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My avid tennis playing has led to an overage of empty tennis ball cans. This year, I am recycling yogurt and cottage cheese containers and working on ways to utilize these ball cans in my native plant propagation. Today, I took Douglas aster cuttings and stuck them in the extra cans I had lying around the house. It was pretty fun! And it seems like a perfect fit.

Many native plant seeds have sprouted, including dozens of western columbine (Aquilegia formosa), hundreds of yellow monkeyflower (Erythranthe guttata), dozens of fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium), Puget gumweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium), and Henderson’s checkermallow (Sidalcea hendersonii).

I just ordered more native seeds for starting this spring/summer including lupine, pearly everlasting, madrone, and Iris tenax. I also ordered some Deschampsia cespitosa plants. I had tried to grow them from seeds and they never quite made it. The plants will be fun to mix in with the rye grass in the pseudo prairie that fronts the native plant garden.

The plants in the native plant garden are putting on a show.

The most joyful bloom, however, is one of the large-leaved avens (Geum macrophyllum) that I planted in the memory garden along the parking strip. My goal is to introduce a lot of native plants in this already-full garden in the coming years to move it towards 70% native. This avens makes me feel like this is an achievable accomplishment and I am really excited to keep the momentum going by adding dozens of asters, large-leaved avens, western columbine, fleabane, gumweed, and more.

There are bitter cherry suckers all around our garden left over from the large tree we had along our driveway for about ten years before we had to have it removed. I keep the suckers in the garden for their contribution to the ecosystem. I prune them pretty heavily to keep them under control and I watch for poorly placed new sprouts. The original tree was a favorite for its amazing bark, fresh spring foliage, and subtle flowers. The tree did not produce a lot of fruit, to my knowledge. I saw a stand of these trees at Ingraham that reminded me of our beautiful original tree.

Today was a great day for adding natives to the yard. I planted about 50 seedlings/starts today, mostly large-leaved avens, fringecups, and a few red-flowered currants. Some were planted in the woodland garden, some in front of the orchard garden, and some in the native plant garden.

The seeds that I planted over the winter are still sprouting; some are looking strong, particularly the columbine and monkey flower plants.

It looked like the Douglas asters were ready to be propagated by cuttings today so I took about 24 cuttings placed in 4″ pots. They wilted almost immediately, however, so I may not have the timing exactly right. I will try again next weekend if it appears they may not make it. There are hundreds of plants to propagate from in the native plant garden.

I took three Viola adunca seedlings to Stuart, a neighbor two doors down, who is working hard to landscape his yard with native plants. He has made a lot of progress but also experienced a lot of challenges and learning. It is inspiring to see how hard he is trying and how happy he is with his successes. He has a lot more natives than I do, including lots of grasses, sedges, Oregon sunshine, lupines, and more. Our native plant community of two yards feels powerful. He says he already is seeing more caterpillars in his garden after less than two years.

Seattle experienced a cold spell a few weeks ago, with multiple days below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I moved some of my more tender potted plants into the greenhouse. However, I let the native seed pots ride the freeze out on their shelves outside.

When I checked the seed pots, I was disheartened. The precocious monkeyflower (Erythranthe guttata) seedlings had all disappeared, apparently cut down by the cold. A few other seedlings had also disappeared.

I went out today to check things out again, and there was a bit of a miracle. There were hundreds of monkeyflower seedlings again!

I suspect the precocious seedlings died in the freeze, but dozens of dormant seeds have reacted to the springlike weather and sprouted in the last week! Nature has it all figured out–she hedges her bets to ensure that some plants survive every year.

Other precocious plants this year are the Osoberry shrubs near the high school–one is in full bloom today!

I got to experience the effect of native plants on birds as a flock of bushtits flew through the green belt and visited this shrub and other natives in the area. I imagine pollinators and hummingbirds are visiting this shrub on nice days like today.

Through the summer and fall, I ordered myriad native plant seeds and I was not tracking exactly how many. In the last month, I have planted hundreds of seeds, with the last batch planted the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I used soil from the native plant garden. I hope that the more natural soil with fungi and bugs will suit the seeds better than a sterile mix. I could be way off. Time will tell.

We have had a mild winter so far and some of the seeds are already germinating. In particular, the Erythanthe guttata seeds are up in droves.

Here are some of the other pots with seeds planted recently.

The seedlings from prior plantings are doing well, benefitting from the mild winter. The Geum macrophyllum seedlings are particularly robust, with the fringecups, piggyback plants, and violets also doing well.

I recently looked at nursery licensing in Washington and was surprised it was not as expensive as I had imagined. It might make sense as a retirement activity for me to grow native plants and organic veggie starts and sell them from the house.

By the end of August, there were extreme signs of drought in the native plants around the neighborhood here in North Seattle. Native shrubs were the hardest hit, with vine maples, osoberries, bitter cherries, red-flowered currants, and others losing leaves really early. In addition, their reproduction was affected with fewer berries and seeds than in previous years.

Then, by mid-September, we started to see a bit of rain. And then more. And then record-setting rains. Almost immediately, you could see the relief. Seedlings popped up everywhere (sadly, mostly nonnative weeds, but green, nonetheless) and the shrubs stopped dropping leaves and decided to flush them with color first, like the big-leaf and vine maple leaves below.

And it isn’t just native leaves that provide interest and color. The madrone trees are showing off with their striptease of old bark revealing new.

Douglas aster plants were extremely grateful for the rain, too. The large patch in the native garden had mostly faded and given up on blooming after a mediocre attempt, but with the rains, their bloom time extended.

My native seedlings snapped out of their doldrums, too, and started to put on more root growth. This, combined with the continued rain the forecast, motivated me to plant a bunch of native seedlings out into the native plant and memory gardens–dozens of them, including large-leaved avens, lupine, fringecup, piggyback plant, Douglas aster, and checkermallow.

And below is the plain autumn garden that will hopefully be transformed come spring/summer with the new native perennials.

The other chore that had to be tackled was planting seedlings into larger pots to winter over and be ready for distribution in the spring. Most of these were Geum macrophyllum, the large-leaved avens, which grows very well for me, both in the garden and from seed. There are more than fifty seedlings that got potted on including some piggyback plants and fringecups.

My propagation efforts continue as I gather and plant more native seeds. The native honeysuckle vines at Ingraham High School had some berries, so I snagged a few of those to see if they would grow, along with dozens of vine maple seeds, ninebark, and ocean spray. I will grab my own seeds from the Douglas asters, the large-leaved avens, and lupines in the native garden to plant this month.

Leon and I went to the cabin from July 22nd to the 24th after having car trouble and having to buy a new car in Wenatchee on the way! Some highlights were having Rafa become a great hiking dog with no leash, and seeing my very first mariposa lily, a sagebrush mariposa, not far from our cabin along Rocky Canyon Road! There were lots of wildflowers, butterflies, bugs, and excellent weather and views! It was magical, as always!

I love garden surprises and Puget gumweed is a fantastic surprise. The seedlings looked like boring dandelion clones for the longest time, but then suddenly they shot up this year with long stalks and thistle-like flower buds with the gum on top that I assume led to their nickname. And the flowers are beautiful yellow daisies! I am so happy to have started these and to have a few in the native plant garden blooming at a time when almost nothing else is flowering.

Lately, I have seen many opportunities around the city to add native plants. My biggest challenge is having enough plants to share with people and to add to various sites that need natives. I hope to have enough strong starts this autumn to meet the need.

On the Fourth of July, used the holiday time to transplant a few hundred native seedlings. I ended up with trays full of Douglas aster, Large-leaved avens, and fringecup! About 72 seedlings of each!

It is not ideal timing to transplant natives in the heat of summer. I will keep these babies in a shady site and keep them well-watered and well-fed.

In addition to the most recently transplanted seedlings, the earlier Lupine seedlings are growing well and are ready to plant out as soon as the weather cools and rains come.

The Douglas aster cuttings that I took early in the spring have done extremely well and are also ready to plant out.

There are more large-leaved avens left to transplant and also some native violets that I will tackle in the coming weeks. And it is softwood cutting season for the red-flowered currants and other shrubs–so many potential local food web plants!

Moths have been showing up for several months at the porch light. However, the larger, showier moths have been missing. Lately, with warmer weather, I am seeing more and more. Here is a favorite, a small magpie moth.

Here are some flowers from the native garden in June.

Above are checkermallows, fireweed, large-flowered collomia, native roses, Oregon sunshine, and a ladybird beetle and aphid on a Lupine.

My favorite June photo is of a native bee, the orange-rumped bumblebee I spotted in the raspberry patch.

The guardian of the native plant garden is Rafa, our dachshund/wire-haired terrier mix. He is on a constant vigil looking for squirrels, rabbits, and rats! My friend Dean took this amazing portrait–thanks, Dean!

Like the other gardens around our yard, the native plant garden shows growth and color throughout May. Below is a photo dump of some of the great beauty of the native plants.

Dean also has planted some wonderful native plants in his and Brian’s Happy Valley, Oregon garden. Here are a few:

This week, I shared more than a dozen plants with neighbors and friends. I gave Stuart and Whitney down the street a tray of seedlings and cuttings, including lupines, red-flowered currants, Puget gumweed, Oregon sunshine, and checkermallow. I also shared a large Douglas fir sapling in a pot and some seedlings/cuttings with our friends Staci and Eric who are rewilding a stream-side property in Kenmore. When more young plants are ready, I will set some out for more neighbors to take and possibly list some on Nextdoor to see if I can tempt anyone.

The growth in the native plant garden over the last few weeks has been astounding! Every day brings new leaves, new suckers, and new flowers.

My brother and I attended a National Geographic Live presentation this week and the speaker, Alizé Carrère, talked about human adaptation around climate change. My favorite thing that she said is that any step a person takes to fight climate change is worthwhile. She quoted Vaclav Havel, who said: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” My little native garden is not much, but I am certain that it makes sense!