sprig to twig

Wendy, over at greenish thumb has always shared recipes so delicious sounding that they tend to lure one into trying out unusual (to me, anyway) ingredients from the garden. Now she has opened her site to all of us who like to experiment with our home-grown veggies. Her recipe for eggplant, alone, is worth the click. I’m sure following the links to other contributors will yield all manner of savory inspiration. Speaking of eggplant, I like to keep a small bowl of garlic infused olive oil on hand. Whenever R fires up the grill, a few slices of eggplant, fresh from the garden, brushed with this concoction and grilled about 2 minutes to a side makes for a simple, yet delicious, side dish. I never bother with any of that salting and draining that most eggplant recipes call for, but then the slight bitterness is an asset in my book.

Wendy’s challenge takes place each and every Saturday (I’m a day late, but she is a forgiving sort). All gardening cooks are invited to join in the fun…or just go there to lift recipes.

When we moved here, we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to part with our old house in the industrial NW Portland neighborhood. It was our first house together and where the gardening bug first bit. Over the 13 years we lived there, we transformed an architectural eyesore and a rubble-strewn lot into a cozy nest surrounded by lush gardens.

The southern exposure and surrounding concrete give a boost to temperamental plants like this Cotoneaster corokia. I’ve killed three of them since.

Melianthus major is another of those success stories. There is now (a copse? a grove?). Not sure what to call it, but there’s a heckuva lot of it. I keep digging up pieces to bring here, but so far none of them have taken.

Our first renter was an architect and good friend, who was excited about the garden. I told her to consider it hers, and just give me right of first refusal on anything she wanted to take out. Next thing we knew, she had a major excavation project going and the whole thing is now on an automatic sprinkling system. She also replaced my funky pathways with elegant stone slabs and added lots of roses and boxwoods.

Now that they no longer need worry where their next drink is coming from, the Crocosmias have multiplied at an almost alarming rate. More freebies hit the sidewalk every year. Fortunately, they’re pretty easy to pull up.

Ditto for the goosenecked loosestrife. (try saying that three times in rapid succession)

And the Filipendula rubra.

Our most recent tenants were not so interested in the garden, so we have spent the last few weeks on a weeding and mulching blitz. See how nice it looks?

So, my dear garden blogging friends (or anyone else who happens by), if you know of anyone who might be interested, please send them on over to liveworknw.com for a look-see. If you click in the upper left corner of the photo there, you get a slide show of the interior and more garden photos by a real photographer. I think the virtual tour is way cool, but it takes some time. Some of Richard’s paintings and a couple of his benches are in the photos.

This photo is going into my files so I can use it on the actual day in future.

It has become a mini-tradition for a group of friends to gather at Morgan and Judy’s condo overlooking this marina and directly across from the Vancouver fireworks display.

Some patriotic boaters parade back and forth, flying a huge American flag. One side of the hull is painted blue, the other, red.

Our hosts get us in the mood with the red, white and blue theme carried out in everything from potted plants to tablecloths, and serving very high-end versions of typical picnic fare. Kobe beef hot dogs, anyone?

As evening fell, the fire boat put on a show. Judy is quite an accomplished photographer, so I will have to see if her shots turned out better than mine.

But here is mine, as the boat shoots water high into the air. We all felt safer knowing they were there to quench any stray sparks. As everyone else went for a walk around the harbor to work off the lavish meal before the “ooh and aah”ing would begin, we took our leave. Richard has tinnitis, so the noise of fireworks puts him in about the same state as Morgan and Judy’s rottweiler…cowering under the bed. We didn’t miss out entirely. The drive home was punctuated by the sparkle of private (pirated) fireworks lighting up the sky…and a clear sky, at that.

Happy Independence Day one and all!

All plant nuts know that as a garden matures it becomes necessary to divide, edit, rethink outgrown ideas about what we want our gardens to be. As a result, the rejected plant material builds up. It is one thing to kill a plant through ignorance or neglect, but quite another to outright throw it away. Most of us have showered our friends with gifts from the garden to the point where they have asked us to “Stop, already!” My friend Janet (who is also my mentor, trying to coach me towards success in selling banners & pillows) has an annual sale of the overflow, which she has potted up, attractively labeled and priced equally attractively. It is quite a lot of work, and she tried to discontinue it, but is now back by popular demand.

The sign alone tells you that good things are to be found here.

Janet is one of those gardeners who uses large swathes of lawn to set off borders packed with colorful and interesting plants. In fact, she is so successful that Hollywood came to call, filming parts of Extraordinary Measures with her yard as a backdrop. She found Brendan Frazer quite unappealing. I must say…he has only made one decent movie, Gods and Monsters, but that was enough to make me a fan for life.

An eye for found objects enlivens these borders.

Not quite sure what these were in their former life, but repurposed as garden ornaments, they rock.

Who would guess that this most elegant of compost bins is itself refuse. Leave it to Janet to find and press into use a beautiful object that someone else considered trash.

From the same source, this metal panel makes a brilliant divider/trellis. That is Romneya coulterii beyond it. I hope my new one will some day take hold like that one.

In addition to the found objects, these nearly life-size women by a local artist lounge in the lush landscape. I’m kicking myself for not asking the name of the artist, but maybe Janet will leave a comment to tell us. (yes, she did…go to comments for further enlightenment)

Many people are casting concrete leaves these days, but Janet’s have a natural look lacking in many. I have one that is the natural cement color spilling water into our small pond. I’ll take a picture to show you some day soon.

There is Janet, on the right, looking as colorful as her borders. Next time she has a sale, I will let all of you locals in on it, and my far-flung friends will just have to settle for these virtual tours.

Last week I went through training and did a few practice interviews as a census taker. We come around to properties that did not send in the written form by mail, for whatever reason, and conduct interviews to determine the status of the property on census day, which is April 1, 2010. The most important feature of these interviews is their confidentiality, so I will not be sharing any information of a sensitive nature. That said, the pursuit of these properties takes me into little pockets of the city I never would have dreamed existed. For instance, one neighborhood is a large, hilly complex of McMansions with perfectly groomed grounds and public spaces that have been clipped, blown and fertilized within an inch of their lives. Having canvassed that area pretty thoroughly, my maps led me down some twisty back roads, and finally down a rutted road that would have been impassable to an ordinary sedan. I was amazed when there came a spot where the trees thinned and I could see that the fancy neighborhood was only a stone’s throw away. The back woods and the exurbs existing cheek by jowl.

I am making mental notes of some of the most striking sites to revisit, camera in hand, when I am off duty. Stay tuned.

Around the same time we left downtown Portland for our bit of ground on the outskirts, our good friends Susan and Gilbert made an even greater leap of faith. They moved to Carlton, OR, in the heart of wine country, where Gilbert opened Cuvee, a restaurant where he can ply his considerable skills as a French chef (yes, those are banners by Ricki bracketing the facade).

Susan, meanwhile, as soon as she recovered from the shock of rural life, located, and bonded with, every creative person in the vicinity. One of these artist friends has a birthday in late April. She and Susan put their heads together and devised an annual event, a Birthday Party built around a theme (different each year) requiring costumes, elaborate invitations, favors, awards…these babes pull out all the stops. This year we were to come as our 9-year-old selves. The invitations arrived in envelopes apparently addressed in a fourth grader’s best block printing. Inside was a lined sheet torn from a spiral notebook with a class photo and all the pertinent info.

Hopscotch, anyone?

Kid-pleasing vignettes met the eye in every direction. I was so taken with the bear that I failed to notice my pillows on the couch until I looked at the shot later.

Here’s our birthday girl, Lorrie, leaning into little (it’s a state of mind) Ashley. There must have been 25 to 30 women, ranging in age from 20’s to 80’s, and all blending into a harmonious whole…if you can imagine such a thing.

Mousketeer Nancy was adept with hula hoop and yoyo, performing with great dash and confidence some tricks I had never seen before. Annie in pigtails had just “fallen out of a tree”, and broken branches were sticking out of her tomboy duds every which way. Evonne came as the 9-year-old she always wanted to be, right down to the ankle strap shoes she didn’t get the first time around. That’s me on the right. Something about pulling hair into two pony tails, one on each side of the head, makes me feel like a kid again.

Footwear played a big part in our regressions. Marilyn’s white knee sox show off her Mary Janes, while Ellie’s zany patterned version hints that her mastery of combining colors and patterns started early.

Tracy threw herself into her role by ramping up her already high energy level to that of a hyper kid on a sugar high. With her is our co-hostess, Susan, who always could pull a look together.

Hank, at one year old, must have gotten his directions turned around. He arrived looking much older than his year.

Here’s Elna, showing off her certificate for “student of the year” and her lunch box prize filled with twinkies, bubble gum Crackerjacks, etc. You can see the refreshment bar to the side, well stocked with KoolAid, Tang…oh joy!

Having feasted on delicacies like grilled cheese, pbj, mac ‘n cheese, jello molds and the like, a fire drill booted us out to the fire pit for some singing and storytelling and visiting.

Everyone had come a considerable distance on winding country roads (plus that Tang was laced with a little something) so of course it was a sleepover. We had developed grown-up tastes overnight and brunch on the terrace was magnificent.

People were having a hard time tearing themselves away. As I wandered around taking pictures, I kept dropping into little groups having all sorts of interesting conversations. Tomorrow, I will take you on a walk around this wonderful property and then show you the strange sight that we earmarked for pictures on the way here.

On the hunt for the unusual, the exotic, the hard-to-find? The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon has a plant sale each spring and fall, where every specialty nursery worth its salt displays its most special merchandise. If the activity at the Expo Center last Saturday is any indication, the economy is on a decided upswing. I had never seen such an active sale, with it often hard to jockey one’s way to the front of the crowd massed around the display tables. I arrived in the vicinity at about 11:30 (the sale ran from 10 to 3 Saturday and Sunday). Bumper to bumper traffic crawled at a snail’s pace, and there were signs telling us that the Expo parking lot was full: we should take light rail. I couldn’t imagine schlepping plants on public transportation, so, like many others, I ignored the warnings. Indeed, cars were being admitted to the parking lot, but much circling and an embarrassing willingness to scoot into an open space in front of someone quite possibly with a prior claim yielded a space as far from the exhibition hall as one could get.

Can you see that building way off in the distance? That is where the sale was being held. As I approached, I could see a long line of cars lined up to pick up their plants. Only if I were to find the plant of my dreams would I be willing to run that gauntlet.

Plenty of shoppers were up to the challenge. This lady was pulling her filled cart into the pick-up area. Boy, did I feel like a wimp.

I had decided to follow the common advice to browse the whole show before committing to purchases. I’m here to say that that is the stupidest advice ever. I was already suffering from sensory overload by the time I made it through half of the displays. I had stumbled upon Romneya coulteri, which had been on my wish list ever since my first open garden visit several years ago. As I looked it over, along came a delightful woman who assured me that it was a fabulous plant and that I needed to get myself a box and snatch it up RIGHT NOW. Well, I know good advice when I hear it, and I had already forgotten which plants I had earmarked for return visits. It was time to commit, and to get the heck out of there while I still had some modicum of equilibrium. So my take, I am sorry to say, is anything but impressive: the aforementioned California poppy, a new Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’, Contoneaster horizontalis ‘Cheney’ (sorry about that, but it is a cool plant), Calluna vulgaris ‘Spring Torch’, a chocolate cosmos for my daughter-in-law (tiny, so I will need to baby it along a while before giving it to her), and a tomato plant for Richard.

It was a dark and stormy day…but we went to the Rhododendron Society’s sale at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden anyway.

The main sale is on Mother’s Day, and is held in the parking lot in front of the gardens. This early sale requires a walk through the gardens (such an imposition) to get to the sale.

The Rhodys are the main attraction, but underplantings, like these hellebores, keep it interesting.

Fallen petals…where’s the bride?

Looking back at the gatehouse across the bridge.

Looking the other way, I think this is a flowering plum hovering over the water and backed up by layers of understory.

The birds were having a fine time.

When I mentioned these groves of Rhodys, I was told that without the pruning, no one could walk through the property.

Inside the building glimpsed in the last photo were tables displaying blooms. Members of the society were on hand with a wealth of information.

This group of specimens was tropicals grown in a greenhouse.

R spinuliferum looks almost like a protea, with a cluster of tubular petals (there is no doubt a more scientific name) with threadlike sepals sticking out.

R reticulatum sports magenta blossoms before it leafs out.

Can you believe that this is an azalea? It is apparently in that transitional phase of being renamed, so I won’t add to the confusion here. Suffice it to say that I was blown away by the variety. I learned that with a little (make that a lot) planning, there can be Rhodys blooming in our gardens every month of the year, they can disguise themselves quite craftily, and if you develop an interest, there is a whole community waiting to embrace you. The Portland chapter of the American Rhododendron Society meets every third Thursday at 7:00pm at 40th and Woodstock.

I know what you are thinking: what did you buy?

That large-leaved beauty on the left is the prize: R sinogrande. It might need a bit of babying if we have more harsh winters, and if you know exactly how we should do that, we’re all ears. The one in flower is R oreothrephes, a species in pale lavender. The label says rose, so if it hadn’t been in bloom we would have passed it by. As I was guarding the plants while R went for the car, two different guys stopped to say it was their favorite. Oh, and the two rangy ones are the cheapies: two for $15 because nobody knows their names or what color the blooms will be. They will go out in our mixed hedgerow as a buffer against whatever the neighbors might dream up next.

See how bundled up everyone was? I’m not kidding you…it was COLD!

Across the street from where I was waiting, here is what I was looking at. Can you believe it?

Every Sunday at one pm, the folks at Joy Creek put on an educational seminar. They always sound interesting, but tearing oneself away from gardening at home on a Sunday afternoon is a big order. Last Sunday, the subject was pruning. That got our attention. We have a running controversy around here. On one side is the liberal lopper, on the other, one dedicated to chaos theory (that would be me, as if you hadn’t guessed). I figured if I could drag Richard to this seminar, I would get some help in taming the rampaging beast. I figured wrong.

After a short introduction, during which it was impressed upon us the importance of caring for our tools (I was already behind the eight ball with that one, how about you?), we decamped to a Japanese maple. It looked quite beautiful to me…kind of an umbrella effect with a complete lacework canopy of branchlets. The picture above was taken about two thirds of the way through the process. It was brutal. It was, however, highly informative, as we were taken through the complete process, with our guide thinking out loud and conveying his strategy for each and every cut. First, he cut out all the dead wood. With that out of the way, it became easier to see the structure. Where branches rubbed against one another, decisions had to be made: which one would go? Sometimes the choice was surprising, until we learned of how it fit into the overall vision for the tree. In the end, the volume was taken back by about half. I began to see it less as butchery and more as a slow and careful artistic endeavor: the sculptor revealing the essence of the artwork. This particular tree is valued at around $3000.00 (insert Antiques Roadshow-ish gasp of disbelief here)

We had spent nearly an hour on the maple, so the rest of the session consisted of a walk around the grounds with questions and answers. A memorable stop along the route was this juniper, left to its own devices.

And its once identical twin after a haircut. The tonsured twin is less likely to lose limbs in extreme weather, and clean cuts have replaced any damaged areas where disease would be likely to gain a foothold. This guy has a windswept, coastal persona that is appealing, but I am still partial to his shaggier sibling (just a matter of taste: Jeff Bridges over Alec Baldwin any time).

I guess there will still be the push-pull of different perspectives in our garden. I may have lost all credibility in my quest for the “natural” look, but I can hardly complain. Most of our property is untouched deep woods. Tomorrow I will take you on another walk on the wild side.

Quite a few of us are bigger fans of foliage than of blossoms, so Pam’s brainstorm has us all aflutter. We can follow up Carol’s long-established Bloom Day with a post chronicling our standout foliage, then leave a comment on Pam’s entry so that like-minded bloggers can find us and share. This is my first time, and I am late (the target date is the 16th of each month). As with all things related to garden blogging, the rules are forgiving, so here goes:

Mahonia ‘Arthur Menzies’ knocked my socks off when I first saw it (in bloom). This one has been here for three years, the last two of which it formed long racemes of buds which were wiped out by bad weather. I don’t really mind, because the foliage looks like this all year. The ones at Cistus are 6′ tall, so it will only get better.

I keep adding heathers, but am not very good at keeping track of their names. This anonymous one snuggles up to Chamaecyparis ‘Barry’s Silver’.

In that same bed, the new foliage is showing up on the Rhus. I love the light, airy look and pale color at this stage.

Nothing seems to phase the Heucheras. They come through snows and deep freezes looking like this, and even seed around a bit. Think I’ll ever spot a sport to add to the growing horde?

The ‘Thunderhead’ pine is just a kid, but one of these days it will have started to sprawl and put forth the huge candles that attracted me to it in the first place.

Over in the vegetable patch, the rhubarb is beginning to push through the leafy mulch. See how crinkly and fresh the soon-to-be-huge leaves are at first.

Well, that was fun! Feel free to join in if you are a fellow foliage fancier. The more the merrier!