Just a girl with a hammer

Tag: garden

  • Worth every penny.

    Worth every penny.

    Watching squirrels try to break into the new bird feeder is endlessly entertaining. They try so hard.

    Oh hey, what’s that?

    Let’s get a little closer . . .

    I think I could reach if I just . . .

    . . . streeeeeetttttttchhh . . . .

    Damn it. Regroup!

    We’re also getting birds at the feeder, which is really exciting. In other unexpected birding news, dumping uncomposted leaves all over these beds has resulted in the birds foraging here like CRAZY. I’ve never seen so many feeding in the yard before. They have zero interest in my native plants; it turns out they just want store-bought birdseed and the bugs hiding under non-native tree leaves. Go figure.
    I still can’t identify any of them, either. Greg will ask, “What’s that one?” and I’ll reply, “A cute little brown one.”
  • Where do you hide your trashcans?

    Where do you hide your trashcans?

    We currently keep our trashcan and recycling bins next to the garage, where all the ferns and shade lovers live. It makes the most sense, since it’s nearest to the kitchen. Oh, but it looks really bad.

    There was already a random fence post at the entrance to the side yard, so I slapped on a trellis and planted an evergreen jasmine to climb it. LeAnn assured me that it will take over and cover the trellis in no time.

    Though I don’t know why I’d want to cover up such craftsmanship.

    Why would I use a smaller piece of 2×4 when I could choose one that can be seen from space?

    What’s the latest and greatest way to conceal trashcans? Is anybody doing anything creative to accomplish this? Even if this manages to hide them from the street, this is the only entrance to the garden and we have to walk past them to get into the yard. Maybe I should just paint some ferns on them? There’s no way that would look bad.

  • Garden Claus, I’ve been so good this year

    Garden Claus, I’ve been so good this year

    I want these plants so badly. I would need a bigger yard but I still want them.

    Flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica ‘Atsuya Hamada’). I ache for this one.

    Photo by Sean Hogan, grabbed from Plant Lust

    Witch hazel. Any of them. This Hamamelis x intermedia “Feurezauber’ would do the trick.

    Photo from Dancing Oaks Nursery

    This ‘Moonlight’ hydrangea vine

    Photo from Great Plant Picks

    A dwarf Korean lilac (Syringa pubescens ssp patula ‘Miss Kim’)

    Photo from: Great Plant Picks

    A Korean fir. I saw this at Portland Nursery and I wanted to buy it. Sadly, it will take 20 or more years to get to size.

    Abies koreana ‘Hortsmann’s Silberlocke’

    Silk tassel bush (Garrya elliptica ‘James Roof’). This is a Northwest native that I never hear about. It’s evergreen and look at those flowers!

    Photo from Dancing Oaks Nursery

    This Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum ‘Mikawa Yatsubusa’)

    Photo from Plant Lust

    When does gardening Santa Claus come? December? He waits until the crocuses appear, right?

  • What’s the etiquette on this?

    What’s the etiquette on this?

    Is it ever okay to knock on the door of a house you found on a walk to
    ask them if you can take pictures of their yard and pump them for
    information on what plants they used?

    This yard was lovely, with dense plantings separated by a large swath of lawn that made it look deceptively simple and uncluttered.

    I think it’s the perfect combination of mass platings that I love and the clean, uncluttered look that Greg prefers in a front yard. What are the chances they designed it themselves?

  • Garden oopses

    Garden oopses

    Some of the garden bloggers out there talk about GOOPs. No, not the newsletters from a delusional celebrity suggesting you purchase a $2600 purse for “your summer leisure time.” These are gardening oopses. I had a couple of noteworthy ones this summer.

    First, I planted this cucumber in the corner of the bed, hoping it would, I don’t know, grow obediently along the ground or something? Levitate in the air?

    Instead the cucumber sprawled like an insolent drunk, belligerently growing wherever it wanted. Into the pathway . . .

    . . . onto the tomato cages . . .

    . . . through the herbs, trampling the chard . . .

    . . . and clinging to the retaining wall.
    And then it got powdery mildew and died but the tendrils stayed strong, making it almost impossible to remove them until the tomato cages came out this weekend. Also, we had to wire the tomato cages together because I planted them too closely together and the plants got too big and started to fall over. Cleaning that all up was super fun.
    Remember when I planted fennel in a victory barrel so it would do something like this? 
    Yeah, fennel likes sun, so when I planted it on the north side of my garage, which lies in shade all day, it grew sideways. 
    That’s just sad. Weeds took over this summer and the old lady annuals died and it looked awful. But I left it alone to feed the pollinators, not because I was lazy!

    Also dead? A flowering currant that I moved 600 times, relegated to a pot, then forgot to water.

    I’m going to give this bamboo a try instead. It should top out at eight feet and it doesn’t mind shade.

    And then I shall never make a gardening mistake again! [Cue the Internet to inform me that bamboo kills children and pollinators.]

  • Putting the garden to bed for the winter

    Putting the garden to bed for the winter

    I told myself that I would go easy while I was cleaning up the garden, so I could leave shelter and food for the birds, but I started weeding and pruning and pretty soon things were looking kind of bare.

    I’ve spent the last couple of weekends slinging compost, dressing all the beds in the hope of improving the soil. I had a yard and half delivered; at first I thought it was too much, now I’m thinking it wasn’t enough. We were going to broadcast it on the lawn, put it in the raised beds, and apply it under the rhodies, even though we don’t want to encourage them. I’m hoping this application won’t interfere too much with self-sowing perennials like forget-me-not. I planted some this year, after falling in love with them on a garden tour. When I pulled them out of the ground I made sure to give them a good shake to disperse the seeds. Hopefully I didn’t apply the compost  too heavily to let them come back.

    After appearing in new places, failing to bloom, and hiding my beautiful rust-colored ninebark behind six-foot shoots, I decided to dig out the nootka roses. 



    It turns out they had never bloomed because they were so busy trying to take over the world. There were canes running underground EVERYWHERE. I dug out every one that I found but I suspect that I haven’t seen the last of them. It pains me to remove something native but this isn’t ‘Nam; there are rules. I wanted to put something evergreen here but ultimately I went with a spirea ‘Magic Carpet.’


    I’ve always loved this plant but it pops up in places like the Fred Meyer parking lot and I was stupidly worried that more experienced gardeners would look down on me for planting something that has been used so widely. It turns out it doesn’t matter, people plant it because it’s beautiful and takes full sun like a champ. I think the chartreuse foliage on this one is going to look great against that dark red of the ninebark. In spring the peonies (on the right) have very dark green leaves and I think it’s all going to play nicely off of each other. Ultimately I think I’ll remove the peonies to a pot and plant something non-deciduous with very dark green foliage. Anybody have any ideas?


    This is the first time my creeping snowberry has fruited and I’m in love. In July it bloomed with tiny hot pink flowers and now the branch is so weighted down with white berries it looks like it could snap.Congrats, snowberry! You get to stay.

    Creeping snowberry (Symphoricarpos mollis)



    I bought my flowering currants from different nurseries, paying more for two that were supposedly var. King Edward VII. I didn’t actually believe they were a different variety until they fruited. This one was trained poorly as a tree, thus it has a terrible shape, and yet it blooms better than any of the other currants and now it’s loaded with black fruit. 

    Ribes sanguineum ‘King Edward VII’


    I was going to remove it but how can I remove something that is so loaded with bird food? I’m not confident in my pruning abilities to bring this back into my good graces. I might just go for it and prune it down to the ground after it blooms next spring.



    In comparison, this currant (presumably not King Edward VII), the first I planted in the yard as a wee seedling, has light blue fruit, a fantastic shape, and a reluctance to bloom. I’m hoping that was its youth showing and that it’ll perform better next year. Learn from the nootka rose, currant! Gimme flowers or I’ll cut you.


    But the really exciting news this weekend is that we finally bought a specimen tree for the back corner! I went to Portland Nursery and spoke to several bearded men about what to plant. We finally settled on a Japanese Cedar, Cryptomeria japonica ‘elegans’. It looks great in a garden with bamboo and it will top out at about 30 feet.

    My little guy. Grow, baby, grow!


    An older Cryptomeria. Photo by phildert.

    It’s going to turn this color in the winter.

    Picture source: nestmaker on Flickr



    So picture this burgundy foliage backed by the purple fruit of beautyberry that is planted behind it:

    Callicarpa bodinieri ‘Profusion’

     . . . and then flanked in front with a honeysuckle on the right . . .

    Lonicera nitida ‘Baggesen’s Gold’

     . . . and a Mexican Orange on the left.

    Choisya ternata ‘Sundance’

    And then this little baby is in front. It’s Corokia cotoneaster, a bonsai variety of wire-netting plant.

    How freaking cool is this plant?


    All three of these plants are evergreen, which means when we open the bedroom curtains in the winter, instead of seeing this:

    We’ll see something closer to this:

    Minus the hose and yard debris bin.

     I can’t wait for everything to grow bigger and to intersperse these plantings with perennials, tulips, and lillies. I couldn’t stop smiling all weekend–I’m so excited to finally have this area edited and on its way to being awesome. 

    While I was working this weekend, planting the Japanese cedar, I learned a couple of things:
      
    1. This soil in this back corner is almost completely made of sand. It explains why my blueberries didn’t do well here and why it smells like the beach when it rains. I think they must have dumped the extra sand here when they put in the patio slab that we removed. Or maybe a previous owner had a sandbox here? I worked wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of compost here and the soil makeup still looked really sandy.

    2. I will never ever stop finding buried concrete. My yard is apparently made of it.



    Happy fall, y’all!

  • I love this.

    I love this.

    Gigantic pots in the garden, spotted at the Bardini gardens in
    Florence. I want. While we’re wanting, I also want marble statues and
    a water feature depicting a lion vomiting water that forms a river.
    That’s all I want. And all of those things are possible because I saw
    them here.

  • A late summer garden is not a pretty thing

    A late summer garden is not a pretty thing

    I saw this tutorial in Better Homes and Gardens on how to create a picture frame planter full of sedums. It’s amazing. I want one. I want an entire fence made of them. I want an entire HOUSE made of them and then I’ll marry them and have a million of their babies.

    It made me miss my junky little bathroom drawer on stilts that I planted with sedums last summer, only to have it crushed when the gate fell down. All of a sudden it became imperative that I recreate it.

     I decided to check out Salvage Works in Kenton. They had lots of drawers that would have worked well but I got distracted by this rusted out wheelbarrow.

    Conveniently, it has a hole blasted through the bottom, meaning I could turn it into a planter with good drainage.

    I decided to sleep on it because I’m responsible. Also: I didn’t have the keys to Greg’s truck and it wouldn’t fit in my Honda. I went back the next day and the owner had conveniently written the price on the handle in Sharpie. Except by “conveniently” I mean “stupidly.” Anyone know how to get that off?

    I ran to Lowe’s in search of sedums even though they never have good succulents. I should have gone to Portland Nursery or Cistus. Actually, I should have cleaned the bathroom or otherwise prepared for my sister’s impending visit instead of messing around in the yard. Lowe’s only had some unremarkable hen-and-chicks so I grabbed more grosso lavendar. I figure this probably won’t last the winter above ground so I’ll have to replant next spring.

    I’ve been blog-stalking danger garden recently and coveting all the pokey plants she has in her yard. This whole wheelbarrow setup is looking a little too precious and I’m thinking one of these babies would be more fun. Whale’s tongue agave:

    Photo yanked from Pam Penick at Digging

    That’s a little more unexpected, ya? I’m not sure how deeply it needs to be planted so I might have to go with something smaller. The wheelbarrow is only five inches deep. While I was garden shopping I bought some orange crocosmia for Greg (if baby wants orange plants, baby gets orange plants) and realized that this area of the yard is an even bigger mess than I thought.

    Because I never really planned this area, so many things need to be removed or moved. There’s a mountain of wild morning glory quietly weaving around every plant in the area. I pull that weed every time I find it and it always comes back. My neighbor, the one who thinks I hate her Doug Fir, has it growing with abandon in her yard, meaning I will never be able to fully eradicate it. Ultimately I want to move the blueberry bushes from this area to the front yard, but that requires removed the rhododendrons, amending the soil, and doing a whole bunch of stuff for which I’m not ready. So they sit in the ground, planted far too closely to their replacement shrubs. Beautyberry sits right next to a flowering currant, which sits right next to an elderberry. They all suffer for it. I’ve also got a few plants on death row. Sadly, they are natives.

     
    This mock orange has been in the ground for two summers and has yet to flower. I have no place in my yard for shrubs that don’t flower when their foliage is nothing to get excited about. I’m thinking about replacing it with a Mexican Orange, which is evergreen. This area desperately needs evergreen elements. I also want some goddamn flowers. Is that too much to ask?

    Also not flowering? The nootka roses. They’ve thicketed like crazy, popping up in places I never wanted and they have yet to produce a single flower. If I’m going to put up with thorns there had better be some flowers. I’m not running a charity over here. Also? They’ve gotten so tall that I can’t see the ninebark behind them. I’m thinking about removing them and planting something evergreen. Something chartreuse, maybe.

    Also on death row? Whatever critter broke my birdbath. AGAIN.

  • It’s all part of my evil plan.

    It’s all part of my evil plan.

    Last night Greg and I were eating in the backyard on the someday-deck. I had that same feeling I think everyone gets in places where summer is very short. I grew up in California where summer basically lasts forever. It starts in March and can last well into October or November. There’s no rushing to go camping or spend time outside because you can always do it next month. But in Portland summer is over almost as soon as it begins. I felt antsy and disappointed–we haven’t kayaked this year! I haven’t eaten a single artichoke! We haven’t had a dinner party in the yard (though we had a barbecue and a birthday party). September has been swallowed up by travel plans, not that I’m complaining, but it shortens the summer even more. The only upshot to shortening days is an excuse to eat dinner by candlelight.

     

    Then Greg admitted to me that he’s been cheating. He’s been looking at other houses online. “For someday, don’t freak out!” he explained. Oh, for SOMEDAY! That makes me feels so much better that you’ve been secretly researching real estate! That doesn’t make me nervous at all.

    As an aside, does anyone understand that familiar plot in TV shows and movies where a dude, as a surprise to his lady love, buys a house for them? I would be livid if Greg did that, and we’re not even married. You made a quarter million dollar investment (or more) and didn’t bother to let me weigh in on it? I don’t know if we’d ever recover from that. And how do you go through house hunting and escrow without letting anyone else know? Come on.

    Anyway, our house isn’t in a very walkable neighborhood. We have two grocery stores within a mile but we don’t have any great bars or coffee shops or restaurants. In a city of forty thousand thai restaurants, we have none in walking distance. If you are drunk at two in the morning, however, we have the *best* taco shop. Greg lived in the NW 23rd area before I made him move into North Portland and we miss the walking options we had for eating out in that neighborhood. If I were to move I’d probably go no further than Kenton, which is a great little neighborhood about two miles away. They have a coffee shop, a library, a salvage shop, and a homebrew exchange. But Greg is plotting to get us back to his former stomping grounds, with its fancy shops and lack of street parking.

    But! He admitted that every house he looked at paled in comparison to mine, mostly because they all had tiny yards. That’s right, baby, you might think you can do better but no other house will love you like this one. We have room to spare and we’re only five minutes from downtown. The whole thing makes me laugh because Greg always tells me how condo living is better, how he hates yard work, how he comes from a family of farmers and he’s rebelled against his heritage by refusing to garden. And now he can’t live without our enormous yard.

    We’re planning on bumping the fence out a ways toward the front of the house on the west side. Sometimes we say it’s going to be a place for the compost bin. Sometimes we say it’s going to be the hammock spot. Last night Greg said we should plant corn there because corn is delicious and also we could create a corn maze as an entrance to a Halloween party.

    You guys, my plan to turn him into a North Portland home ownership-loving gardener is working! He wants to grow more vegetables AND he wants to create a corn maze entrance to a party! That’s some Martha Stewart level awesome shit right there. I’m so proud.

    We both agreed that we want to get the deck built early next summer, hopefully by May so we can spend the rest of the summer just enjoying it. And having dinner parties on it. Maybe kayaking on it. Definitely eating artichokes on it.

  • On nature

    On nature

    I awoke one Saturday morning and opened the curtains to greet the day. We settled back in bed with our coffee and watched the birds flying by and the squirrels frolicking on the lawn. One leaped onto the planter! So cute! He adorably reached into the planter with his little rat-hands and PLUCKED A STRAWBERRY OFF THE VINE.

    Son of a bitch.

    I ran out into the yard in my underwear and cursed that tiny animal out. He retreated to the fence where, I swear to god, he made a big show of eating my strawberry. Mmmm, so good! So juicy! Wouldn’t you like one? Too bad it’s in my belly and also covered in squirrel disease.

    I know I got my yard certified by the Audubon Society and I love animals and all that, but lately I’ve had it with nature. Some critter recently ate every single blueberry on both bushes. The crows, in addition to being noisy as hell, like to divebomb me when I’m weeding. I keep finding neighborhood cats lurking in the back, which would be fine if they would eat the crows (circle of life and all that); instead, they just poop in my beds. My yard is not a goddamn gas station, guys. You can’t just use the restroom and leave.

    The boy found water pellet rifles online and offered to try his hand at controlling the crows. I won’t let him . . . yet. Because last night I successfully harvested a bowl of strawberries and they tasted like victory.

    Score one: Heather.