Changing Seasons

One of the things I love most about Portland is that we actually get all four seasons here. While growing up in Sacramento, CA, I always thought of Winter as something you drove to. We would go up highway 50 to Tahoe and play in the snow, but Winter in Sacramento was similar to what fall is here. Temperatures were usually in the 60's, and it would rain occasionally.

I later moved to Klamath Falls for two years, and experienced the opposite of the mild seasons of the Sacramento Valley. Winters were cold, snowy, severe, with enormous plowed piles of snow often lasting in parking lots until late spring. Summers could be blisteringly hot, as hot as those of California. The extremes of Winter and Summer somehow eclipsed the three months that should properly belong to Spring and Fall, however. I began to think of them as in between seasons, a month or so of slightly different weather and plant colors before you got to the "real" seasons of the year.

Upon moving to Portland, I made the wonderful discovery that each season should properly take up its allotted three month span. Spring and Fall were not pass-through seasons, but proper seasons on their own, each distinctly different from the season before and after it. The edges are blurred a bit as the transition is made, as late Winter looks quite similar to early Spring, and many people think of late Fall as Winter anyway.

Another observation of seasons in Portland is that each month within the three month seasonal span is different as well. Fall is not just orange-leafed tree time for three whole months. The end of September still feels like Summer, October is the epitome of one's imaginations of Fall, November follows along the lines of October, although with less bright trees, and early December is quite hard to distinguish from one's ideal of Winter.

We had a record snowfall in Portland this December, and most of it fell before the actual start of Winter (December 21st). To illustrate the beauty of Portland's changing seasons, I will take you from mid September through the first days of Winter in my garden.

The lushness of early Fall- still smells like Summer.

 

 

Mid-Fall, the fading annuals have been removed and spring bulbs tucked under the soil, but the foliage of the trees are blazing, and the dahlias have reached new impossible heights (they were supposed to be 4 feet tall!)

 

And finally, late Fall blends into early Winter. The annuals and dahlias have all been cut back, the beds have been put to sleep, and Winter lays her gentle blanket to transform the world into a glittering white wonder.

Garden Time wins over posting time!

I think winter will be garden blog meandering thought time. Spring through summer so far has turned out to be actually gardening time - outdoors among the flamboyant new growth, heat waves, bumblebees and even spiders. So, obviously, I haven't posted in ages - I've been much too busy!

The winter gives me more time for thought about my garden. I've realized it is my contemplative planning time. I research, absorb, learn, obsess over the long cold grey months, dreaming of warm sunlit days when my garden will be at its peak.

But the summer is too full of chores and pleasures to be indoors with my nose in a book and my thoughts in the clouds. There are weeds to pull, flowers to cut, cuttings to take, mulching to do, composting, digging, and planting. When I'm not working my gardening muscles I can be found either sitting back and observing the whole thing, or knealt down over something up close, probably a bee taking nectar from my jasmine shrub, or a spider crawling its way over the rocks under the japanese maple, or a butterfly visiting my striped tongue (salpiglossis) flowers.

I love the daylight and warmth I have to enjoy my garden. I love how my garden looked in the late winter and spring, as in the below pictures, but my garden in early summer and now, late summer, is lush and green and full. Wonderful. Enjoy the pictures, they progress from early spring, to late may/early june through now, late august.

Better than nothing

So I was off yesterday, and bored, and the weather was awful - hailing and sleeting, grey, cold. What is with the ice? I need my spring weather! So I decided to get some plants for my completely not done and really weedy front yard. I went to two nurseries to find what I was looking for. All of the plants I purchased I have read about, and have wanted, but I didn't go to the nursery looking for them and thinking I would buy them. I just saw them there, and started arranging foliage and colors in my cart.

The first nursery had awful plants. Everything I picked up was so root bound - where the roots are circling around and are all tangled in the pots. You want strong roots, not showy blooms when you are shopping for plants. Look at the bottoms!

The next place had nicer plants, but a small selection. Of the actual plants I went to the nursery to find, I purchased zero. I was looking for some lovely shade plants for the southern side of my back garden, but they had nada! I think I am going to have to purchase the plants I want online, which makes me nervous because I have never done so.

This first picture shows my mismatched yard. You can see why I had to do something, anything. It is full of weeds and some beautiful bulbs. But the bulbs will soon sink back beneath the earth to conserve energy until next spring. Then they will emerge after you've long forgotten how wonderfully fragrant the hyacinths are. Now that I've started with my plant decoration, I can't stop. It looks too silly with half of it bark mulched and weeded like that.



I am already thinking about moving them around a bit. I want to get more of the purple fluffy stuff (heuchera 'silver scrolls' aka coral bells) and putting it closer to the sidewalk. I would move the feathery grey-green stuff (artemisia 'powis castle') back, since it grows to 3 ft. The heuchera only gets about 18" high, so it would look better in front of the taller artemisia.



Of course, they're tiny and far apart right now, but believe me, both of those plants have quite a spread. That's why all the teeny viola plants are tucked in between them. They'll peter out by late summer, then come back from self-seeding through the fall to the spring. Although listed as an annual (grows from seed, flowers, sets seed, and dies in one year), it reliably comes back in the entrance garden. And the weather here is pretty mild, so I have flowers from it almost year round with absolutely no care, just rainwater and sunshine.

Hereditary Gardening

I didn't have any answers at first as to why I was so suddenly fascinated with the botanical world. My interest came on so suddenly and so fiercely that I barely had time to question it, so immersed have I been in researching, observing, and enjoying the natural world. When I visited family in late February, almost a year after my new obsession started, I gained a clue. My grandma is an avid plant lover, with a natural green thumb. I'd admired her flowers and strawberries when I was a girl, but I'd never really paid much attention beyond "that's pretty" or "that's sweet." My mom also planned and planted a lovely courtyard garden when I was a teenager, and again, I barely noticed. But after 26 years of just not really noticing all the life around me, my genes were finally showing true.
Whatever the reason, it's a great excuse for pouring money into a tiny urban lot to acheive your vision of a private paradise. And I do mean pouring - tons of it, enough for Scrooge McDuck to swim through. I have a new appreciation for people who plant flowers, trees, and shrubs for all the neighborhood to enjoy - it's expensive at first. I long for the days of garden establishment, where I can take cuttings and divide perennials to my heart's delight. Tons of plants, for nothing more than my initial investment. Yippee!

My garden today: