One of these things is not like the other

One of my tulips mutated or reverted and is now yellow. And it had the audacity to produce an offshoot bulb! Part of me doesn't care, as I already have a mess of orange, pale pink, peach, black, and red bulbs. What's the harm in adding yellow to the mix? (For the record, the pale pink in the very back offends me the most in this scheme.)

In other strange surprises, I've found English ivy popping up in the backyard. One spot was in the rain garden, which made me emit this terrible gargling yodel-scream as I ripped it out. This is the part they don't tell you about when creating a bird-friendly yard: sometimes they spread your neighbors' invasive plants to your garden. It's a good thing they're so cute when they splash around in the birdbath.

Help

I just need to admit something right up front: this is all my fault. I have badly abused a tree and whatever the equivalent of the DHS is for trees should be called on me.

In the NE corner of my yard, the one I want to be the focal point of the garden, I planted a Cryptomeria japonica 'Elegans.' It was beautiful. 

But then we took off its braces and lines and it started slouching. It got much worse than this.

I finally yanked it in November and put it the only place I had room: the vegetable bed. And it immediately flopped over and I did nothing. I just left it like this all winter because I am a terrible person.

I needed to plant up the vegetable garden but I didn't have a big enough pot for the tree. I was hoping to pawn the tree off on Jane, who I was confident could teach it to stand up straight again.

So I plopped it here, just to the right of where it used to be. I was hopeful that it standing up straight-ish. I thought, "Maybe if it's a little more protected, with some shrubs to lean up on, it will be okay."

I even thought that maybe I could move it over to the left and plant the Korean fir to the left of that, and it would look something like this:

But then I realized that the Cryptomeria will always be bigger than the Korean fir. And while I was in the shower I thought, maybe I'll just plant a deciduous tree like a Japanese maple and be done with it. Yes, they're ubiquitous (and not evergreen) but they are pretty.

And then the Cryptomeria did this and I'm back to thinking it can't be saved.

Can this tree be rehabbed? And what would you plant in this corner? I feel like it needs to be anchored with something tall, preferably evergreen.

The view in winter

I currently have a bunch of grasses and Joe Pye weed planted in the back, so we'll have winter interest next year. I still feel like it needs an exclamation point, though. Maybe I should just move the potted weeping blue spruce here and call it good? If you have ideas or opinions, my ears are open. 

It was noisy

Well, the earthquake retrofit is done. It was loud and very messy. I wore my safety ear muffs while I worked on my laptop. It made me oddly productive. 

We went with NW Seismic. I was mostly happy with the experience. Two brothers own the company and the one with social skills comes out to do all the calculations. Then his silent brother and a sidekick show up to do the actual work. They showed up on my doorstep and said, "Hi."

"I take it here you're here to do the retrofit."
Nods.

At one point I asked, "So are you the brother?" and he was like, "Yeah, a lot of people call me his name because of the resemblance," and I almost said, "It doesn't help that you never introduced yourself." You're not Cher, not everyone knows you on sight.

Anyway, they had to cut away the drywall in the finished side of the basement, which is how I found out that the previous owner used sheets of styrofoam to insulate the walls. This probably has an R-value of 3.

At the end of the day they just walked out the door without saying goodbye or asking for a check. I emailed the brother with social skills and told him what happened and he was like, "Oh, John was in a bit of a rush to get home and watch the Ducks game," and I wanted to scream, "THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME FEEL BETTER. Do you understand why that wouldn't make me feel better?"

Then our furnace stopped working and I had to call Jacob's out to service it. It turns out the emergency gas shutoff valve that they installed needed to be reset. Apparently when you install it, the device thinks it's an earthquake. So $90 later I know how to reset the valve. I'm trying to recoup that from NW Seismic.

So ask me after the big one if my house is still standing and I'll tell you if I recommend them.

Why didn't you tell me?

Because my mind is a sad and boring place, I often stand in the shower after a hard day in the garden and ponder, "What's a gardener's bigger friend? The wheelbarrow or the nail brush? I should ask that on my blog." I've been using those cheap leather work gloves from Home Depot, which get so full of splinters when you spread mulch, AND they leave your nails filthy. Even though I read two years ago on Mr. Brown Thumb about Atlas gardening gloves, I didn't think they could be that great and waited until now to buy some. They are $15 for a four-pack on Amazon. Even if they all crap out by the end of the year, that's cheap.

Holy shit, they're awesome. No splinters made it through when I spread mulch (I prefer to use my hands over a rake). My nails were pristine. It didn't feel like I was wearing gloves. I could pick out tiny weeds without mangling the seedlings I wanted to keep. I could operate my phone with them on. They were comfortable. I chased miles of wild morning glory roots, carefully teasing them out of the soil so they wouldn't break and resprout.

My neighbor has wild morning glory so I have wild morning glory

Then LeAnn asked the next day on Facebook about which gardening tools we couldn't live without and I chimed in about my gloves and everyone else was like, "Oh I love those too!"

Guys, why didn't you tell me?!?

Be sure to watch for LeAnn's column in PQ Monthly about the tools gardeners can't live without. I can't wait to find out that there's a better tool than a landscaping spike for popping dandelions. Or head over to her Facebook page and chime in about your favorite garden tool or the tool you find the biggest waste of money. Think of the poor dumb gardeners like me who need a leg up.

Retooling the back rain garden

I didn't really know what I was doing when I built the rain garden in the backyard. For starters, it's comically large. When I do something, I really do it, and I was like, "I'm gonna harvest all my rain water!" I really listened to the rain garden instructors when they told me to give the grasses plenty of room.

I also thought the Juncus effusus in the back of the rain garden would get taller than the Deschampsia cespitosa in the middle. They did not. The deschampsia is gorgeous but it probably shouldn't be smack dab in the center of the rain garden like that.

The rain garden elders really emphasize that you should only plant natives in your rain garden but I'm fudging that a little bit.

I moved the deschampsia toward the back and some will get removed to go live at Scott's soon. I grabbed the Juncus tenuis from the front rain garden, which was gorgeous until it got totally crisped in the searing summer heat. It was so pretty that I only took one single blurry photo of it:

Poverty rush (Juncus tenuis)

I planted some Geranium 'Rozanne' in the rain garden, which should appreciate the moist soil and hopefully weave through everything. Let the native purists rain down their judgement! (Just kidding, they can zip it.)

I also put in Carex comans 'Bronze' because I enjoy grasses that look dead. I also want to put in some Sedum 'Autumn Joy' toward the front, where it gets more sun in summer.

Image source: Annie's Annuals

Lastly I put an Aquilegia chrysantha 'Flore Peno' in. We have some native Aquilegia so this didn't feel like cheating, somehow.

Image source: Annie's Annuals

If it makes the native purists feel better, the Erythronium oreganum has naturalized under the cedar tree and I have a spreading swarm of beautiful flying nuns. I love them.

Just FYI

If you give a castor bean plant water and fish emulsion every three weeks and plant it in a sunny place, it will look like this.

And the root ball will be so thick and sturdy by the next spring that you'll have to clip the roots and then hang your whole body weight on the trunk to get it out of the ground.

I planted a Chionochloa rubra in its place, along with some annual tidytips (Layia platyglossa) to fill in.

Greg was so insistent that this grass not poke into the driveway (the castor bean did) that I planted it too close to the Mahonia. Now the question is, can I plant another castor bean here for the summer while the grass gets up to size? Maybe I won't give it quite so much fish emulsion this time.

We're in technicolor

My apologies to those of you still buried under snow. It was pretty glorious in Portland this weekend, with the weather hitting 75 degrees. Greg mowed the lawn, I got a little sunburned, I complained over and over about being hot. It's officially spring.

This is that time when the garden starts going nuts. Things are a little technicolor in the backyard right now. The spirea 'Magic Carpet' is in the neon phase.

The old tulip color scheme was black and pale pink. Now that I have the orange tulips installed I need to relocate those peachy colored guys to another part of the yard.

The Japanese golden sedum in the wheelbarrow is filling in nicely and it's electrically chartreuse.

The Dart's Gold ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Dart's Gold') under the cedar screams from across the yard (in a good way).

My next door neighbor has an impressive swath of muscari, which I'm liking with all the orange tulips I planted along here. I know orange isn't everyone's favorite but it's my favorite. Especially with blue.

Happy spring, y'all!

Tulipa 'Flair'