Month: February 2017

Shooting stars (pulchellum, or few flowered) are starting to come up this last week (feb ~10). They do NOT look like this yet, however!- at this point in time they have barely poked out of the ground. This is quite a late appearance compared to last year, when there were sightings of these in early January, about a month earlier. But then again, last year was way early. The appearance of some other plants is also relatively later, also, including the tritelliaea, Camas (light blue and white), Hookers onions. As far as seeds go, only the yellow Desert Parsley has germinated, but there is a big mound and some shoots showing, so there will undoubtedly be dozens or more of these! Others anticipated, especially Woodland Penstemon, Iris Chrysophylla, Indian Paintbrush and Pink Fawn lillies, all of which have so far been elusive. 

In review of the post from a year ago, I had found two barely live plants that had returned from the missing or dead, I’ll call them Lazarus the Rattlesnake plantain and Phoenix the Wild Ginger plant. Both are thriving now, despite their rough and slow starts. The Wild Ginger had been tortured by slugs, until I covered it with a cloche last year, the plantain I just kept uncovered by pine needles, and now nature has taken over. 

We are having a number of small trees taken out, which have outgrown their sites. Four of these are evergreen trees inside the raised planter bed, in the north backyard. These have gotten too large and compete wth each other for sun, each growing way out over the deck and making a mess as well as ending up distorted by each other. These were all deliberately planted years ago: a moderate size Madrona (litters large leaves onto the deck), a Strawberry tree (which leaves a nasty mess with mushy berries and flowers on the deck), and two tallish Bay leaf trees. I had already planted two Myrtle trees BEHIND the raised planted bed, which are each about 6-7 feet tall now but are not getting enough sun, leaning over and with wimpy branches. Taking these four trees out will give the Myrtles lots of sun and they should fill in the screen border (I may throw a viburnum in between for good measure). Unfortunately there will be a paucity of screen in the meantime, so we’ll have to use the umbrella a lot. Fortunately though, the row of Myrtles, Viburnums, and Strawberry trees along this same border nearer the house have matured and near completely screen out the neighbors. This is more of a continuation of the same screen row pushed out of the yard, to reclaim the raised bed space. I’ll have to do a. It of  LITTER cleaning once the trees are out, since the area under those trees is thick with leaves, small branches and pine needles. This is a pic from a several years ago looking at several of those trees (towards the right, around the red rhodie), they had already filled in the planter space:

Several other trees will be taken out here and there. This also includes several NON-NATIVE American Cranberrys, which turned out to be the European variety, and there were three that we need out (the fourth, which has grown almost as a trellis over the stream, will be kept). We found a true Native American Cranberry which will be planted. And some lowering of Vine Maples and pruning of some Pine branches.