Chestnuts, a favorite symbol of fall

One of the many rewards of having a dog is you end up spending time just standing in one place, looking around at the trees, and the plants, while your dog takes care of doggie business. I hadn’t noticed these trees in the park near our home until one day when Lila found something interesting nearby that had to be investigated.
Thanks to nest maker’s mom, Patricia, I found out they’re Spanish Chestnut trees, also known as Sweet Chestnut. All my life I’ve loved to collect chestnuts in the fall; their colors are so rich and warm. I checked back recently to see what these trees were producing. Cool huh?
And they add a little touch of fall at home on the mantle. Or once you’ve accumulated enough they look so pretty in a bowl.
Evidently this is the variety of chestnut that is edible. People have been swarming the park and collecting them as they drop. Have you ever eaten a roasted chestnut? One winter while I was living in Seattle the Four Seasons Hotel hired a roaster at Christmastime to roast them at a cart on the street, and give them away in paper cones. How romantic I thought, how cosmopolitan. How disgusting! Not a taste I ever want to taste again.
Lila decided if I was going to stand around and take pictures then she’d just go ahead and lie down and enjoy the sun. Smart girl. Back September I posted about a group of trees that caught my eye. A couple of keen readers identified them as Dawn Redwoods and alerted me to the fact they would take on beautiful color in the fall. I checked back yesterday and found this… Close up color, but over all still very green. I’ll keep a watch.
On a tree in the same park as the Redwoods, this sign appeared a couple weeks ago.
It reads (in part) "This Oregon white oak tree, a longtime resident and honored citizen of Willamette Park, will be leaving the neighborhood soon. If you look closely at the base of the trunk, you will notice fruiting bodies (conks) of a disease fungus. Additionally, there are areas of decay along the main stem and surface roots. Pathology tests and examination of this tree by certified arborists have determined that the root rot disease and the structural defects make this tree vulnerable to failure.…..This tree is scheduled for removal during the week of October 12, 2009."

These are the fungal growths referred to. Yuck. Poor tree.
It’s was a tall beauty don’t you think?
Now there is just this…

slapped in the face by fall

I was actually starting to embrace the idea of fall, before escaping to sunny California where I willingly stepped back into summer, complete with flip flops and sun burns. What a shock it was to return to the Pacific Northwest. As we drove north along I-5 the mountains of Southwestern Oregon were alive with fall color, I have to admit it was beautiful.

I couldn’t help wondering what my garden would look like, I checked the Portland weather a few times while we were away (it’s an addiction), there was a lot of rain and some wicked winds. Saturday, the day we returned, we lucked out with sunny skies…what a treat. Several plants in the danger garden are showing the effects of the cooler temperatures, including Clifford (Magnolia macrophylla)…who doesn’t really impress with his fall color. His leaves turn golden with splotches of brown, it’s the same with the Hosta leaves you can see on the lower left.
The Tetrapanax leaves are also starting to turn gold. But the Echium is hardly fazed (it's the big green mass below with the pointy leaves). Unfortunately it’s going to take a very mild winter for this one to make it till spring. but a girl can hope. Can you believe I brought this plant home from the NW Flower and Garden show in Seattle on an airplane? In a small tote bag?
The Solomon’s Seal has turned golden…
And the Peony foliage… Eucomis Oakhurst falling every which way.
And this one remaining upright… sort of...This silly Abutilon has more blooms and buds on it now than it has had all summer!
The same for this fuchsia, which I bought on a whim three years ago, and it refuses to die.
I left town thinking the Canna maybe frozen mush when we returned, not the case.
The same for this Ensete Maurelii. I have given up trying to winter over this plant and just replace with a new one in the spring. This one hardly seems to notice summer is over and is going strong. Perhaps I’ll try, just one more time, to winter one over.
There are still a few green tomatoes hanging on. I realize they are never going to ripen but they look so full of possibility. And the Fatsia Japonica blooms are looking so “sputnik”…I love them at this stage.
All in all things weathered the two weeks without me just fine. The garden has progressed effortlessly into fall, now I need to catch up.

California Dreaming

We’ve just returned from two fabulous weeks in California ….amazing. Our vacation was full of sunshine (except the freak storm during our time in Oakland and San Francisco) and astonishing plants. I am now scheming to see how we can someday make the move south, I was in heaven!

The day before we left (October 9th) our forecasts were calling for a freaky early freeze here in Portland. Lows in the low 30’s and briefly even rumored as bad as the high 20’s. Thankfully it didn’t materialize, but I left town having prepared for the worst. The reality of over-wintering tender agaves and aloes helped to mitigate my natural tendency to go crazy buying plants on the trip. But no worries, I did come back with a few.

The cities we visited: Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Fillmore, Pasadena, Burbank, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, Venice, Santa Monica, and Sacramento. Whew!

The plant focused places on our itinerary: Flora Grubb Gardens, San Francisco Botanical Gardens, Berkeley Botanical Gardens, Cactus Jungle, San Marcos Growers, Lotusland, California Cactus Center, Huntington Gardens and Big Red Sun. Sound exhausting? My brother in law in Fillmore, CA, jokingly asked when PBS would be showing the Ken Burns documentary on our trip. I thought his remark was a humorous take on how epic the itinerary seemed to others. I must thank my husband who was completely engaged in the gardens, and patient with me and my picture taking.

My eyes are tired; we saw so many incredible things. Rather than risk boring you all to tears with agave picture after agave picture for days on end I am going to split up my hundreds of photos and post once or maybe twice a week about the trip until I am finished. Hopefully then I will be able to keep it all fresh and keep your attention and interest.

The picture at top is the courtyard of our hotel in Oakland, our first hotel stop in California. Look at that tree fern! Amazing. The picture below was taken near our hotel; I thought it was an interesting illustration of how different the folks in California seem to think about agaves; they are common, nothing special. An Agave attenuata in a plastic bucket just growing along a restaurant sidewalk, not babied, just fending for itself. Imagine!
It was getting dark by the time I spotted this one, thus the camera flash making odd shadows.
These are its roots and sprouts; this plant is determined to grow!
There were so many more agaves ahead in our travels…I can’t wait to share them all with you!

Then and now, the end

Standing in the lower back yard, looking at the back of the house, May of 2005. I’ve threatened to show movies on the back of the house. It’s such a big blank white wall. In my dreams we install an industrial rollup door with lots of glass, and steps down to the garden. Wouldn’t that be fabulous? To be able to completely open up the back of the house in the summer? Maybe someday. In the mean time I’ll settle for painting and making that wall-o-white go away.

Skip ahead to July of 2007. In this picture you can really see the crumbling retaining wall separating the two levels of the backyard. Judging from the adjacent properties this is original to the house, built in 1948.

August 2007, preparation for the patio and new wall. Work, work, work. Break out the old wall, dig out the sod, dig out 7” of soil, and bring in sand and gravel and blah, blah, blah.

It's still August 2007. The one part of the project that we hired someone else to do was build the new retaining wall and stairs. Totally worth it. Although I was a bit afraid when I came home to this scene…

September 2007, wall and stairs done…time for the patio to go in. That vine growing up the back of the house? Breaking up the field of white. Gone. Ya, it was working it’s tendrils under the siding…bad idea!

Summer 2008, a picture from the lost year! I loved this picture so much that I luckily I had it on my computer at work. So when our home computer crashed it was not lost.

Unfortunately pictures I took this year from this angle didn’t even came close to looking this good. Too many harsh shadows from the new shade pavilion, which wasn’t around when this picture was taken.

If you want to see more on our patio project I went into detail on this earlier post and there more pictures are here. On that note “then and now” week is complete! Thanks for coming along on the 4 year journey...

Then and now, the back garden

On to the back garden, that’s the entrance above. Not a very glamorous entry with the chain link gate, I am hoping for a custom metal gate, someday. In the mean time this one keeps Lila contained and safe. What I do like about this entrance is the way the paver path takes your eye around the huge hydrangea and hints that something more is around the corner. I plan to add a swanky focal point straight ahead, where there is now only the green shrub/bush/tree and the neighbor’s grey garage…but that is waiting until after we paint, in 2010 (hopefully).

Okay, rounding the hydrangea and looking straight to the back of our property…picture taken May of 2005 before the house was ours. Our backyard is two levels. There is the upper yard next to the house, and the lower yard which you are looking at here.

August of 2005…shortly before our neighbor cut down the wall of laurel and built an ugly fence.

August of 2006…our attempts to hide the fence, and the house behind it, with bamboo.

July 2007, about a month before we started working on the patio.

2008 would be here, if I had pictures.

And just a few days ago…in 2009, on a cloudy rainy fall Portland day.

Then and now, looking out across the front yard

Sept 2005 above. My big accomplishments that first summer were planting Yucca in the parking strip and tearing out the thick mat of Vinca vine next to the house sidewalk. That area is in the shadows in this picture so it is nearly impossible to see, but after the backbreaking job of removing intertwined old vines up to 10” deep I planted a Fatsia Japonica, several Yucca and transplanted a Peony into a triangle between the sidewalk, the driveway and the house. The Yuccas in the parking strip came from my garden in Spokane.


April 2006, bye bye lawn!June 2006, the plants are in and growing.

August 2007, you might notice the row of Blue Fescue has been replaced with Black Mondo Grass. A neighborhood cat killed most of the Fescue by using it as a toilet. Nice kitty.
And September of 2009…looking like fall.
If you are interested in a more pictures and a little more info on our “get rid of the lawn” project here is an earlier post on the topic.