Happy Solstice and Great Conjunction!

 "Saturn doesn't ask us to give up our dreams, only to make them real" Steven Forest

I didn't get to see the great conjunction on the night of the solstice and that was kind of a bummer, but I looked into the low western sky on a clear night last week and I got to see the two planets pretty close to each other. I'm hoping it cleans up later this week so I can see that. My love of the oceans great wilderness and mystery has evolved into a love of the stars as I'm steadily learning to orient myself using the constellations. 

The usual suspects are blooming on this the longest night. The first hoop petticoat of the year and one of my favorites for the Christmas season the Amaryllis. 

N. cantabricus blooming on the solstice

Hippeastrum adding it's Christmas cheer to the house

Well, here we go, another winter is underway! This is the time I get to go ski through the silent wilderness. For me it's a time of replenish before another busy season of plants and pruning, weeding and shoveling and the general garden busy that comes with spring. 

Enjoy the longest, darkest night. From her on out the spring is closer and another turn of the calendar offers a new year of hope and promise. 

Happy Solstice, go look at the stars and figure out where you are in this universe, 

Mark

Thanksgiving

 

“Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.” Mark Twain

Some Fritillaria striata seedlings I'm thankful for!
They seem to be trucking along for November though, Always makes me 
nervous when I see things emerge so early.......or is it still late in the season?

Crocus niveus
Proving the answer to the question above is that it's late in the season. 

I have a bulb of some sort in bloom every month of the year at Illahe,  often November is given to the latest of the fall crocus, and occasionally to the the hoop petticoat narcisuss that to me starts the official beginning of a new bulb season. This year it looks like the award for last of the season goes to Crocus niveus, from the Sun dappled shade of Grecian Olive groves, growing over limestone. This species with it's creamy white petals and golden throat does seem more like spring then fall. But I'll take it for the season extender that it is! 

Happy Thanksgiving from Covid Lockdown, where we are keeping our circles tight, hoping not to exterminate anyone this year by careless and wanton disregard for public safety like the antimaskers. Please be safe and stay healthy. Be thankful that you weren't born in a time before vaccines offered at least some hope on the horizon. 

Mark

The first frost

 “All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I've always loved that epic tale, since the first time I read the books at 9 years old, and again at 13 and again at 36 when I read them to my daughter every night before bedtime. Something pretty timeless about the tale of good versus evil and the quest of small folk to overcome adversity and trials and defeat foes much larger than themselves. Speaks volumes to our situation in America today really.  I've always liked the saying "deep roots are not reached by the frost". Frost it did finally, this morning the temperature was 26 as I left illahe for work, downtown Salem it was 31, enough to knock the Dahlia's down finally and end the growing season. Of course at illahe I have a pretty good selection of overwintering veggies for sustenance in the garden, cabbage, kale, collard greens and cardoons predominate and they all seem to perk up with the frost and coolness of fall. This weekend was all work as I winterized the patio tropicals and snugged up the potted bulbs into the coldhouse for the winter.

I love this season, and would be reveling in it more if weren't feeling like we are engaged in the biggest game of capture the flag the country has ever seen. My ballot has been cast and I can only hope now that a light from the shadows shall spring and that once again the flag of my country will stand proudly for liberty and justice for all, for the immigrants like my family once were waiting on the shore for the golden opportunity. That the flag will stand for a new equality for all  regardless of color, religion, race or gender. That once again the flag will  be something I can be proud of and not ashamed of. Vote as if your life depends on it because it does. 

 

The annual pumpkin carving at the nursery was a success, of course I think my fish took first place but we didn't really judge it and I think everyone came away from that evening as a winner. 

Narcissus obsoletus
Just a wonderful fall blooming daffodil to welcome the change in seasons. 

The crew brought out some creativity and passion as we combined a socially distance oktoberfest with the pumpkin carving fun. 

Crocus niveus
with it's creamy white set on golden hues

So far Crocus thomasii is proving to the be the winner from the saffron group in Western Oregon, showy, with ever increasing clumps this one is tenacious.

I've been tracking the frost dates at illahe for over 10 years now and it seems like 7 out of 10 times it's been around halloween. It almost always falls when the pumpkins are carved so this years was just a bit early. I seem to remember one year it was well into the second week of November. Regardless, this year I was ready for it and ready for the changes ahead, changes for the better. 

Mark

Autumn Crocus

 

“Autumn leaves don't fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.” Delia Owens

It is starting to feel like a right proper autumn with the leaves changing, the cool nights, the crickets song louder, more hurried and desperate and all through the nursery the lilac, white, yellow and red collage of the Autumn crocus in bloom now. My own personal favorites are those in the saffron group, but even the pale pink Crocus kotschyanus that is massed out by the driveway adds to the season. 

Crocus cartwhrightianus 'Marcel' looking fanstastic on a late autumn evening. The long exposure and low fstop seemed to make the throat colors pop more intensely. I actually had a review from a customer once who bought this and was disappointed with the lack of deep color in the throat they had seen in a picture online. What was it someone said once 'it's hard to see when your imagination is out of focus'

Crocus goulimyi
I may have distributed this once accidently as C. tournefortii, if the flowers close at night it's definitely C. goulimyi. 

My saffron production is coming along!

Crocus goulymi 'Mani White'
A new one for me this year thanks to Jane McGary, a beautiful cream white flowered version.

Crocus thomasii
I'm thinking about doing a saffron tasting comparing the wild types with the domestic, could be interesting to see what people find the best. 

Just a quick blog entry to show I'm still alive, although fighting hard to maintain my mental health in this trying time. I normally love the autumn and hope the season lasts as long as it can, but for some reason I find myself wishing for November and wanting a hard, killing frost to end this season so can try to survive winter and hope for a better spring. 

A decent weather maker is supposed to arrive this weekend with an inch or so of rain forecasted over the days off. I'll probably shut up the open sidewall on the greenhouse and think about bringing the bulbs in under cover. 

Mark

The Autumnal Equinox

 “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

― Terry Pratchett

Oy Vey.......this year. I don't even really know what to say at this point, the flower bulbs season was good and then it was over and even more hell broke loose then covid. My beloved santiam canyon burnt to the ground, fueled by a freakish September Wind storm, the likes of which I've never seen in my 40 years here,  filling the valley with air so toxic it couldn't be measured with the standard metric chart. For days it was like living on Mars, the voles were out in the middle of the day because it was so dark that it seemed like perpetual twilght, I watched the cat catch 7 of them in the half hour after noon.  When the non stop lightning storm finally ushered in the rain and washed out the air, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. I sit here feeling like I'm doing that brainstorm exercise in that writers workshop I took when I got divorced, the one where the instructor said write down 3 random ideas and then connect them with a string of consiousness. This feels almost made up, but it actually happened and it's been that kind of a year where you just seem to be saying it can't possibly get any worse but it does get worse and then it gets worse than that and then it gets worse than that. 

If it weren't for the flowers it would be even darker. 

Zephyranthes grandiflora

Colchicum 'Rosy Dawn'

Gladiolus in the border

Crocosmia in the late summer flower beds

Colchicum variegatum

The gladiolus as the sunsets on the autumnal equinox

So I walked around on the equinox and took some photo's of a few flower bulbs blooming in the garden, the rain has freshened thing up a bit and the green is starting to return to the landscape with the cooler nights now. 

Mark

The 2020 Bulb sales season has ended

“We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts.”
― John Ruskin

The 2020 flower bulb sales season is officially closed for the year, I want to say a huge thank you the the loyal customers who have made this endeavor possible. And a big thank you to all the new customers we had this year! It was one of our best years ever, and I think that is a good sign that lot's of us are staying home and gardening and thinking about beautifying the immediate space around us. I hope the bulbs you ordered bring you many years of joy and color in your landscape. 

I was walking around this labor day evening as the last order was filled and admiring all the Colchicums starting to bring the pale pink and lavender show to the early fall landscape. Hopefully I can keep up with blogging about the flowers, as there is another species or selection in bloom now every day. 

Thank you so much for all the business, this year we will be looking forward to rebuilding some of the infrastructure that needs updating at Illahe, several of the raised beds have lost structural integrity and need to be rebuilt. The plan is still in the works for a climate controlled greenhouse at some point. For the next few months we will enjoy watching the fall bloomers and get ready for the seed sowing season to begin, when we tuck away the plants for the wet winter months. 

I hate to even give the weather report here because it's so bizzare, a wind storm of notable size blew through the valley last night, ushering in a thick layer of smoke so that it's 8:3o in the morning and one can barely see enough to walk outside. The warm, wind has an ethereal feel to it and the sky is ominous and forlorn. Hopefully this blows over soon. 

Mark

The sale season is closed for 2020, I'll leave the catalog up here for reference purposes only.

 

The Harvest and Catalog Update

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."
 ~ Vidal Sassoon



It's that time of year again when work hours go from long days to the seemingly never ending, the bulbs are being harvested and repotted and the bags of saleable stock are being lined out on the shelves ready for your orders. 4 yards of my custom blended potting mix is piled up and shovel ready. With a little luck and determination, I'm hoping the 2020 catalog will be out late next week. I will continue to update here.

For my day job at the Lord and Schryver Conservancy, this is a fun time as I get to be a bulb buyer instead of a seller. This time of year I'm busy with research, planning and ordering to recreate the historic flower displays that Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver drew and planted at the famed Gaiety Hollow garden. This particular year I'm recreating the 1956 design, that featured heavy use of lily flowered tulips and the newly developed Ideal Darwin varieties of the day. I thought I would share a few of the fall bulb catalog gems I ran across in my research this year:

Gone are the days when you could get 100 Fritillaria recurva for $12, as in this 1929 W.E. Marhsall and Co Fall bulbs catalog. 

How about the selection of species tulips in this 1956 Wayside Gardens catalog!

It's fun to read through the old catalogs and to try to match the selections with today's modern varieties and occasionally find a heirloom that has survived the test of time.  

As it never fails to do, the weather turned hot and dry for the harvest, temps moderating a bit this week after a solid run of days in the 90's last week.



Stay tuned for a catalog release date that is coming soon!

Cheers,

Mark

The last flowers before the harvest

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate." Bertrand Russell

Well here I've been arguing for the restoration of our Liberty and the extinction of Tyranny, but perhaps this Bertrand Russell quote really does ring the bell. It's hitting way too close to home now as the secret police are marching through the streets of Portland (my former home, and birthplace of my daughter) abducting people at random. Some are just advocating for the extinction of racism in our systems of criminal justice, some are no doubt trouble makers painting on concrete, and smashing glass. But I'll go to my grave saying human lives matter over property any day and the exercise of tyranny in the name of capitalist greed may have reached the boiling point and the melting pot was already full to the brim anyway. Seems to me someone is playing a dangerous game trying really hard to get the pot to spill over. 

Bulbs, yes the bulbs. It is my fortune to have an escape, where one can turn off any electrical signal be it cellular, digital, wifi, broadband, or some other wavelength and walk into a yard full of flowers. I grew a few rows of cut flowers  this year thinking I might sell some produce from the garden and offer cut flowers along the side of the road but lately i've been giving them away and it brings far more joy to let people walk through the u-cut and gather a little bit of my heaven and refuge to take with them to the apartment or house that's not as floristically rich. 

Calochortus clavatus ssp. clavatus
The last of the California Calochortus to flower for me, hailing from the south western part of the state, hailing from Los Angeles county North to San Benito county with a center of prominence in San Louis Obsispo county. I went out to the greenhouse without the tripod, hence the depth of field issues on this late evening shot, but I find it rather artistic. 

The club haired mariposa has been covered in the blog before but I thought I would share a few photo's as it's the last of the summer species that will likely be in the catalog to finish up this year. As soon as it's done I'll get working on the bulb harvest. So teaser alert if all goes well, the summer bulb catalog should be out sometime in the next several weeks. I'll be sure to post updates. 

Playing around with various combination planters on the patio this year, I've been loving the Cypella herbertii with purple petunias but even better with a spray of Heliotrope 'Marine' flanking it as a foil. 

The glamini gladiolus I've been experimenting a lot with at my work gardens, these dwarf selections require no staking, and this year overwintered to make wonderful late June, early July shows in the formal gardens at Deepwood.

It's well into summer now as the mercury says it's on the way to 91 today. 

Praying for peace and the demise of the fascist menace in my time. 

Mark

"If ant hills are high in July, the coming winter will be hard" American Folklore

“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.”

― David Searls

I got out on the ocean a few weeks ago and that felt really good, caught a few salmon, lingcod and cabezon. I love all the quotes  you can read about seeing beyond the horizon. I'm reading a pretty in depth book about Magellens circumnavigation and it is something to think that ancient humans really did sometimes see the horizon as the end. The book literally spends the first 300 pages or so just getting to the point where they are sailing down the Guadalquivir.  I'm trying to see beyond so many things right now, to envision a better place for humanity and I have to be honest It's not that easy. We need more folks to put the boat in gear and place the compass needle at 270 degrees, or whatever compass point gives you a horizon and head for better times. 

Lilium davidii 'Berry Red'
I wish I could go back and talk to Jack Poff, Mrs. Berry's long time gardener and one of my early mentors about this one, I'm sure he would have a story about it, and if he didn't I bet he would make one up. A huge thanks to the wonderful growers at Wild Ginger Farms for getting this one out on the market! Now if they would only get that Scoliopus bigelovii that grew up on the hillside propagated! wink, wink. I bought a bulb of from Wild Ginger last year at the Bush Pasture Park sale and it's now occupying a prominent place next to the treasured Rocks Peony and an Edgeworthia in the slight shade of a purple leaved flowering plum, towering to 6' tall with it's deep red flowers back set on the purple, it's like the dying embers of a fire  when you see it backlit by a summer sunset. 

The rock garden is a splash of color and a few things that will be moved, I have a fondness for these native Checkermallows from my years spent restoring the Willamette Valley Wetland ecosystems around Salem. They do get a bit rangy as they go to seed and often fall over. They really do need to be out in the wet meadow part of the property but they seed around and I can't get myself to pull them out until they are 6' tall and it's too late!

I've been swamped with folks asking about the summer bulb catalog, and I will say that it's coming soon! I have a busy couple of weeks coming up though and so I'm tentatively going to say it should be out around the first or second week of August.

Cheers,

Mark

The End of June

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good–and how he treats people who can’t fight back.” – Abigail Van Buren

Well June pretty much flew by, it's hard to believe this weekend coming up is already the fourth of July. Back when I was a kid, I sometimes worked summers for a hay bailing outfit in the valley, cleaning up the straw left behind after the swathers and combines had taken the millions of pounds of tall fescue and perennial ryegrass seed that the Willamette is famous for. It was often an index of the season if the straw bailing started before the fourth of July as that meant it had been an early season. I spent a lot of Independance days, however driving a tractor towing a hay bailer at about 2 miles an hour through hundreds of acres of windrowed straw. Every so often I could see the fireworks as tiny little puffs of light from one of the valley towns like Brownsville or Tangent. But usually the dew would come down and the straw would get too wet sometime around midnight, long after the fire works had finished. We would pile into the farm pickup for the hour or so drive back to Salem, faces covered in dust, and sometimes we would talk about how many mice had been picked up by the bailer tines and flung into the waiting talons of  the red tailed hawks that followed us around the field in search of an easy meal. No big life lessons here really, just recollections and memories of growing up in the country. The spring gave way to summer although the weather didn't totally agree who was in charge as it went from 90 and sunny to 50's and rainy this past week. 

The lily bloom is going well this year. 

This is a new one for me, the supposedly Hardy Amaryllis 'Alaska' I'm trying out next to the colchicums in the foundation bed.  

I've been adding a lot of lilies to the rock garden lately. 

Lilies and a Hesperis foil, make a good combination.

Anya and I and some of her school mates made the brutal descent into Tumble lake from French Creek to see what we could find of the mountain flora. I was thinking it was early but pleasantly surprised to find some nice things blooming. That is Detroit lake in the background. 

It was a great hike, saw some Calochortus, saxifrage, a lot of different color forms of penstemon, it was early for the lilies though. I remember nice patches of L. washingtonianum from this hike and they were still a few weeks out. 

Anya finished up her Junior year aquaponics homeschool project and turned in her final report. It was a fun project and we both learned a lot about what works and what doesn't in using fish to make fertilizer for your vegetable production. One big lesson, the racoons will wreak all sorts of havoc in the fish ponds, but they don't particularly care for baby ceasar romaine which produces well  in that environment. Hard to believe she is a Senior in Highschool now.

My little pastoral country road got 2 huge streetlights installed this week and it really rocked my world, no notice from the county and PGE told me they can put them wherever they want, I literally have flood lights shining directly into my windows and can read a book in the middle of the night from the intensity. It made me think back to those long drives home from the straw fields well past midnight on the country roads of the willamette valley and how I may have taken for granted the ability to look up and see the stars at night. It's sad to see the sprawl continue unabated, the valley isn't the same place as it was when I was a kid, that's for sure.  You probably haven't heard the last of this one as I'm gravely concerned about the effects of 24 hour lighting on the nursery production and am doing everything I can to get rid of them. 

From one of my favorite bands, the Arcade Fire:

                              "Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small

Then we can never get away from the sprawl
Living in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains
And there's no end in sight
I need the darkness someone please cut the lights"


Mark

June..........oh June, you used to be a summer started.

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

I'm still here, although somewhat stunned, shocked, baffled, disheartened, enraged, and engaged in what it is going on in the country right now. I could fill pages and pages with discourse on the murder of American citizens by Police, unleashing the Army on it's own populace, the rise of a racist and fascist leadership in America, white supremicists patrolling the streets of my own home town with assault rifles and all the hell that is breaking loose coming with it. If you don't know where I stand at this point politically then please thumb back a few pages in this blog and figure it out. If any of my standpoints offend you then I have made sure to do my bit to speak my mind. I recognize how privileged I am to have been able to get an education, find gainful employment doing what I love and even start an independant small business without facing racism and discrimination that could have made all my dreams impossible. Take a minute, no take all the time you need to process your own privilege and then think about how you can be active in making sure other people get the same opportunities we did. If you are reading this there is a chance you have some disposable income to spend on flower bulbs, so that means you likely made the most of the opportunities that were given to you. Lets all start to think about how we can use our privilege to give opportunities to others who have been less fortunate then us. 

There are flowers in the garden, seems almost silly to be talking about them as our country descends into chaos but I had to get a June post in between attending protests and planning the overthrow of the Nazi regime currently seated in the White House. 

The calochortus look great in the rock garden

The rock garden is really starting to come into it's own at illahe

The marks on the ground are the addition to the rock garden at illahe, It's actually done now and we added a succulent bed, with a road punching through to the RV rental campground that we rent out to hiker/bikers/

Some years ago, Rick Lupp donated a bunch of plants to a Norman Singer Endowment funded Sensory Rock garden project at the Oregon School for the blind, I asked Rick if he could put together a collection of Alpines that the blind and visually impaired could "feel" there way through a mountain top. That garden was eventually bulldozed for development and the blind kids kicked out on the street by the State of Oregon. This is a rescued Dianthus from that project, and thank goodness for kind hearted people like Rick who would give to those who have less. For a while at least some kids who may never get a chance to botanize above the treeline got to experience that. Lets make opportunities for those that are less fortunate then us. 

A marguerite daisy in the rock garden at illahe. This was a chance seedling by a local grower who was sowing clear white marguerites but ended up with this lovely pink form. I propagated a bunch of them overwinter and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites.

Maybe I really run a nursery business not to sell flower bulbs but to be able to have a forum where political dissent can be featured. The flowers just make it all possible. 

The weather is wet

Mark

The May Garden

“How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em.”

― Shel Silverstein

These days are just packed, despite having no resturants, movie theaters or bars to visit, the boat launches mostly closed so I can't go fishing. I somehow have managed to fill about every minute of every day with something to keep me busy. Lot's of work in the garden lately, as I'm doing an extra big vegetable garden planting this year. I had noticed over the past few years it had gotten progressively smaller and smaller until it seemed to balance out the needs of the two individuals that live at illahe most of the time. But this seems like a time to have a good supply of food on hand so the planting season has been a busy one. There are flowers as well, and I finally managed a quick walk around the garden and greenhouse with the camera on a lazy sunday afternoon that alternated between sun breaks and thunderstorns. 

The Calochortus season has begun

The Rock garden has really been a lovely respite through the "social distancing days"

Allium unifolium 'Wayne Roderick' and Cammassia cusickii in the fading light.

Calochortus luteus

Townsendia's have always delighted me, I grew some in pots plunged in a sand bed this year. I really wish I had more time to do the alpines I love justice. 

The last of the Fritillaria to bloom out in the raised beds, F. biflora grayana

The Calochortus are like paintings, lovely paintings done in natures hues.

Cypella, I've been doing more subtropicals on the patio during the summer and overwintering them in an unheated shop or the greenhouse, and this one is a fun long season bloomer. 

The iris collection is expanding every year. I think the Dutch call this 'Eye of Tiger'

I have sworn that I finally identified this Iris that was growing neglected in a corner of the yard at our first house on Tolman St. in Portland as Iris ensata 'great white heron'. But the foliage is more like a bearded then a Japanese. Whatever it is I have propagated thousands of them and put them everywhere for the lovely fragrant hankerchief sized flowers. 

Iris douglasiana one of our wonderful native species that grows so well with so little care.

Looks to be a wet week ahead, as soggy sneakers were to be had after a morning walk to check the greenhouse. Good for the plants though as I don't really like to start irrigating anything if I don't have to until well into June.

Cheers,

Mark