The garden - the fruits of our labors

As you can see, our garden is pretty informal and even utilitarian. It's mostly fruit trees and veggies with a few flowering plants in the small two acre patch which has been cleared out of the dense forest.

There was nothing here when we bought the land except acres of forest, a new house and three small rose bushes - oh - and lots of weeds. The first thing I did was plant my South African lily bulbs which I brought from San Francisco. Next we planted a small orchard: several different kinds each of apples, plums, cherries, pears, peaches, apricots and a fig tree and a walnut tree.

Since then I have been collecting mostly Oregon native plants plus anything that can handle summer droughts and winter downpours and doesn't need too much heat or pampering.

Here are some pics that I took this afternoon. They're big so click to enlarge.

These are native Shasta daisies which grow like weeds here - well, most people treat them as weeds. I think they're gorgeous.























This is yarrow, also regarded as a weed here.























Here's a white lavatera in front of the tank holding water pumped up from the north creek which we use for irrigating the orchard. Hopefully it will one day obscure the tank which is not exactly pretty.























And here's a pink lavatera. Both lavateras were only 6 inches high when we planted them last year. Lavateras are Mediterranean mallows that thrive here.























This pic does not do justice to this rose which is a screaming shocking pink. This bloom decided to grow backwards into the veranda.























A passion-flower vine which we planted only last year. It's a subtropical plant but it survives here because it goes dormant in winter.























A white rambling rose which grew from a cutting that we took from one of our rental properties two years ago. Roses adore this climate but must be watered and fertilized in summer.























The swarms of dragon-flies have finally eaten all of our killer skeeters but we are now under attack by biting "no-see-ums" which I had never heard of till I moved here. They are so small that you can't see them unless they are swarming in a shaft of sunlight but their bite is bigger and nastier than a skeeter bite. Skeeter bites are small red bumps. "No-see-um" bites are whitish lumps the size of dimes. I haven't got a clue what they are. Everyone just calls them "no-see-ums" - and, yes, they love sucking my hot African blood.