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Friday, December 21, 2018

Narcissus cantabricus ssp.cantabricus var. foliosus


"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."

John Steinbeck




Happy Solstice and cheers to the first day of winter! So I hear there is the Ursid meteor shower is about to rain down tonight, a full moon on the solstice known as the Cold Moon will rise, on the darkest and longest night of the year. The federal government is about to shut down and Christmas is right around the corner. What a time it is. I've always appreciated the solstice events, and the equinox and the markings of the changing of the seasons. The first day of winter has always been an interesting one, lots of times we are so busy with the hustle and bustle of Christmas that it barely get's noticed. But without winter starting we couldn't get to spring. I must admit the darkest, longest nights of winter, where you leave for work in the dark and you return home in the dark can be real downer. But starting tomorrow we begin to gain ever so many precious seconds of daylight. So raise a glass to tonight and toast to the Winter Solstice, the sky may be falling and the country may be imploding under bad leadership, but tomorrow will seem just a little bit brighter. Happy Solstice!




Narcissus cantabricus ssp. cantabricus var. foliosus
I thought I'd feature this little gem of a hoop petticoat Narcissus since it's been blooming for a week or more now. If you have followed this blog much you probably already know that it's usually always the last flower of the year and the first of the new one. It doesn't need forcing to bloom right on Christmas. It's been known to science since 1601 when Clusius, received a drawing from a traveler stating the bulbs had been dug up on his journey's through the Cantabrian Mountains. Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, the genius of a swiss botanist, who gave us the concepts of "natures war" and influenced Charles Darwin subsequent works,  was the one who gave it the name Narcissus cantabricus however he too was wrong about the location of origin. This one with it's creamy white flowers and 3 to 8 leaves per bulb actually comes from Morocco. It's an easy grower, the only caveat for cultivation in the temperate rain forest winter's of Western Oregon is keeping the buds dry and slug free for the winter bloom. Cultivation in a cool greenhouse is ideal, as moisture can be controlled and a better eye kept on the slugs who will quickly ravage the tender buds which must come as a delicious treat at such a lean time of year for flowers.

This is probably the last post of 2018, I must admit I was thinking back on this year and the Counting Crows song a Long December came to mind

 " there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last"


I said too many last goodbyes in 2018, I saw too many bad things happen to good people in 2018, I felt the hurt and the sorrow of immigrants escaping war and famine, I felt the coldness as America turned it's back on the pale and downtrodden. I felt the cold apathetic hand of "leadership" in the work place slap across my face. I looked on as the feeble minded continue to rule without a thought for the betterment of society. I watched as "Christians" turned hate into "Conservatism" and served it spoon fed to the gullible and weak minded. 

 I'll see you in 2019 with more flowers and a hope that:

 " there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last"


Cheers to a better one ahead, 

Mark

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Happy Holidays from illahe Nursery and Gardens



"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why"
Mark Twain


I have been notably absent from the blog for a bit, It seems the Holiday season crept right up on me without warning and before I knew it we were in the thick of it. This time hasn't passed without some fun and adventure however. I spent a fun day for my 42nd birthday cruising around Portland with my daughter Anya. We hit the Lan Su Portland Classical Chinese Garden to admire how well the asian landscaping holds up in the winter season. It's really a spectacular garden with something to see throughout the year. 

I love architecture in plants and the Loropetalum was not only showing off it's great form, but the bark was interesting and it even sported a few flowers to boot. 

The interesting bark of the Loropetalum brings us back to the gardens at Illahe for a moment, This is a seed grown Arbutus xalpensis var. texana going on 7 years old now. It's seemed to weather the winters here well and so we will see how it matures if it makes to a ripe old age this one is a winner for it's lovely bark. 

The Kiddo and I enjoying a day at Lan Su. 

Of course no trip to Portland with Anya is complete without a stop at Powells books, she really is a kid after her dads own heart and book stores and gardens are a perfectly awesome way to waste a day. 

The Mahonia lomariifolia was starting into its winter bloom and that was a treat. 

I was inspired to try to add some walking paths through the gardens at Illahe but not sure if I have the time or resources to put in something like this, absolutely marvelous work makes an ordinary path a work of art.

It has been on the mild side here really, the snow pack hasn't built yet, as evidenced by the lack of a cross country ski trip and we are already towards the end of December. We did have a couple of inches of rain come down the last few days which was fun. I got the ditch cleaned out just in time for it to fill up with the ensuing downpours, still we need things to cool down if we are going to get some snow in the Mountains. I've been sowing some seed orders in the greenhouse and watching the South African bulbs under grow lights for signs of flowering. I'll be sure to post the obligatory Winter Solstice flower bloom  post as we do have a Narcissus or two in the greenhouse flowering now. 

Cheers to you and yours and a wishing you all a wonderful holiday season from our family to yours,  

Mark, Anya, Keta the Labrador Retriever, Sam the cat, and Gilbert the Tiger Oscar. 



Friday, November 9, 2018

The Iceman Cometh




"Although even here they keep up the appearances of life with a few harmless pipe dreams about their yesterdays and tomorrows"...Eugene O'Niell

It's interesting how the phrase "Pipe dream" has made it into todays lexicon. If you asked 10 people where it came from I bet you would get a few different answers. To be honest I always thought it meant a dream of something far off, like you are looking at it down the length of a pipe. But of something maybe attainable as it's their, but it's at the end of the pipe, and whatever journey it takes to get to the end goal. 

Unfortunately, reading a little late 19th century literature to look for a good reference on the arrival of the first frost of the season, I actually discovered the etymology just refers to an opium induced dream state. I like the optimistic version of it better that I made up in my head. 



I don't think this video of the bees flying on the Colchicum late on  November afternoon day is actually playable. 


This is a pig on the waterfront in Olympia Washington, he just looks so daper enjoying the view of the harbor 

This is Olympia Washington and the Capitol Building from Pervical Landing.

So I was at a communications camp for work in Olympia Washington and it was a really great time to learn about being an effective outreach tool, public speaking and effective communications in Environmental Education. Good time and I attached a few pictures. 

Got back just in time to experience the first real frost of the season. It was legitimately frozen solid as I walked out the door this morning, which was kind of refreshing. Of course now I have to be a little worried about the tender South African and South American bulbs I've been playing around with. But I'll keep ya posted on that. 

Low 29 degrees, Sunny and clear and the same in the forecast for the weekend. 

Cheers, 
Mark

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Still no frost on the pumpkins


"WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best,
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock."
James Whitcomb Riley.




Still no hard frost, but the pumpkins are carved and waiting for the Evil Night of dread and terror when the children take the streets in search of candy. 

This is the view from the patio looking toward the rock garden, kind of hard to believe that it's a day away from November and all the flowers are still looking like it's Mid-July.


So we had the first real decent rain storm move through along with the field associated it, there was even a tornado that touched down a few miles away. I think that is the signal to button some stuff away for the winter. The bulbs in quart pots will be put into the greenhouse and the outside beds will get a nice mulch. Then we wait for the spring thaw! That is if we ever get a frost!

Cheers, 

Mark

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

One door closes and another opens



"Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all."
Mark Twain
Still no frost on the pumpkins, in fact the lowest temperature I have seen this fall season has been 38 degrees. This is of course good as I am ripening some vegetables in the garden still and playing the grasshopper a bit longer till the Ant takes over. I finally got caught up on a lot of the Fall projects I was needing to do. General farm maintenance and such, I re-sided the rotting old tractor shed, which should allow me more room in the wood shop this winter. I started painting the well pump house to match the new siding on the tractor shed and soon discovered it was rotting out as well. I decided not to bother with the fixing that problem this year as I think it can wait for better funding and more time next year. I have heard the saying said so many times "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good", I think I like the way that Mr. Twain said it better.  Honestly, some things are better left to sort themselves out and no sense in worrying over the things that can be dealt with at a later date. 

Just a few pics of some stuff I saw as I walked around the garden last night. I still have the greenhouse bulbs out in the can yard waiting for a decent shot of rain, then I'll weed the pots and tuck them into the greenhouse for the winter. So far it looks like that shot of rain is going to start this weekend. 

I rescued a bunch of Sowbread corms from an old abandoned homestead down by the river this summer. Got quite a few nice leaf forms and flowers ranging from white to deep pink.  

Colchicum psaridis a greecian species doing the fall thing. 

The old illahe homestead viewed from the Rock Garden as we approach the end of October. 

Sometime I need to lay out all the historical stuff I know about my place, the Title deed says it was built in 1934, but the way the foundation was added onto, and the fact that there is a photo of the old sunnyside school taken from my front porch in 1914, leads me to believe it was actually a prune drying shed that was added onto. A while back I interviewed a few of the old timers in the neighborhood and learned some great stories about the little community of Sunnyside. In fact, I'm feeling like that will be a good winter project while the bulbs are waiting for the bloom period. I'll blog the story of the community of Sunnyside.

Rain in the forecast, temps in the 50's, it once again feels like a right proper fall in Oregon.

Cheers,
Mark



Friday, October 12, 2018

Legends of the Fall


“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” 
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

I'll be honest, I was thinking a lot about this past week and some of the political and social injustices I've witnessed and having had a beloved relative pass this week and having been mistreated by folks who lack compassion and understanding about such things. I was feeling like I should talk a bit about injustice. All one needs to do is google, quotes on injustice, and you realize quickly that all the worlds great authors and orators wrote about the subject. Then you start to realize that this is a subject that has been discussed at length throughout generations and over millenia. Finally one starts to realize that injustice is just a part of society, civilized or otherwise it subsists in our culture, it exists in nature, and perhaps by human nature it's ingrained in us that you must either endure it or impose it on someone else. So speak up about injustice, call out evil, be it the management at your work place, the leaders you see running this country into the ground, or the treatment of an person or a creature. We all have a responsibility to rise up against evil and not let it perpetuate into the future generations. 

Justice is not blind, justice is bought and sold at the highest levels of our courts, it's traded and bartered for favors by lobbyists, to old white men with power and wealth. To quote the seminal metal band Metallica, And Justice for all "Justice is lost, justice is raped, justice is done". 

Crocus kotschyanus 'Reliant' Clumping up nicely in a plunge bed.
Oh ya, flower bulbs, the autumn crocus collection is definitely doing it's thing, this has actually been one of those nice crisp, dry autumns where it doesn't even really feel like Fall has kicked yet because the leaves are holding strong on the trees, but they are starting to get those lovely reds, golds and every shade of orange and brown in between.

Crocus thomasii and C. carthwritianus 'marcel' the lovely false saffrons just do better and better for me every year and despite my attempts at becoming a legitimate saffron farmer, C. sativus doesn't seem to persist for me through a season or two. 


The weather has been remarkably wonderful as we moved into October, Dry and crisp for the most part, highs in the 70's and lows into the 40's for the most part in the evenings.

Cheers,
Mark

Friday, September 28, 2018

After the Autumnal Equinox Comes


"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there." Ray Bradbury Farenheit 451


 So I took a long walk around the garden this past evening, I had meant to put up a post on the flowers of the autumnal equinox as I have done in the past. But somehow time slipped by me and almost a week has past since we hit that perfect moment where day and night are equal in length.

So all the pictures in these two collages were taken on evening of September 27 when the length of day is now 11 hours and 52 minutes. And tomorrow it will be 3 minutes and 6 seconds shorter.
I really just focused on the Autumn Crocus and Colchicum that are in bloom, although I could have found a few more flowers if I had pushed the issue. I like the shades of lavender and pink, it seems to be a subdued color pallette for the coming of winter, almost as if the flowers are telling you it's time to fade away from the bright neon glow of summers Petunia's bedded en masse. Time to take a closer look at the intricate details of the flowers that will soon fade away with the first hard frost, and won't be seen again until the days once again begin to lengthen. I really wish I wasn't writing in memorandums here every so many months, but it's come to that point in life where the good friends and relatives are aging out.


In Loving Memory:
Oh to walk down those racks of vintage's in glass in the little Chelsea Lane store, near the duck pond in Bend where Auntie Raissa made her place. Thank you for so many memories from Pacifica and the Packaging Store, to Bend and Chelsea Lane. You may not have left a garden for your soul to rest at, but you left me so many precious memories I'll never forget you. Rest in Peace and may your soul be free.



Monday, September 17, 2018

Summers End

“To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.”
– Ann Patchett

The Autumn Colchicums with long summer bloomers


We all know that day, the crisp cool morning, the dew is heavy and you can see your breath as you walk out in the now dark early morning hours. By noon the foggy dew is burning off hard and by afternoon it's warm and the flannel comes off. Oh, these are the halcyon days. I've used that quote by Walt Whitman before, but I don't know if I went into the etymology. I mostly liked it because I used to follow a travel blog of some retired teachers, who bought a boat, named her the Halcyon and went about exploring the rivers, lakes and oceans wherever they could take her. 

The Halcyon,-I took this from wikipedia- From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beachwaves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the "halcyon days," when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successful.
My Halcyon days often involve fishing, and off the Pacific Coast where storms can ravage, I envy old Aeolus and his ability to restrain the wind and keep it calm, because when it's calm like the past few weekends, you would have found me at Salmon camp, following the ways of the indigenous coastal tribes who knew that when you had a Halcyon day you went to get the Salmon and stock up for the winter ahead.


It's been a wonderful end to summer, Salmon camp was successful and the fall bloomers have started in well. The rain has been here and gone and back again. Which is the way that I most enjoy it, a day or two of dry followed by a wet one makes for the perfect, easy end to summer. It's also really nice not to have to water anymore!

While I do have a huge amount of fall projects I need to get done ahead of the real "weather", I hope to be back here every so often with some fall blooming bulb pics. 

Showers this weekend, followed by sun and nice weather in the 70's. 

Cheers,

Mark



Saturday, September 1, 2018

It is Finished


The shipping season has ended!

Thank you so much to the loyal customers who put in orders this year and welcome to the new folks that are enriching the garden. I for one am looking foward to the fall, harvesting the produce from the vegetable garden, some salmon fishing  to stock the freezer for the long winter I have a feeling is coming. The kiddo is back to school soon and the heat wave has broken, its starting to legitimately feel like fall is here. Every few days a different Autumn Crocus is coming on now. The Naked ladies are up. I'll be back to blogging about them after some salmon fishing trips, but here are a few for you to enjoy now and look forward to purchasing on next years list.



Colchicum lateum




Colchicum davisii
Temps in the low 80's and nice cool evenings, the yellow jackets are about the most annoying thing about this season as they seem to be think as thieves right now.

Cheers!

Mark

Friday, August 3, 2018

"We’ll read in the autumn evenings; we’ll read many books, and a beautiful new world will open up before us.... "

“We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor.”
                                    Anton Chekov-The Cherry Orchard

Oh, the parallels of this story to my life, the property on which Illahe sits is an old cherry orchard, I have a daughter named Anya and she is a virtuous and strong young woman much like the character in the play. The perpetual and endless labor of working the land. Clawing one finger hold at a time toward the top of the lower middle class........maybe some parallels are lost there, the aristocratic land holdings and such. I'm happy  to be much more the serf that bought the cherry orchard type. But I don't want to cut it down just yet. Too many harvests left in this lifetime. 

There was a small interest in the Carnivorous plants I was selling last year, I think I'll offer a few more of those again. I still have some nice Darlingtonia californica that I thought would be way more popular but really you all need to buy more of these so I can justify the water usage. On the non bulbous front I'll have some more of the Epipactus to sell as well.

Anya and I have been busy with the harvest, We setup in the shade of the cherry trees and thank the gods for some cooler weather! That's a stroke of luck I wasn't counting on, since it's been such a hot summer. 

Keep checking back because the list is coming soon!

Cheers, 

Mark Akimoff

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Harvest Time

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” 

Hmmmm.......Sound familiar to anyone? Seems to reflect some current situations we see today.......Imagine being the press secretary for such a buffoon. Professional liar. I think George Washington said it simply "It's better to offer no excuse than a bad one". I make no apology for politicizing a blog that is mostly about flower bulbs and i'll offer no apology for filling a political blog with so many posts about flower bulbs. 

Amaryllis belladona bulb


The harvest is on! The repotting soil is stacked by the yard, the racks of bulk bulb bins are laid out in the shop, the packing tape is locked in the dispenser. Here's to hoping it's a been a productive year!

The heat wave has broken, the first day below 90 in some time and finally a cool cloudy day, perfect weather to start the harvest!

Catalog coming soon.

Mark

Monday, July 9, 2018

Calochortus clavatus var. clavatus


“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.” John Keats




Calochortus clavatus var. clavatus


Keats wrote that in a love letter to his fiance, Fanny Brawne, but he died 3 years after the engagment, and before they could receive the consent of Fanny's Mother, to wed, apparently she didn't approve of Keats..........I guess a poet was too much of a risk back in those days. You don't want to end up being "a liability to someones career", I guess. Such a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions really.

I was following a posting on the PBS discussion emails about late blooming Calochortus. The C. clavatus var. clavatus above is the last to bloom for me. Now comes the season of the summer Gladiolous and Acidanthera. C. clavatus var. clavatus hails from the coastal and valley foothills of Southern California. Were one to take that iconic trip up Mullholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains above Los Angeles you could encounter this variety growing along the roadside. This is one of the drier clime species for sure, with the average annual rainfall in it's type local hitting somewhere around 13" per year. The average lows it sees are pretty mild as well, it's been down into the 20's for me, but would likely seldom if ever see this type of a low in the wild. I haven't noticed any pollinators on this one yet, but I sure do hope it sets seed.

Catalog out sometime in Early August.

We are locked into our typical modified meditteranean summer now, highs in the 80's, comfortably cool at night, dew still on the grass in the morning.

Cheers,

mark


Thursday, July 5, 2018

Summer Fun


"The most successfull people are those who do all year long what they would othwerwise do on summer vacation"
                                                                 Mark Twain


By this account i'm woefully unsuccessful, if I could I would travel constantly, see all the new places, catch fish in far off lands and botanize the world. But until that lottery ticket hits, I remain for the most part shackled to the desk and bound to the paycheck. But every once in awhile I escape, or am granted the freedom to use those accrued vacation hours to see what can be seen.
The Rock gardens were bursting with color, although I think you could even push it a few weeks out for some pretty spectacular shows. 

Just back from a fun visit to my sisters place in Reno. Took the kiddo to Tahoe for the first time and we swam in that beautiful blue water. Toured the Tesla Giga Factory and marvelled at mans scientific and technological advances. Seeing that huge building, I kind of wonder what it must have been like for the first explorer who wandered into the Valley of the Kings. Just amazing what people are capable of building when they decide they want to go bigger then everyone else. 

Despite many awesome moments on this fun summer vacation trip, a highlight for me was a quick hike up around 7,000' in the Sierra Nevada. Below are a few pics.




What a beautiful natural rock garden setting can be found around Incline Lake. 

I love finding Monkeyflowers, not the most floriferous version of Mimulus tilingii i've ever seen but it had nice large flowers. 

Pussy paws, phlox and lupines in a veritable carpet.

We didn't get to any snow where we were at and I would have loved to have had more time for exploration above and beyond the ridges. But I will be back for more of that with more time at some point I'm sure.



Catalog update:

So it's looking like the dry spring and early summer have most of the stuff going dormant now, Still waiting for a few Calochortus to call it quits for the season, but so far it's looking like I'll be able to start harvest around the end of July which would make for an early August release of the bulb catalog. Stay tuned for more updates. 

Cheers, 
Mark

Monday, June 4, 2018

Cypella herbertii

Cypella herbertii

William Herbert was a British botanist, illustrator and Poet, He is probably best known for some of his early treatments of the Amaryllidacea, but also published works on Crocus. John Lindley the very well known botanist who studied with Hooker and Banks, named this species for Herbert, who should be more widely known for his contribution to the study of flower bulbs.
It's a wonderful,easy and long blooming plant, these are only three years from seed and they seem to just bloom through the season all the way up to frost. I dug this clump and overwintered it in my unheated barn, in an aquatic plant basket filled with sawdust. It never got watered from November until late March and the foliage only started to wither and turn brown in the later part of Feburary. The range seems to be "almost totally confined to complex of grasslands ecosystems of Río de La Plata, the most extensive area of grasslands in Southeastern South America" to quote the work THE TYPE OF CYPELLA HERBERTII SUBSP. BREVICRISTATA RAVENNA (IRIDACEAE: TIGRIDIEAE)1 LEONARDO PAZ DEBLE2 , FABIANO DA SILVA ALVES3, Which deals with a subspecies but contains a wealth of information on the genus itself.

Sunny and Warm, as was most of May. We saw a few sprinkles move through this weekend, but it was also in the 80's for a portion of it. Looks like it might be a hot summer if this spring was an indicator. 

Might be slowing down on the bulb posts for a bit, as I have a bumper Cherry crop to harvest in between some much needed botanical explorations. I'll keep updating on the status of the bulb catalog as I get closer to the harvest window. 

Cheers,

Mark

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

The Seed Producers

"Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds." Norman Vincent Peale


I have been lucky in my life to have met a few of the amazing seed collectors like Ratko and Halda, who enriched our gardens. But I have also been lucky to have met some amazing seed producers as well. Today we toured Heritage Seedlings amazing native seed production facility in the rich soil at the headwaters of the Little Pudding River outside of Mcleay.


Lynda Boyer is an amazing seed grower, producing some very high quality native seed for restoration projects around the valley. The tour of her production fields was knowledge filled to say the least. 

You have to look closely but this is an actual seed production block of Calochortus tolmei. Pretty cool to see little rows of plants all lined up producing copious seed pods

Kinda made me think of the possibilities of row cropping a few of the illahe Rare bulb selections for mass production!

Amy Bartow literally wrote the book on native seed production, I mean literally and it's called the "Native Seed Production Manual for the Pacific Northwest". Some years ago she gave a group of Chemeketa Community College students a tour of the Corvallis Plant Material Center NRCS production facility, amazing tools and technology combined with grass roots farming knowledge makes for a pretty spectacular operation.

My hats off to the seed producers, the ones who work hard to bring us the material that starts our gardens, our restoration plots, our wetlands, and prairies would be long gone if it weren't for them. 

Sunny, warm, bulbs senescing for the season, veggies and bedding flowers coming on strong. 

Cheers, 
Mark

Monday, May 14, 2018

Renaming the name



 "The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another."
Douglas Adams-The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy


I could have chosen a lot of different quotes since I was in the mood for some Douglas Adams, and he has written so many brilliant things. Of course that quote was written in 1979, and here we are 39 years later and one of the dirtiest, foulest, ethic's lacking Attorney's one could imagine sits at the head of the EPA, the same agency he sued 14 times to ease regulations on pollution. He is straight up funded by the oil conglomerate, and responsible for selling out our clean water and our land. When you can't drink the water and you can't swim in the lake, and your lungs choke from the poison gasses in the air. When the cancer is everywhere because the plastic oozes from every landfill, and the sun can't penetrate the smog and the grass no longer grows green anywhere, is it then that you will realize that money is nothing without a life to spend it?

Just a thought, if work to you is just a paycheck, go do something else. Leave the seat in an environmental stewardship role to the ones who have a passion for it. Otherwise, you are just another Scott Pruitt, setting us all back decades and sucking the life from the planet.




Fritillaria biflora 'Grayana', or is it  now Fritillaria biflora var. ineziana? They seem to be always renaming the name.
This Beauty is a rare one, impacted no doubt by the march of man on his quest towards total domination of the earth, left with only a small fraction of habitat, it may not be long before it's gone from the wild. Sure does good in the garden though, one of the latest of the California Fritillaria's to bloom, this one sometime is still going as June comes rolling around.



The Rock Garden at Illahe Nursery and Gardens on a late spring evening.

Absolutely stellar weekend weather, it hit 80 degrees, but still cooling off wonderfully at night. Looks like a good weather week ahead.

Cheers, 
Mark

Friday, May 11, 2018

Onions and Inspiration

"The mediocre teacher tells.
 The good teacher explains. 
The superior teacher demonstrates. 
The great teacher inspires."
 William Arthur Ward



Allium unifolium 'Wayne Roderick'
Much has been written about Wayne Roderick, if you don't know who he was then you should google it. I won't repeat the many accolades here but I wanted to nod to the inspiration he provided many, including myself. I never met him, but I followed his work intently, I've been to Tilden Park many times and I have a passion for many of the Fine California Native plants he championed. I was thinking about how many of these legendary, plantsfolk are fading away as the "greatest generation" have hit the golden years and gone beyond. I wonder who will fill there shoes, who will spread the botanical knowledge and interest in the information age. I will always think of Jack Poff, the aged gardener for Rae Selling Berry who taught me so many propagation tips and tricks that you can't learn from a book. I hope I can spread some of that knowledge around. Because at the end of it all, you may or may not be remembered for things you did. You may have a statute built for you, or you may even have a plant named for you. But many of these things can fade or find the bulldozer or be lost to antiquity. But as long as people pass the knowledge on, that is a legacy that will hold forever.

Camassia  cusickii 
This was my seed collection from the Wallowa Mt's many years ago now. It's been such a good doer you'll likely see it on the catalog list this year. I know the color is a little pale, and some might say washed out, but those tall, sweet foxtail like flower spikes are really quite resplendent. 

Headed for 80 degree weather this weekend, I caught two bee swarms this week, and I'm getting a new motor put on my boat! If this isn't the Dolce Vita, I don't know what is?

Cheers, 
Mark

Monday, April 23, 2018

Nor Cal


Just a quick photo tour of  my trip to California, had to go lay Grandma Shook to rest. Botanizing is a great way to get the mind off of missing someone special and plants are always a recharge for me anyway. 

Calochortus amabalis
So this was in the hills above Calistoga where the fires burned this past fall. 
Ziagadenus in the Sonoma Hills
Mexican butterworts at California Carnivores, this epic nursery is just a few miles down the road from My grandma's house, I"m gonna miss those plant filled visits. 
California Carnivores is a plant collectors type of place. 
I need one of these for teaching about water quality and the carnivorous plant connection, almost every kid anywhere has heard of or seen a venus fly trap so it's the ideal intro plant to teach botany and evolutionary adapatation.
Made it home to see the cherrys and mustard in full bloom, a hive of bees buzzing happily away and a pretty solid week of good weather. Life is good when it's like this.

Cheers,
Mark