Archive for April, 2007
I’m in the Tri-Cities area for a few days to photograph gardens and to teach a workshop on photographing wildflowers for the Columbia Basin chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society and Richand City Parks. The workshop includes an all-day field session on Saturday where I’ll work with my dozen students on techniques. There are several possible locations not too far from town, including Badger Mountain which is immediately south of Richland and Kennewick. I’d never been up there until this afternoon.
The trail begins at the end of the road in a new housing development, then climbs 800 feet in about 1.3 miles. A “friends” group has been working on the trail so it’s in good shape. The vegetation is predominately grasses with flowering plants mixed in here and there. The trail passes through a lithosol area (thin, rocky soils) which has the endemic Rosy Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza rosea) pictured here. The soil must not be quite as thin as some lithosols, because there were lupines and bluebunch wheatgrass growing nearby — both species that usually want a little more soil to be happy. continue reading »
April 26 2007 | Native Plants | No Comments »
Natalie and I have been working on her mother’s new garden about a mile from our house. We started when she first bought the house with a few shrubs and conifers after Betty had a raised berm and rock-filled dry stream built in the front yard. Those early plantings, now in their third growing season, are looking very nice.
Earlier this spring, Natalie and Betty worked up a plan to add many more plants to the front garden, and a layer of taller small trees to the back of the border in the back yard garden. They placed an order with Plantas Nativa in Bellingham, who delivered a truckload of plants a few days ago.
Today we spent the better part of the day placing and planting everything. The photo shows just a small part of what we started with — Shining Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium), Kinnickinick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), Salal (Gaultheria shalon), and Evergreen Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum). We also planted a couple dozen Sword Ferns (Polystichum munitum) and maybe a dozen Low Oregon Grape (Mahonia nervosa) in the front garden. By lunchtime we were finished with the front and pronounced it good. It will take a little time for the plants to establish and start to fill out, but the end result should be a relatively low maintenance, mostly native garden that is a joy to behold both from the street and from Betty’s large living room window. continue reading »
April 22 2007 | Gardens and Native Plants | No Comments »
Friday afternoon was warm and sunny — perfect for skipping out of the office and going for an afternoon paddle along the shore south of Bellingham. I put a note on the WAKE kayak group listserv and got a prompt response from Ed Alm. We agreed that a 3 pm put-in at Marine Park gave us enough time to get ready.
It turned out that we put in at low tide, in fact a little lower than minus 2 feet. Since there’s not much current along the shore, the tide didn’t matter and neither of us had checked it in advance. The benefit of going out on the low tide was that more of the shoreline rocks were exposed.
We paddled quickly south from Marine Park, hitting 5.5 mph according to Ed’s GPS. Once we reached the interesting rock formations along the shore of Clark’s Point we slowed to a very leisurely pace and paddled very close to the cliffs to see what was hanging around. There were dozens of ochre sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus) in almost every crack, as well as a couple of marine invertebrates we couldn’t identify — something rather long, orange, and tube-like. continue reading »
April 21 2007 | Photography and Kayaking | 2 Comments »
This past weekend I was on the east side of the Cascades for a Washington Native Plant Society state board meeting in Ellensburg. We had a productive session all day Saturday, but six-hour meetings are trying even when everyone is on the same track and the discussion is genial. The cure? A day tromping in the field to see what’s blooming.
Sunday, Walt Lockwood and I headed down to Yakima and west another 15 miles to the mouth of Waterworks Canyon. It’s a fairly small canyon tending north-south that drains into the Naches River. The land is on the Oak Creek Wildlife Area, administered by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. There’s a small parking area on the north side of the highway about a quarter mile west of the junction of WA 410 and US 12. [N 46° 44.921′ W 120° 47.874′]
The mouth of the canyon is just over 1600′ elevation. After passing through the gate, we were soon greated by spectacular displays of Carey’s Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza careyana) and Showy Phlox (Phlox speciosa), particularly on the east-facing hillside that was bathed in early morning sunshine under a brilliant clear blue sky. continue reading »
April 16 2007 | Photography and Native Plants | 1 Comment »
One of my favorite wildflowers, dating back to my childhood, is the trillium. I grew up in central West Virginia and in the spring one hillside along the road to my grandparents home was always covered with large white trilliums, Trillium grandiflorum. When I moved to Washington state I learned that our native trillium here, which looks quite similar to the eastern white trillium, is Trillium ovatum. Both of them can be grown successfully in Northwest gardens.
I photographed in a Tacoma-area garden recently where there were a couple of patches of trilliums planted. In this photo, they’re mixed with redwood sorrel, Oxalis oregana, and a non-native fern. This planting is practically inside the house where it can be easily enjoyed. Elsewhere in the garden was a larger patch of trilliums, which had been self-seeding and establishing a rather nice large patch of flowers. The gardener pointed out to me that first-year trillium seedlings have a single leaf, second-year seedlings have two leaves, and not until their third year do they develop their typical three leaves. continue reading »
April 13 2007 | Gardens and Photography and Native Plants | 1 Comment »
One of the prime Northwest native flowering shrubs that’s in bloom right now is red-flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum. It’s a good shrub for the garden, as well as being found at woodland edges in the wild. It has a wide range in the Northwest and is a good early food source for hummingbirds.
In this Bainbridge Island garden, red-flowering currants have been planted in several areas around the edge, including in this mixed border. Some native plant gardening enthusiasts are sticklers for only growing natives while others, like this gardener, believe that its OK to mix and match. The currant will stay in bloom for two or three weeks in the spring, and flowers will be followed by rather tasteless blue-black berries mid-summer. The attractive foliage will become a backdrop for other plants that bloom later, like the ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum planted at its base.
April 13 2007 | Gardens and Photography and Native Plants | No Comments »
Spring feels like it’s getting off to a slow start around Bellingham this year. I had to scrape frost of my windshield on Tuesday morning, and high temperatures have remained in the mid-40s. Our daffodils are continuing to look good — a blaze of gold in the corner garden. It must be too cold for the slugs as they haven’t been eating many blossoms this year.
We can go from sun to cloud and back to sun again quickly. The two different kinds of light make for different feelings in a photo of the same subject. On the left, Monday afternoon sun. On the right, Wednesday afternoon cloudy skies. One captures the brilliance of spring in a sunny garden; the other a more mellow feeling under softer light.
continue reading »
April 05 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
After hauling more rock and more soil and constructing three low stone walls, the result is good. Here’s what one of the three new beds looked like right after the soil was placed and roughly leveled.
Natalie worked for a couple of hours the other evening to start planting the beds. This one got a nice low-growing variegated Ceanothus in the middle. She put bunches of crocus, which had come out to make room for the wall, around some of the edges. There’s still more planting to do, but we’re making progress. We’re thinking of mostly low-growing plants in this bed, with some dwarf conifers in the other two corners. We spent a bunch of money on plants the other day, but still need to do more shopping. We haven’t been plant shopping together for a while, so it’s a fun thing to do. continue reading »
April 03 2007 | Gardens and Photography | 1 Comment »
