In bloom this week: April 30, 2018

Lilacs!

Spring is here, the lilacs are finally blooming! I expect they'll fade quickly though after warm weather last week, then rain, and now more sunshine coming. Ah well, I think there are enough other flowers to console me. 

Lilacs in the rain

Camassia

Camassia

Bleeding hearts filling in nicely along with other native groundcover

Dodecatheon

Limanthes douglasii, Meadow Foam, just starting to bloom

Beargrass!

Apple blossoms

Blueberries

Strawberries

Tulips

Tulips, I'm pretty sure these were all supposed to be the same

Aquilegia, planted from seed 2 years ago

Clematis

Creeping phlox

More aquilegia planted from seed

Forget-me-nots

Coming soon: more camassia, lupine, many bearded irises, and I'm very excited that all three of my peonies have buds.

Fall color

Acer rubrum 'Franksred', planted in February

Fall is my favorite season, the world feels settled and calm. Fall is also the only time that I love yellow, orange and even red. The rest of the year, I am drawn to blue, purple and green. But the other colors shine in the fall, especially when we are lucky enough to have sunny weather. I don't have enough fall color in my yard, but I'm working on it.

Blueberries

Unknown Japanese maple

Dogwood, Cornus kousa 'Rosy Teacups', planted in the spring

Acer rubrum 'Franksred', planted in February

Witchhazel 'Diane', planted in February

Asian pear

Grapes

Grape leaves

Our roses, neighbor's maple in the background

Late blooming coneflower

I like the dead heads on the coneflowers too

In bloom this week: Mar. 29, 2016

Asian pear

Where did March go?! In like a lion with a storm on the first and out like a lamb, sunshine all week. I need to remember to take pictures earlier in the day, the sun is too bright when I go out in the late afternoon.

The classic spring bulbs are still here, I have more planted this year and different varieties so I'm enjoying a longer bloom time.

Late daffodil

Tulips

Sunny daffodil

Vinca minor, or periwinkle, spreads quickly but so far I'm happy with a few areas where I transplanted it last year.

Periwinkle

All four of my blueberries are blooming, but hard to get pictures of them. I grow a lot of fruit but these are my favorites!

Blueberry

Another blueberry

One lonely strawberry is blooming before all the rest.

Early strawberry

I planted a few kinnikinnick last week, just in time for the flowers.

Kinnikinnick

Indoors, one of my amaryllis plants is finishing blooming, it had three sections and this is the last. The other amaryllis doesn't seem to want to bloom this year, but I don't do anything to force them to bloom.

Amaryllis

Coming soon.... I found pictures of lilac blooms from this week last year, so we are a little behind - but I think still an earlier than usual spring.

Lilac - maybe next week?

The apples and kiwi blossoms are still not quite here either, although I almost like the buds better than the blooms. I'll change my mind next week.

Apple

Hardy kiwi

And one more preview - coming in April!

Early rose

A hillside of work

Lower hillside, facing south

This north half of the lower hillside is my third area to focus on this year, along with the rose garden and the southeast corner (which is visible in the back of the above photo). Ignore the cardboard, it's a temporary attempt to keep the grass and weeds from growing too much before I have time to deal with them.

The first spring after we bought the house, we planted a multitude of fruit and berries: four blueberries on the hillside, two dwarf apples, raspberries on the near side of the trellis, two grapes behind them, and three hardy kiwi on the far end of the trellis. Thirteen years later, the grapes grow amazingly well and completely shade out the raspberries. We need to re-do the trellis (maybe this year, maybe not) for the grapes, and take out the original raspberries - which have probably reached the end of their productive lifespan anyway.

Instead, I want to plant a shorter row of raspberries down the hillside, with wire on metal fence posts to support them. That'll be less solid than the current trellis, but the everbearing type that I like really don't need much support. I also want some type of stepping stones up the hill on either side of the raspberries, because the slope is steeper than it looks and it's easy to slip.

Lower hillside, facing west

The blueberries have grown fairly well, but they'd be happier if I keep the grass and creeping buttercup out. I dug out a big circle of grass around all four bushes last year, and a lot of it has come right back again. I've been researching companion plants for blueberries and there are a lot of options as long as I keep them from directly competing with the blueberries's shallow roots.

All of the grass from the blueberries to the bushes on the south half of the slope (flowering currant, Oregon grape and hazelnuts) needs to come out. It's too hard to mow across the slope, and will be even harder when the new raspberries are planted. This side of the hill gets full sun for most of the day, so I've been looking at some of the native carex grasses. Maybe sedum also, and plumbago might look good with the blueberry stems in the fall. I'm still looking for ideas of what would grow well with full sun and no extra water. I have a drip line on the berries, but I don't plan to water anything else after the new plants are established.

The bottom of the hillside gets very wet in the winter and I'm thinking about planting Siberian irises along the edge of the slope. But not sure if that will be in this project or not!