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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!

Today’s “Growing Your Own” Update

Nikole — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:33:29 +0000

The beds are coming along nicely. The root vegetables (carrots, radishes and beets) have all been planted, as well as the flowers and the herbs that will sprout between rows. The tomatoes have also been pruned a bit. The only thing missing at this point is that small section in the front right, where the peppers will go.

The peas were trellised this week (a bit too late, but I’ve been busy!) and the evergreen blueberry bush has been planted in a wine barrel container.

The baby peppers were dropped in their coconut pots into 4 in plastic pots, while the taller ones got a bath in the sink to remove aphids from their tops. The peppers will be heading into the outside garden soon. I also harvested the top of some of my basil plants.

A Tour of the Rhododendrons

Nikole — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:20:08 +0000

There were a lot of rhododendrons when we moved into this house, and honestly I don’t know much about them. Now that spring is here, I took a walk around the house to look at them and figure out what needs to be done.

The first one is a taller tree, 6-7′, that looks nice from one side

but you can see it’s all leggy and doesn’t have a lot of leaves from the other. Actually, it may even be 2-3 plants, spaced closely together, and none of them seem to be doing any new growth from the base.

I’m going to leave these ones as they are though, because my daughter loves to play on the bottom. It does need some work for general health, because it seems to have some sort of fungal problem on the leaves. I’ll wait until its new pink blossoms fade and then I’ll do a bit of tender care. I don’t know any of the history of these shrubs as we just moved in here …. so all I have to go on is the current state of the plant and any evidence of past trauma or pruning.

In the front yard, I have 4 of them. Two seem to be getting enough sunshine, have a nice shape to them, and look like they needed to be deadheaded but will otherwise produce some nice magenta flowers this season.

The other two are some leggy variety, need some serious help, or they are not getting enough sun from being under a large conifer tree. It looks like they both did have some heavy pruning down to the base at some point and did not regrow from it, so I’m not sure if a rejuventation pruning would even work in this case. I may just have to accept how sparse they are.

And then there is this one in the back yard, which sits in the shade of a maple tree. It seems to have done some base regrowth after a pruning, so I may have some luck in helping this one to come back a bit stronger.

There you have it—7 or 8 in all!

The Spring Bulb Update

Nikole — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:08:42 +0000

I took a walk through my front yard today to look at the spring bulbs and admire all the changes going on. My original blooming Iris, a blue and yellow variety (possibly Dutch or Siberian), have now faded back and new Bearded Iris varieties, one yellow and one purple, are just starting to bloom.

The Grape Hyacinths have faded as well, and the little purple bulbs have been replaced by a strange green seed pod.

5th Street Market in Bloom

Nikole — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:39:58 +0000

We stopped by the 5th Street Market in Eugene the other day, where a lot of the bulbs are in bloom. The diversity of the flower shapes and colors is just fantastic. This is definitely a spring treat! Enjoy the pictures, and I am sorry about the quality—I forgot my camera and had to use my Sidekick to take the pictures.