I know this sounds hilarious, but you have to understand … I have been known to drive around with these puppies and my gardening gloves in my car — you know, in case something needs a good trim? The biggest problem when I can’t find something I need is that I find other things to do. And look! I have a nice pair of loppers in my garage!

So … you get the picture. Poor Japanese Maple, your one branch was just a little too close to my head and it shaded the south edge of my garden just a few minutes too many. Half of the two-trunked Oregon Ash got it with a saw too. I guess the pine is lucky I finally found the pruners, because some blackberries pushing their boundary line got it instead of a third tree.

Clicking on any of the above images gets you a larger view.

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!

When space opened up in the back yard for the strawberries, I moved them and planted succulents in the front bed (and in a few planters). I was told deer didn’t like sedum and would prefer to snack on other things. Well, apparently the deer didn’t get the memo because I came out today to find this:

For reference, this what that planter looked like after it was freshly repotted:

The funny part is that they skipped by a bunch of more tender perennials, a planter full of basil, and all sorts of other things to settle on eating this pile of stonecrop. I don’t mind too much, but I may move some of these planters to the back so that they don’t get knocked over and broken by the deer.

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!

On the report for the house, it said the deck supports were rotten so we knew the deck would eventually have to come out. I hired a local contractor to come rip out the deck, and I’m very glad I did because it was really rotten underneath. I was then left with a pile of rotten deck:

And a giant sink hole that was once a deck:

I obviously now have several problems to address. First off, there’s obviously a lot of dirt that needs to be added to this area. Those poor tree roots are hanging out of the ground for lack of organic material! Secondly, what am I going to do with this area? I’d rather not have another deck here, and I definitely don’t want a plain concrete patio. So my idea is to build a sort of “country garden patio” with a mix of stone, urbanite and brick, spaced a bit apart, with sedum and moss growing between the rocks and some built up planters on the sides. Sort of like this in terms of feel, and without the steps:

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:

The idea here is that if I work with nature, instead of fighting it, I can have something that grows well here to fill in the side yard and that will replenish itself every year with a minimal amount of maintenance.

Anyone have any idea of what this little guy is?

Update: Apparently this is some variety of vetch, an introduced plant that grows well here and has become pretty much native to the area. I think it may even produce some pretty flowers for us soon!

The downside to this is that it takes FOREVER if you are impatient! (My husband is quite horrified at the idea that his front yard will probably have patches and holes in it for a few years until this all takes.) Instead of digging up the whole front yard and putting this in, I am just slowly replacing my grass with these groundcover plants every time I find a hole or have to dig out some sort of undesirable weed.

For my groundcover, I chose Elfin Miniature Thyme (Thymus serpyllum) from the Stepables collection. (They seem to be available locally here during the spring from several nurseries as well as Fred Meyer.) It is a compact, tightly matted plant with slower growth that produces pretty flowers in the summer. It tolerates heavy foot traffic and stays green all year. Once established, it doesn’t require a lot of water and it tolerates long periods of sun.

Before we moved in here, the house had been sitting vacant for a long time, and there are no sprinklers so the grass was pretty much dead. This, for me, set the bar in terms of what the yard would do if left completely unattended – the grass would die by fall and the trees (more suited to this habitat) would continue on just fine. So the groundcover is my answer of how to make that part of the yard "survive" the summer with little care.

Along with replacing the lawn with this groundcover, I am encouraging moss growth as a native groundcover. It is really quite pretty and soft, and grows with such little effort in this soil. To feed the moss and encourage growth, I fed it a mixture of buttermilk and compost tea (a recipe from the Lovejoy book). I also wanted to enrich the soil as a whole (feed the soil, not the plants!), so I spread chicken compost around the front yard and let the rain dissolve it into the ground. (Besides making the process easier, I am really glad it was raining during both these applications because it meant that my neighbors were not out in their yards while I was doing this. I really didn’t want to explain to them, being the new kid on the block, why I was putting buttermilk and chicken crap all over my front lawn!) I purchased the chicken compost from Rexius, a local green recycler.

Overall it seems to be going well although there are a few snags in this process – such as what to do about the lawn during this growing phase. I can’t mow it because I don’t want to damage the groundcover that I am trying to establish, but I imagine the lawn will eventually grow taller. I have been hacking out any tall grasses (some sort of fescue) by hand, as well as any undesirable weeds (usually the ones with spikey leaves). I then replace these holes with more compost mixture and another groundcover plant. Eventualy, I may have to just mow down part of the lawn with the edge trimmer to keep it manageable without whacking the groundcover or anything else out there. (One of the fun benefits of not mowing your lawn is that you get to see what else pops up – I’ve had everything from delicate wildflowers to iris and hyacinth blubs.)

I am up to 6 or 7 of these "groundcover plugs", with lots of moss mixed in the grass. I’ll keep updating with pictures as this progresses.

In theory, at least. We will see how this actually works out!

I think most people would select one or two varieties that best complimented their needs, but I went with seven total because I’m going for this wild/forest-looking concept. They were all selected based on their tolerance of sun/heat, drought resistance, and speed of growth. (I’m impatient, what can I say?) These are the finalists:

• Grass replacement: Elfin Miniature Thyme (Thymus serpyllum) As the grass dies off or gets weeded out, I will slowly replace it with this low-growing groundcover. It stands up to heavy traffic, is drought tolerant once it is established, and it produces these wonderful little flowers. It stays green year-round and never needs mowing like a lawn. I can’t wait until my "icky ol grass" turns into a luxurious "living carpet"!
• Corner strawberry bed: Baby Tears (Sedum album ‘Chloroticum’) This will fill in nicely between the strawberries, hiding under their leaves during the hottest months, and bringing blooms every spring. I’m also hoping these will somewhat distract the deer from eating the strawberries, as deer typically don’t like sedum plants but I have already caught them rummaging through my varieties of strawberries!
• Fast growers to live around the landscaping: White Star Creeper (a white-flowered Pratia angulata), Alpine Geranium Charm (a pink Erodium reichardii), County Park (purple-flowered Pratia pedunculata), and Double Alpine Geranium Flore Pleno (a light purple-flowered Erodium reichardii). These may vary in their tolerance of the amount of foot traffic, but what they all do have in common is their tolerance of varying water conditions and bright sun at certain times of the day. They are all moderate to fast growers during the peak season as well.
• The landscape accent plant: Victor Reite, Dwarf Thrift (Armeria) This plant tolerates light foot traffic and looks like a mini grass bush with taller flowers.

The soil was simply prepared by hand-mixing the soil, the top layer of bark mulch, and some composted elements. I pushed down on each plant as I dropped it into the hole to keep them level with the ground. The plants were also watered well after being planted.

I know these will take a few years to really spread out and become established, but I am trying to think of my garden in terms of the long run (say, the next decade or two) instead of what looks good right now. I am also getting continually bombarded with surprises in this yard, because plants keep springing up everywhere that the previous owners must have planted.