Flower Show

Is anyone interested in attending the Northwest Flower and Garden Show at the Seattle Convention Center? It is Wed-Sun, Feb 23-27 this year. If we buy tickets before the show, it is $16 each. Day of it goes up to $20. There is a group discount for 20 or more at $15 per person. Check it out, and the seminars, at http://www.gardenshow.com/. I usually take a day off work and spend the whole day. Right now I'm leaning towards Wednesday, but I need to take a closer look at the seminars before I decide for sure.

Welcome new blog follower! Marie

Welcome to our new blog follower Marie. Feel free to just read or post whatever you'd like to this blog. It was originally started when some of us at church wanted to discuss garden successes and problems, get help when possible and share photos of projects and our gardens. Here is another of my odd garden photos - I call it green eggs and ham. All the green in these scrambled eggs are herbs and veggies (spinach, basil, thyme, greek oregano, and green onions) from the garden and it was a very yummy breakfast!!!  

Church garden

Here is a picture of Carrie revitalizing the small garden bed by the front door of church. She did a really good job adding the purple and yellow pansies and planting the two shrubs I brought. Hope they bloom, they are star jasmine and african lily. The picture was taken Oct 23rd.

Summer dreamin'

So, here are some more photos from summer I wanted to share - the giant rutabaga that ended up in a nice stew (they cook like potatoes when you peel and cube them up); the three varieties of beets planted - chiogga (the ringed ones), Bull's Blood (the really dark ones), and yellow (I think the white one is a chiogga that didn't get it's rings right); and the Easter Lily from this years display at church - blooming again in October, their regular blooming time.

Keeping Track

This year I was thinking of how to keep track of which flowers and other perennials were planted where at our new house. I have been making crude maps of beds in my 6"x9" spiral garden notebook for at least 5 years in one book. This year I added a new method to the old - I took pictures of the dahlia areas when the plants were about 3 feet tall. I didn't know in most cases which tubers ended up where because when they were dug, washed, dried, split, then moved, they got all mixed up. Totally maddening as I wanted to "compose" color schemes in the garden beds. You know, yellows and oranges together, purples, pinks and whites placed together because they go together well. Also, some were planted quite late - June to early July - and the summer wasn't very sunny this year which dahlias need, so they didn't bloom as fast or have enough time to bloom as they would have in a normal year. When I took the pictures, most weren't blooming yet. I printed these pix out on regular printer paper to save the cost of photo paper and to be able to write on them. Then when the plants bloomed, I noted on the print what each was (if I knew from having planted before), or just described by color and size of the flower. I am hoping to find out real names for my unknown dahlias so I took pictures of the flowers when they did bloom, to check against catalogs or the internet.

Summer is GONE!!

Well, with the snow outside, I suppose I should quit being in denial that the garden is done for the year. Saturday night my dahlias bit it hard, they are crispy brown and pretty ugly. I just hope the snow is a sufficient blanket to insulate the tubers. I didn't have time to dig or throw some leaves or something on them yet. Luckily I cut the last good blooms on Saturday afternoon to be able to take one more bouquet to church. The Karma Choc dahlia lasted the longest and best, with the plant that kept its largest flowers at the end. Don't know if I posted a picture of it yet but here it is. Some of my other dahlias flowers kept getting smaller as the colder weather crept up.
Also I was surprised to see a couple new dahlias (I got some "potluck" tubers from the friend of Roger's). Here they are too: a beautiful medium orange with red streaks in the petals and a multicolored orange one I believe is called Candlelight. I took these pictures back when I was happy there would be a few more warmish days and nights - Sept and Oct.

Tomato Blight

Ack! Last Sunday my tomatoes looked so promising! By Friday they looked like we'd had a hard frost, and the fruit was split like I watered too much! After talking to Verdelle and Anna, it sounds like everyone has this problem. I suspect the warm, humid weather we've been having was paradise for blight. The nearly 2" of rain the other week is probably what split the fruit. I guess we'll salvage what we can.