New beginnings

Flowering Pacific native dogwood, Cornus nuttallii

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I am too excited to concentrate on writing; I just "got" a garden and we are moving in already in the end of next week. For the moment, it is all happiness; the spring is here, everything is blooming and I am walking with my feet barely touching the ground. The new garden (it feels odd to say "my" quite yet) is far too well-manicured for a person like me, which gives me something to work on. I like my gardens a bit wild and not too proper; I prefer admiring formality somewhere else than in my backyard (for it truly can be beautiful, too). I am already making a list of "must-have's" (oh, here we go again...) and plants of nostalgia to be included in this garden. After having made two gardens, I hope I know how to edit my plans and not to overdo things, however enthusiastic I might sound. But my main project will be planting a kitchen garden, the girls are just in the right age to enjoy growing their own veggies and flowers. And since we are not travelling anywhere this summer, there is a chance we get to enjoy the results too. So, being mentally too busy for anything else than family-centered thoughts, I just wanted to give a short update with some pictures from gardens around me, full of blooming beauties.
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The excitement, the true excitement, is always in starting again. Nothing's worse than an accomplished task, a realized dream.

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- Marilyn Harris -
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Thriving forget-me-nots, Myosotis sylvatica

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Species Rhododendron, with nodding, pink bell-formed flowersK

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Blooming white lilac, Syringa vulgaris 'Alba'
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Blooming lilac, Syringa vulgaris

Unexpected fellows

Anemone nemorosa 'Vestal'

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I know very well that it is torture to go to a good nursery without having a garden to plant anything into, but I still can't keep myself off. I try to tell myself that this is an exercise in self-discipline, something that has never has been my strongest feature. A couple of days ago, I came home with three pots (tiny ones don't count...?) of ordinary wood anemones, which fill the forests of Southern Sweden and Finland this time of the year. Just look at the beautiful pictures by Slottsträdgårdsmästaren, showing what I am so desperately longing for just now...

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After the tiny flowers opened, they were are not at all the single, wild wood anemones I thought I had bought. Instead, they are Anemone nemorosa 'Vestal', a double-white wood anemone with a frill of white larger petals around a pompom-like centre. As these anemones lack their anthers, their flowers are sterile, which makes them quite long-lasting in the garden, unlike their wild sisters. And as 'Vestal' tends to nod its face downward for the first few days, hiding its frilly center, the nursery had incorrectly marked them as ordinary wood anemones. So now I'm wondering if I should go back and tell them, offering to pay more as these rare and refined ladies are more expensive... or just keep the secret and enjoy them without any guilt?

Confetti time

Prunus 'Accolade'

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The first, early varieties of cherries have almost finished their blooming. In the evening sun, some flowers were still clinging to the branches, like tired ballerinas after a beautiful performance, not willing to take off their pretty dresses... But soon they have to give up and join their fellows on the ground, already covered with pink confetti.

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People often shun once-blooming roses, but who would ever come upon complaining about cherries, that flower just as many times?

Weeds or vegetables?

"Taraxacum is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. They are native to Europe, North America and Asia and two species, T. officinale and T. eruthrospermum, are found as weeds worldwide".

(copied from Wikipedia)

Somewhere I snapped up the term plant racism; and wouldn't this be an excellent example of it? Poor dandelions, they probably are just trying to regain their territory... And it definitely is not their fault that they are so well-adapted to the "disturbed habitats" of the modern world, such as lawns and other sunny, open places.

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On Saturday, I had a walk at the Discovery Park in North Seattle, and found this wonderfully blooming field of dandelions and daisies. I thought it was so much prettier than a short-cropped lawn, but of course, many gardeners might argue with that. Then I learned that dandelion leaves are more nutritious than almost anything in the grocery store; higher in beta-carotene than carrots and the iron and calcium content is greater than in spinach. They also contain vitamins B-1, B-2, B-5, B-6, B-12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc...

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So there we have this free, amazingly healthy vegetable growing on virtually every lawn, ready to be harvested. I remember how I once cooked dandelion buds and tried to eat them with butter, but I was totally disappointed, as the bitter taste was not at all asparagus-like as promised. Maybe it is time to search for some new recipes and get into action?

Spotting ladybugs

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Euphorbias are now in full bloom, showing off their large trusses of chartreuse flowers inside the similarly coloured bracts, containing glistening drops of honey. Yesterday, I found this little guy having a sweet drink in the evening sun. The British and Australians call these kids traditional favourites for ladybirds, the Americans call them ladybugs, which is kind of cute too. Ladybird sounds a bit more romantic to me; I can't imagine that Lady Bird Johnson, a First Lady of the US in the 1960's would have called herself Lady Bug Johnson either...

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Sadly, many foreign species of ladybirds, like the seven dotted ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) so common in Europe, and the Asian lady beetle above (Harmonia axyridies) have either been introduced in North-America or arrived by hitch-hiking with ships. For a long time, they've been considered as useful insects as they feed of aphids and other scale insects; the first alien lady beetle species was introduced already in the 1880s to try to combat the Cottony cushion scale in California. To this date, more than 170 lady beetle species have been introduced to North America. But in reality, these foreign invaders are now outcompeting native beetles, and altering the fauna in North America, just like introduced species tend to do. So in fact, in the picture above, instead of musing over a sweet little ladybird or ladybug, we are looking at a biological control agent wreacking havoc in the ecosystem...

To help the native nine spotted ladybug and other native ladybugs scientists need to have detailed information on which species are still out there and how many individuals are around. To do this, the entomologists at Cornell University launched the Lost Ladybug Project, where everybody can join in spotting these little creatures. So if you feel like making a difference in an easy way, look for ladybugs and send Cornell pictures of them on email. This is a great summer science project for children and adults, just check out the pages above for loads of information and fun things - in addition to getting to help ladybugs, all "spotters" get their photos and names published on the project pages.

Happy, with tired feet

The view over Times Square from our hotel room...

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We had a quick but intensive long weekend in New York during the Easter break; everyone was exhausted by the end of each day. My youngest daughter (she's six) was not so sure she fully approved of NY city (too much smog, too much traffic and too many people) whereas the older one (now eight) thought it was cool (“Hey we can go to Broadway every night …”). I'm somewhere in between; I love the amazing energy of it all, but at the same time, I feel a bit claustrophobic without seeing any "real" soil and nature around me... NYC really is such an inspiring but demanding environment for a human being, both physically and mentally. I don't think I would be able to live there full time though; I would miss the bird song far too much.

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The Bethesda Fountain by the richly-ornamented Bethesda Terrace in front of the Lake in Central Park. It's sculpture, Angel of Waters, was designed by Emma Stebbins in 1873. The Boat House in the background.

Anyhow, we were very lucky with the weather and had some great play times in Central Park. The girls patted just about every dog that walked by, and they were many. I missed one of my objectives, to photograph the MoMA Sculpture Garden (the mother of all modern sculpture gardens, as John Walsh said), as I forgot my camera (!) that day and had to be content with just sitting there enjoying the sculptures in the sunshine. It really is such an amazing "garden"; with it's straight lines and rectangular forms, it visually connects so perfectly with the environment surrounding it. Anything else (like meandering lines and curving paths) would have felt like a joke in this extreme landscape of skyscrapers, stone and steel - you need the scale and size of Central Park to make a contrast to this huge city successfully. And happily, I got to see the MET exhibition with Pierre Bonnard's late interiors; his vibrant colours put me into a trance every time, I've never seen one single book or picture that can reproduce them correctly...

Closed between bird cherries and lilacs...

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I'm heading off for a little spring holiday with my family. Really, I would be as happy staying here, lying under a tree looking at it's newly unfolded leaves and musing over the wonder of spring.

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There is an old Swedish story about a shoemaker, who always hanged a sign on his door this time of the year, saying: "Stängt mellan hägg och syren"; "Closed between (the blooming of) bird cherries and lilacs".

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Hänryckningens tid, as they sometimes call spring in Sweden... a time of being filled with wonder and enchantment. The old shoemaker understood this so well, sitting in his garden and enjoying life waking up around him after a long and cold winter. Now, I don't have any bird cherries or lilacs, but the horse chestnuts look lusciously green and azaleas are coming out so I'll be content with that, even if they don't have any scent...

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The Parker-Ferson Residence revisited

Isn't it amazing to see how a residential area changes in just one hundred years?

The black and white picture is from 1913, showing the Parker-Ferson residence on the right. It is a large Neoclassical Revival house built 1909, just South from the Volunteer Park Water Tower in Capitol Hill. I took the second one yesterday, between the security bars at the top of the Water Tower. It is interesting to see how this beautifully green area with wonderful old trees was so bare just a hundred years ago; the temperate climate of Pacific Northwest really does to amazing things with plants here. Just look at the Douglas fir saplings at the bottom of the first, old picture: it is one of them, now almost hiding the large house from sight.

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First picture from Classic Houses of Seattle - High Style to Vernacular by Caroline T. Swolpe (2005), from Museum of History and Industry, Pemco Webster and Stevens Collection. Note the horse looking at the house in the lower right corner - compared with all the cars in the second...

Almost wordless Wednesday

And who did say that pink and yellow don't go together? The cherries are in full bloom, and it is pure bliss to my eyes...
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A sophisticated choice

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"I think that a planting near the house or round the terrace should be bold and, for want of a better word, sophisticated: so I usually exclude plants which really require a wilder setting such as heaths and brooms and, indeed all kinds of rock plants. For the same reason shrubs and trees should have character in their form, their foliage or their flower to gain a place where they will be seen all through the year. Magnolias, for instance, always look right. I do not know a variety which is not distinguished-looking at any time."

- Russel Page, The Education of a Gardener, 1962 -

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The Education of a Gardener in one of my most loved gardening books. I found my copy, a second edition from 1983, at the Avenue Book Store in Albert Park in 1999, and it has been on my bedside table since then. Russel Page's language is like the magnolias, always elegant and distinguished. Page constantly emphasizes that simple unity, aptness and mood of relaxation should be a gardener's aims, and where possible, gardens should take their cue from the surrounding context and landscape. He's reflections on garden design, plants and the surrounding landscape are born from several decades of thinking and working with gardens, and at the same time they are fresh and modern. Every now and then I pick up my dog-eared copy and read a couple of pages randomly, always feeling like I hear his voice through the pages.

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The magnolias are starting to flower here in Seattle. A bit late, but the cold winter seems not to have damaged the flowers. First out are Magnolia kobus and M. stellata, two of the hardiest varieties, which I think are in their wild simplicity some of the most beautiful magnolias. I am longing for a garden in which to plant these beauties and hopefully be staying long enough to enjoy the results.

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