Gardening Mothers

Did I get lucky or what to have Bulbarella for my mother.









Several generations of avid gardener's genetic material resides in me from both sides.















I consider that an important gift.


















Happy Mothers Day to my mom and to all the women out there in the gardening world who share this gift with children.

Loopy

403 Error Message was all was I getting on any Blogger blog for quite some time yesterday. I assume they were down for maintenance. A more appropriate message couldn't be that difficult for them.













There has been lots of nail pounding in the last two days. Metal straps and brackets are being attached all over the cozy little cabin. The main girders were strapped to the cement columns. The floor is bracketed to the girders. The walls are now strapped to the floor. The studs are now bracketed to the wall frame plates, top and bottom. The roof will be strapped to the walls.

If'n a mighty storm or a ternader comes, my cozy little cabin should stick together in one piece.













With all that nail pounding and bending and twisting and crawling around, my hip must be out of alignment again. You will have to straighten this picture in your minds eye. My cabin really isn't crooked.













Lots of details before the roof building begins. I think we are even going to put on most of the plywood that goes under the Hardie Board, a cement fiber mesh siding material. That and a metal roof will make the cozy little cabin a bit more fire proof.













A nice walk in the evenings helps stretch things back into better alignment. You have to go slow. There is so much to see and appreciate.

Prelude To The Rhododendron

The focus often falls on the wide variety flowering perennials. They do tend to dominate most of the space.













There are shrubs here as well, less by percentage than in a more conventional garden. The dominating forest trees limit the need for the structure shrubs can bring to a garden and the shade limits those that will do well.














One shrub enjoys these conditions and there is a large collection,















Getting ready to take center stage.














The Rhododendrons are coming.

Squeezed In

There is always room for one more thing. It isn't a bad idea either to wind the bulb season down with some late bloomers. Ornithogalum nutans fits the bill. It does have oddly gray/green colored petals, but hey it's different.















Camassia quamash also blooms. The wait for the Alliums to fully open continues.
















The San Francisco branch of OutsideClyde got some attention in between cabin building activities. Three types of seeds from a box of goodies were sown. Sea Holly, Eryngium giganteum (a coveted plant), Clematis stans, and Dierama pulcherrimum will join the existing Chicago, Tennessee and Buffalo additions to OutsideClyde. Still to be planted is a wonderful Dahlia 'Madame Simone Stappers' hailing from San Francisco. I'm supposed to wait until after our last frost date of May 15th. I am trying to be patient. Maybe I can wait another week.

It will be quite some time before my own garden has plants that are squeezed in. Even then I may not be patient enough to wait until after a frost date. How could it possibly freeze again? How could it dare to?













Look there is a bathroom and kitchen in my cabin now. The floor joists for the loft are up. The front joist of the loft is part of the roof structure. The roof will be built on the ground in two sections, then lifted into place by a crane.













I think this is Erigeron annuus. I found this in the Kingdom of Madison. Here it is being pulled as a weed. Now that I see it blooming, one has to wonder what determines weediness up here?















The Hyacinthoides hispanica were some of the first foliage to appear in late winter and the last of the bulbs to bloom. Great swaths of them carpet the hillside.


















They come in three colors, pink, white and blue.













The Trail of Spanish Bluebells winds around a mountaintop.


















At the close of another spring day.

The Forest Floor

Delpinium tricorne, Trillium grandiflorum and the faint pink glow of Geranium.













Phacelia purshii










Dodecatheon meadia

















Iris cristata














Geranium maculatum













Trillium grandiflorum













Just a few of the things growing on the forest floor.

Unfolding Iris

I voted for the first time in my new state today at the Fines Creek North Carolina Volunteer Fire Department for the next president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, who will be making history as the first Hawaiian president. You would have to have lived in Hawaii, to know its hapa culture, to understand that before anything else, Obama is Hawaiian.

They had to call the county election headquarters before they let me vote. I had not made it onto the list of names at my precinct. Luckily I had brought the confirmation card I had received in the mail. They sure were nice there. We talked story while waiting for approval to let me vote.

The Iris blossoms are unfolding with each new day.
















Most of them had not budded out before that last icy blast.

















The assortment of colors is sure to be vast. There are patches of Iris spread over two acres of mountaintop. Short ones, tall ones, dwarf ones, Siberian kind, native kind, all kinds, living happily together in one large garden.
















Another petal on my cabin has unfolded. The kitchen/bath interior wall is standing. In the top right, attached to the wall studs is the ledger that will hold the floor joists for the loft. On the bottom left, on the cabin floor, is the opposite ledger for the loft floor joists. That will be hung tomorrow, the joists put in and the rest of the combo kitchen/bath/living room wall built.

There are a lot of temporary braces and two overhead connections to pull and hold the walls plumb and straight. As more parts get added and the cabin gains its own structural stability, these temporary boards will come down.













The native Iris cristata that I planted last summer at the top of my drive has produced its first bloom. They not only survived, but multiplied, almost doubled in size.














There are some good signs for the future.

A Spring Meadow

There is almost too much to keep up with. How will I ever find the time for a real job.













It is time though to devote scheduled set days to my clients. If I have to restart my own business, I need to get out there and present myself.














I could stay busy all day, every day on this mountain. That is a nice thought. I'll think it. Aaahh, that was nice.















A burn spot marks an afternoon of clearing out dead trees, fallen trees and fallen branches in my part of the meadow. We want to be able to skip through the meadow, not trip; though I have certain friends......













I am also having second thoughts about what I want to do with the boulders in the bottom of the meadow. Will it still be a snake in the grass?

Pulsating Orbs

In Purple Pulsations