Fall is here

I've pulled the tomatoes out of the ground and brought my tender plants inside. I made bolognese and Brussels sprouts for dinner. All I want to do is make chicken stock and roast vegetables. Fall is here and I welcome it with flannel-clad arms. Let's put on socks and talk about Oscar contenders and our favorite squash. 

I always said I'd never buy plants that couldn't survive the winter outside but then I went to Rare Plant Research this spring and caved. And then Ricki posted about her Opuntia microdasys 'Bunny Ears' and I had to have one. And then I needed, absolutely needed, an Agave 'Blue Glow' so I bought two. Then the flood gates had broken and I was like, f*ck it, I'm gonna buy a bunch of aeonium and sedum that aren't hardy to my zone. 

And you know what? I still have room inside! I could've bought way more tender stuff!

Mike the ceramic squirrel makes these guys feel like they're still outside

I could totally squeeze a few smaller pots here!

Everything is looking balanced and almost . . . planned. Next year I'm buying everything.

Thank goodness we don't have kids or cats. Danger, danger everywhere. Happy fall, y'all!

The bedroom! An outward manifestation of my capriciousness!

While Greg was gone and I was painting the dining room, I also painted the bedroom. For anyone keeping track (me, Greg, psychiatrist), this is the third time I've painted it. I picked this color out myself so I can't even blame Anna if people don't like it. It's Stained Glass by Benjamin Moore.

I promise it's not the same color as the dining room. It's darker and bluer (and very hard to photograph).

I think whoever prepped this house to sell was worried that they would run out of paint, so they decided to paint two walls in each room one color, and the other two walls a different one. The paint colors were all mis-tints bought from the clearance bin at Home Depot. I know this because they left me the cans in the basement. This bedroom had two pale green walls and two French blue walls.

I initially painted it Cilantro Cream by Behr and it was okay.

Then Greg was going to move in and I decided I had to repaint the bedroom. So I tried to get a color match to the spare bedroom color, which was a Metro Paint color. Because Metro Paint is made from recycled paint, there's no consistency to their colors. The color match wasn't very good, but again the color was fine. Pale blue. Like the dining room.

Mid-painting

But now it is dark and delicious and I love it. Why are interiors so hard to photograph?

I really want brass swing-arm sconces instead of those dinky bedside lamps. I don't care if I'm blindly following fads, I think they're pretty:

I used to read books but then I discovered TV, which is like reading except it's less effort and you can surf the web while you do it! This TV is old and weighs over 60 pounds, so I had to con my friend Bill into helping me get it off the wall before I could paint.

I love the color of Dracaena 'Limelight' against the walls

I have something in the works for new drapes, which will hopefully be less labor intensive than when I sewed the living and dining room drapes. The sweater rug at West Elm went on sale recently so we got an 8x10' rug for $350 but now I'm wishing I'd gone with the darker colored rug. And not just because I'll probably spill wine on it.

At the very least we need a new duvet cover, no? I think this one deserves to be replaced after all the wine it's put up with. What color would you go with?

I'd like to incorporate more plants in the room as well, but being so accident prone = no plants on the bedside table. Two things recently made me laugh until I almost peed: an article from The Onion "Man Puts Glass of Water on Bedside Table in Case He Needs to Make Huge Mess in Middle of Night" (thanks Scott) and this photo on Pinterest:

Everything was fine until I got up to pee in the middle of the night, tripped over the stack of books, and impaled myself on the antlers hanging on the wall.

If you're wondering what Greg thought, he likes it! In fact, he's digging the more saturated colors so much that he thinks we should repaint the spare bedroom.

I'm thinking I should let him have the fun this time and I'll just watch. Painting is a lot of work and I have so many things to spill on the new rug.

Woodwardia fimbrata, my favorite plant in the garden this week

I bought this giant chain fern (Woodwardia fimbrata) last year at the HPSO Hortlandia sale. I wasn't sure how it would like the rain garden. I knew it would like the winter wet but I didn't know if it would be able to take the dryness in summer, not to mention the midday sun.

Well, this guy has behaved like a champ. It gets the carwash treatment in summer instead of a proper slow soak and yet it never showed signs of wilting or browning. I suspect I got lucky but I'll take it.

Better yet, it reproduced.

I hope it will continue to reproduce because I would love for this area to be covered in giant ferns. In the wild these ferns can get to 10' tall. Whoa.

The stats (source: Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes):

• Zones 6a-9b
• Prefers moist to wet soil
• Full to part shade
• 5x5' in a garden setting, much larger in the wild
• Evergreen

My favorite plant in the garden this week is hosted by Loree at Danger Garden. Be sure to check out what she's liking this week!

And then I painted everything

Greg recently went to a trade show in Europe and was gone for two weeks. Two weeks! I have a habit of painting while he's gone (proof here, here, and here) and this time was no different.

Except that he was gone for so long that I had to paint multiple rooms.

First up was the dining room. For anyone keeping track (so far that's me, Greg, and my psychiatrist), this is the third time I've painted this room. The first color was a disaster, so I painted it again two days later.

The color(s) when I moved in

First disastrous paint color, minty fresh

Two days later, second alright color

The second color, that washed out blue, was never something I was in love with. It just didn't make me shudder the way that minty green did, so it stayed. Also, I was sick of painting by that point.

But! Now I had holes in the ceiling to repair and a ginormous hole in the wall to fix. When you're very lucky, your house comes with TWO fuse boxes.

This fuse box confounded three different electricians, who couldn't figure out WHY there would be two boxes in one house, one upstairs, one down. It powered a very strange set of things, like: the refrigerator, the outlets in the bedroom, one switch in the living room, and, somewhere in Mongolia, a single lamp that an ancient man cooked by. The main box in the basement powered everything else.

One reason that our electrical upgrade took so long is that our electrician removed this and properly rerouted our wires to one single box in the basement, which he then balanced and upgraded. This is all fancy talk for saying that we had a huge hole in the wall now, and the lights no longer dim when you run the microwave. Huzzah!

Blah blah blah, patchy patchy patchy . . .

I finally got smart and got professional help on the paint color. Anna Kulgren is a gardening friend who I came to learn also has degrees in architecture, interior design, horticulture, and loads of other things. She's also a brilliant color specialist and runs a small design-build studio in Portland called Optic Verve. She came over with her suitcases full of color swatch decks and got down to business.

In no time she found the perfect color for the dining room. You guys, she's SO GOOD.

But first I also had to patch the ceiling where the old light fixtures were. I think I did a pretty okay job.

We chose Benjamin Moore's Caribbean Teal and I'm head over heels for it.

I cannot recommend Anna enough. If you are struggling with finding the right colors for your home, call her. She also figured out colors for our crazy blue entryway and our bathroom. I can't wait to get painting again. That's really saying something, considering I spent two weeks prepping and painting. I'll show you the bedroom next!

There's a new man in my life

His name is Louie. I looooove him.

Pinus strobus 'Louie'

I went with Scott to the Salem Hardy Plant Society sale two weekends ago, which was GREAT. It was smaller, very well curated, and not super crowded. We were able to go to each and every booth, really look at what they had, then circle back and buy stuff. You paid the vendors directly so there were no mega lines to deal with, either.

Scott and I were making the rounds and he said, "Oh, Heather, look over there . . ." and I RAN to Louie and started running my hands all over the needles. I looked like an idiot and I promptly got a rash all over my arms. I'm the coolest!

I'd just gotten paid the day before so I was feeling like I needed to make up for the fact that I missed the Fall HPSO sale because I was broke. I've been in love with Louie ever since I saw him in Carolyn Kolb's garden.

Photo by Loree Bohl. Source

I always see Pinus contorta 'Chief Joseph' at spring plant sales and I die a little when I see that it costs more than my mortgage to buy a tiny six inch seedling.

Pinus contorta 'Chief Joseph'. Image source: WSU

Chief Joseph has a superior color in winter but it fades to green come spring. Louie remains a golden beacon all year long. I swear the photos are leaving him so much less golden than he appears in real life!

I've taken to storing my newest acquisitions on the back deck so I can make googoo eyes at them from bed. It's gotten a little tight out there. The other adoption that I'm so excited about?

Helwingia chinensis. This is a plant I heard about in Dan Hinkley's "Foliage First" talk at the Yard Garden & Patio show. Those flowers are fused to the leaf and eventually they'll form a fruit:

It's evergreen and it's got that pretty purple veining. It's hardy down to 0 and it's available at Dancing Oaks.

Except, wait. I bought the male form. Does that mean no fruit? Do I need to buy a lady version now? Shit, the Internet says yes. Who wants to take a road trip to Dancing Oaks?

Leycesteria formosa, my favorite plant in the garden this week

You can probably guess why. Oh, those pagodas of fruit!

I got this Himalayan honeysuckle from Ricki at a plant exchange. I've come to realize that if Ricki tells you you need a plant, you listen.

The foliage has a nice color with branches that arch and layer pleasingly.

The flowers are fairly unremarkable and I detect no fragrance on mine, though others report it has one. Reports also vary on its hardiness: Davesgarden reports 4a-9b while Annie's Annuals says 9-11. Has anyone below 8b grown this one? Where it doesn't die back to the ground in winter it can be cut back hard in the spring to keep its size in check. Mature size sounds to be 6-8' tall and wide.

Reports also vary about where it should be sited. Mine is in part sun and gets regular water. It seems content so far. I'm so glad I found a spot for it.

My favorite plant in the garden this week is hosted by Loree at Danger Garden. Be sure to check out what she's liking this week!

The Michelle Duggar of agaves

I was deadheading yesterday and I noticed that I had some agave pups that I could relocate. When I looked closer, one agave had a petticoat of pups that you could barely see, they were so smashed underneath. I actually had to dig Mama Duggar up, unwind all the pups, and put her back in the ground.

Mama Duggar this winter, plotting her fecundity

All but one of these came from this agave.

NOID Agave americana?

I thought it only right to give them names.

Edited to add: if any of you are unfamiliar with the Duggars, they're an obnoxious family that had their own show on TLC because they had 19 kids, all of whom were named with J names. She was going to keep having babies "as long as the lord wanted her to." Now they lobby Congress to outlaw birth control. Ick.

Now take it easy, lady. You've given me something to take to the next plant exchange! Your work here is done.

How's your agave crop this year?