Last year, I picked Oregon grape berries here in the yard and around the neighborhood. I potted them up, protected them from birds, and virtually every seed germinated! Ultimately, three pots full of Oregon grape seedlings were my prize, each with about 50 plants! I endeavored to pot them all on this past weekend.
Because there were so many, I potted three seedlings in each 3-1/2″ pot. I expect this will produce fuller transplants to send on to restoration projects. These seedlings ultimately grow into multi-stemmed shrubs, so this is a way to expedite that process. The other benefit is that if one or two seedlings don’t make it for some reason, there will still be a good strong one to plant out. In reality, I don’t have the resources or room to plant them/keep them individually!
In late summer, I was starting to wonder if I’d done something wrong with the native plant garden. There were hardly any “they” coming, despite me planting it–almost no birds at all. Luckily, in the last two weeks, along with cooler weather and shorter days, along came all the birds!
One of my favorite birds passing through the neighborhood this time of year are the brown creepers! They are so unassuming and so perfectly designed! It feels like good luck when I spot one, which I did last week on the western red cedars across the street.
I also heard an evening grosbeak in the Douglas fir next door last week, the first time I’ve noticed that bird in the neighborhood.
The crows were mobbing a raptor in the 80-foot fir tree across the street today and I got a photo. I see a red tail here, so suspect it might be a red tailed hawk, but never saw it fly away to confirm. Pretty exciting to have such a beautiful bird so close!
