Squeezed In

There is always room for one more thing. It isn't a bad idea either to wind the bulb season down with some late bloomers. Ornithogalum nutans fits the bill. It does have oddly gray/green colored petals, but hey it's different.















Camassia quamash also blooms. The wait for the Alliums to fully open continues.
















The San Francisco branch of OutsideClyde got some attention in between cabin building activities. Three types of seeds from a box of goodies were sown. Sea Holly, Eryngium giganteum (a coveted plant), Clematis stans, and Dierama pulcherrimum will join the existing Chicago, Tennessee and Buffalo additions to OutsideClyde. Still to be planted is a wonderful Dahlia 'Madame Simone Stappers' hailing from San Francisco. I'm supposed to wait until after our last frost date of May 15th. I am trying to be patient. Maybe I can wait another week.

It will be quite some time before my own garden has plants that are squeezed in. Even then I may not be patient enough to wait until after a frost date. How could it possibly freeze again? How could it dare to?













Look there is a bathroom and kitchen in my cabin now. The floor joists for the loft are up. The front joist of the loft is part of the roof structure. The roof will be built on the ground in two sections, then lifted into place by a crane.













I think this is Erigeron annuus. I found this in the Kingdom of Madison. Here it is being pulled as a weed. Now that I see it blooming, one has to wonder what determines weediness up here?















The Hyacinthoides hispanica were some of the first foliage to appear in late winter and the last of the bulbs to bloom. Great swaths of them carpet the hillside.


















They come in three colors, pink, white and blue.













The Trail of Spanish Bluebells winds around a mountaintop.


















At the close of another spring day.

The Forest Floor

Delpinium tricorne, Trillium grandiflorum and the faint pink glow of Geranium.













Phacelia purshii










Dodecatheon meadia

















Iris cristata














Geranium maculatum













Trillium grandiflorum













Just a few of the things growing on the forest floor.

Unfolding Iris

I voted for the first time in my new state today at the Fines Creek North Carolina Volunteer Fire Department for the next president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, who will be making history as the first Hawaiian president. You would have to have lived in Hawaii, to know its hapa culture, to understand that before anything else, Obama is Hawaiian.

They had to call the county election headquarters before they let me vote. I had not made it onto the list of names at my precinct. Luckily I had brought the confirmation card I had received in the mail. They sure were nice there. We talked story while waiting for approval to let me vote.

The Iris blossoms are unfolding with each new day.
















Most of them had not budded out before that last icy blast.

















The assortment of colors is sure to be vast. There are patches of Iris spread over two acres of mountaintop. Short ones, tall ones, dwarf ones, Siberian kind, native kind, all kinds, living happily together in one large garden.
















Another petal on my cabin has unfolded. The kitchen/bath interior wall is standing. In the top right, attached to the wall studs is the ledger that will hold the floor joists for the loft. On the bottom left, on the cabin floor, is the opposite ledger for the loft floor joists. That will be hung tomorrow, the joists put in and the rest of the combo kitchen/bath/living room wall built.

There are a lot of temporary braces and two overhead connections to pull and hold the walls plumb and straight. As more parts get added and the cabin gains its own structural stability, these temporary boards will come down.













The native Iris cristata that I planted last summer at the top of my drive has produced its first bloom. They not only survived, but multiplied, almost doubled in size.














There are some good signs for the future.

A Spring Meadow

There is almost too much to keep up with. How will I ever find the time for a real job.













It is time though to devote scheduled set days to my clients. If I have to restart my own business, I need to get out there and present myself.














I could stay busy all day, every day on this mountain. That is a nice thought. I'll think it. Aaahh, that was nice.















A burn spot marks an afternoon of clearing out dead trees, fallen trees and fallen branches in my part of the meadow. We want to be able to skip through the meadow, not trip; though I have certain friends......













I am also having second thoughts about what I want to do with the boulders in the bottom of the meadow. Will it still be a snake in the grass?

Pulsating Orbs

In Purple Pulsations

The Trilliums Blush

High Spring has definitely arrived down in Clyde. I spent two days weeding and mulching at Client #1's and will go back again tomorrow. All of a sudden things have begun to grow quickly. I think it is time to go at least once a week now.

I was almost too tired to wander into the forest when I got home, but there was something in there I needed to find.













One of the things I found was that the last winter blast had actually damaged some of the native plants. What I think may be the emerging Ageratina altissima, White Snakeroot, the Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica and many of the new unfurling fern fronds had been frozen back.














The Trilliums are reaching their peak bloom and the older ones have begun to blush pink.















It's like having two different flowers in the same plant.













There are all kinds of Polygonatum type plants in the forest. This one might be ten inches tall at most. I wonder how many species of those might exist here.













This is what I was looking for, the much less common, here anyway, Plain Green Jack. Many of these had been zapped by the ice and snow last week. More are still emerging fortunately. I may still find some new kinds.

















The cold damage from last week was species specific more than micro-climate specific. Some things were not bothered at all, while others lost blooms and/or leaves.













Over all it is barely discernable. Only a prying eye would notice. The big losers were a lot of the deciduous Azaleas. Their blooms were lost for this year.













Each new spring will be different. My first has been pretty good so far.

A Hoe's Life

I must admit that my experience with Hoes is limited. I am a firm believer in a protective layer of mulch. It doesn't hurt to take a walk on the wild side every so often and that wild and crazy gal, Carol at May Dreams Gardens, is at again. Visit her Hoe Central for your chance to get down with Hoes from around the world.

The single hoe that resides at OutsideClyde has a very zen lifestyle. In gardens that include a wildflower meadow and a shaded forest woodland garden, weed is a relative term.


















The Hoe did get out once last summer trying to pickup a little work out by the roadside vegetable garden. Since then, the Hoe has gone to pot.


















A working Hoe. Maybe. We'll see how well the thick layer of mulch works in the vegetable garden this year.













Looks like there may be a customer.















The Hoe striking a pose after a quickie.













Postscript: No Dandelions were harmed in the making of "A Hoe's Life".

Under The Apple Tree

We all may like to fantasize, just a little, that one day our gardens might become a mecca, such a stunning display of horticulture and design that it is a must see for those in the know. I have a long way to go to reach mecca. I may never actually get there, but I can fantasize, and plant my way towards such a lofty goal.
















Right now my "garden" is home to the pits, the $500 holes dug for my septic perk test. The pits need to be filled back in and the drain lines installed before I can really begin to claim this large space as my garden. I'm getting antsy though and have planted a few things in places out of the way of a big trench digging machine.













In the center of this picture are two small apple trees and to their right, the Serviceberry, Amelanchier arborea, that has just finished blooming. Bulbarella and the Faire Garden have joined forces under the apple trees in the start of the first planted bed in the roadside shade garden. This one section is at least a quarter acre of ground. It could be years or never, that this garden is "finished".













This is gardening in the wilderness folks, so don't be scared or appalled if it seems like I am doing things backwards. I had plants that needed to go in the ground. An actual "bed" will be made around the plants when I get to it.

Bulbarella often has overflow Hosta and some were given to me. Frances at Faire Garden, my close neighbor in Tennessee, very generously sent me a care package filled with Hellebores. The two largest Hellebores were planted behind five divisions made from half a Hosta clump. A little weeding, a thick layer of woodchip mulch and one flower bed will appear. It can expand from there. About twenty seedling Hellebores were potted up to grow them out to a larger size before planting them in the wilderness. Bulbarella was very excited to be inline for some more Hellebore.













Below the Hellebores and Hosta is a large group of native fern, at least six that I have counted. They are big ferns. I might ID them at some point. These will be left to grow and become part of this new bed.













One nice pink Dianthus was included with the Hellebore care package. I planted this on the sunny south facing slope beneath my cabin with Iris starts from Bulbarella. The pink Dianthus will echo the pink Spirea and pink Mediterranean Heath that have already been planted on this slope to begin a hillside garden of low mounding color and texture beneath the utility lines. Every little plant counts.













One day they will grow up to be big plants.
















Some of them might even have blooms like this.