A Perfect Day for a Garden Tour!

April 15th was a glorious day here in Western Washington, so Hubby and I drove northward to Federal Way, where we spent a sunny afternoon walking among the many woodland wonders of the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden.

Lots of photos after the break!

(Please forgive the awkward exposures of many of these shots. It was a very sunny day and I was using my camera-phone.)

Tortoiseshell Among the Tulips

Lizzy does just as she pleases.

I thought I'd take advantage of a sudden sun-break and finish my morning tea on the porch with the cats. I lazily soaked up some sunshine and snapped a few flower pics with my phone while the furry beasts, always pleased to have me around, took turns visiting with me and checking my tea mug for tasty smells.

When Lizzy, my gloriously fat mama cat, came over to visit, she rolled around on her back in order to tempt me with the baby-bunny softness of her expansive belly. I fell right into her trap. As soon as my hand made contact with that soft tummy, she immediately seized it in her paws and tried to eat it, the playful beast. Fortunately, I managed to free myself from her clawed clutches without any loss of blood. Now clearly in a wild animal type of mood, Lizzy proceeded into the brightly blooming container garden, leaped up into a large square pot, plopped her enormous tush onto the creeping jenny and started poking her nose into all of the red tulips that she could reach.

Look at that tubby tortie. She thinks she's a jungle cat.

What a pretty kitty that tubby tortie is!

When I tried to take a wider shot of my containers, the jungle beast took the opportunity to show off her wicked claws. Just look at her ripping splinters out of my poor wooden fence!

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

—Robert A. Heinlein

Frozen

Fallen baldcypress leaf frozen in concrete birdbath

This November's unusually sudden turn to freezing weather has left many deciduous trees, shrubs and vines looking rather disgusting. My lilac is a nasty mess. Some of the now limp, blackened leaves of my big-leaf and panicle hydrangeas are still clinging pathetically to their stems. Not so, however, for the leaves of my climbing hydrangeas, which turned a very pleasing butter-yellow, then dropped of their own accord before the big freeze. The foliage of the autumn-blooming clematises appears a bit battered, but the fluffy, white seed heads are sweet and friendly-looking. Succulent sedums look tired. Iris fans look spotty. Heucheras and heucherellas look anemic. Wire vines are dying back unexpectedly. In one nursery pot I have a baby baldcypress (Taxodium distichum), which is still holding onto most of its rust-colored leaves. We know that at least one leaf has fallen. There it is, now frozen in the birdbath. The birds fight over the berries of nearby trees and the cats have to come indoors for a drink. A muddy field of bootprints and puddles has become a frozen network of ice lattice and intricate bubble patterns. Ready or not, winter is coming to the garden.

Fish Flowers & Fragrant Corpses

The goldfish plant (Nematanthus gregarius) is still blooming! Once it got going last summer, it never stopped. It's always got at least a couple of blooms on at any given time. Today there are a dozen or so. I frequently take cuttings from this plant, as they root extremely fast in a glass of water and they make pretty darned good houseplants. They don't seem to be picky about light or water and they put up with a lot of neglect. Now to see if I can get the babies to bloom ...

Meanwhile, I have a new garden-themed Halloween decoration! Hemlock's Nursery is the "home of rare and exotic, carnivorous plants." The dead branches that I put in the background were pruned from a rosemary plant (Rosmarinus officinalis) that is probably suffering from being pot-bound in its outdoor container. Even dead and defoliated, the rosemary branches give off a lovely scent when you touch them. Mmm ... fragrant corpses.

Do you do any garden-related decorating for Halloween?

Take Me Back to the Bark & Garden Center!

Hubby and I went to the Bark & Garden Center in Olympia, yesterday. I can't believe I'd never been there before. It's so big! And open year-round, seven days a week. Bliss! I went looking for Golden Creeping Jenny, a popular trailing groundcover that seemed perfect for a container combination I'm working on. I was pleased to find exactly what I was looking for, plus copper plant tags and an orchid pot. It was nearing closing time when we arrived and we were already tired from other shopping, so we didn't stick around long enough to see even half of what they had to offer. Sigh.

This morning while cooking breakfast I found myself singing these words (to the tune of Take Me Back to Toyland):

Please take me back to the Bark & Garden Center
I'm so much happier there
It's more than a lark at the garden center
Where dreams, just like plants, can be shared

Shoppy-shop-shopping!

Yesterday's little haul was pretty sweet. The groundcovers were about three bucks apiece. Not a fantastic price, but pretty typical. I bought the plant tags for labeling tall bearded iris rhizomes. In addition to copper tags, they had zinc and wood and plastic in several sizes. The orchid pot is a five-incher that seemed the right size for one of the oncidium orchids I recently bought at Trader Joe's.

I just love garden-related shopping. Hubby and I spent an entire day at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in February. We got there hours before opening time and we stayed until my eyes had glazed over and my legs were actually giving out. I'm so hard-core.

If I can go back to the Bark & Garden Center
With its acres of plants to see
All my day would be spent at the garden center
What a wonderful day that would be