SPRING?! Can you spell it, please?

Ahh, I was enjoying my morning coffee and admiring all your blooms...

March .... Spring .... Sunday... Life is beautiful...

- "Did you look outside?"

- "No, I didn't. Why? WHAT????!!!!"

It is snowing. And it's a serious snow, not that light - probably last -close to spring one, but real heavy non-stop snow.

These are my March almost-spring blooms...

Can you click on us please, we are so-o-o... even under the snow...

Hellebores foetidus

I needed to shake some snow off to see the flowers of this hellebores...

Petals are so beautiful...

Again Hellebores...

Primroses...

Now, I am back to my usual winter chore - to brush off the snow from two palm trees.

Winter Garden Dining

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Valet parking is available:

 

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Complimentary Drink - Frozen Margarita With Sault:

 

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A Prelude in Sea - Fresh Oysters (Hood Canal):

 

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Essence of Onion Soup:

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Featured Vegetable - Cabbage. Chilled:

 

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Main Dish - Hot Dog (Organic.):

 

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Anthology of Desserts - Snowcone:

Fresh Local Pear:

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Your Server - Bahus:

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Outside Seating is Available:

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Satisfaction Guaranteed!

snow art

-Your Favorite Color? - Green.

Is it a sky fallen into the lake or is it a lake floating in the sky?

Click on the pictures to enlarge them

How can people drive by without stopping here? Maybe, it's good that they don't stop...

How many shades of green does nature have?
 

If this is not beautiful, then what is?

Small lake somewhere on the Kitsap Peninsula, state Washington.

We took a day trip to Port Townsend, drove along the Hood Canal and I almost caused an accident when suddenly shouted: "Stop!!!Stop!!!" when saw this lake.

Nobody was around.

My heart just sunk.

Pristine...

black and white art

Foxglove, The Beautiful

Click on the pictures to enjoy them

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Hermes ( http://goldenagegardens.blogspot.com/) posted a beautiful picture of foxgloves recently. I live not far from the Foxglove Drive and understand why they gave that street such a name. Foxgloves grow everywhere in our neighborhood.

Other names for Digitalis: Fairy's Glove. Gloves of Our Lady. Bloody Fingers. Virgin's Glove. Fairy Caps. Folk's Glove. Fairy Thimbles. (Norwegian) Revbielde. (German) Fingerhut.

The digitalis plant may contain several deadly physiological and chemically related

cardiac and steroidal glycosides. It explains such names as Dead Men's Bells and Witches' Gloves.

I found the following interesting information here

http://www.botanical.com/botanical : The Foxglove derives its common name from the shape of the flowers resembling the finger of a glove. It was originally Folksglove - the glove of the 'good folk' or fairies, whose favourite haunts were supposed to be in the deep hollows and woody dells, where the Foxglove delights to grow. Folksglove is one of its oldest names, and is mentioned in a list of plants in the time of Edward III. Its Norwegian name, Revbielde (Foxbell), is the only foreign one that alludes to the Fox, though there is a northern legend that bad fairies gave these blossoms to the fox that he might put them on his toes to soften his tread when he prowled among the roosts.

I never planted it in my garden. It came itself and made a home here. It self seeds and becomes a weed, sometimes. Then, I just remove extra plants. I love foxgloves. They look good, they are heat tolerant and care-free, at least in my place.


Good focal point:

It's so tall, it can be seen from a far.

Somehow, seeds spreaded even to my kitchen garden that is pretty far from the perennial bed.

It is TALL, I checked!

Nice cut flowers. It's difficult to believe that it is poisonous.

The flowers of the Foxglove are tubular, and vary in colour with species, from purple to pink, white, and yellow. The best-known species is the Common Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea. It is a biennial, often grown as an ornamental plant due to its showy flowers, that range in colour from purples through to whites, with variable marks and spotting. The first year of growth produces only the long, basal leaves. In the second year, the erect leafy stem 0.5-2.5 m tall develops. (Wikipedia).

They recommend to grow foxgloves in partial shade in rich soil. In my garden, it grows in full sun and average soil, too. Zones 4-8.

Puget Sound Sky

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Puget Sound is an inland marine complex of waterways from the Pacific Ocean, connected to the rest of the Pacific by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It branches out from Admiralty Inlet and Deception Pass in the north to Olympia, Washington in the south. The surrounding land partially overlaps the Seattle metropolitan area. (Wikipedia)

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Sprucing Up a Vegetable Garden

When I want to enhance my vegetable garden' look, I go to my picture file. First three pictures were taken at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show '08.
This is a part of the Lucca Statuary' display.

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Click the pictures to see details

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Vegetables' colorful foliage helps to creat beautiful borders:

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Next pictures were taken during the garden tours on the Kitsap Peninsula.
Elements of a knot garden: The owners of this lot decided to introduce them after visiting several European gardens.

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Garden Tour picture

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Knot garden: comes down to us from Elizabethan England. The English and the French loved their knot gardens and usually patterned them after a rug or tapestry in their home. The main ingredients consisted of intricate geometric patterns, dwarf hedges of evergreen herbs, and/or paths. There were the closed knot gardens with no access and compartments, containing colored sand or gravel. Then there were the open knots with paths forming part of the patterns and compartments filled with sweet-smelling plants such as rosemary, hyssop, sage, and lavender. Traditionally, the planting schemes were sparse with the emphasis on the individual species. For instance, all the hedges were of boxwood, and knots were made in groups of four. These gardens demanded time and care as the hedges needed constant and careful trimming to maintain their appearance http://www.superbherbs.net/design5.htm.

Next: Mixing vegetables with flowering plants. I also like the bamboo cage around the container with the tomato plant:
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Garden Tour picture

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Garden Tour picture
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I like the idea of having an interesting focal point in the middle of a vegetable garden. On the picture below, a mosaic urn makes a big difference!
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Garden Tour picture
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Triangle raised beds look good:

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Garden Tour picture

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These are my modest attempts to spruce up my own vegetable garden:
Perennial/ Vegetable bed:

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My garden picture

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Here, I put little boxwoods around small kitchen garden:

My garden picture

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P.S. Second part can be seen here: Sprucing Up A Vegetable Garden - 2 (posted in January 2011).

***Copyright TatyanaS

Blotanical: The Garden I Can Visit Any Time I Want

I've been blogging for more than a year now. I wrote about my garden, travel, my kids' school life, etc. I had a good group of readers who were my relatives, friends, friends of my friends and just friendly strangers. Unfortunately, very few of them were gardeners. It was good to hear what they thought about my garden, but I was craving for more. Like a fisherman wants to talk to other fishermen, I wanted to talk to other gardeners, learn from them and share my experiences with them. It was purely accidental that I stumbled on Blotanical http://www.blotanical.com/. Several months after joining it, this is what I got:

* The first visible result came very fast. I've had a self-seeding pink-flowering plant that I didn't know the name of. Many gardeners tried to help me, and hurray it was found! - Sweet William Catchfly:

* I found grasses that would be good candidates for replacing a part of our lawn. Several blotanists posted very useful information about grasses and their use in landscapes.

* I learned the name of weeds that started to invade all parts of my garden. After reading a couple of posts, I announced a state of emergency and several sessions of weeding later, I can say that I won the battle.

* I found new details about composting thanks to several blotanists.

* I had bulbs that I bought at the 2008 NW Flower and Garden Show which didn't have tags. I spent weeks trying to remember their names: Bulb... Giant bulb... Well, my guesswork ended after I read one recent post. It was a Giant Squill Bulb!:

* Several of my posts

(for example, "What are you all whining about?" ( http://tanyasgarden.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-are-you-all-whining-about.html), "Amur Maple, Black Caviar and The Dog On My Blog" (http://tanyasgarden.blogspot.com/2009/02/amur-maple-black-caviar-and-dog-on-my.html) resulted from reading other Blotanists' posts.

* I learned about new plants, visited several botanical gardens in other states and countries, read high quality posts on a range of garden subjects, had many good laughs and met dozens of nice friendly people.

It is like participating in garden tours when people are so generous they let you step into their gardens and answer your questions. It is even better since you are touring those gardens comfortably seating in your office no matter what time a day or night it is. Speaking about day and night, I should confess I check Blotanical any time I can not sleep. I read posts, do my picks and voila - I'm ready for dreaming about flowers, grasses, raised beds, birdhouses, earthworms, bulbs, etc., etc. To be fair I should admit that I am spending much more time with my computer now. So that I do not feel too bad about it, I try to combine blogging with snacking, doing yoga and having breaks from doing chores. All in all, I feel good and look forward to having my first spring, summer and fall with Blotanical.
I heard a saying: A GARDEN IS A FRIEND WHOM YOU CAN VISIT ANY TIME YOU WANT. It looks like Blotanical is another place that you can visit any time whether you want to be alone and enjoy all the beauty which the garden world offers or engage in a friendly chat with fellow gardeners.

Apple Tree. My Picture of the Day

Click the picture please