The Orchid Experirment

I learned at an early age that houseplants can be fickle friends.

Oh sure, they start out all lush and fat, full of promises of indoor greenery with minimal care — "Just water me, give me some light, how could you go wrong?" — but a few weeks later my mom and I would be staring at a whithered stick in a pot that would make Charlie Brown's tree look worthy of Rockefeller Center.

So we fell back on the hardiest of hardy houseplants: spider plants for her, ivy for me.

Which is not to say I gave up trying to cultivate other plants (my previous post shows that), but one genus of which I steered clear was orchids. Not only did they seem as temperamental as Veruca Salt, they were EXPENSIVE.  No way was I gonna plunk down that kind of money for something doomed to die.

Until yesterday, that is.

I went to Wal-mart for bird food — three varieties of bird food, to be exact — and there they were: orchids. Tall, slender, deliciously delicate orchids in simple aluminum pots. I felt myself drawn closer.

Only $10, the sign read.  Easy care, the snowflake tag promised.

I bit my lower lip, considering.

They are awfully pretty, I thought. And $10 isn't that much to risk....

Obviously I took the plunge, and am now either on my way to expanding my plant-growing comfort zone or relearning a painful lesson. Fingers crossed for the first outcome!

December Flowers?

Our three so-called Christmas Cacti have been blooming since two weeks before Thanksgiving... but they're not alone out there in the sunroom. In addition to the cacti...

We also have flowers on a geranium:

An azalea:

And a Wandering Jew:


My citrus shrubs &mdash I can't bring myself to call them "trees" &mdash had blooms in early November, but are now putting on honest-to-goodness fruit. Right now they all look like limes, so I'll post photos of them as soon as they show some color.

Our Work-in-Progress Front Yard

I've spent a fair amount of time sharing views of our backyard, but we've been almost as busy in the front yard.

We decided a couple of years ago to eliminate the lawn in our front yard. It looked okay, but required more care and water than it was worth. And it wasn't as if the dogs could enjoy it, so what was the point?


We'd planned to put in two island flowerbeds last summer but ran out of topsoil/compost mix &mdash so one bed it was. Unfortunately, we still bought plants for two, so it was definitely full!


This year we created the second front bed, but it's still far from fully planted &mdash which gives us an excuse to hit the nurseries' clearance sales over the next couple of months. (As if we need a reason.) Most of the front yard is heavily shaded during the summer months, so we're planning to add more rhododendrons, hostas, and hydrangeas. I'm especially on the look-out for an Oakleaf hydrangea similar to the one a certain dog &mdash *cough* Sherman *cough* &mdash obliterated earlier this year.



As for that bare spot in the middle, that will (someday) star a natural rock water feature.

And We're Back!

Dios mio; has it really been almost a month since my last post?! Sorry about that!

I'd like to tell you it's because Sherman has so dazzled us with his perfect behavior, that he hasn't uprooted any plants or shredded any toys or done anything else horrific, that I've had no blog-worthy stories to share. I'd also like to tell you we won the lottery...

Truth is we got busy with yard projects and then decided to throw a barbecue/birthday bash for my visiting aunt &mdash which meant kicking our garden projects into high gear.

Our new flowerbeds were in, as you faithful readers already know, but they looked naked and sad with just dirt and few plants stuck here and there (although we'd added more since these early July photos):
So we (Cary) ordered two units of bark dust for us (me) to spread. Turns out Mr. Six-Months-Post-Back-Surgery isn't up to shoveling anything or moving the wheelbarrow. How convenient.

To be honest, I'd expected I'd be spreading the bark solo &mdash but I didn't know I'd be doing it during a triple-digit, week-long heatwave. Most days I stuck it out until noon, but during the worst days I only made it until 9:00 or 9:30 before scurrying back into the AC.

Cary announced one morning it was expected to reach 108 (what?!) and could be the hottest day in the Willamette Valley. Ever. We decided one day we'd be telling young'uns about how it was 120 back in Aught Nine but we were still outside workin', consarnit, 'cause folks had a work ethic back in those days....

Anywho, it took longer than expected, but I finally conquered the mini-mountain of mulch and had the flowerbeds looking a bit more like actual, tended beds:
We're hoping to finish the top of this trellis this week, as well as plant still more shrubs and vines. (Darn you, Lowe's and your irresistible clearance prices!) The paths of dead grass aren't especially appealing, but I think moving loads of gravel by hand can wait until the cooler Fall months....

Playing Dirty

I suppose it was inevitable that our relaxing (read: lazy) weekends would give way to days of toil, so it didn't come as much of a surprise when Cary ordered 30 yards of topsoil/compost mix last week. Yeah. Three-oh. As in a heaped dump truck AND its trailer. The dirt was delivered Friday around noon, and bright and early Saturday Cary was off to rent a Bobcat.

Let the summer projects begin.

As the tracks in the "before" photos show, I was a little late taking them, but you get the idea: grass and more grass.

We added dirt to extend four existing flowerbeds — one by quite a bit; I think it's now five or six times its original size — and created a new island. (Actually two new islands, but one is out front and doesn't look like much just yet.)

While Cary moved the dirt, I dug out and moved the thin-split rock we had been using to outline the beds. (I'll reuse it to create raised beds in the rose garden... but probably not this year. I like to pace my punishment.)

On Sunday, we set out the plants we've been buying since last Fall... and then started digging. At last count we'd planted 48 shrubs, perennials, and tubers including a crape myrtle, a rhododendron, a Daphne, peonies, roses, lilacs, verbena, lavender, potentillas, and who-knows-what-else.

It looks a little puny right now, but in a couple of years — with mulch and a few more plants added here and there — it should be right lush. Assuming the plants survive the Thunder Feet of Sherman, that is.

We've already bought another dump truck load of gravel for the paths, so stay tuned...