Pacific Northwest Spring
I spent the weekend gardening. We're having a dry spell right now with brilliant blue skies and day-time temps reaching a high of 65F. If you read gardening books about the West Coast, you will see some gardeners referring to late January as the "Pacific Northwest Spring." Others call it a "false Spring" because there is no guarantee that it won't become wintry again in the next few months. It snowed last April and our nights are still frosty.
But there is no denying that our "Pacific Northwest Spring" has sprung. All the deciduous trees such as the maples, oaks, alders and cascaras, the three types of native Pacific willow, the dogwoods, cottonwoods and all my fruit trees have put out tiny new buds. This means it's my last chance to move any trees that need to be transplanted. So I spent the weekend moving the "mistakes" I've made during the past three years.
Two years ago I planted a fig-tree in the orchard with the apples, pears, peaches, apricots and cherries but its fruit never ripened. Figs need more heat than the other fruit. So we dug up the fig-tree and moved it into a southwest corner of the house where the sunlight is focussed most fiercely. Then we planted a new walnut in the hole left by the fig-tree.
The biggest job was digging up a vine-maple which was one of the first trees that I planted when I moved here. A year ago we decided to put an ornamental pond (with a fountain) in the front yard to greet visitors. The maple was in the wrong place and would have shed leaves into the pond and it made it hard for visitors to turn cars around in the driveway. I should have moved it last winter but my sister was visiting and, by the time she left, it was too late to move it.
It took hours to dig a two foot deep moat around the maple and then carefully loosen the roots. The best place for the maple was occupied by a ceanothus (California lilac) so we had to move that. We also ended up moving three other ceanothuses to a sunnier and drier location.
Ceanothus, like most Pacific native plants, cannot stand soggy roots. In fact they thrive in semi-arid conditions and have developed a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium that lives in its roots and helps it to absorb water from seemingly dry soil. Soggy soil kills this bacterium and the plant dies.
This is the way that three of the the ceanothus will look when they bloom from late Spring to early Fall. I have five ceanothuses: white, pink, pale blue, lavender and purple.
And here are some trees for gardeners of the male persuasion. (No, these are not my trees. I found these pics in the days before I used to keep track of "where.") Tree-hugging will take on a whole new connotation.
But there is no denying that our "Pacific Northwest Spring" has sprung. All the deciduous trees such as the maples, oaks, alders and cascaras, the three types of native Pacific willow, the dogwoods, cottonwoods and all my fruit trees have put out tiny new buds. This means it's my last chance to move any trees that need to be transplanted. So I spent the weekend moving the "mistakes" I've made during the past three years.
Two years ago I planted a fig-tree in the orchard with the apples, pears, peaches, apricots and cherries but its fruit never ripened. Figs need more heat than the other fruit. So we dug up the fig-tree and moved it into a southwest corner of the house where the sunlight is focussed most fiercely. Then we planted a new walnut in the hole left by the fig-tree.
The biggest job was digging up a vine-maple which was one of the first trees that I planted when I moved here. A year ago we decided to put an ornamental pond (with a fountain) in the front yard to greet visitors. The maple was in the wrong place and would have shed leaves into the pond and it made it hard for visitors to turn cars around in the driveway. I should have moved it last winter but my sister was visiting and, by the time she left, it was too late to move it.
It took hours to dig a two foot deep moat around the maple and then carefully loosen the roots. The best place for the maple was occupied by a ceanothus (California lilac) so we had to move that. We also ended up moving three other ceanothuses to a sunnier and drier location.
Ceanothus, like most Pacific native plants, cannot stand soggy roots. In fact they thrive in semi-arid conditions and have developed a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium that lives in its roots and helps it to absorb water from seemingly dry soil. Soggy soil kills this bacterium and the plant dies.
This is the way that three of the the ceanothus will look when they bloom from late Spring to early Fall. I have five ceanothuses: white, pink, pale blue, lavender and purple.
And here are some trees for gardeners of the male persuasion. (No, these are not my trees. I found these pics in the days before I used to keep track of "where.") Tree-hugging will take on a whole new connotation.
posted by Joubert at 8:19 AM
The Alliance
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