The Convergence Zone

Well, we made it into the Everett Herald, thanks to the editors there! Plant sale benefits shelter for homeless families in Everett Picture of plants getting ready, by the new greenhouse at Glacier Peak High School. Students in biotech classes did the work! We are getting lots of help and interest in our project, and looking forward to a great sale on what is looking like a SPRING DAY after months of freezing, rain, rain, and more rain. The plants at volunteer's yards have all been fine over the winter, the native plants know how to shut down so to speak in the cold. Leaves turn red, wait for a while, then turn green again as it warms up. Here's what my Native Planter looks like now, recovering from winter. And yes, I did add some non-native pansies from the supermarket.

After three days of below freezing, and several nights in the teens (unusual for us), the natives in the planters and in one area are doing ok. Surviving, some green left, only real sign of the freeze is the fading leaves on the salmonberry. Here we have the highbush cranberry started last March showing leaves turning gold. Below is the fringe cup, leaves still green, beach strawberry, leaves still dark green, blue-eyed grass, oak fern & salal, barely visible but there. Will try to take another similar shot of this one every month till May. Here's another natives planter, with deer fern, evergreen huckleberry, a bit of sedum spathulifolium, more salal, and a cedar seedling. Finally, here's a patch of natives, with early blue violet, salmonberry, sword fern, blue-eyed grass, sedum oreganum, bunchberry , maidenhair fern, and others.

Nov 22, 23, 24 - Record-breaking low temps around here, along with some snow. Went for a walk in a nearby field. Looked over the nearly frozen pond, with the ducks near the crust of ice. Walked around the yard a bit, here's the cedars growing in pots, lined up on the edge, with sun beaming in on the snow.

Want to grow some NW Natives in your backyard over the winter? Let me know -- I'm volunteering on a project to raise funds where we buy starts of plants, farm them out to people's yards, then collect and sell in the spring. All Pacific Northwest Native Plants, so they are easy to grow, can take the rain and winter weather, hardy, don't need special care, can be drought-tolerant once established. Read all about it: Interfaith Native Plants Here's a really pretty spring blooming shrub: Pacific Ninebark, great shrub for the back or front yard. Sun or shade, little care needed. We will be picking up a number of these bare-root at the Snohomish County Conservation District's March sale.

One of my three apple trees, the Libery, has been producing well this season. No spraying this year, no traps for the flying pests, and until mid-summer there were still weeds and groundcovers growing under them. Cleaned up under, put down woods chips, picking up all the dead leaves now on all three. The Johnagold apples are all still full of bugs, Spartan's were very small, some scab, a few ok eating. But the Liberty's are ok, medium size, few bad spots, and taste great. Here's the Liberty tree and one of the apples.

Strawberries are getting ripe. Edible pea pods on the vines to eat. Rhubarb making a second showing and raspberries almost ripe. Apples the size of a golf ball and getting larger fast.

This picture from April 2, last week, after a heavy rainfall we had. Taken in the morning. Later in the day the water had all seeped into the ground or had flowed from the channel at the lower end of the garden to areas below. Growing here we see grasses, heuchera, hellebore, sedums, lots other stuff. I use it like a nursery for struggling plants, such as the yellow twig dogwood in left of this picture. Next I need to fix up the drainage channels so that not only the vegetable area below gets watered, but the runoff from that will drain to my new shade raingarden, to be made from my now messy weed pile under the spirea. More on that soon, I hope.