Notes to self

Note to self: this area, while lovely with all of its orange flowers, needs something to cool it down.

The Melianthus major, whose cool blue foliage probably would've done the trick, is too short to be seen from the street.

Maybe replace the Drosanthemum micans with something with blue flowers?

Note to self: cutting back the Agastache 'Golden Jubilee' in late May made it look terrible for a couple of weeks but now it's recovered nicely and it's blooming like normal but with a more compact shape. Do this again next year, harder.

This might be a good choice for replacing the Drosanthemum and cooling off the orange cannas.

Or maybe Salvia 'Black and Blue'?

It looks like the Eucomis 'Sparkling Burgandy' that I got for $2 at Viscaya's end-of-the-season closeout last fall is going to bloom. Don't miss that event this year.

Note to self: all the heartache and worrying over how to get your hands on Bouteloua gracilis 'Blonde Ambition' was totally worth it. Those floating eyebrows are gorgeous.

I mean, come on.

Pay attention to deadheading. The lewisia has been blooming for months because you've been diligent about snapping off the spent blooms, something you can do without shears.

Plant more annuals and biennials. They inevitably become your favorite plants and it's fun to have your neighbors ask you what "the Dr. Seuss plant" is (Verbascum 'Arctic Snow').

Divide that Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' in the fall. It's beautiful yellow flowers are threatening to eat the garden.

Stake the milkweed next year. These fell over badly and you couldn't seem the blooms from the sidewalk.

The neighbors shouldn't have to bushwhack to see these awesome milkweed pods. And maybe you'd see Monarch butterflies if you made them more apparent.

Never pull out the rue you planted. It might be coincidence, but once you planted it swallowtail butterflies started appearing in the garden. It's not much to look at so far but it seems worth it.

Note to self: edit the back rain garden. It's a freaking mess. Chop the penstemon next spring to keep it tidier.

Ditto the area behind the rain garden. It's an amorphous blob of ratty green.

Thank Alison for forever burning the name "Hen and Dicks" into your brain.

More pots. They are like jewelry for the garden.

Plant more of these Echinacea purpurea 'Kim's Knee High'. They bridge orange and pink so nicely and they are compact and very upright.

Can someone remind me to read this post in the fall? Pretty please?

I like dogs more than I like dog owners

Overnight my Devon Skies blue-eyed grass went from looking like this:

To this:

I'm thinking dog urine is the culprit. Anyone have any other theories? I think it's going to live but it looks UGLY right now.

The other day I was weeding in the front garden and a woman came by with her two dogs. One went into my hell strip and peed all over my Aristea inaequalis and she looked right at me and said, "Good boy." People can be jerks.

Pollinators on the brain

Growing up I viewed bees as the enemy because my mother is very allergic to them. I hated the enormous Callistemon in our backyard because it was buzzing with insects that wanted to kill my mom (in my mind, at least). I'm terrified of spiders and I still scream if an ant or beetle crawls across my foot in the garden. As a result, I don't know how to explain how obsessed I've become with bugs.

I was going through Kate Bryant's archive on Portland Monthly and ran across an article on attracting pollinators to your yard which somehow led to this plant list that will help attract beneficial insects to your garden, which led to me completely falling down the pollinator rabbit hole, all of which culminated in reading this article on neocotinoids and their devastating effect on pollinators.

It left me sort of depressed and then 50,000 bumblebees were killed by a landscaping company who sprayed some linden trees in a Target parking lot with pesticide and I was really depressed. So what do we do when we get sad? We buy plants! What do we do if all the nurseries are closed and we're feeling impatient? We buy them online!

I placed an order to Annie's Annuals for a buckwheat I'd had on my wishlist for a long time: Eriogonum grande var. rubescens.

Image source: Annie's Annuals

Buckwheat is a favorite plant for hover flies, whose larvae eat aphids, a LOT of them. The larvae can eat an aphid a minute but they don't eat your plants. They look more like bees than flies. Aphids were the reason that landscaping crew sprayed the linden trees, killing all of those bumblebees.

Image source

We have a pretty bad problem with aphids on the roses in the lab, so I placed a buckwheat there. Of course, I ripped out most of my roses but my next-door neighbor still has about 15 planted here. Now I just have to hope that her mow-and-blow guys don't spray this area.

Buckwheats like it hot and dry, which is perfect for this area. This buckwheat is evergreen and tidy, growing to 1' x 3'. The undersides of its spoon-shaped leaves are silver and fuzzy. I want to find a spot in the backyard for another, since the cabbage aphids have recently discovered my edibles.

I've never had a desire to grow sunflowers but I gave in and ordered 'Lemon Queen' which is the official sunflower of The Great Sunflower Project, which has been tracking honeybee colonies for years.

Image source: Annie's Annuals

I also picked up some Erigeron glaucus 'Wayne Roderick', which is supposedly loved by bees. And it's pretty.

Image source: Annie's Annuals

Then this weekend a friend and I went to Portland Nursery and I picked up something for the butterflies: Achillea millefolium 'Terracotta.' After being like, "Where are the freaking butterflies?!" I've witnessed two swallowtails sailing through my yard. I haven't yet witnessed them landing or feeding on anything, but hopefully they'll check out my garden and tell their butterfly friends, "That place is cool. We should hang out there."

Are you unhealthily fixating on anything lately? Any plants I'm missing that will single-handedly repair the damage all these landscapers have done? Sometimes it feels like that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to come to terms with pollinators I've always hated, like wasps. We frequently have them drinking from the bird bath (cute!) and I know they're important predators of bugs that cause a lot of destruction in the garden, but they still make me nervous.

The happiest place on earth

Last week Greg and I traveled to Anaheim to go to Disneyland with my brother, my sister-in-law, and their two girls, along with a smattering of grandparents and friends. We went swimming a lot, rode as many scary rides with my mom as possible (my dad's not a fan), and I bored Greg discussing the landscaping in and around Disneyland.

We also spent a few nights at Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Room. We love tiki and my brother really, really loves tiki, so we had a great time. I accidentally bought too many tiki glasses.

The trip was expensive, even staying at the cheapo Best Western, but it was so much fun. Screw dinners and flowers, I think the most romantic thing in the world is Greg voluntarily spending his vacation time with my family and allowing three little girls to demand that he hold their hands, go swimming with them, sit next to them on rides, or not hold my hands so they can. We don't want kids of our own but I am so grateful to my siblings for giving me such wonderful nieces and nephews. I miss them so much now that we're back home.

Phoebe having a staring contest with Greg

I missed my garden while we were away and it was noticeably larger when we returned. It rained the whole time we were gone, GOOD JOB PORTLAND!

I tried not to be that annoying girl taking photos of the landscaping, especially when I had such cute little girls nearby, but I snapped a few with my phone. California Adventure was particularly nice, with lots of desert plants, including a mass planting of Agave americana that I wanted to photograph but there were so many strollers between me and it.

But really, I bought too many tiki glasses. What was I thinking?

We are now those people

I gave in and ordered a No Solicitors sign, as it's been getting out of hand at our house. Would we like to sign a petition to ban plastic bags statewide? Would we like to donate money to this? Would we like to donate money to fight that same thing? They often come at ungodly hours, like 8am on a Sunday morning. Unless you have a petition banning door to door petitions, I want you to GO AWAY (except for you, I like you).

We bought it from this Etsy seller, from whom we also bought our house numbers.

And then I took down the bird feeder in back so I could hang up the disco ball. More fun for us, less fun for the birds. And possibly less sleep for our neighbor; that might be his bedroom window behind the fence there.

At last

 . . . my love (that is not Greg) has come along to my garden.

How did I get joint compound on that green pot?

In April a friend gave me a gift certificate to Garden Fever. I'm at Garden Fever all the time and I could've spent it before now but I didn't want to use it on tomatoes or compost or filler plants. I wanted to use it for something special.

I finally got an Agave 'Blue Glow.' I was so excited I bought two. Because I'm a greedy little plant-pig, I wish I had bought three.

These guys are hardy in zones 9b-11, so they'll have to come inside for the winter. They reach a mature size of 1-2' by 1-2' and apparently they are fast growers. I could have purchased a larger size but they didn't look as nice as the smaller ones did.

As long as we're talking about pokey plants, I thought I'd give you an update on some of my others . . .

After sitting like a bump on a log for a year, my Dasylirion texanum has pumped out a ton of new growth. He's surrounded by biennials and easily moved grasses, so he'll have plenty of room to stretch to his full size (3' tall by 3-5' wide). This one is hardy down to zone 5 and it hasn't been fazed by the heavy rains.

My agaves have gotten hugongous. Three of them are more than a foot across. Too bad about that tenacious petticoat of oxalis, grrr.

This guy had some damage from the wet spring. He's also a little sheltered by the milkweed and crocosmia, so I don't think he's drying out enough.

Those low white blooms are Lewisia cotyledon 'White Splendor'. They have been blooming without stop since the first of April. They are hardy in zones 4-10 and only ask for excellent drainage.

This one's going to get her own MTV show. A baby having babies! You're too young!

This is a pup I recently unwound from one of the larger agaves and it's only a couple of inches across. They grow up so fast these days!

The edible garden

When I tell people of my age and station in life that I garden, they always assume I mean food production. They seem so disappointed that I don't grow a lot of food and that I get more excited by flowers or grasses. Don't I know I could be canning? Raising chickens? Making my own artisanal chutneys or whatever?

We have these two small raised beds for edibles. I love to cook and I've been known to make my own mustard and ketchup (so delicious) but I prefer ornamentals because I hate harvesting. I would rather weed my lawn than pick strawberries. I don't know why. Thank goodness for Greg. He doesn't mind harvesting and it's a pretty good way for him to blow off steam if he's had a frustrating day at work.

A lot of our edible garden is frankly ornamental this year. Cabbages we probably won't eat (though I love cabbage and all its relatives), amaranth we'll never consume in any way, and one stalk of variegated corn in the middle. It's just pretty.

So what do we eat? A lot of lettuces. If you are a man in my life please know that I'm actively worrying about how much you poop. I want you to eat more salad (and quit smoking already). I'm firmly in the camp that believes half your dinner plate should contain veggies and we eat enormous salads every night.

The worst part of growing your own lettuce is that those pre-washed bags of lettuces taste terrible forever afterward. And once you start making your own dressing? You'll gag if someone tries to give you that crap out of a bottle. I am not a food snob except when it comes to vegetables (though I love those crappy salad bars with the iceberg lettuce and the thousand island dressing and the pickled beets). So we're growing a lot of lettuce and it never goes to waste. (LeAnn gave me the tip stuff my sink with as much lettuce as will fit and let it have a good soak in salt water to kill all the slug and crawlies. Then it all gets washed and spun in batches in the salad spinner.)

Weaving in and out of everything are strawberries. In the lower bed are my strawberries: 'Hood.' In the upper bed are Greg's strawberries: 'Albion.' Hoods are sweeter and better but Greg still claims that he likes his better.

Our rhubarb is happy and getting too large for the tiny corner I gave it. We also grow kale and chard, a winter staple at our house (this kale salad will change your life). 

In the area where we pulled out the tree stump I put in three blueberries ('Sunshine Blue').

I'm very interested in growing this thornless blackberry, possibly at the new entrance to the gravel garden. Has anyone grown these? They claim you get 10-20 gallons of fruit per plant. !!!

I'm trying to be good about rotating my tomatoes, so this year they're getting set up in the gravel garden. I refuse to buy $8 tomatoes so we wait all year to eat the ones from our garden. In August and September we grill bread and eat bruschetta every night. It's also one reason we grow so much basil; I've got five kinds this year.


The other reason to grow basil is my favorite dressing, adapted from LeAnn's recipe.

About half a cup of unflavored Greek yogurt (I like Fage's full fat version)
The juice of one lime
1-2 T of white balsamic vinegar
half a shallot
one bunch of cilantro
one bunch of basil
Olive oil
a smidge of honey if you need it.

Whirl the first six ingredients in a food processor, streaming the olive oil in until it reaches the consistency you like. Taste and adjust with honey if it's too tart. When we use basil from the garden we don't need honey but the stuff from the store usually isn't as sweet.

It's totally adjustable to your tastes: swap garlic or red onion for shallot or whatever herbs you have on hand for basil and cilantro or red wine vinegar for white balsamic. It's good.

I completely blanked on planting cucumbers this year. Greg loves them and I love making pickles. How will people know we're from Portland if we don't make our own pickles from cucumbers we grew? Are you growing any good edibles this year?