Category: Wednesday Vignette

Wednesday Vignette: New tree!

Posted on by susan

It looks flippin awful right now but just you wait.  There’s so much going on here – hoop house is up with tomatoes NOT in it (what? I don’t know, I don’t work here), there’s fencing and other crap all over the place to keep birds and dog out of the garlic, there’s a big ol’ feverfew that I’m going to put in the ground (it volunteered in that pot and went crazy), grapes that need to be pruned (in the big pots) and of course the big obvious red highlighter mark which is the hopeful eventual outline of a Eucalyptus parvula.

For a long time I’ve been wanting an evergreen tree on my side of the fence right there in between those two Styrax japonicas on the other side.  I’ve considered oak, Arbutus (unedo?), cypress, and various others until it finally occurred to me that (I think) Eucalyptus feels right.  So then it became a matter of selecting the species.  As luck would have it I had a conversation about this with Paul Bonine of Xera Plants while in the car, and not only does he have a lot of experience in growing Eucalyptus, he also knows where they all are around town.  So he took me on a little tour and showed me E. kybeanensis, E. parvula, and several others.  E. parvula won the race handily once I saw the gorgeous one on N. Delaware Avenue just south of Sumner.  Street view here.

Yet another stroke of luck – another friend just happened to have a little E. parvula and he gave it to me.  EEEEEEE!!!

Lastly, If I say it out loud do I HAVE to follow through? I think I’m gonna take out the raspberries.  They are thirsty, hard to harvest, and I have those damn spotted wing drosophila.  Relatively new arrivals to the area, these assholes are responsible for significant impacts to commercial fruit growers.  They are damnear impossible to control and I just don’t think it’s worth it.  I’m halfway though an experiment to see if allowing chickens to forage under and around the plants will reduce populations or eliminate them (adults overwinter in/on ground) so I’m going to see that out but even if it’s successful, I’m still not all that keen on growing these.   Maybe olives…

Wednesday Vignettes come to us from the genius of Anna at Flutter & Hum, so go check her blog out too.

Wednesday Vignette: Dripping

Posted on by susan

Befitting a drippy rainy day (after so many days of relative dry), I present you with this (slightly blurry; it was raining) lovely sedum which appears to have dripped itself right off the top of this rock wall and into the soil below at the base.  I was struck by the idea that this little happening is indeed an experience of movement in the garden, albeit slower movement than, say, a water feature.

 

Though we gardeners are usually quite aware of them, casual observer or one-time visitor might not notice the seasonal migration of things like self-seeding annuals or creeping perennials.  This is certainly an instance of that sort of plant migration, and I love how this scene shows it so clearly.

Also, this is actually in a friend’s garden; my own has similar rocks but no such elevation – yet.  I’ll get to it.  Maybe…

The Wednesday Vignette concept came from Anna at Flutter & Hum: https://flutterandhum.wordpress.com/