaze me! Some people might find the randomness to be annoying, as we didn’t plant any of this stuff so we don’t really know what is going to come up. I just find it to be a fantastic adventure.

Please click on any image to launch the gallery.

And So It Begins Again …

Nikole — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:33:05 +0000

Spring has sprung on me quite early this year. I had all this work to do outside, not to mention this website was supposed to get a winter overhaul … oops. I was getting a bit behind on posting while I was waiting to redo it, so I decided to just start writing and redo later on. I guess what I am saying here is that I will be updating again, but you can expect that the site will get an overhaul in the next month and look much prettier after that. Programming note over, now on for the garden tour!

I was surprised to see the crocus coming up in January. It felt early to me, so I had to go back to my Flickr account and see when it was coming up last year … and sure enough, the timing is about a month early. Same with the Iris, the Daylillies, and whatever other bulbs I have hanging around in this yard.

Emerging Crocus:

Bearded Iris sneaking up through the leaves:

Buds on a tree that I have still not identified:

Forsythia starting to bud (I finally identified this one this year, after seeing the blooms for the first time since we moved here!), with some blackberries sneaking up in the background:

Apparently this is what a pair of garden shoes looks like when you "overwinter" them in the yard:

The "evergreen" blueberry bush, starting to bud again:

I’m not sure how evergreen it could be considered, as it held on to maybe a handful of red leaves all winter, but it’s pretty nonetheless.

Daylillies peeking up:

The weather is just beautiful here in Eugene, but spring has definitely caught me by surprise and there is so very, very much to do!!

The first step: Bask in the coming of spring. Second step: Assess and make the spring plan!

Surprises in Bloom

Nikole — Mon, 25 May 2009 07:24:27 +0000

The Bearded Iris plants running rampant all over my front yard continue to come up in new colors. Here are the most recent pictures. Enjoy!

The “Green Onions” are Flowering

Nikole — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:25:16 +0000

Now that spring is fully here, I have counted six kinds of flowering bulbs growing between the front and back yards: tulip (yet to flower), iris (yet to flower), crocus (first tiny bulbs of the season), grape hyacinth (second flower of the season), what is possibly a day lilly (growing into an unruly jungle but no flowers yet), and this little mystery which I first described to people as "something that looks like a green onion":

These green shoots are now starting to produce some sort of blue/purple flower, so we may know what these bulbs are very soon! Here are the latest pictures: