Blueberry Hill Crafting

Gardening

Spring 2017 in my garden

It has been one of the wettest winters and springs on record here in Oregon, and spring is very slow to arrive.  I’m told that the plants are all close to a month behind their regular schedule.  So, when we have a day when the sun peeks out and the flowers start to bloom, I grab my camera and run outside!

spring blooms 2017

The cold made my anemones really stunted, but I managed to scavenge just a few beautiful blooms.

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The rhododendron bloom season is just beginning – very late, it’s usually in full swing by mid-April.  This is always one of the first bushes on my property to bloom.

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I grow a few bleeding hearts, in both white and pink, the in shady recesses of my front porch – I love the old-fashioned look and feel of this plant.

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Dogwoods are notoriously finicky in our climate, and mine never lives up to its full potential, but even a few faded flowers are glorious.  I love how the native azalea (below) is color coordinated with its neighboring dogwood tree.

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The lilac blooms are also few and far between this spring, but even a few branches make the entire house smell so wonderful!

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This is the last of my flowering cherry trees to bloom – I have close to 50 trees of differing varieties on the property, which gives me close to an entire month of bloom time :)

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Creeping phlox creates a glorious carpet of color.

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The native azaleas bloom in an amazing array of oranges, reds, yellow,s and golds, and they smell so sweet, and so unlike any other flower in my garden.

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Blooming in my garden right now

Such a beautiful time of year in the flower garden!  The daylilies are blooming:

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daylilies

The gooseneck is taking over one corner of the pool garden:

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A morning shaft of sunlight through the bee balm – a real favorite with the hummingbirds:

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I love the old-fashioned, antiqued look in the colors of the echinacea as the blooms start to fade:

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Peonies!

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Picking a favorite flower is like picking a favorite among your children . . . but if I had to choose, peonies would definitely be a contender!  I grow over a dozen varieties – probably at least 100 plants on my property – so I’m able to extend the bloom season as long as possible.

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They’re beautiful even from the back, with the light shining through . . .

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and even when their bloom is at an end and their petals have dropped :)

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Blooming in my garden this May

I have a spectacular old-fashioned David Austen rose bush blooming in our garden this month:

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The snowbell tree is in full bloom, and the entire tree hums with the sound of happy bees:

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And the rhododendrons by the cottage are spectacular this year!

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It’s frosty this morning

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Rose hips and fallen leaves – the last vestiges of fall – are touched by frosty winter this morning . . .

rose hips

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Fall colors

I love the colors of fall, whether it’s in yarn:

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or in nature!

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Fall projects

Dahlias from the farmer’s market:

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And from my garden:

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Zinnias, dahlias, delphinium, and coneflowers

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‘Tis the season for baking owl cookies:

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To make these candleholders, I pressed leaves (for a minimum of 36 hours)

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and then applied them to jars with Mod Podge.

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These autumn candleholders couldn’t be simpler:

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I just collected acorns from local elm trees, and used some leftover quart canning jars, twine, and Pottery Barn votive candles.

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Will autumn ever come?

It’s been such a long, hot and interminable summer here in Oregon – finally the sumac is starting to show its fall colors, but I’m beginning to wonder if autumn will ever arrive . . .

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Images from a summer Sunday

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Our summer schedule has been packed full of fun trips, activities, camps, and adventures, which is all well and good, but I was really glad for a Sunday to stay home, take a breath, and slow down a little!  My youngest daughter designated Sunday as “family day”, which she defined as:  waffles and fresh peaches for breakfast, a bike ride on the Clackamas River trail with her dad, swimming with the whole family (including her sisters, who these days are usually “too old” to find time to play in the pool with the rest of us), a BBQ dinner of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, corn on the cob and watermelon, garden-fresh tomatoes and lemonade, and then s’mores at the fire pit.

An at-home Sunday gave me some time to work in the garden, cut flowers, make our overflow supply of tomatoes into spaghetti sauce, and spend a little time in the pottery studio and with the current knitting project on my needles.

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This year’s sunflower crop is truly stupendous – we must have grown at least a dozen varieties from seed, and they are so beautiful when they’re massed together!

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Zinnias are such simple, unassuming flowers, but they’re one of my favorites – maybe because of their bright, almost neon hues.  One of my recently thrown pitchers makes the perfect vase for their short stems.

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tethermade baskets

I recently bought these beautiful handmade baskets from Tethermade – perfect for storing my carefully hoarded Clara Yarn and all of my knitting tools and notions.

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My latest project off the needles is a cardigan knit from the incredible Camellia Fiber Company indigo-dyed yarn – it’s so luscious knit up in these big cushy cables!  As soon as I get the buttons sewn on, I’ll display more FO photos.

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Cutting garden begins to bloom

This year, I developed a new area of our property into a cutting garden, using as guidance an article in Sunset Magazine about perennials and annuals that work well for cut flower arrangements. This first year, I’m growing as many varieties as I could find in kind of a “pilot program,” to see what fares well (and most of all, what isn’t eaten by the deer, rabbits, squirrels, etc that seem to gobble down everything I plant here!)

Inspired by the idea of learning to arrange flowers beyond my usual – a vase of dahlias, a vase of roses, a vase of gladiolas (you get the idea!) – I’ve been walking around my yard a few mornings each week, cutting anything I find that I think might work well together in an arrangement.  In addition to the usual cut flowers, I’ve tried to add other points of interest, such as the flowering tops of onion plants, the blooms of cilantro that has bolted, or the leaves of a smokebush.  So far, I’m really pleased with the results.

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This beautiful pink and white arrangement uses phlox, delphinium, gooseneck, and onion tops gone to flower.

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This arrangement is smaller, but I like the varying heights of the flowers, which include dahlias, coneflowers, delphinium, phlox, and flowering onion tops.

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Of course sometimes you can’t beat the impact of a single variety en masse – especially when that variety is as gorgeous as this hydrangea!

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Fragrance

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I wish that photos could convey how wonderful this rose smells!  The shape, fragrance and color all embody the word “rose” to me.  Out of all of the varieties in my rose garden, this one is hands-down my favorite :)

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Falling petals

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Peony petals are beautiful even when they’ve dropped to the ground :)

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May in my garden

Here’s what’s blooming this week :)

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Gorgeous peonies – I think I have over 100 plants by now!

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Rhododendrons are in full bloom – this is one of my favorite colors.

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I planted this flowering ground cover on the slope near our pool several years ago, and now it is spreading beautifully.

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The first week of May in my garden

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Oregon has had a beautiful spring so far, and everything is in full bloom around here!  The peonies are just starting to open:

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The native azaleas bloom in such beautiful colors, and I love their light fragrance:

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I’ve gotten most of the annuals planted in the deck pots, including these geranium and sweet alyssum:

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I was knitting on the deck yesterday and glanced down at the light coming through the leaves of this fancy oregano, and thought it was absolutely beautiful :)

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Caging the blueberries

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A few improvements to the veggie garden this spring:

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We’ve tried everything to keep the birds out of our blueberries, with no luck – the word is out, and every season they pretty much decimate the harvest from our dozen our so blueberry plants.  So, this year my friend and general contractor constructed this ingenious blueberry cage:

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It spans the entire blueberry patch and covers it on all sides and across the top with sturdy deer fencing, spanned between pressure treated boards.

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The door is on a hinge so that it swings shut behind you, and the deer fencing can be easily repaired if it gets torn or if the leaves or snow (not that we get much) weight it down on top.  I’m so impressed with the design and the overall look of the structure!

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We also capped the veggie beds (building instructions here) with pressure-treated boards, to give additional structure to the beds and to keep them from bowing out over time.  Plus, it makes them look nicer, and gives me a place to lean or sit when planting, weeding, or harvesting from the beds.

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Construction notes for strawberry pallets

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I’ve tried growing strawberries in many different ways – raised beds, down a slope, in hillocks in a fenced “strawberry annex” – all with very little success.  I’m not sure what the problem is – slugs, rot, those annoying ground squirrels that pick the green strawberries and then leave them mounded up in little piles (ugh!)  Whatever it is, my production is lousy and my actual harvest is even worse.  So, back to the drawing board – I’m trying vertical pallets this year.

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First, we stapled a double width of landscape cloth to the inside of the pallet, stapling along the top and bottom and several times along each interior board.

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Next, we stapled landscape plastic to the outside of the pallet, along the top, bottom, and both sides.  We wrapped the plastic around the bottom open end (no need to do this to the sides, because they were already closed up with the side boards), but left the top open.

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After standing the pallets up vertically, we carefully filled them with dirt (this had to be done by hand, because the opening was so narrow that a shovel just dumped dirt everywhere!)  We used scissors to cut slits in the landscape fabric, through which we poked the strawberry roots.  The slits were approx 1-2″ long – big enough to fit the roots into, but not so big that the soil would fall through.

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I placed the pallets facing east, so they get good morning sun, but avoid the hottest afternoon sun.  I’ll have to water them by hand, but it’s easy enough – either just spray them down, or water them through the top openings.  I’m hoping that by growing them vertically, I protect the berries from rotting on the ground or getting eaten by slugs, and by growing them so close to the house and driveway, I discourage the squirrels and other raiders.

One thing I’m not sure of – how to handle rotating the strawberry plants.  I believe that you are supposed to have new plants every two years.  Typically, these are generated from the runners, which plant themselves, then you can rip out the old plants.  That obviously won’t work here, though.  Will I have to pull out the old plants one by one and stick their runners in the openings?  This makes sense to me – I guess I’ll wait and see how the plants develop.

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Ranunculus

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Spring has come so early here in Oregon, I’m already planting my pots of annuals!

 

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