Wednesday, June 30, 2021

My Hortlandia 2021 haul...

Hortlandia, the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon's huge annual plant sale (see here and here for examples) was cancelled in 2020, as with most events that year a casualty of COVID. The ever-resilient HPSO Hortlandia committee resolved to find a way to hold the sale this year and settled on an open air event that took place last Saturday. I'd signed up as a volunteer for set-up on Friday, and then reserved a 9am shopping spot on Saturday. I couldn't wait for this little slice of normal! 

Then the ankle-incident occurred. Another event that I had to miss. I tried to keep my chin up, at least I wouldn't be out there sweating in record breaking heat—and do I really need more plants? All in all I was coping pretty well until I looked at Instagram and saw this...

Hayden (@theperennial.victorian) posted several stunning images from the sale including the above photo of a heliamphora. I felt that tug... there it was, a special exotic...something I wanted and might of bought if I was at the sale, but I wasn't. 

Then this photo came up on the HPSO feed. That's my cute friend Nanthawat working at the Courting Frogs Nursery booth. A little light went on...

... I texted Nat to see if the the heliamphora were at their booth and if there were any left. He sent me this photo...

And delivered the plant to me the very next day.

And that's how I shopped Hortlandia 2021 without even leaving my house.

It's a Heliamphora heterodoxa x nutans. Heliamphora are native to the mountaintops of Venezuela and they don't like temperatures above 80, which of course we've been experiencing. I know the growers must have felt it would do okay at the sale or else they wouldn't have brought them, Nat also took care to keep it "cool" before bringing by my place.

Needless to say it's living indoors in the A/C. These plants like consistency in their growing conditions and our extended forecast stays hot, too hot to take it outside. I need to find a suitable pot for it, but for now I'm trying to class up the plastic with a nice Jonathan Adler saucer.

Isn't it fabulous? Those little tips are called nectar spoons, they'll eventually get a little larger and bend over a bit more closely resembling a spoon.

I may end up getting a small light for it too, something like what I use on the planters on our mantle.

Thanks Hayden and Nat for enabling my Hortlandia purchase! And hey, if you're shopping for some cool houseplants and other things check out Nat's online shop The Other Side Nursery He doesn't currently have this specific plant, but he has some other carnivorous plants.

In case you're wondering about that owl planter sporting sansevieria hair, it was a gift (filled with flowers) from a group who toured my garden a few years ago. Not usually my kind of thing but I really liked this guy.

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All material © 2009-2021 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

Monday, June 28, 2021

My garden in June, before the extreme heat arrived

After ankle surgery I knew getting out to enjoy the daily developments in the garden would be tricky, there's no way out of our house that doesn't involve fairly dangerous steps. Thankfully, Andrew and I came up with a safe method (using a short stool), but it's a two-person effort, so it doesn't happen on a whim. Determined to make the most of every opportunity I've been snapping garden photos like crazy whenever I'm out. 

Let's start street-side with the peeling bark on Arctostaphylos x ‘Austin Griffiths'...

Little did I know by taking these photos, I was creating a record of the garden before the arrival of heat like Portland has never seen. On Saturday afternoon, as I was working on this post, we broke our record of 107 for all time high temperature, when we hit 108. As predicted Sunday was even hotter at 112 and this afternoon is predicted to top out at 114. Good lord.

June is yucca time...

Yucca filamentosa that is. When I finally got out to check on things around 5:30 on Saturday most of these blooms had already crisped up, or dropped.

Ditto for the Callistemon 'Woodlander's Hardy Red'—crispy!

Had I been thinking I would have cut a few, they make great cut stems. I wonder if those flower buds will abort?

Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' with Eucomis 'Sparkling Burgundy' 

There are so many flowers on the pineapple guava this year! It's been fun encouraging visitors to snack on them. Fingers crossed for fruit later in the season.

Artemisia versicolor 'Sea Foam' looks cool on a hot day.

A reminder of a previous version of the front garden. I inherited a huge clump of this orange daylilly and so grabbed another when I saw one available. Now the original is gone, while this one lives on. 

I was caught with a few plants still unplanted in the driveway stock/holding tanks. Thankfully I don't think this blooming Aristaloe aristata will mind...

Also in the drive, this long-tortured Agave americana that came to me as a tiny pup from my in-laws plants in Truth or Consequences, NM. 

It did great in the front garden until the evils (snow, cold, ice) of January 2017 almost killed it, but certainly deformed it. I dug it up and put it in the large galvanized container to recover. Now it's facing extreme heat (possible sunburn) on the cement of the driveway. We've got an umbrella up for shade but I can't be out constantly moving it so some sun happens.

Nearby are several of these little cuties (haworthia?) tucked in a strawberry pot.

More driveway agaves...

Agave 'Kissho Kan', a recent adoptee from Lance Wright.

Moving into the back garden now, Clematis recta 'Purpurea Select'.

Coniogramme emeiensis 'Golden Zebra'

Ferns and bromeliads long the side of the garage...

Sedum takesimense

Saxifraga x geum 'Dentata'

Look! A clematis I'd given up for dead is making a rebound. I think this is Clematis 'Danielle'...

Palm shadows, not depressing.

Planting that fuzzy agave was one of the last things I did in the garden, before the ankle incident. I came labeled as Agave parviflora but evidently is actually Agave x leopoldii.

My cloudy cabbages—aka Bukiniczia cabulica, along with Lonicera crassifolia (blooming) and a small Deuterocohnia brevifolia.

I've got 3 or 4 Aloiampelos striatula, formerly Aloe striatula blooming.

Spikes in containers, a hechtia...

And a NOID, I assume it's a dyckia.

The northeast corner of the patio...

The large Agave ovatifolia you see above in the container.

First bloom on the Passiflora 'Amethyst Jewel'.

As I captioned this one on Instagram: ‘Blue Glow’ and bougainvillea, is this Portland or Palm Springs?

The carnivorous gang. Pitchers...

Flowers...

Dyckia ‘Nickel Silver’

Agaves everywhere!

Up in the sky... doesn't the Albizia julibrissin ‘Summer Chocolate’ look magical in this photo?

On the patio table...

I always think of a mummy (or several) when I look at this cactus.

The back of the garage... the bromeliad trashcan lids that would normally be perched on those cylinders hadn't yet made it out of the garage before the ankle break, now they're waiting in the shade for the crazy heat to pass. The other circles on the back of the garage have also come down, temporarily.

Close-up of the contents of stock tank visible in the photo above.

And an arty shot of the Blechnum chilense.

Acanthus mollis bloom and Nepenthese miranda

And I'll end this long post with a look up at the blue sky with the big leaves of my Magnolia macrophylla and Tetrapanax papyrifer. By the time this post goes live we'll be into the last—and worst—day of the heat. Fingers crossed for my plants.

All material © 2009-2021 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.