WordPress acting up FOR MANY MONTHS by not saving posts, etc. Multiple false starts with pix and everything, and something would then happen to cause an error. Dave had to change the server back to WordPress, which gives up the plant directory links and stuff, but at least it will keep the posts.
Lots of stuff going on. Plants and everything came VERY early this year, ostensibly due to the warm winter and early warm spring temps. Then temps to the 80s and 90s for weeks into summer. But it did all start early, with the mallards arriving at the pond in mid February, rather than mid March. All the growing season long, plants came up or bloomed about 3-4 weeks early,too. That meant some of the flowers didn’t go to seed, because they were too early for the bees. Hummingbirds and flies also are pollinators for some plants, so some seed formation took place. No trillium seeds except for the choropetalum (fragrant off white) which I harvested and sowed in the yard, and few shooting star seeds. On the other hand, once the warm weather did get under way, some of the later plants went to seed with a vengeance!….including Indian Paintbrush, Globemallow, purple and white camas, bear grass, and the various fawn lillies (not enough time has passed by to see if any of the former pink seeds were successful). In fact, I have about 50 packets of seeds ready to sow this late fall/winter!!! For the full list, see below post (so as not to bore some folks).
We couldn’t get the same landscapers we used for the backyard and other projects out to help us fix our front yard, which has been neglected for basically all the time we’ve been here, so Dave and I did a lot of it ourselves. Below are the only pix I could find of the front yard before we embarked on doing the plant removal and landscaping ourselves. The area most changed is uphill to the pond/patio (we also did the pond/patio ourselves about 20yrs ago). It was overrun with Oregon grape and ajuga, and no plants seemed to be successful in trying to cover the area over the years.
We didn’t take enough pix before fixing up the pond area and front deck, either, but there is one hard copy I can try to scan and put in, and these below are already almost 20 years after that fix. And we had the landscapers put in stone steps with gravel path that uses the south end of the front yard about 8 yrs ago, and Dave just fixed that up as part of the project with stone replacing some of the wood borders for the remodel. This path parallels the driveway but lower, allowing stepped entry during snowy weather and also turns this area into a garden, instead of an ignored St. John’s wort and ivy yard.
Before pictures:
Now for some new pictures, after much of the recontouring, step placement and gravel path rehab:
(Latest picture….added 10/2017):
Some replanting has been done, but much is new small transplants or will be seedlings or seeds, so next spring pix will be more interesting! However, we all know how important “before” pictures are.
For those who are interested, the seeds I have in packets in the fridge to put in the ground or pots : all the camas, including some light blue (have never knowingly germinated yet, will have to keep separate to see, but few seeds), all shooting stars, Indian paintbrush, Yellow Desert Parsley, Bear grass, all the fawn lillies (have planted out pink FL seeds before but haven’t seen pink babies come up yet), Globemallow, Desert Yellow Daisy, white and blue Brodiaea, Monardella odorissima, Gaillardia, Pussytoes, several Buckwheats, arrowleaf, Wild Blue Flax.
ellensgarden.us 