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I was shocked to see that some of the seeds I planted back in November have sprouted already. These native plants really are very hardy.

Lupine and Gilia seedlings are braving the January cold and rain. I am curious how they will fare with spring still months away.

Native plants that did better than survive the chilly temps and snow cover include the checkermallows and the lupines in the native plant garden.

The first two photos are of Lupine species and the last three are Sidalcea. They were all started from seed over the last two years.

Speaking of seeds, winter is a time when invasive plants really come into focus as I walk around the neighborhood. There is an unusual English holly tree a few blocks away that demonstrates why hollies are so successful in spreading everywhere. Usually, hollies have berries in clusters of just a few but this tree has huge bunches of berries.

Not surprisingly, this tree has a lot of starlings and American robins around it, picking berries and dropping seeds for miles around.

When I walk our new puppy around the neighborhood I use the Merlin Bird ID app’s sound identification feature to identify what birds are around. Our north Seattle neighborhood is unusual in that it features a bounty of old, large native trees. There are large Douglas fir trees in many yards, some large western red cedar trees, and less common are Pacific dogwood, madrone, red alder, and bigleaf maples. Most of the landscaping here features non-native ornamental imported plants and lawns.

Birds that have been confirmed in our yard or within a few blocks of here include:

American robin–lots of these–dozens in small flocks mostly around berry- or fruit-producing trees, including cotoneaster, holly, mountain ash, and others.

Dark-eyed junco–always common here now (they used to be rare twenty years ago), they feed in small flocks and have nested in our yard the last few years.

House finch–many of these birds in the neighborhood the last month or so; they do not come to our suet or seed feeder, thankfully, as they are susceptible to highly contagious avian diseases. They nest in shrubs on our fenceline with the neighbor to the north.

Pacific wren–I was not aware that these birds came to our neighborhood until this year with the sound identification app. I have seen them before, I’m sure, but they look similar to the Bewick’s wrens that next in our yard every year

Song sparrow–already singing around the neighborhood, these cheerful sparrows have a lovely song. They feed on the suet in the yard sometimes but the songs are not heard in our yard yet.

American crow–pairs of crows seem to have staked out every block in the neighborhood. We have our own Half Beak and Full Beak that we have been feeding for more than ten years in the front yard.

Chestnut-backed chickadee–common in our yard and around the neighborhood. They stay here year-round and their sounds are slightly different than the black-capped chickadees that are also common here. A pair was nesting in a nest box in our backyard two years ago.

Black-capped chickadee–common, tame, smart little birds that feed at our seed feeder and suet feeder, caching seeds around the neighborhood. They also nest in boxes in our yard.

Red-breasted nuthatch–gorgeous little tree creepers with distinctive calls. They eat seeds from our feeder in the fall/winter mostly. I hear them in the big Douglas fir trees mostly.

Golden-crowned kinglet–gorgeous, tiny birds that seem common here in the winter this year. The sound identification app helps with these little birds because they are usually in deep cover and in flocks with other small birds.

Yellow-rumped warbler–another winter resident, there are quite a few of these birds around the neighborhood and they feed at our suet feeder every day. Elegant birds with great camouflage colors that include brilliant yellows underneath.

Bushtit–flocks of these tiny birds descend on our suet feeder (up to eight at a time on the small feeder). They are very tame and go about their business picking bugs off all the plants in the yard no matter how close they get to me. They are common year-round and have nested with their hanging basket nest in our Douglas fir several times over the year.

Steller’s jay–it is tough to miss these noisy jokesters as they scream and call out loudly. These are year-round residents here and they travel in pairs or small family groups. They will feed at the suet feeder occasionally.

Northern flicker–how these spectacular woodpeckers make a living in city neighborhoods is a mystery to me. Yet they do. I remember twenty-seven years ago when we were looking at houses that I heard and saw a flicker in the trees around this house and I took it as a good omen. They are still here year-round and eat at the suet feeder most days.

Bewick’s wren–sassy little birds that travel individually or in pairs here year-round. They feed at the suet feeder but only in spring. They nest in boxes in the yard.

Anna’s hummingbird–another surprising year-round resident. Hummingbirds never used to spend the winter around Seattle but they have adapted to spending all winter here in the last twenty or thirty years. This time of year I mostly notice the males who are issuing their metallic calls from treetops and fighting for territory.

European starling–we do not see starlings here all year but I think they are probably around. In winter, I see them around food sources like berry- and fruit-producing trees and rarely on the suet feeder. They are noisy and are often heard before they are seen. This species was introduced in the 1890s and has spread throughout the US.

Spotted towhee–beautiful, big sparrows that are around all year here, though not as frequent in our yard in winter. They will eat the seeds that fall from the feeder. We had towhees nesting in the yard the last few years.

Less common birds that I have seen (or heard) lately in the neighborhood include a varied thrush, purple finches, red crossbills, brown creepers, and hairy woodpeckers.

This list of species seems like a wonderful baseline from which to grow our biodiversity. If we plant more native plants, the number of native birds will increase as well as the number of species represented in the neighborhood.

The University of Washington has recognized the need to utilize more native plants and treat its landscapes with more respect for nature. One change is to leave the trees that get cut or fall near where they fell.

These large cottonwood trunks have been left to rot in place an they are already attracting moss and lichens.

Ingraham High School has an area dedicated to native trees and they are taking similar steps, leaving some large trees on the forest floor that have fallen in the last few months.

The last few weeks I have noticed the native blackberry vines, Rubus ursinus, have colored up to an incredible red in the cold winter weather. I need to add some of these to my native plant garden to replace the English ivy vines I am removing. So beautiful and I have heard the berries are delicious though I have never seen one in the wild. The photos show the colorful vines mixed with bracken ferns and salal.

It can be difficult to convince people to plant native flora because we all have so many amazing choices of non-native plants from around the world for every possible use and to match any possible theme. When people say natives are boring, though, I want them to look closer at our native plants.

Here are some simple photos of Cornus sericea leaves that have flared up in the last week.

Rafa, our new puppy, has led me on some walks lately and I found a stand of salal that doesn’t appear to belong to anyone that is loaded with berries. Every time we go by, I grab a handful of berries. I sprinkled some in the native plant garden to see if they will sprout on their own. Today, I also planted some salal berries in a pot and put them with the other seed pots on the shelves outside the greenhouse. The native roses in the native garden have lots of hips this year so I grabbed a few of them, too, and put them in pots. The recent rains have watered the seed pots nicely. I can’t wait for spring!

I found SeaDance Nursery on Etsy and ordered a bunch of native plant seeds. In addition to those seeds, there were some in the refrigerator that I had collected over the last few months. It is supposed to rain in a few days so today is the day I planted all the native seeds in pots and then sprinkled the remaining ones in the native garden.

My seed-planting process is not at all fancy. I dump a bunch of dirt in the trays/pots, mainly previously used potting soil/seed starting mix. For trays, I used some aluminum frozen food containers from the food service we subscribe to (Mosaic).

The plant types include two types of lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus, Lupinus rivularis), dog violets (Viola adunca), fringecups, piggyback plants, scurf peas, Columbian lilies, globe gilias, bleeding hearts, largeleaf avens, Douglas aster, vine maples, and osoberries.

The hope is that the seeds will germinate next spring. The seedlings will remain in their trays/pots for a full year and be planted out in the early spring of 2024. I have a fair amount of seedlings and cuttings that will be ready to plant out in the spring of 2023, as well, including Douglas aster, Lupinus polyphyllus, Oregon sunshine, fleabane, and Puget gumweed.

The best part of planting seeds today is that I had lots of help from an old friend, Halfbeak, the crow we have been friends with for ten or more years.

And even better, my new friend, our new dog, Rafa. He wandered around the area and explored and wondered why I am so fascinated with dirt.

Ultimately, with all the new activities in his third day from the shelter, our little Jack Russell/dachshund puppy got worn out.

Just over a month ago, Leon and I visited the Tonasket cabin with some friends. It was warm and sunny there and I became a little obsessed with finding and photographing the late butterflies and moths around the property and discovering the birds in the area based on their calls using the Merlin Sound ID app.

The interesting thing about where the pollinators were found is that they were most common on the invasive knapweed that is along the roadsides near our cabin. There were large drifts of knapweed buzzing with all manner of bees, wasps, hornets, moths, and butterflies.

Here is a dump of some photos and at the end some bug names.

The bright orange butterfly is the Mormon fritillary, followed by a beautiful yellow underwing moth, a common wood nymph butterfly, a heath butterfly, a festive tiger beetle, a small copper butterfly, another Mormon fritillary, a light brocade moth, another common wood nymph butterfly, a woodland skipper butterfly, a feathered gothic moth, a green cutworm moth, dingy cutworm moth, woodland skipper butterflies, silvered blue butterflies, grass wave moth, red-shanked grasshopper, British tube wasp.

The last two photos are of some fungal diseases on currant bush and Douglas maple–it was interesting to see these highly infected plants and to know that this is all part of nature and they will likely be fine next year.

There have been a lot of rats around the house this year and Leon traps them now and then to try to keep the population down. One of the traps he set in the greenhouse disappeared and two days later I heard some shuffling outside my home office window. I said, “Leon, I hear something outside my window here–can you go check?” And he did.

It was a poor young opossum with the rat trap on its toes. Leon set it free and picked it up because it was cute and he had to show me! He then let it go in our woodland garden and it wandered away during the night. We had opossums in the neighborhood when we first moved here 27 years ago. One was living in our crawl space, and Leon picked that one up, too. I’m excited that a creature like this is finding space to exist in our neighborhood.

The summer seemed so extremely hot and dry and was quite miserable from a gardener’s perspective. The ornamentals put on their early show and then fizzled early. The natives are faring better but I have supplemented their water every week or two to be sure I don’t lose any. The summer of 2022 was the driest summer in Seattle’s history. And the fall is dry so far, too–and no rain in the forecast for at least ten more days. I’ve noticed how the western red cedars are putting out far more cones than usual. When plants are stressed one response is to hyper-procreate to try to ensure the survival of the species. I really hope all these trees don’t get sick and die in the near future. The evergreen state feels like the everbrown state lately.

Some of the perennials in my native plant garden have also hyper-procreated (as have some of my relatives, to be sure). I harvested some seeds today and will plant them over the winter solstice holiday break with the native seeds I purchased.

The fluffy seeds are Douglas aster, the tiny ones are large-leaved avens, and the pea pods are large-leaved lupine.

My worries about the thimbleberry divisions were misplaced. They have leafed back out and look fresh and healthy.

My porch-light “mothing” hobby has dwindled a bit with the cooler weather but there are still some fun surprises. Here are some of the gorgeous visitors in the past month.

The most common moths in September were brown-lined loopers and small dusty waves. There have been a few sliver “y” moths, too–one of my favorites. Other beautiful moths are the light brown apple moth, the flame carpet moth, the square-barred bell moth, the gold ribbon argent moth, the thicket knot-horn moth, and the garden rose tortrix moth, whose claim to fame is looking exactly like a splat of bird crap. The small dusty waves are interesting because they come in myriad colors and sizes–from white to grey and with varying numbers of spots. As humans, we are always looking for animals to be easily identifiable. We forget that each of us belongs to the species Homo sapiens and look at how varied we are! Most animals have significant variability in their appearance, too. Inconvenient for identification, but critical to survival and evolution.

The leaf hopper was a tiny, spectacular beauty, Menosoma cincta. The green jewel is the southern green shield bug. And the spider is a surprising one, possibly the Eurasian armored long-jawed spider, a long way from home.

As mentioned in previous posts, skipper butterflies are my favorites and in the last few years, I’ve only ever seen one at a time and only for a day or two all year. There were four, and likely five, skippers flitting around the memory garden today, nectaring on catmint and verbena! I am attributing this to my native-forward landscaping and insect-friendly practices. I went crazy with the phone camera and the macro lens and the little beauties were less photo-shy today.

I hope that these skippers will mate and lay eggs in my garden on the native grasses and next year there will be even more of these bronze beauties.

There were a few other pollinators out today, too.

Of the eight Douglas aster cuttings that I took, seven of them were successful. I potted them into 4″ pots today and moved them outside the greenhouse so they can get used to the weather. These will go into the garden in late September or early October when the rains have returned, and one is destined for a pot in Dean and Brian’s yard in Happy Valley. The red-flowered currant and ocean spray cuttings seem less far along and likely less successful. I will leave them in their starting pots until spring and then pot them on.

As I worked in the garden and greenhouse today I listened to David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet. He has been a favorite of mine for a long time and this audible book is good to hear while working in a native garden–rewilding is one of the calls to action. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has kids or grandkids and cares about the future of humans on this planet or preserving the other life on this planet. It is not joyful or fun to hear about all the missteps humans have made since the dawn of man, but Attenborough provides a map for a better future during this narrow window of time when changes could still make a difference.

In a previous blog, I showed the Elymus grass that had turned brown and I cut the whole bunch of them down. It seemed dramatic and dangerous at the time. As so often happens, however, Mother Nature was nonplussed.

The native plant garden isn’t pretty, perfect, or full of flowers. The goal is for it to be attractive to bugs and birds and mammals. And someday, amphibians and reptiles. So, it doesn’t have to look good to me or to any neighbors. I’m happy if it is just interesting to people so they ask questions. There is a lot of space still in my little garden that doesn’t have plants at all. Some of the seedlings and starts are just putting on their first year of growth this year. They are plants that people don’t normally see in a standard garden–things like Puget gumweed, Oregon sunshine, checker mallow, native grasses, fireweed, columbine, dock, nettle, and lupine.

Here are some photos of those little investments in the native future.

There are parts of the garden that are lovely to me (even though that doesn’t matter, of course!). This little shady corner has some happy natives with beautiful leaves.

Luckily, I’m not the only one who finds something of interest in this little corner. Look at all the holes in the large-leaved avens foliage! Excellent! So much foliage entering the food web!

In my last post, I mentioned that the butterflies in my garden have been visiting non-native plants. The butterflies are not the only nectar- and pollen-hungry bugs that are feasting in the garden.

In the spring there seemed to be a shortage of bees and flies among the flowers. It was concerning. As the weather has warmed up, however, it has become clear that there are more native pollinators than ever.

Below are some photos and videos of pollinators I’ve seen this year. They are not easy to capture, especially on the warm days we’ve been having lately.

I got a couple of videos of pollinators on native plants, too, which makes me so happy!

The summer native plant propagation project is going well. However, it might have been a mistake to dig up a bunch of thimbleberry suckers in late July. There are about eight divisions, most with excellent roots. They shriveled up right after potting on and look awful right now. Hopefully, they’ll snap out of it in the coming weeks.

Other new cuttings include some ocean spray starts that I stripped from a shrub that was overgrowing the sidewalk on the North Seattle College campus and was destined to be pruned. Similarly, I grabbed a few native willow cuttings from the same sidewalk. Willows are proving particularly challenging for me even though they will root in water. They don’t seem to transfer well to the soil in pots and even worse to the soil in the garden. I found a stand of goldenrod in a ditch nearby and I took four cuttings of those, as well. They were part of a native plant restoration that had gotten a bit wild so I am assuming it is a native species. I’ll confirm that if they root and leaf out.

My favorite success so far is the Douglas aster experiment. It looks like all of the cuttings I took from my overgrown aster colony have rooted well and are ready to pot on into bigger pots. This is a much faster way to get adult aster plants–it takes a full year from seed to get them even close to this size.

All of the red-flowered currant cuttings are still green and appear to be rooted. My only regret is that I didn’t strike more cuttings of everything. Next year, I’ll know better.

There are many bigger and showier butterflies around Seattle but skippers are still my favorites. In my childhood, they represented the ultimate test of steady hand and speed when I would sneak up on them and catch them by pinching their wings between my thumb and forefinger. Not my proudest conservation moment, but it brought me joy at the time and the captives all flew away.

When I was in the garden on a hot, sunny day this weekend, I saw the first skipper of the year on a non-native aster in my memory garden.

Here is the drama queen of the local butterflies, the western swallowtail. This one is on another non-native plant, the perennial phlox near our driveway. There aren’t enough native plants blooming in my yard yet to attract these butterflies, but maybe next year.

It seems like moths contribute a lot more to local food webs than their glamorous butterfly cousins. The number of moths in the garden this year is impressive. I’m not sure if there are really more moths or if I’m just noticing them more because I’m obsessed with them this year. Below are some recent moth discoveries here at the house.

Moth names are fun, too:

Common rustic, brown-lined looper, fruit tree tortrix, garden rose tortrix, dusky raisin, tissue, four-spotted yellow neck, small gray, common pug, vagabond sod, oak lantern, holly tortrix, hedge rustic, privet twist, thicket knot-horn, shy cosmet, small dusty wave, single-dotted wave, cork moth, and maple looper are a few names of those pictured above.

I enjoy growing native plants from seeds. It can be pretty slow, though. Cuttings are a faster way. July is usually a good month to take shrub and perennial cuttings.

Today, I took a tray full of red-flowered currant cuttings. In addition, I took cuttings of my osoberry and the salmonberry plants in the native plant garden. Lastly, I decided to see if Douglas aster cuttings will strike this time of year.

There are other opportunities for propagation in the native plant garden–the large-leaved avens has a lot of seed heads on it and will produce thousands of seeds this year. The thimbleberry and native roses are spreading all over the place and I can pot up the suckers in the autumn. The roses are putting on quite a show right now and the thimbleberry has some berries coming for the first time.

I added the iNaturalist Seek app to my phone this week and started using it to identify insects and plants and it is AMAZING! If the photo is good enough, the app seems very capable of identifying all the insects and plants.

Here was a tough one that I never thought the app would recognize. But Seek rose to the challenge! Meet the diminutive Black-smudged Chionodes Moth!