sprig to twig

When the plants labeled lemon cucumbers instead began shucking out these, I decided it was time for a new experiment.

I had never made pickles before. It was incredibly easy. With this much raw material at hand, I will be trying out several variations and will let you know if there is a clear standout.

One tip was to put a grape leaf in the jar with the pickles to assure crispness. When I stopped by to see Michelle of Jockey Hill Nursery at the Scappoose Farmers’ Market, sure enough, she had grape vines. This one is a seedless Concord, good for jellies and pies, but it was the leaves I was after.

If you find yourself headed for the coast on Hwy 30 on a Saturday morning, you would be well advised to stop by this market. Michelle has healthy, well-groomed plants and there are always at least 5 that I can hardly resist. This Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ had to come home with me. Cooking and planting: what a way to spend a beautiful weekend.

Want to see what others are cooking up from their gardens’ bounty? Visit Wendy and she will put you on the right path.

Remember the old song “Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight”?

Well, I guess these Rosa ‘Buffalo Gals’ will oblige.

I am really liking the way the colors are working out in this bed, so I’ll show you the overview before zooming in on a few of the individuals. See how the Acaena inermis ‘Purpurea’ ground cover echoes the color of the Acanthus flowers, with Verbena bonariensis weaving through the berm with its perky lighter purple blossoms bouncing along on stiff, long stems? Two kinds of Eremurus introduce amber through orange, with a bright orange geum that you can’t quite see in this shot and the acid green of the Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’

Here’s a closer look at the Acanthus spinosa.

Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ with the much shorter ‘Ruiters Hybrid’ just peeking into the frame lower left.

Looking at the east berm from one end, there’s a whole lotta yellow for someone who started out shunning that particular color. The tall thing front and center is a volunteer Verbascum, with Lysimachia ‘Alexander’ trying hard to cast off its variegation to the left and Phlomus russeliana barely showing, stage right.

I am crazy for the architecture of the Calla Lily. Is it still properly called Zantedeschia?

I turned a little bit to the left, standing in the same spot where I took the last picture to snap these plume poppies, Macleaya cordata, happily wrapping themselves around the foundation of the house and nodding at us through the second story windows when we are inside, looking out.

We trimmed back some limbs on the cherry trees to let in more light, and so the water lilies have consented to bloom.

This makes me think of the story of The Ugly Duckling. That funny looking Allium (which I love, by the way) is called ‘Hair’. I have several of them scattered about, but I especially like it mixed in with its more conventional cousins, the drumsticks (Allium sphaerosephalon).

More yellow…guess I’m hooked. Hypericum ‘Brigadoon’ blooms yellow on nearly yellow foliage. It makes a stunning ground cover, giving the tall lilies the shade they like at ground level.

This is something new I picked up from Means Nursery: Campanula punctata ‘Pantaloons’. It was a five gallon plant. I put it in the ground at the woodland’s edge. It immediately began to droop and wither despite careful watering. Richard dug it up, to find that the gophers had been at it and eaten right up the middle. He put it in a big pot with lots of good soil and stuff and it seems to be recovering. Maybe I will put it into a wire basket to replant it where I want it next spring. Isn’t it cute, with its double flowers?

This hydrangea, ‘Preziosa’, is one of the few that came back strong after the harsh winter. I like the bronzy tones in the leaves, the deep maroon stems and the many different subtle colors of the blossoms.

This nearly black hollyhock, Alcea rosea ‘Nigra’ is putting in an appearance just in time for bloom day.

Rosa ‘Dortmund’ is blooming madly, but I like glimpsing its masses of single blossoms through the tall foliage of the Joe Pye Weed.

Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’

Irish moss

It takes a long time for Hydrangea petiolaris to take hold, begin to climb and flower (six years is about standard) but when it does, look out. This one is ready for another training session.

Some of the blossoms hold the promise of good eating ahead, like this lemon cucumber blossom.

Speaking of promises, May Dreams Gardens keeps the promise of connecting you with blogs of blooms on the fifteenth of every month. Try it, you’ll like it.

I open with this shot because it so perfectly illustrates the symbiotic relationship between the garden and the art…

although this huge water pot was actually the first feature to greet us as we entered.

Strategically placed here, there and everywhere are examples of the art that pours out of Jean’s Greenware Pottery.

If you can tear your eyes off the ground level vignettes and raise your head, you can glimpse the studio where it all happens.

Another outlet for Jean’s creativity is her way with container gardens. This one sits in front of the studio. If you look closely, you can just see some of her products in the background.

Small pots with cunning plantings are tucked in without ever looking like afterthoughts.

A beautiful old tree around the other side of the studio holds an assortment of bird houses created by the artist, while providing the conditions for a shade garden.

One of several healthy looking phormiums caught my eye. I asked Jean about them, hoping to hear some magical formula for nursing them through harsh winters. She simply buys new ones each year: they are that important to the architecture of the garden.

Between the studio and the main house sits the pond, the most recent addition to this six-year-old garden.

The plantings around and in the pond guarantee that its newness bears not a hint of rawness.

I couldn’t stop snapping photos of this particular combination for the color echoes spanning different textures. In the background are daylilies in vivid sunset tones, further forward, a dwarf cotinus billowing amber and in the foreground, the strappy phormium tying it all together.

By panning a little to the left, you can see how yet another texture has been introduced with the smooth green ball cozying up to the phormium. The whole garden has been considered this carefully. To the back of the house, the garden steps down to a grassy area and then the river. Jean and her husband were deep into preparations for next week’s Garden Conservancy tour, but Jean’s generous nature demanded that she spend time with us, sharing insights and inspirations.

Back at the studio came the hard part: deciding which of Jean’s whimsical garden creatures would come home with us.

I settled upon this dragonfly with ceramic body and tail and wings fashioned of willow twigs.

I figured you need to see a close up to appreciate the happy, loopy expression.

Marilyn saw how difficult it was for me to choose, so she bought me one of the flying fish, now frolicking in my heuchera bed…a fitting reminder of a lovely day.

We went to the farmers’ market to get tomato plants, and kind of went our separate ways. When we got home, we saw that each of us had purchased a generous bunch of asparagus. One we ate, of course. The second bunch got put in a vase to help support a bouquet of peonies (tree peony ‘Chinese Dragon’).

In case you’re interested, my favorite way to serve asparagus is lightly steamed, with a sprinkle of this concoction: sauté onions in butter, add dry mustard and almond meal and sprinkle over the asparagus. Wendy can put you in touch with all kinds of yummy ways to use the season’s bounty, and even offers prizes if you want to join in the fun.

Rosettes that will soon begin to send up tall stalks of common foxgloves could easily pass for something more exotic. They migrate into and around the garden from surrounding meadows and roadsides. It is always fun to see where they will pop up each year.

Shy little rosettes of Lysimachia ‘Alexander’ push their blushing noses through the mat of spent stems, giving precious little indication of the aggressive, upright plants they will become.

Herbaceous peonies are deep scarlet when they first emerge. In the three years they have been in the ground, they have yet to bloom. That’s OK by me, because they are spectacular foliage plants.

My sumac does not go in for a showy dying act in the fall, but displays some subtle coloration as the leaves unfurl.

Variegated sedum is at its very best from now through June, when it starts to produce lackluster, leggy flower stalks. Pinching it back has not proved to keep it looking fresh, so I just ignore its profligate ways until cutting back time in the early spring.

Peeling bark and a satiny finish that invites stroking are every bit as good a reason to grow this eucalyptus as its aromatic leaves.

In its cloak of lichen, the volunteer cherry seedling seems almost to be in perpetual bloom. Against the dark background of tall cedars, it brightens the woodland we see out our dining room window year round.

I am a day late, so you may need to scroll down a bit when you click to find Pam’s foliage follow-up post, with links to other foliage fanatics amongst us. Have fun!

We were close by, and I wanted to pick up a CD by Esperanza Spalding, the Portland jazz artist who ruined Justin Beiber’s night by winning best new artist. I like going to Music Millenium, even if I didn’t consider it sort of a civic duty to try to prop up local businesses that have been shrinking of late. It is near the gates of the Laurelhurst neighborhood. On the opposite corner, the Laurelhurst Market:

occupies a handsomely remodeled building with a fence of espalier between the diners/shoppers and the parking lot. It will make a nice screen when it leafs out, but I was glad to see it now with all of the handiwork exposed.

Right next door was this ramshackle but imaginative structure.

Another angle reveals the mossy roof and more of the details of the cobbled together construction. All was deserted, but it seems someone had had a vision. Hobbits, maybe?<.p>

The house adjacent to the lot with the handmade house is guarded by this fun/scary mud woman, who looks out over a weedy expanse of naturalized daffodils.

OK, so time to check out Ian’s potential new neighborhood. Looks like the kind of place to put down roots and raise a family.

Maybe do a little gardening?

And definitely get to know the neighbors with the sense of humor. Those eggs are bowling balls, with the nest in proportion. That’s it for my guided tour of just a few of the quirky sights on Portland’s east side. I hope Ian and Noami buy the house, so we will have many excuses for further visits.

Fellow Portland bloggers are all about the Yard, Garden and Patio Show, which took place in our fair city over the weekend. Saturday was my target day, but guess what? After incessant rain and gray skies, Saturday dawned bright and clear. I could not bring myself to spend such a day anywhere but in my very own garden. If you want to experience YGP vicariously, I can direct you to two excellent sources: Danger Garden and Mulch Maid. In fact, I was so sure of their excellent accounts that my decision to stay home was an easy one. Often their reports and photos top the live experience.

So what shall I write about instead? A couple of weeks ago, my daughter, Hillary, was visiting from San Francisco. We planned to catch a rush seat at a matinee performance at the Gerding Theater, but got the times confused. Instead, we took off walking, with no particular destination in mind. Heading South on 11th, we crossed Burnside and turned left on Washington, to discover a mini fashion district. Several small storefronts along Washington have been taken over by independent designers and dress shops. We fingered the luxe fabrics, tried on a few things and wound up here:

As an example of the sort of little shops I’ve been talking about. The others had been too dark inside to take pictures, but when we stepped through these doors…

We found not only a space filled with light, but a plant sensibility that sent me digging in my bag for the camera.

Every display surface featured my kind of plants: everything from Tillandsias to this Sanseveria planted in moss and rocks in a glass cube.

Oh, and the clothes were pretty nice, too.

The shopkeeper gave us a card for the designer at Space Design Botanicals who had done the displays. We then wended our way back to the car via the Museum of Contemporary Craft, a stunning photography show at Blue Sky Gallery and a bowl of authentic French onion soup at a little bistro. It was a grand day, and we wound up thinking that missing the play had not been such a bad thing.

I have far too few of these to make much of an impact, but as a harbinger of things to come, it lifts my spirits.

I am not exactly bowled over by Hamamelis intermedia ‘Diane’. I think I might have walked right by her a few times before noticing that she had burst into bloom. Up close, the color is nice, but I detect no scent…guess that comes more with the yellow, which I am not all that crazy about.

Backing up a bit, you can see how I could have missed the show entirely.

I am still backing up, and now we can see that the blooms are all on the older wood. The newer branches rising in the middle are bare. I think by next year, when those branches produce flowers, the effect will be dazzling. Isn’t that always what we tell ourselves? There is always next year.

Gosh! I sound like I am complaining. Shame on me. Today was sunny and clear. I wandered around the garden after my walk, and signs of life are everywhere. Buds are swelling. Daffodils are pushing up through the mulch, as are several of the earliest alliums and tulips. We made it through another winter and the show is about to go on. Whoopeee!

It is not only the plants that have been beaten up by the freeze, thaw, freeze…

You probably cannot even tell that this was once a black ceramic hand rising from the creeping jenny. I quite liked the effect this noirish touch had on the bed, but failed to bring it in for the winter. I will now need to look elsewhere for something to provide a humorous touch.

It has taken several years for this terra cotta pot to reach this level of disintegration, with a few new shards flaking off after each freeze. I brought most of the clay pots onto the porch, where they still experience the cold, but they don’t get saturated with water that then expands and contracts to disasterous effect. This pot, tho, had literally grown into the lower level of the deck. If you look carefully at the base, you can see the Sedum dasyphyllum which migrates from pot to pot, and has even taken up residence in the moss of the porch.

Now here is a pot that can stand up to anything the weather wants to throw at us. Several years ago, I followed the directions in a magazine to create a hypertufa planter. It was a messy process, but I think I will have to hype myself up for another session and make a lot of these. The patina of moss and lichen adds interest, but even in the raw, brand-new state, they are quite attractive. When I get around to it, preferably mid summer when getting wet and muddy is rather pleasant, I will share photos of the process and the formula for the mix.

Oxydendrum arboreum, Lily-of-the-Valley Tree, Sourwood…call it what you will, this tree deserves a place of honor.

When there is much ground to cover, a vigorous spreader like the sedum ‘Angelina’ is much appreciated. I love the way she weaves her way through other foliage and catches the light.

The new leaves as they emerge on the Castor Bean are bright red and shiny. As they mature, they deepen to burgundy wine, but keep their sheen. I adore this plant.

The most recent addition to my growing collection of Euphorbias is ‘Ascot Rainbow’. Like ‘Helena’s Blush’, which I lost last winter, it is the foliage that puts on the real show on this plant.

Visit Pam for a feast of foliage and links to even more leaves.