Snap to grid

I'm at that point in the gardening season where I want to do something, but if I want to do that, I have do this thing first, which means that I might as well do this other thing while I'm at it . . . and so now I have a bunch of projects going all at once and nothing's finished and everything looks like hell.

It started with this area on the back of the house, which faces north. I had the two shrubs back here ground out so I could start fresh.

This is the first time I'll have an area in shade that isn't dry. Hooray! So I started removing sod. But first I felt like I needed to address the area under our little deck, which is weedy and pitted and not sloped correctly.

I took some of the gravel that had been languishing on a tarp in the front yard and dumped it under here until everything was level.

You'll never guess where the tarp used to be.

I had to stop to take photos because the light was so good that night. Also, I was starving.

The back rain garden

I put down rock and I started planting, grabbing ferns and hostas from the side entrance, and the shrub mint and oakleaf hydrangea from under the cedar. And damn it if I didn't plant everything in two perfectly straight rows. What is wrong with me?

Every time I'd dig something up to move it so it wouldn't be in a line I'd somehow have a brain fart and the thing would end up back in line with everything else. And I ran out of rock, so this bed still isn't finished. How do you like that reveal?

As a palate cleanser, let's admire my new Darmera peltata. I bought it at the HPSO sale and the cashier proclaimed it "so ugly only a mother could love it."

This Oregon native is a relative of rhubarb and its leaves will grow to as much as two feet in width. And they also have flowers, which aren't very exciting.

I told the cashier that, come summer, she'd be jealous of my ugly plant. She just may not be jealous of the rest of my garden, which is a swampy half-finished mess.

So say we all

Columbines always look like cylons to me.

Aquilegia caerulea 'Krystal'

Pretty cylons, though.

Garden bloggers' bloom day April 2013

I didn't think I had that much blooming but then I started walking through the yard . . . we have a TON blooming right now. My dogwood is a beautiful shocking pink right now.

Cornus florida

Camassia leichtlinii 'Blue Danube'

NOID Lewisia 

Pieris japonica

Hooker's fairybells (Disporum hookeri var. oreganum)

Ribes sanguineum

'Oregon Sunshine' blueberries

Forget-me-not

Fringeflower 'Sizzling Pink' (Loropetalum chinense)

Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata'

Stream violet (Viola glabella)

Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) and Tulipa 'Rosalie'

Tidytips (Layia platyglossa)

Coastal strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis)

Cerinthe retorta

Trillium ovatum

Oxalis oregana

Happy bloom day! Be sure to head over to our host Carol's site to see what else is blooming.

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.