Drip System Install

Conserva Irrigation is installing our drip system this week. We've had a few plant casualties from the trenching and channel drilling but overall the plants that survive will appreciate the reliable summer water. And once the installation is finished, I have a few more native plants to add to the yard.

Beautiful Spring Flowers

I haven't been diligent about blogging about our yard. It has been really quite lovely this spring since we've had so much rain. This is the best year we've ever had for irises; there are some we had that I didn't actually know what color they were. Obviously, we hadn't been watering them enough.

These purple irises actually used to be in our front yard, but when we planted the rain garden and shaded them, they actually migrated to the property line with our neighbor. I love the color.

These johnny jump-ups are a volunteer from the plants I put in last year. This is a good spot for them.

We got these two-tone irises from our neighbor, Donaleen. This is the first year I've seen the flowers on them. She thought they were the Iris 'Perfection' variety introduced before 1880.

I'm actually a little confused about this iris variety. I ordered several from Schreiner's Iris Gardens but this plant doesn't match any of the varieties I ordered, so perhaps it was a freebie from a neighbor. I did get a few plants from our local buy-nothing group. It looks very much like the Oui Madame variety.

I've been making a point of ordering more of the Pacific Iris varieties as they seem to do better in our shady yard. This Iris x pacifica ‘Violetta’ is looking lovely this year.

This Iris x pacifica 'Big Wheel' has been looking lovely for several weeks. 

This Iris douglasiana (Pacifica) ‘Canyon Snow’ also looked great a couple of weeks ago.

The rest of the iris plants around the yard are ready to burst into the flower so I look forward to next week as well.

This old-fashioned bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis 'Gold Heart') has looked amazing for several weeks. All the rest of the bleeding heart plants in the hidden garden died, but this one is thriving in its location.

I have more photos and more pretty plants, but I'm tired and need to head to bed. I do hope the rain keeps up because our plants are loving it.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

We have really been enjoying our yard this year. Every week there is some new plant to enjoy.

Dodecatheon hendersonii / Shooting Star

Iris x pacific 'Big Wheel'

Parrot Tulips 'Garden Fire'

Epimedium grandiflorum ‘Lilafee’ 

Epimedium grandiflorum ‘Dark Side’

These are violas I grew from seed and planted last year!
I can't believe they survived the winter.

Jeff pruned our wisteria way back, but what is left looks nice.

This is the shady side of the front yard that we planted last year.
It looks much better now.

There are so many more photos I could share, but that's probably enough for now. I am so much happier about our yard these days. It was definitely worth the time and energy to make it a place we're proud of.

Enjoying the Yard

I have really been enjoying all the beautiful plants out in the yard. Flowers started quite early with the Hellebores blooming in winter.

Hellebore of an unknown variety. Planted by an earlier resident.

This is an Hellebore 'Apricot Blush'. The flowers are red on the outside,
but apricot on the inside. Very lovely.

The white hellebore is a 'Picotee Pearl.' It has grown really
fast so it must love that spot. The pink hellebore to the right was a
gifted plant I got from a neighborhood friend. 

Most of the crocuses came out right before our freak snow storm
but didn't last too well with all the weight of the snow on them.

Epimedium x warleyense

We have so many daffodils coming up in the yard. I tried to dig up
the clumps last year and spread them out, but I guess I missed a couple.

Corydalis solida ‘Purple Bird’. I thought this one died because
it's a summer deciduous plant but there it is! Yay!

Hyacinth 'Gipsy Queen'

The Red Flowering Currant is only days away from being absolutely stunning.

Already Spring

We've had some really pleasant weather over the past couple weeks and our yard is already waking up. We had a squirrel problem over the winter (as in he was digging up bulbs for food), so I expected there to be no bulbs left. I'm pleased to see some survived.

Mammoth Yellow Crocus from Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, Woodburn, OR.
We only planted one bulb in each spot, they divided over the winter.

These are hellebores of unknown variety from our neighbor, donaleen. I think this is their second year.

The flowering maple in the hidden garden survived the winter and is putting on new growth.

Our flowering currant in the front yard rain garden is about to explode into flowers.
Really looking forward to that.

I'm not sure what this shrub is at the back fence. Jeff had to prune it way back so we could paint the shed last summer. The flowers are starting to come in. (My latest guess is Flowering Quince.)

Fall is Here!

It's not just a clever name. There are so many leaves in our yard right now. I hope we have another couple dry days so we can clean up the yard. As the outdoor season draws to a close, I thought it would be fun to look back at the progress we made in the yard this summer.

In May/June, Jeff planted the parking strip.

This is how it looked when initially planted

This is how it looks today. The plants that lived seem really happy.

Thimbleberry is Gone!

I 💜Wednesdays because that is when Aaron comes to help Jeff with bigger yard projects. I posted in June about how I was done with the thimbleberry and I was ready to put in more flowers. I was happy Jeff was on board and decided to work on the project today.

This morning I took some before shots.

It wasn't terrible, I was just ready for a more flowery change. We originally planted these plants for the birds to eat the berries. I have never seen a bird back there eating berries off any of our natives. I did, however, see one stealing blueberries.

Santa Rosa Gardens Order

After the Wholesale Nursery debacle, I had pretty much sworn off of buying plants from online nurseries. But this year, when I wanted very specific plants for my particular color scheme, I began thinking it would probably be okay to order from nurseries in Oregon because at least the plants wouldn't have to travel as far.

While I was poking around doing searches for the heuchera in the specific colors I wanted, I found all of them on clearance for $5.99 and $2.99 at the Santa Rosa Gardens website. Then I found some columbines in good colors for $2.99; those would be perfect for the backyard rain garden. And the more I looked, the more I found that I had to have. Honestly, I got a little shopping cart happy when I was perusing their clearance plants. Even though I was reluctant to order from them, I had a moment of weakness and clicked the order button.

At the time, I thought they were located in California, which seemed not so much further than Oregon. At least it's on the west coast. But I learned after I placed the order that they're actually in Florida! Oops.

Anyway, my order arrived today, just three days after I placed it. This time, my result was MUCH different.

Wow, each plant was individually wrapped

The boxes come with these neat little trays designed to hold the pots perfectly

When you pick the pots up you can feel a little of the dirt has been knocked out of the pot. If you support the netting, you can shake most of the loose dirt back into the pot.

Each plant has this little net thing on it to hold the dirt.

They recommend you cut off the netting from the bottom and pull it off from the top so you don't bust stems/branches.

The columbines were looking a little parched, and there were a few broken stems here and there, but they're looking pretty good—and alive—which is a nice change.

Here they are! A little bedraggled, but mostly looking healthy.

Some of these plants were ordered for the backyard Hidden Garden, which isn't ready yet. So, those will get repotted into gallon pots and we'll keep them on the back patio until we're ready to plant them in a month or two.

Update: They just sent me a 50% off coupon for the holiday if anyone is interested. The discount is off the clearance prices.

Reimagining the Rain Garden

Now that Jeff and I have been spending so much time in the yard, I'm starting to reconsider some of my earlier plant choices. I think I'm ready for some more flowers. :)

We planted two small thimbleberry plants in the backyard rain garden and it obviously loved that spot because it has been a chore to control it in the backyard.

Here was the rain garden at the beginning, Oct 2011

Before Jeff realized he could literally chop it to the ground and it would come back, this is what the thimbleberry looked like. It felt like an impenetrable wall splitting our backyard.

After a severe pruning, it got better by Aug 2016. Also, in summer 2016, a friend of ours brought over two large garbage bags of ferns and quite a few of them ended up in this large rain garden.

Here is the yard tidied up in Aug 2016

Here is where the rain garden is at this summer.

Maybe there are too many ferns. LOL

I think I'm ready to remove the thimbleberry. It's a fine plant if you have a huge yard, but we don't. This plant is occupying one of the few sunny spots in our backyard and I would prefer to plant some flowers there. I think we'll also dig and relocate some of the ferns. I predict quite a few will be moving down to our soon-to-be installed Hidden Garden.