Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Gardening”
I wake to rain. I am on my hands and worthless knees. I pry and pare back twinflower leaves, free the groundcovers: kinnick-kinnick, thimbleberry, and native wintergreen. Dig and prune. Command the dahlias to grow aligned with their bamboo stakes. My fingernails are crescents of dirt. All I care is to breathe, hidden beneath the reach and lean of these tall, tall western Oregon trees. Last night in the rain, the emperor gong rang…
There is a spectacularly bright full moon out there on this chilly, late November night. Yesterday, I cut the final dahlias blooms of the season. They were looking a little ragged after a few nights of just-around-freezing temperatures and cold wind. Then I tackled the plants with my new, awesome Felco secateurs—they made swift work of stems and stalks
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There was a frost last week in and around the Northeast Portland neighborhood where we live, a couple of miles up the hill from the Columbia River. But somehow the dahlias survived here in our micro-climate that only got to a low of 33 degrees F. I walked by other gardens where their dahlia leaves are now blackened, their unspent blooms still knobby and unopened on their stems…
Our garden helper, Phil, was here today, pruning the vine maples, the Japanese maples, the witch hazel, the redbud
The rains have pretty much arrived here in Western Oregon. And we are in the final stages of putting most of our 400-square foot plot at the Woodlawn Community Garden to bed. Oh, there will be stuff growing over the winter like always—…
And, in their September abundance, they are now putting on a glorious show. And now they are in a book—Gratitude, by the outstanding photographer, Kelly Johnson. Kelly was walking around the neighborhood one day during the pandemic and she stopped to photograph some blooms…
A September Sunday of rain on the long holiday weekend. Harvesting the San Marzano tomatoes at our community garden plot after giving a tour of the garden to passersby…
We are now edging into the last week of August. We just survived a stretch of record-breaking hot days and now the smoke has arrived. So many trees and perennials are suffering. But the dahlias are coming into their peak bloom and seem to be thriving! I am not sure if I ever formally decided to start growing a small urban “farm” of dahlias….
We have become custodians of a wonderful variety of hard neck garlic called Ellensburg Blue. It was back around 2018 when we first ordered some from Irish Eyes, a family farm outside Ellensburg, Washington. I remember we tried it alongside their Inchelium Red variety and there was no comparison…
Today I made a conscious effort to change some of how I do things rather than fixate on what I do and be all crabby about not doing enough, being disciplined, etc. (my usual state). I tried to focus my morning journal pages …
