Fall 2011

The late spring means the fall is late, too. Lots of leaves still on the trees and shrubs, so the yard is still private at the end of October. Still working on building up the evergreen screen. Made three Ceonothus Velutinus / Snowbrush simple layerings a few weeks ago. The last set of C.V. air layerings made some inadequate roots. These are hard to find in nurseries, so I’ve had to make my own from the original ones.
Planted out the pots with several types of shooting star and delphinium seedlings from last year in the as yet mole-free meadow which was cleared last year. This gets lots of sun. They were left over summer when the seedllings die back, but the summer was so wet and cold that moss grew over much of the pots. In planting these out it looks like a few seedlings are present at the periphery of each pot, but the moss probably killed many of them off – they should be planted out in the spring. More problematic are the bulbs such as Fawn lily seedlings…they are supposed to be kept over an extra winter in the pots. Lots of bulb seedlings, but maybe I should put them in the ground when moss starts to form. When I plant the ’09 bulb seedling I’ll have a better idea how these are affected.

There were two types of plants that were produced from seeds from Rainier park (from Dave), we’re not sure what they are but one looks like an anemone, and the other is supposedly an aster-like flower, but it has small straight grey-green leaves that arise directly from the ground. It will be interesting to see what they are when they flower. I put them in the mole-free meadow, at least for now.
I was able to divide the Rattlesnake Plantain again, this time with three satellite plants from shoots, into other areas of the back yard. These had started to come up into the saxifrage, so I dug them out with a weeding tool. They each had good roots and several shoots themselves, so they should be at least as successful as the one with a small stump of root that came back this year.

Haven’t seen the frogs in a while , but also haven’t heard them. I guess they only make sounds for mating after all.