The photos speak for themselves!

Happy Spring! March 23, 2009. Notice my cold frame buried under almost a foot of snow? Sweet. It's really blowy and drifting--drifts are a foot or more deep. Amazing. But it is spring, so this will likely all be melted by this afternoon :>)

I'm going to the women's prison today to check out their gardening project. My friend Gary is the head of maintenance--he's trying to get their greenhouses and garden plots going in small baby steps. Has anyone seen "Greenfingers"? Such a great movie! There probably won't be much to see up there today but I'm going anyway!

sage, snow, seed

So two days ago I was outside in a tank top getting a sunburn and pulling out sagebrush with my bare hands (TOWANDA!) and today I'm filling bird feeders in the snow. I love springtime in Idaho. Probably should have gone skiing today, but oh well. So hard to tell this time of year! Pebble Creek snow report said it rained a little up there last night (yesterday Pocatello probably hit low 60's?), but is probably dumping powder up there today. Oh well!

They're alive!

mat daisy, white flax, chocolate flower, yarrow, sweet williams. And more tulips are poking their leaves up.

The wild red poppies (oriental I believe) that grow in masses along my hillside have started to come up too. Sweet! They're huge--like 3' tall. I seeded a few in my regular garden spots and they completely dwarfed the other plants--had to move them--so I dug them up and ran them to my neighbor--I hope they come back for her!

Last few years I've been trying to get some spots in my landscape to grow flowers only from seed. I'm having decent success with that. I'm also trying to seed some of my hillside with low-water wildflowers--flax, poppies (smaller variety), bachelors buttons, larkspur, sunflowers. I seeded a huge area last year and it looks like I'm getting some clumps of seedlings coming up. Yeah! We have sunflowers that don't need any water in the summer--they grow wild on the benches (and along the highway)--take some seed heads from them in the fall and scatter them in your yard--totally awesome, easy sunflowers.

How do I seed? I cut the flower stalks off the old flowers once they have dried out, take them in big bunches, and smack them around a new spot that I'd like to seed. Then I leave the stalks right there as kind of a cover/mulch and let the rest of the seeds fall out naturally. It seems to work!

OK, back to it! Nancy

Sunny and snowing; it's a beautiful day

Yes, snow. And looks/feels like more on the way.

So, not much gardening news to report today! Except I wasn't hallucinating--those tulips have, in fact, started to grow. Feels early to me--these tulips are in a particularly sunny spot that turns into hell's kitchen in July-August. Got some lambs ear, yarrow in there for high summer (oh and there is a patch of wild prickly pear just outside this garden bed)--I need some yucca or other desert-like plants to add in there. But for now, we have tulips. Until the deer eat them.

If you would like to be sent blog updates...

Contact me at goodnanc@yahoo.com and I will add your e-mail to the automatic update list. Thanks! Nancy

test post from my e-mail! oooh, fun blogger toy!

I think I can move tulip bulbs...won't matter--I need to learn about deer-resistant bulbs! And yes, it seems I can update my blog from my e-mail! Very cool. However, this particular post needed extensive editing at my blog in order to be readable--but easy enough fixes. Sweet. Anyone know of a good coast-to-coast wireless internet plan I can plug into my laptop and take on a 2-day bus trip to, say, Philadelphia?

Yes, Tulips!

So I'm not sure--is this normal for Pocatello if you have good early season tulips, or is it super-early? Probably as early as I've noticed them?

I've only been working with bulbs the last few years--first several years it was strictly perennials.

Along the ditch by my driveway, someone at some point spread a ton of random tulip bulbs. These bulbs have, over the course of time, moved, died, been accidentally dug up and never re-planted, choked under 3' of grass, etc etc.

I've got random tulip bulbs close to 100 yards (that's a football field, right?) away from my house. I think squirrels like to plant them as much as I do these days.

So recently I started bulbs. Ugh. Same trial and error as everything else. These bulbs coming up now, for example, are like deer caviar, apparently.

Can I move bulbs in the spring?? Anyone who knows please post!

Nancy

Let it snow??

OK, so my garden is under 2-3 inches of nice fresh powder. Made for a great day at Pebble Creek yesterday, but not much to do around here! I did "fluff" some rocks in preparation of freshening up my rock borders everywhere...and now it's back to staring at my seedlings for a few days it seems! It's what I love about Idaho :>)

oops!

OK, I stand corrected. I guess you can't plant things outdoors in Ohio yet--but it's getting close? Thanks Teresa my Zone 6/Facebook/Peterson Elementary pal!

Teresa, by the way, is starting heirloom tomatoes from dried seeds she harvested from last year's crop. That's hardcore.

I am also very happy to report that my white flax may have survived another year! Those things are hard to get started...I'm pulling out Lewis's (blue) flax like weeds, but the cool white and red kinds? Different story...

This is the time of year I start poking around the crowns of my dormant perennials. Should start seeing new growth very soon and being able to figure out what survived the winter--I tend to lose at least a few plants every winter...but most do live, and it's so much fun to see them come back! This fall I moved a bunch of plants around so am curious to see how many survived the transplant. My theory is: if you move plants around when they're dormant/sleeping*, when they wake up, they don't know they've been moved!

*assuming you haven't hacked off all the roots in the move--a good spade-full of dirt/roots is good--with the new hole already dug and soaked with water.

Wow, I like blogging about plants. Off to First Friday art walk!

Arrow-leaf Balsam Root growing wild...

That tiny yellow smudge to the left is some arrowleaf balsam root that grows wild around here. It's beautiful in the springtime! View from my backyard--terrain is referred to as "high desert, sage-steppe environment". 5000 feet elev., sage (at least 3 kinds...), juniper trees, and during summer seasons desert primrose, lewis's flax, sunflowers, and a few others I haven't identified yet.

Israel flowers, zone differences, and whatever else

OK so I've spent the morning off and on Facebook (I love working at home!!), and have learned so much already about gardening!

There's a flower in Israel called the anemone coronaria (Kalanit) that is forbidden to pick because it's losing habitat due to development. Looks like it might be easy enough to plant here, though? I wonder, and perhaps will try! There are lots of anemone plant varieties--never grown them myself but why not. That'd be a really neat addition to my landscape!

And apparently if you live in Ohio you can plant things outside already. What? We've got two more months here in Idaho before it's safe to do that! We had snow this morning, and last year had snow in June. Amazing. But the really wet spring last year made for amazing columbine, and what I thought was just a big bush exploded with lilac flowers for the first time since I've lived in the house. I'd like to see that again...

Anyway, for now I've got 80 1-5" pots of flowers and veggies growing in my mudroom. I'm a little worried about the scarlet flax. Kind of spindly and seems to be not be really taking off? And I have no idea what portaluca, a re-seeding succulent annual, should be doing in it's early seedling stages, so can only assume what I'm looking at (very small seedlings that aren't growing?) is normal.

I planted everything at once on January 17 which, as I really knew at the time but couldn't help myself, is way way too early to plant squash-like plant seeds!! It's nice to see something so robust, however! Basil for indoors is taking off slowly, and just planted cilantro for indoors since it was growing randomly in my flower starts for some reason.

OK, is everyone bored to death besides me? OK, here's some gardening advice/tip to liven it up: If you can grow it (per region) you should get some chocolate flowers. They are awesome. Low water perennial that likes it HOT and DRY; small daisy flowers have strong cocoa smell up close. Put them by your pathways so you can smell them as often as you want! High Country Gardens is a great catalog/website to buy/learn from, and they have chocolate flowers. I've seen them at our local Town and Country gardens nursery once or twice as well. I wonder if they'd special order them?

Hello everyone!

OK, just decided to do a garden blog--for years I've tried to do a garden "journal" but whatever, that's not my bag, come to find out. But after leaving messages on a Facebook wall where I wasn cut off due to length--I figured I've got some things to say, some tips, some mistakes, some successes, and an ultimate "I have no idea how I did it" triumph or two regarding gardening in Southeast Idaho--and it might help other folks I'd guess who want to save a fortune on their water bill each summer.

So that's it for now, I'll be back soon I promise. Perhaps we'll start with chocolate flowers...