Still a lot of winter green, though a little beaten up, probably due to the late season. Purple Penstemon Richardsonii and bleeding heart still in bloom, the last of the Gaillardia is fading. No frosts yet. The Brodiaea are very late everywhere, they usually start to pop up about the end of November! Some Shooting star and Camassia cusickii starting to come up.
Winter seed sowing done, both in planters and all over the yard. Trying to keep ahead of Mr Mole by overwhelming him with sheer numbers of plantings. Low temperatures keeping mole activity down. Favored seeds in the planters this year are Globemallow (orange blossoms), Golden and Cerulea (blue) columbines, Harsh paintbrush (orange), Arnica mollis (yellow), Pacific Anemone (cream color), a mix of Tiger and Leopard lillies (red and deep orange), Brodiaea Congesta (purple) and Fawn lilies (cream color)In the yard are those and also lots of native Delphiniums, Woodland Penstemon (magenta) and true Penstemon (blue) confertus.
I planted out two-year-old bulbs from 2009 seedlings of Leopard lily, White Brodiaea, the Camases Cuseckii (light cornflower blue), Quamash (dark purple blue), and White camas. It will be another two or more years before they bloom. They each had well formed small bulbs, the Camas were the largest. I also planted the pot of Giant Trillium from 2010 seeds, those take two years to even sprout a leaf (collected and planted a lot from good seed production of several trillium types this year). Since they were around during the summer, the planter pots helped provide some shelter for the little tree frogs which were still around.
Waxwings in a Saskatoon berry tree: they seem to be hanging out with the large group of robins, junckos and tohees that swarm together.
Puget sound
“New” meadow below:
ellensgarden.us 