Anticipation and a little destruction

It's been interesting to see how much of my settling in to living in Oregon has had to do with anticipation.  After the first difficult winter I planned lots of traveling for the second winter so I was anticipating those trips for months.  The first fall in our home I planted lots of tulips.  One of my friends made a comment about not liking tulips because they don't last very long, but as I planted the bulbs I was so excited about what I was going to see in a few months that I decided it really didn't matter to me that much to me if the flowers didn't last very long.

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The first spring in our house I was more than a little disconcerted to see what looked like ears of corn growing in the arborvitae next to the driveway.  When I realized it was bamboo invading from the neighbor's yard I was annoyed and had Josh and Tyler tear it out.

In between that spring and the next spring, though, my feelings about the bamboo changed.  Our backyard has been such a source of delight to me in this house.  We looked at many (MANY) homes where all you could see in the backyard was the house behind you.  Sometimes it felt like there was no privacy at all.  The lot behind 75% of our yard is an old lot of several acres, and just behind our yard there are mostly woods.

During the summer after Josh tore out the bamboo the neighbor behind the remaining 25% of our yard put an addition on his house.  He cut down several trees in his yard and then put on a huge (at least 20 foot) addition, pushing his house much closer to his back fence (and therefore our yard) than it had been before.  I HATE it.  HATE.  IT.

I started looking at the bamboo growing by our back fence in a different way.  Look how tall it was!  Look how thick it was!!  Look how evergreen it was!!!  I already knew from talking to my bamboo neighbor that a decent sized pot of bamboo was $50 at the local nursery, but then I had a thought.  I could wait until the next spring when the rouge bamboo came up by my driveway again, dig it up, and plant it in my backyard.  What a great idea!

Last spring 2 bamboo plants sprouted.  We watched them grow and grow--sometimes it seemed almost a foot in a day, and then dug them up as carefully as possible and transferred them to a pot. Despite our care we could only get a little bit of one of the rhizomes (the big root thing that the cane grows out of) and after a couple of months in the pot that bamboo cane died.  The other cane survived, though, and this year has put out a couple of small new shoots.  Last month we dug a big trench around the area where we want to plant the bamboo and put in a 30" barrier that should keep the bamboo we plant from escaping anywhere else. When this year's bamboo sprouts are all done growing & leafing out, we can transplant our bamboo into it's new home.

In the meantime, I was waiting and watching for new bamboo to come up by the driveway.  Waiting.  Watching.  Waiting.  Watching....

I just went back and reread the post about Josh and Tyler taking out the bamboo.  If I had know then what I know now I wouldn't have had them do such a thorough job of it.  This year we don't have any shoots, just some small grassy plants.  I am bummed about that.

In what was a very unexpected turn of events, though, one day I was sitting in the chair in my room and I happened to look just right out the french doors and saw this.

Just in case you need to see that up close, here you go.

I was so annoyed!  No bamboo in the driveway, and bamboo here getting ready to wreck my fence again!  I was going to break it off (which will stop it from growing) but just didn't get around to it by the time I looked again...

Two!

And yet I still didn't knock them down.  I was busy with things to do, you know.  Maybe in the back of my mind I had the idea that I would figure out a way to be able to take advantage of these bamboo canes.  So they grew and grew and grew.
One day I noticed something new--not only my 2 canes growing up between the deck and the fence, but the tip of a cane poking between the 1st and second deck board.

That's when I started thinking differently...I started thinking about deconstructing the deck.  I looked at it carefully, noticed that it was put together with screws, and rationalized that what is screwed together can also be un-screwed!

Friday evening when I was done using the drill in the attic (another story) I brought it outside along with several different drill bits.  I then proceeded to loosen as many of the screws in these two boards with a regular screwdriver, then take the screws out with the drill.  I ended up having to drill several screws out and that wasn't pretty, but being the end boards I figured they didn't have to be too pretty.  When Russ got home from work I was just starting to try to pry one of the boards up.

(Does he get home from work and think wow, she's at it again?!?)

He helped me get out the last stripped screws and provided the strength I needed to pry up the two boards.  Let's just say that being rained on and sunned on for the last 3+ years, they were on there tight!  When we finally pulled them up it was dusk and it took us a minute to figure out for sure what we were seeing.

This is a picture I took a few days later.  You can see that without the boards in it's way, the new bamboo to the left took off.  But can you also see what surprised us--on the right, two other little bamboos that were entirely under the deck boards that look like they've grown a few inches since we took them off!  On the far right are two others, but they look so stunted already that we're thinking they must have been from earlier this spring or even from last year.

The sad thing about the deck removal was that I hadn't counted on the deck frame (non-technical term) underneath.  So those two big canes are pinched between the frame and the fence.  I'm still hoping that when the time comes (we can't do anything until they have their full growth) we'll be able to get at the rhizomes via the space we've just opened up and then pull them out.  Crossing my fingers on that one.

So there you have it.  Our bamboo story as it unfolds.  A story of anticipation with just a little bit of destruction.  I can't wait to see how it ends!

The back fence

Cindy Lynn requested a picture of the backyard today.  I thought I’d put it on here along with some pictures I’ve taken recently. 

This year we planted clematis all along the back fence but they’re all still small.  So the dahlias have definitely been the stars of the backyard show.  Especially these yellow dahlias.  The rest of the dahlias were just planted this year so they were slower to start blooming but the yellow plant bloomed earlier and often.

I also have some pinkish-purple dahlias. (Purplish-pink?)

But my favorites?  Definitely these—almost as tall as me, and flowers as big as my hand!  I don’t know enough about dahlias to know why there are such color variations.

My new policy is that any dahlia that blooms facing the fence or is otherwise not visible gets to come inside to beautify our kitchen.

We have two really tall dahlias that still haven’t bloomed.  (Good news—I’m told that dahlias will bloom till a hard frost.  So we still have time.)  One is now as tall as the fence and one almost a foot taller.  It finally has a bud on it—can’t wait to see what it looks like!

Tulip Therapy

Last fall I bought tulip bulbs.

Several times. 

I mean…

SEVERAL.

And then one fine day I planted, and planted, and planted, and planted.  And I thought about how they would look in the spring.  And I decided something—that planting tulips was a *super* way to combat depression.  Both being outside all day planting, and the anticipation of the blooming season to come. 

As the spring has approached and the tulips have started to emerge from the ground I’ve been so excited to see them. 

But then just as the first tulips were starting to bloom, with sunny weather forecast for the next week, it was time for us to leave for our two week trip to Utah.  I was so relieved that one of the tulips I had anticipated being my favorite bloomed before I left.  (I was right—it really was amazing!)

I was really worried that all of the tulips would bloom and die before I got back.  Somehow I just didn’t think it would be the same to have Russ take pictures for me. 

Can you imagine my happiness to find most of the tulips still blooming when I got home on Saturday???

First a mixed bag of tulips truly was that.  (Not a great picture, but it shows the truly random nature of this mix.  And yes, they’re planted by the air conditioner because I ran out of places.)

 

The tulips in the front of the Japanese Maples looked like they might need another place next year where they don’t clash quite so bad.

The tulips that I’d been so excited for were blooming in full force.

There were tulips blooming all across the side fence in the back—another mixed bunch, but these a little better mix.

Best off all, the very best, were in a big planter tub right outside my bedroom door.  These tulips seemed to me like an incarnation of sunset and I have loved looking at them.

It’s a good thing I did, because today it rained like crazy and the wind blew really hard and then it rained some more.  I’m guessing my sunset tulips aren’t going to be looking so good come morning, so I sure am glad that I got some good pictures.  And that now I know what I have to look forward to outside my bedroom next spring…

That’s therapy indeed!

Mum’s (not) the word.

I will admit to being a sucker for a lovely flower.  And when I saw this one at Walmart at the beginning of October I just grabbed it and put it in my cart.

Even though I don’t really have a good history with mums.  In fact I believe that while in NC I tried mums once and swore off them forever.  But how could I resist those bi-color petals?  So I didn’t even try.  And I told myself that this time around, my experience with mums would be different.  They would thrive and be beautiful in a place of honor on my bridge and I would enjoy looking at them every day.

Except.

I forgot to ask around.  To get the native opinion on how mums thrive in what they euphemistically call “liquid sunshine.” 

And after two nights of heavy “liquid sunshine” (is it “liquid moonshine” at night?) this is what my beautiful mum looked like.

Let’s look at that from another angle, shall we?

 

Thrashed.  Completely.

And that’s why I’d ask, should you see me sidling up to a brightly colored mum, that you remind me gently (and not so gently) of my previous experience with mums.  Tell me to save my money.  Or to use my money to buy some chocolate.  Because I’ll get to enjoy it for about the same amount of time, and with chocolate there wouldn’t be a bad taste left in my mouth…

Garden Notes

It was definitely an uneven year for my garden.  The early heatwave bolted all of my lettuces before we had even begun to eat them.  I got carried away with the tomatoes, ending up with about 14 (!!!) plants in a household with 1.75 tomato eaters.  They were delicious, until early September rains caused them all to split and mold.  (Welcome to Oregon!)  Here are pictures from the tomato forest late in the season, and one of the hummingbird that liked to hang out in it after tanking up on nectar.

I learned the hard way that I didn’t plant enough peas or enough beans, though Rachel did enjoy eating every pea that appeared on the vines.

I also learned that while the tomato forest thrived, plants planted in un-amended soil (where there was recently a rhododendron) definitely didn’t.  Poor me—I love summer squash so much and got almost none.  Next year my plan is to try straw bale gardening in this area.  I love that because our house is built on the lot line on the south side of our lot, we have a nice sized side yard on the south side. 

Russ tore out all of the tomatoes yesterday, and I will miss their foliage outside the dining room window.  In future seasons I might plant some winter flowers in the garden beds, but this winter we need to add another layer to them so for now they are just bare.

As we were finishing our work in the yard yesterday (which for me meant tearing out some shrubs to freecycle and planting more tulips) I realized that I needed to harvest the potatoes.  I’d planted them in 2 unused containers when I ran out of room in my raised beds, thrown dirt on them from time to time early in the season, and then forgotten them.  I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have produced any potatoes at all.  Much to my surprise, this is what I ended up with—a nice bowl full of purple potatoes!

Russ chopped them up and roasted them to go with dinner tonight.  They were…very purple.

The insides were even more purple—this picture has the roasted edge torn off.

They were delicious—the flavor was really nice.   But I must say, they didn’t look quite right with catsup!

Clemency Denied

I think that my petunias are worried that after over a month of non-performance I might be getting ready to replace them.

I say that I think they’re worried because they’ve made a last ditch effort to keep me happy by blooming again.

And it did make me smile every time I saw them for a few days.

(Though the smile could also have been caused by those big blue planter pots that I bought because nothing I had went well in front of our new house.  Those pots are still making me happy.)

Valiant effort, petunias, but it was too little too late. 

Because I’ve already bought the bulbs and pansies that are going to replace you.

Clemency Denied.

Currently blooming in my yard

We are enjoying the fact that there is such a long flowering season here in Oregon—starting with the bulbs in the early spring, still going strong with the roses and various annuals & perennials now.  Here’s a sampling of what’s blooming in our yard right now.  (Besides tomato & squash blossoms.)

And here’s a funny one.  I promise—I planted the plant from one pot here.  But this is what’s grown.