My energy is coming back after a long, lazy winter. The longer days mean more time to work in the garden on the weekdays after work and no excuses at all on the weekends. Well, the rain could be an excuse. But even I don’t believe myself when I try to use that one.
During this week, I took some of the seedlings from last year and planted them out in the garden. These included Oregon sunshine, lupine, fleabane, checkermallows, fringecups, and one western columbine. Besides getting these plants out to their forever homes in the native garden and the memory garden, a welcome bonus is the free space left on the shelves for new native plants.
Today, I took early cuttings of Douglas aster plants. Last year, I tried this softwood cutting technique and it was very successful. This year, I took 18 cuttings–an entire tray.
My aster patch is very healthy and dense. It would not damage the planting at all if I took 100 cuttings. Maybe next year! We’ll see how they do.
The red-flowered currant cuttings I took last summer look strong. There are five or six of them and I pulled them out of the greenhouse so they can get some rain and wind. One precocious cutting was blooming!
My red-flowered currant plants from the nursery, which were the parents of these cuttings, appear to be a very light-flowered cultivar. They are beautiful, but not as showy as the true red plants. I plan to add a red one this year so I can get cuttings of that going forward, as I think that will be a more popular choice for folks to add to their gardens. These lighter-colored ones will work just fine for guerilla gardening, though.
Today was also a pricking-out day for native seedlings. Specifically, I potted on a few dozen Gilia capitata and fringecups.
The Gilia seedlings, above, were decent-sized and pretty easy to move on. But the fringecups were tiny and delicate. I probably should have waited. Luckily, I have another pot of seedlings that just sprouted so all will not be lost, regardless.
There are other seedlings coming along, too–new ones every day, it seems.
The rain is actually an excellent reason to go out to the native plant garden because I always know the lupines will be sparkling.
It looks like something has been chewing the lupine leaves–maybe the eastern cottontail rabbit I saw in the yard this week. But it looks like maybe some insects are eating them, too.
My favorite animal sighting was this fledgling junco that flew in front of Rafa and clung to the screen of the greenhouse door this afternoon. I was worried that Rafa might find the little guy and eat him so I moved him into the dog yard and blocked Rafa’s access. He seemed fairly unafraid in my hand and flew to a branch in the lilac and called to his mom, who visited him a few times while I watched.
It seemed very early to have baby birds fledging but I had noticed some nesting behavior from the juncos weeks ago. It seems likely they will have several broods this year. I am so excited that our yard provides them the habitat to nest and raise cute little babies like this guy.