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It’s January and the relative warmth continues. It’s been in the 50s /40s for a long time with a brief spell of 30s. Coming up a little early also are the shooting stars, which appeared a few weeks ago. The Ookow/Brodiaea Congesta is sprouting up, as are the white Tritellias now scattered all over the back yard, white  Camas (2 light blue ones already coming up, we’ll see if they decide to bloom this year).  There may be one group of Hookers Onion coming up. A small plant spike near it has always come up but has never turned into anything. Maybe it will first not get eaten by slugs and then actually bloom this year, and I can then decide if it is worth protecting. I put some slug bait around those two and the nascent daisy.
The greenery of the yard is somewhat maintained through January, by virtue of the increasing size and extent of the evergreen, though there is a ways to go: ferns, evergreen Penstemons, Heucheras, Silal, irises, evergreen ground covers like cranberry, Yerba Buena, and Twinflower.

 
The Rattlesnake Plantain looks good, it is growing new leaves at the two sites we transplanted it in the lower back yard wooded area (from Lopez Island). One other old rattlesnake plantain plant appears to have come back from the dead. I’d transplanted it out of the sun at lest several years ago -in an unlikely place for it, to be honest. It surprised me by coming back up last fall. Maybe it was there but invisible…..it is less  dramatic in the rattlesnake pattern but it is one. There is a nearby plant that I’m not sure of, it superficially looks like it, though I would not likely have planted anything there as it is in the walkway. That one is under surveillance. A third one nearby is likely a weed, that one will likely get booted soon.

We took out the now monstrous Garrya tassel bush from the back yard near the deck, which was crowding out all the adjacent plants, and causing the Hairy Manzanita to be deformed. It was over 8 feet tall and spread widely. It also was stunting the adjacent Pink Honeysuckle, Penstemon and deciduous Rhodie- it had to go. It was too big to transplant. I hacked all the limbs off, and Dave dug it out. Much more sun for all those plants near the hot tub deck and steps. We planted a new Garrya Fremontii which is a smaller shrub and put it where it has room to grow for screen. Here’s a pic of the tassels. Pretty tree but it IS a monster!  

Some early shooting star coming up as well as the Brodiaeas, mostly the blue harvest Brodiaea. Some seeds germinating at the west yard that I think are Gillia, and I out a glass bowl cloche over them. They seem to like that . Also put one over some of the short purple asters and an old, non thriving stem of Wild ginger that I thought was dead a long time ago, it has one leaf and some shoots to protect from the slugs (fast forward two years to 2017, it’s a big healthy plant now, go figure).

Two new Rattlesnake Plantains I squirreled from Lopez island, along with their dirt and moss. They seem OK so far with some new growth. Also, a couple of plugs of Rattlesnake plantain popped up near a small Red Flowering Current, I must have planted them there long ago. So that’s three sites. Previous attempts have all failed, I think for versus reasons, sometimes it was the tentative health of the bought plants.
Seeds sewn this fall, in the middle of November, were about eight or so plants that I collected seeds from that I don’t have that many of, or at least want to increase:

In planter pots: Pink Fawn Lily, Oregon Fawn Lily (off white), Wild Blue Flax (two pots), Hookers Onion, Yellow Avalanche Lily (fawn lily), Common (small) Camas,

In the yard, around other plants:Camas: white, small purple, tall blue,  white and magenta Shooting stars,  trillium (very few this year), Brodiaeas, Lamium /Yellow Desert Parsley, Penstemons, Ookow.

We are going to have a minor landscaping project done in the front yard, which has never been addressed and is now quite an eyesore. In waiting for a particular landscaper, I ended up doing some of the tear out work, which should save us some money, anyway! I tore out the mahonia patch that was taking over the front yard.  For this project, I am going to have large stone steps added from our patio up to the walkway, possibly in two spots. That is the route we usually take on foot anyway, and it will clean up the area for a true rock garden. Just hope the moles and voles aren’t able to mess with them too much.

Below, pix of the before and after (added pic of fall 2016):

Because daylight savings was over mid November.,Interestingly, as difficult as the summer was on our plants what with the heat and dry, the September rains and the heat finally breaking caused a lot of greenery to develop, even some flowerings in October and now November! The plants that bounce back when it rains like Bleeding Heart, Bluebells, pussytoes, columbines, Penstemons,Heucheras  Lewesias,nodding onion, boykinias and trifoliate foamflowers all came back and are still quite prominent despite the date, due to the persistent mild weather in the 50s and 60s. Fortunately the Globemallow (orange flowers) is doing great this year, it must have liked the sun and heat.  It used to get rust on the leaves and fail when it was in planters. Also liking dry sun without fading first: Beargrass, Wild Blue Flax, Monardella Ordorissima, Gilia (although they don’t much like the pine needles where they are), all the Buckwheats, Yerba Buena, Sea Thrift, and Asters.

 There are other plants that are still flowering, even in November. They include pussytoes, though the pic above is not from now-they are still in the bud stage right now. But Deciduous Rhodies, Penstemon Tolmei, Lewisia Columbiana are actually in bloom. The hummingbirds go after the strawberry tree  buds and our feeder, of course. 

  Brodiaea is coming up at multiple places, as of the LAST WEEK OF OCTOBER! This pic is from last year’s Brodiaea experiment, but there are several sites up this year, too.

Oh good, another couple of WordPress updates!

I’m sure this will all run together as one paragraph,  even though that is never how I create the documents…..instead relying on lots of  dots.

This summer was very unusual, and pretty hard on the plant life around here. 80’s and 90′ for weeks at a time, and no rain from June 1 to around  end of August. It wasn’t until the temps dropped back down into the 70’s that any of the plants came back to life. Even the mature Rhodies looked wilted and near death while it was still hot, despite  my providing some sprinkler assistance to some sites. But because we don’t have humidity to speak of, which also goes along with no rain, it was pretty pleasant for humans, especially into the evenings. We are used to it getting chillier at night, but we didn’t have to bundle up at night this summer. If we’d had a little more rain, some of the plants wouldn’t have been so stressed, and some might not have died.

BUT, the real stars  of “drought resistant” gardens here in the Pacific Northwest, meaning they not only survived but they looked OK   Delphoidea/Arrowleaf, Monardella odorissima, all the buckwheat species including ground covers and shrubs, Penstemons Richardsonii and Tolmei, Beargrass, Desert Parsley, Indian paintbrush (castilleja), many heuchera, Globemallow, the two pussytoes, and of course the sedums and all the spring emerging plants that are not subject to the drought because they die back in the summer anyway (bulbs, irises,  Columbines).  Some plants did OK if they were not in the sun, but there were literally sunscorched areas of otherwise alive plants where the Suns Rays were strongest, especially afternoon light (why did it capitalize “Suns” on me, twice now? This must be part of the upgrade).

I have found a new ‘feature’ fatal flaw in this version of WordPress. You may not appreciate it because this is a static document, but there is a huge lag time for typing the keystrokes and seeing the words being typed out, very frustrating. Guess I’ll wait a while till they fix this bug to come back. Bye bye!