New plantings in the Front Bank

This will be a pretty simple post since we don't have any pictures, but I wanted to be sure and record the names of these new plants we put into the bank today!

• Dianthus - Supra Crimson. A little annual that grows to about 12" tall. We added it to get some color on the bank, plus it's supposed to attract butterflies - looks like this.
• Cistus - 'Gordon Cooper' This is a perennial - we planted it under the coral bark maple, it should spread to about 2' wide, and has these super cute little white flowers on it!
• Geum - 'Cooky' This is a perennial with a great textured leaf and perky orange flowers.
• Bowle's Mauve Erysimum linifolium - This is an evergreen shrub that has these amazing purple flowers on it in the spring and summer. It can get to be pretty large - 3-4 feet wide/tall!
• Salvia 'Sizzler Purple' - another annual to help add some color to the bank. Great for hummingbirds!

Spring Has Sprung

We had a busy, busy weekend. New seeds started:

• Tomato: Grape Jelly Bean Red & Yellow, Lycopersicon lycopersicum (hybrid). I grew these last year and they were delicious.
• Tomato: Cherry Rainbow Mix, Lycopersicon lycopersicum (hybrid). I started three pots of these -- the seeds are dyed so you know which color you're planting. The three colors I started were: Brown Cherry, Super Snow White & Bi-colored Cherry (pink & white striped).

For those of you who have been to our house you know that the gate into our backyard has been broken for, oh, ever since we moved in. Thor put his new circular to work this weekend and put in a new latch!


Perhaps the biggest, most exciting news of the weekend is that Thor's mountain bike came in! It's an Ibis Mojo - built out full XT (except LX cassette and Heyes Stroker brakes). It also has the new Fox Talus 150 fork on it! (I realize that for about 75% of you this information will mean nothing). I'm bummed I still can't get out mtn. biking with my gimpy shouler!


Thor ripped out the back lawn that had been invested by aggressive winter moss. He has three weeks before optimal grass seeding to turn in compost, level, and lay the brick border.

The first daffodils of spring in our yard! (This is ironic given the fact that it was snowing on my bike ride into work on Monday morning).

Early October Blooms

Here are three blooms that opened up this past weekend while we were away in Sunriver. It is a pleasant surprise to find that there are plants in our yard blooming into the fall.

Our tiger lily has finally blossomed! I was beginning to wonder if we had mis-identified the plant. These little flowers are so delicate - they are only a little bigger than the diameter of a quarter.

This stunning dahlia is on the west side of our house tucked in underneath the lilac tree. I love the fringed petals and delicate pink color.

I wasn't sure this dahlia was going to bloom at all. My mom & I moved it into a barrel in the back of the yard and it has been straining to reach out into the sunlight all summer. I was planning on transplanting it to a better spot later this fall - and now I'm glad I waited since it was a late bloomer!

Late July Blooms

This post is very late. I recently put most of these spent blooms into the yard waste -- that's how late I am posting these pictures! These flowers were all blooming around the last week of July and into the first week of August.

One of the many dahlia varieties in our yard.

More dahlias - these are on the west side of the house under the lilac tree.

Another dahlia - this is on the most humongous dahlia plant I have ever seen. It is currently planted right smack in the middle of our raised veggie bed, but the tallest dahlia stalks are over 6 feet!

Our hydrangea - it deepened in color towards the middle of the summer and was a bright bush of vibrant purples & blues.

A couple shots of our hostas in our front yard. I never realized that hostas produced a bloom!

A lily.

I am not sure what these are called - but they are in our front yard next to my artichoke.

Another front yard lily variety.

These are Liatris - we have these up in the front yard and down in our park strip.

Black-Eyed Susan....I think? They're in our front yard.

Here's a series of shots of our Orange Trumpet Vine. We thought it was a wisteria for awhile until it bloomed orange! The vine winds around our fence and over the top of our gate that connects the front yard to the side yard on the west side of the house.

A close up of the orange blossom on the Trumpet Vine.

This fuschia lives in a pot in the back yard underneath our Cherry tree.

Another dahlia!

Anna's birthday!

Today is Anna's birthday -- and looked what bloomed in our garden this morning just in time to celebrate!!! It's a gorgeous dahlia -- a deep cherry red with bright yellow tips on the petals. It is huge - larger than a softball! I wish I could give it to Anna as a present on her big 2 - 6 (um...you are turning 26, right?) but she will just have to make do with this picture until she decides to move to Portland (shameless plug for Anna to leave Hawaii and move closer to me!)

Growing Iris

I am sitting here at work messing around with how to turn hard copy pages of information that I want to save into electronic files that I can post to my blog. My mom gave me this handout on growing iris that has some good information, however I know that I will loose this piece of paper in the next year -- or get sick of it sitting in a pile at my house and just recycle it. I figured out if I scan the page into the computer and then save the file as a jpeg I can upload it to the blog as an image file! If you actually want to read the page just click on the image and it will come up 'full size' and readable in your web browser. Now next spring when I want to read about what I'm doing with my iris I'll be able to access this information quickly & easily. Sweet!

Fig Tree Container

This fig tree was the first fruiting tree I purchased after we moved into our house. It is a 'Brown Turkey' fig which produces medium-large maroon fruit. Yum! I don't think we can expect any figs this year, but hopefully next year this tree will produce it's first crop. This is supposedly a good variety to grow in our area -- so we'll keep our fingers crossed! There are also a few other plants we have in this container with the tree - scroll down to see them in detail.

Delosperma 'Mesa Verde' - cold hardy Ice Plant. Masses of apricot-peachy flowers. 2" tall and spreading quickly to 2' wide (no joke! this plant is growing FAST)

Penstemmon. I am not sure what variety as it was a plant that was here in a different container when we moved in.

Black Mondo Grass

2 Dahlias, 1 Crocosmia

In the last two days we've had a couple new flowers open up. This dahlia is on the west side of our house underneath the lilac tree. The flash makes it look a lot more pink than it actually is - it is a much deeper purple in actuality.


This is a crocosmia - from what I can tell we only have one of these in our yard - it's really neat!


This is also a dahlia - although it is unlike any dahlia I have ever seen. A co-worker gave me the bulb as a house warming gift and it was labeled as a dahlia. The foliage and bud both looked like a dahlia as well, so I was pretty shocked when it blossomed and this is what came out!

Early July Blooms

When we got home from Katie & Zabyn's wedding yesterday I took a quick tour around the garden and we have a whole host of new flowers that opened up over the weekend while we were away. Enjoy!

This little red lily is over near the fence on the NW corner of our yard - it is tucked away in the shade and there is only one of them - I haven't seen a single other lily this color in our yard.


This cluster of pink lilies is in our front yard in full sun. They are a beautiful coral pink with school bus yellow centers. There are a few more stalks of lilies around the front yard that haven't blossomed yet, but I'm hoping they will be this color too!


One of the many dahlias springing up all over our yard - this pink variety is one of the first to open up this summer. It is currently in our back box with the nasturtiums and geraniums, but I'll probably transplant it somewhere else once it is done blooming.


This gorgeous, delicate yellow dahlia is out on the east side of our house tucked in next to the raspberries.


This fuschia was one of the un-identified plants left behind by the previous owner of our house. There was a container sitting out underneath our cherry tree that had a very dead looking plant in it this winter. Being the lazy gardener that I am I didn't feel like dealing with it so I just left the container alone and at the end of May I noticed that the branches were starting to get little buds on them. It had turned into quite a healthy looking green bush, but I wasn't expecting the flowers! It was a treat to come home and see these blossoms and finally be able to identify what was growing. It's a good thing I didn't dump my 'dead plant' into the yard waste in March!


This lily is all pink and is one of a number of this variety growing on the west side of our house in the shade. They look very robust, but not that happy as they are growing horizontally along the ground as if they are trying to find some sunlight. I think once they are done blooming I will transplant them to an area of the yard with more sunlight.


Remember those 'Himalayan' poppies I was all excited about earlier this month? Well - they're blooming and they are NOT himalayan poppies. They are a very nice, fringed, single petal poppy that is coming up in a wild fuschia color... But they are not himalayans...sniff. I wish I could find my seed packet to read if they were some sort of varietal or if I just thought I bought the himalayans...or what happened. oh well. these are pretty too.


I think this is a Hollyhock. I am not sure -- anyone know what a Hollyhock looks like?


Our hydrangea finally bloomed. And they are not blue. I was SO SO SO looking forward to having a sky blue colored hydrangea in our yard -- and instead it looks like the Easter Bunny came to visit -- all sugary purple & pink covering the bush. Hmph. I have heard you can change the color of the hydrangea blooms by altering the nutrient content of your soil. I may need to look into this and figure out whether it is true or just an old wives tail.

A New Dahlia

Our yard is filled with Dahlias - and they are coming up in the strangest places! On my last trip to Tacoma, however, my mom had an extra dahlia bulb and I just couldn't resist. It's a Tahoma Frills variety -- and it should bloom white in 6-8" wide blossoms! Here's the 'before' picture. It's the very, very little green sprout on the left of the pot! (don't worry - it's pretty much impossible to see right now)

New Blooms in the Garden

It has finally been sunny here for a couple of days in a row, and it is amazing what a little sun will do for the garden! Here are some new flowers that blossomed in the last day or so. Enjoy!

This is some variety of lily that is blooming in our back yard near the raised veggie beds. It is GORGEOUS! Sort of a mauve-rose color with gold strikes right down the middle of the petal. This is the first one to open up - I can't wait until we have a whole backyard full!


I had a hard time getting a good picture of the Lychnis that is blooming in our front parkstrip. I think this plant generally comes in white or a deep fuschia - so far everything we have blooming is white.


Nasturtiums!!!! I planted these guys in a planter box at the back of our house - I have them mixed in with geraniums that are already blooming. This combination was inspired by the planter boxes that we always had growing up in Alaska. The nasturtium variety that I planted was 'Alaska'....I think. Of course I can't find the seed envelope now - so I think I must have thrown it out earlier this spring...sigh.


This is a spirea of some sort. I had always heard they bloomed - but didn't really believe it because I thought mine just looked like a bush! So I was awfully surprised to see these pink blossoms pop out earlier this week. The entire plant is just covered with them!

Wooly Sunshine. I picked three of these up as bare root plants at the Naturescape native plant sale earlier this spring in February. They are a good drought tolerant native that thrives in rock gardens and well drained soil. They're doing great out in our front park strip!