My Peony Addiction Would be so Much Easier if...

My Adleman's peony catalog came in the mail recently.  I have been pouring over what I would like to buy this year ever since.

My Saturday routine is to pour myself a pot of coffee and sit with my Adleman's catalog, read every page, make a list of each plant I like, its stats and the price.  My list changes weekly.

It just makes me crazy (could just be the pot of coffee I drank or genetics) with all the options and my limited budget. Why can't I win the lottery?!?  I could just call them up and order one of everything and have it delivered - that would be so much easier.  Wouldn't it?  They might even come plant them for me, now that would be really nice of them. 

Back to my reality - I spent Saturday and Sunday digging out some more grass in the front yard to make room for my future peony purchases.   So now I need to buy more bark mulch. (sigh)   

I've been carefully watching all the resident peonies in the yard.  Some of the tree peonies are off to an early start and continue to amaze me with how leafed out some of them are already. Yes, I'm counting my buds before they bloom!

Paeonia suffruticosa 'Lu Xiang Qiu 綠香球'

Move along, nothing to see here folks - Paeonia suffruticosa 'Kinshi 金鸟' (Golden Bird Tree Peony) - The rock is so I don't step on the peony, I also like to loosely tie bright colored curling ribbon on the peony stems as another "Don't Tread on Me" visual.  One careless step cleaning up in fall can ruin a tree peony and set it back many years.

Paeonia suffruticosa - My flimsy stake didn't do much to straighten this one out.

Paeonia suffruticosa 'High Noon 海黄' - A little life stirring under there.

Paeonia lactiflora 'Raspberry Charm'

Paeonia mascula (Balkan Peony) - A very cool species from Turkey.  I'm excited to see two fuzzy growths this year. 

I'll continue to try to win the lottery before May, but no matter what, I'll be there when they open to the public in May to snatch up a few.

Soul Renewal

Nothing is better for the soul than a trip out to the garden.

I've had some sad times recently and it helps to have the flowers making their Spring appearance.

Being a slightly obsessive gardener, I often have to make a conscious effort to just go into the garden and "enjoy".  I always want to have my bucket/clippers/gloves, to pull a weed or pick up some debris or trim something.

Sometimes you just have to remember to breathe and enjoy what you have because nothing lasts.

Crocus vernus 'Pickwick'

Daphne odora 'Zuiko Nishiki' - This one has a better smell than Daphne odora 'Marginata' but is not as pretty.

Trillium kurabayashii is up already - I'm happy to see it!

Crocus 'Blue Pearl'

A baby May Apple emerging.

Found this Crocus bulb on the side of the road.  I gladly took it home and planted it.

Plants are popping out all over.

Embothrium coccineum (Chilean Flame Tree) - Looks a little sad but it made it through the winter.

Cheap Thrills

I have to admit that I cannot resist a $2.99 cactus.  No matter how I try, I get sucked in every time. Add in months of gloomy Portland weather, a bad week and off to Portland Nursery I go. The car is on autopilot at this point.   

I love to cruise the Tillandsias and the little cactus and succulent starts at the Portland Nursery Division Street location.  

So one depressing day I stopped in and had to bring all these cuties home. I just had to! But now that I had all these cuties home - they need new pots!

So off to Freddie's I go to procure something cheap and cheerful to plant them in plus more cactus soil. Only the gods know how long that other bag of cactus soil has been around in the shed.  The gravel for the top, I had left over from various aquariums from the past. 

But then I also had to get additional matching pots for the cactus I already had. Everything's got to match right?  Another trip to Freddie's for a few more pots.

I spent many times more on pots than I did on plants, but they look so nice now.

The Desert Rose in the front green pot, I grew from seed from a plant my mom has in Florida.

Feels like Spring!

Flowers and leaves are busting out all over and boy does that feel good.  

Of the tree peonies that are starting to unfurl leaves, I'm already counting my buds before they've flowered.

Some pictures from President's Day.

Paeonia suffruticosa 'Bai Xue Ta 白雪塔' (White Snow Tower Tree Peony)

Paeonia suffruticosa 'Lu Xiang Qiu 綠香球' (Green Fragrant Ball Tree Peony) - This years buds are clearly visible.

I have a tiny Chief Joseph, but it made it through last summer and through the winter and is looking good.

Daphne bholua - flowing for the first time. Bought at Portland Nursery last year. It has a nice fragrance, but not as nice as some of the other Daphne.

Love these pure white flowers on a dark day.

Yvette enjoying the purple primroses.  The purple ones seem to grow the best for me for some reason?!?

 

Opuntia compressa (Prickly Pear) - This cactus has the nicest canary yellow flowers in early summer.

Pinus monophylla (Single-leaf Pinyon Pine) - This was a find at Cistus. I'm not sure I needed it but it was so darn cute and in 20 years I can harvest my own pine nuts.  I'll be able to grow my own pesto!

Agave parryi var. parryi (Parry's Agave) with babies. The mamma plant has been in the garden since 2006. This agave has been very reliable for me in Lents and it pups quite often often several feet away from the mamma plant.

Gardening on a Rainy Day.

Finally, we had a nice enough weekend for me to get out in the garden and get a few things cleaned up.

I noticed my first Trillium poking its head out of the bark mulch, along with the hyacinths and snowdrops.

What a difference it makes, on a gloomy day to look out the kitchen window and see the happy nodding heads of the snowdrops blooming under the Laurels.

 
I keep telling this tree peony to go back to sleep! I still suspect there will still be late snow and a few days of very cold yet and it scares me that this one is leafing out so soon. I think this is Paeonia suffruticosa 'Bai Xue Ta 白雪塔' (White Cloud Pavilion). 

The Lenten Roses are also busting out all over and the Crocus are emerging.
 

I tend to leave last year's foliage on the Lenten Roses until the flowers are up pretty high.  We haven't had any snow to smash last year's leaves down yet.

I noticed that there were lots of baby Cyclamen hederifolium 'Silver Me Pink' popping up.  I have made a point of breaking open and spreading their seed pods around last fall and it seems to have worked.The foliage is so pretty and the little flowers are so cute.

The Camellias are getting fat buds and the color is showing through the bud tips.

Camellia japonica 'Scented Treasure' - It doesn't seem to smell though!

My friend James got busy after being inspired by terrariums we saw at a local antique store in Sellwood. I showed him some areas in the pavement that had a lot of moss, so he made these. It's super cute and a cheap way to bring a little of the outdoors in. I have a bumper crop of moss too!

We've Come a Long Way.

A new year!

For me the excitement of the holidays is over and the depressingly short Portland winter days and lack of sunshine are starting to get me.

I wasn't out in the garden during the holidays, having just finished my fall leaf clean up before the crazy started. It's now the time of year that I can really only be in the garden on a weekend when it isn't pouring.

So, I'm thinking about what to do next in the garden and what do I really want for 2013?!?  Here is a look back of some of what has been done so far.

1996 before I bought the house.

Summer 2012

This is the first garden that's totally mine. It is a reflection of me completely.  My life was always "a garden left behind" before that.  So the current state of things has been all sweat and tears on my part and that's exactly what I wanted.

The dreaded English Walnut in the back corner - The fence was new and the bark mulch fresh off the truck.

Spring 2012

The design of my garden has been more a function of making it easy to mow and edge and the constant expansion of flowerbeds because I bought too many plants. It was also easier to rip out patches of summer fried grass and replace them with flowerbeds. Digging sod and shaking off the dirt really sucks. 

Front Flower bed - Too bad the Phormium didn't make it.

Summer 2012

I have gone through my plant "phases" and have quite the collection of plants (over 700).  I have kept track of every name in a book along with a spreadsheet of plant names I can reference for when I have "Senior Moments" and can't remember what something is. 

The "back yard" before 2003.

Felony Flats Farm 2012

Thankfully in 2012 I discovered lots of wonderful garden blogs and I bought many new plants that I didn't know I needed.One trip alone to a Peony farm left me with 8 new herbaceous peonies to find a new home for. This meant digging up a new section of grass for them and another trip to Portland nursery for other plants to go with.

This was one of the first spots I removed the "lumpy" grass and put in flowers

I wasn't sure the Dogwood would make it, but it's doing great.

The plants seem so tiny!

2009-ish

I'm not really sure what 2013 will bring. Here are some ideas that have been floating around in my skull:

1. Remove the walnut trees?
2. Remove all the grass on the one side all the way back to the garden and putting in a new flower bed with gravel paths?
3. A big pond for more water lilies?
4. Repair the fence?
5. Buy more bark mulch?
6. Remove the three Butterfly Bushes that are noxious weeds?

But that all sounds like so much work...