Suburban Gal

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Plant Nerd Report
2007-11-02 06:45:00
I'm happy to report I have a Viburnum tinus in my yard. We discussed this particular shrub in my plant i.d. class last year, but we've gone through so many hundreds of plants it's hard to remember the specifics. However, I remember some things that help identify plants:Leaf shape (lanceolate, ovoid, palmate, cordate, etc. ), are the leaves simple or compound, leaf edge characteristics (serrate or entire, etc.), how the leave sit on the stems (opposite, alternate). Is the petiole flat or rounded? Are the leaves hairy (tomentose) or smooth? Is the color on the underside of the leaf different from the top side? How are the buds shaped? How about bark color and texture. What color is the new growth? Flowers, fruits, bloom time? This is really plant nerdy, but it's sure a nice way to be able to find out just what it is you have in your yard. Check out this glossery of technical terms from the OSU Landscape Plant s site. It defines some of the nerdy terms that can help you narrow do...
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Almost Coppiced It
2007-10-30 23:52:00
First of all, this is one cute little mysterious bugger:Now that I've removed that from my system, on to other things.I've mentioned that Suburban Girl will not only document my yard-altering successes, but my yard-altering mistakes as well. The, uh, thing I did may or may not have been a mistake. I'll find out eventually.I have a lovely Cornus alba 'Elegantissima', or as I learned it in my Plant I.D. class, 'Argenteo Marginata', in my front yard. For those with tongue-tie, it's a Variegated Red Twig Dogwood. See Rainy Side Gardeners for a little more on the lovely leaf color I had going on this Summer, as well as some detailed information. It's nice to have some Summer attraction, but the real draw with Red Twig Dogwoods is, of course, the Winter interest...red twigs. The red twigs are new growth, however. Older growth is gray and completely uninteresting. Therefore, this shrub must be under constant prune-watch in order to reward its steward in the Winter.In my Plant I....

The Mystery Grows
2007-10-29 16:46:00
Psh. Well, now look. The leaves, aside from being mollusk food, are hairy, white-striped and a little rangy. A good hard frost is going to kill this thing soon. It must be some sort of squash. That's all I can come up with. Funny what pops up when you make a planting bed.You can find comparison photos, if you're of the mind to, here and here.
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Time to Divide
2007-10-28 20:51:00
Please take a look at this nice description of one of my most beloved plants, Crocosmia. This information comes to you from one of my favorite websites, Rainy Side Gardeners.When we bought our house here in Beaverton, it came nicely landscaped. I was delighted to find a clump of Crocosmia in my back yard. The first Summer we lived here, these bulbs put on a really great show, but this year, we had only a few sputtering attempts at flowering, and I was mostly disappointed. I decided perhaps it was time to divide the clump, which is recommended when flowering declines. Autumn is a great time to divide them. It's so important to wait until the plants are done flowering completely, otherwise they could go into shock from having so much stressful activity going on at once. Hey, making flowers is stressful! So, here's the before picture:I decided to use my favorite hand tool:Pardon the shiny picture but the sun is brilliant today. The tool has a wedge on one side for digging and weedin...
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Do It Yourself!
2007-10-22 17:35:00
Well, let's see: The top photo is a pumpkin I carved with the use of a stencil. Sort of a dry run for the real thing. It's supposed to be the Grim Reaper standing next to a tombstone with part of his scythe silhouetted against a full moon. My first reaction to it is that it looks like the left side of a jack-o-lantern face staring at the right side of his face, grimacing in shock. The moon resembles an eyeball.Also, the Grim Reaper looks pregnant.But enough of that. I recently purchased two square pavers at Home Depot over there on Canyon Road in Beaverton with the hopes if giving my new flower bed a path. Just a small one, but if I don't put a path there, we'd have to walk on to the driveway to get to the lawn, which might entail squeezing past a car. Since our garage regularly fills with junk, we often don't have room in there for what was intended.I've never been fully sure about how to lay concrete squares into dirt, so I've always done it my way, which is the wrong way. ...

Chameleon Plant
2007-10-19 06:56:00
I'm not crazy about aggressive plants, the kind that take a hold and spread roughshod over the land like yellow jackets at a steak picnic. I've had too much experience with English Ivy (Hedera helix) and Creeping St. Johnswort (Hypericum calycinum), both of which are mean and unrelenting here in the Pacific Northwest. The St. Johnswort I simply consider unnattractive. I don't like the flower, I don't like the leaves. It grows into the grass and pushes through concrete pavers. It's a mess.However invasive the stuff is, it doesn't hold a candle to English Ivy, which is simply sinister. Not only does it run all over the yard hiding snakes, vermin, toys from yesteryear, garbage, and the neighbors' dog poop, but it is taking over native forests around these parts, climbing up and over tall firs and oaks, eating away all the native vegetation. I despise it, it's ugly... and it's threatening to turn Northwest forests into barren monocultures.Well, that turned into a rant.Having ...
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Really. What Is This Thing?
2007-10-09 06:50:00
Well, dang it. Here is this thing again, one week later. I was planning to show you an up close and detailed piece of mysterious perfection, but a slug got to it. Despite the bites, you can still see the soft but spiny true leaves with a white pattern on them. My across the street neighbor supposed it looked like some sort of sedum, but when you feel it, the leaves on it are not succulent at all. They are nice and glossy, however.I've sprinkled Sluggo around the bed. I hear this is the time to do slug bait anyway, as they are in serious egg-laying mode in the Fall.I'm afraid a hard frost in going to come along and kill this little guy before I have an opportunity to see what it does. At least I have photographic evidence. Maybe I'll have to print it out and bring it to the Landscape department at PCC. Perhaps I can bring it to my old Plant ID instructor. It's what he does for a living.I did a couple of new things to my newly-excavated bed by the front porch, but I'll leave tha...
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Er...What Is This Thing?
2007-10-02 07:37:00
Er...what is this thing? This suddenly appeared in my newly-created flower bed by the front porch, next to my Daylily. At first I imagined it to be a baby sunflower or squash. It still may be a squash. The first two true leaves have spiny edges and the green leaves are flecked with white spots. I know it's too close to Winter for this to really do anything. I imagine a bird or squirrel planted it there a week earlier. It may have even come from our bird feeder in the back. I also have a neighbor with a yard chock full of perennials and annuals, so it may have originated from there as well. It just seems like something you'd find in your vegetable garden. You can click on the photo for a closer look. It's actually very pretty.I've been taking a rain, school, and financial respite from any heavy-duty yard shifting. I need to get out and transplant some things. Now's the time...
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Blue and Handsome
2007-09-28 22:35:00
One of the last purchases I made at the nursery where I used to work (that sounds weird) is this little number. I promised myself that I would keep the tag so I could actually know what I put into my yard. Well, I lost the tag, yes. I always lose the tags and I feel like a green thumb loser, but then I read Dulcy Mahar's column this last Thursday from the Oregonian Home and Garden section, where she claims to lose many of her plant tags as well. She then cannot remember some of her plants' names just like me, so I felt better. If a pro can do it, so can I.I knew it started with a "C", however, so I opened up the old Sunset Western Garden Book and searched until I found a "C" entry with a corresponding correct image. Ah. Caryopteris, or Blue beard. I had purchased the C. x clandonensis (Blue Mist) which says it gets about 2 ft. tall and wide. On the now-missing tag, I found some instructions for care involving pruning, but the sentence ran off the tag so I vowed to research what it...
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The Big Goose Egg
2007-09-24 18:17:00
I was supposed to be taking an online Math course at this very moment, but there was some sort of system error going on when I entered the access code to get into the class. I've called the system administrator and he got the same error message as me. So...he's working it, and I am left with nothing to do while I wait for a sign that all is well.The reason I'm telling you this? I had just announced in my first blog that I was about to start school this morning, 9 a.m. sharp. And here I am, not doing it. I'm trying to tell you, honestly, I'm not purposefully playing hooky!So I'll post an entry.Here's the rock that I had moved from my backyard. Now it's planted up front. Behind it I put another sedge which had been previously sitting in the same desert conditions as my Sea Oats. I had a little adventure dumping the rock out of the wheelbarrow. If you are familiar with my other blog, you know that I've made a few careless errors that resulted in injuries to parts of my body. ...
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Rocks & Piles of Dirt
2007-09-23 19:59:00
Top Photo: Berm!Bottom Photo: Rock!Okay, Msugarcity, here it is. I made a berm out of upside down sod, which in turn freed up my wheelbarrow, which in turn made room for a rock. Now the rock has wheels and I'll be able to move it up front!I may goof around with shape of the berm, and I may make it go behind the little azalea instead of in front of it. But here's my thought: I'll cover it with a little compost, put a weedblock on it for the winter, and then in the spring maybe I'll plant some groundcover on it. I already have some Kinnikinnick there, I could add to it. I suppose I could do other things too, but what's neat about this is that it provides a little bit of a border between our yard and our neighbor's yard. Our back yard has no fence, and we like it that way since it opens on to a green space and then looks out over a cute little alley which bisects the neighborhood. This makes our yard appear bigger and more woodsy than it really is. The berm creates a smidgen of ...
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Reader Suggestion
2007-09-20 22:15:00
If my vine maple's going red, it must be Fall.An alert reader had a fantastic idea regarding the unwanted pieces of sod I have sitting in my wheelbarrow. This person suggested building a small berm with the sod, by piling it into a nice shape with the grass side down. Then cover the new mini-hill with weed block over the winter to kill off the grass and other undesirables.The reader suggested it could be hidden somewhere so as to be relatively unnoticeable. Excellent... I wonder what else I could do with a berm made of upside down sod? Something like that, if placed strategically, might provide a little 3-dimensional interest.Thanks for the thoughtful response, reader... I'll give it a try. It's certainly preferable to throwing the sod in the garbage can.The comment can be found under my post, "Changing the Name".
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Beauty Becomes Beast
2007-09-20 05:50:00
Boring picture? Boring plants. But it's not their fault. Normally this is a majestic and romantic specimen. But I was a bad girl last year and made some assumptions. I planted these Northern Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) based on those assumptions.Assumption: Grass likes dry sunny locations. Action: Therefore, plant all grasses in dry sunny locations.I put these in the sunniest, most water-starved place I could muster. All Winter long I waited for my little dormant oat grasses to return. The chartreuse and somewhat bamboo-like blades are so beautiful, but the cream on top is the swaying, nodding seed heads. Sunset's Western Garden Book likens them to "flattened armadillos". I've seen them in mass plantings, where they reflect the dreamy light of Autumn and make soft tapping and rustling sounds in the breeze.The oats made a promising showing in the Spring and early Summer months. However, as the season progressed, the bottoms of these things began to dry out. The lower leav...
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Rock and Roll, Beaverton!!!!
2007-09-19 06:04:00
I have a number of small boulders in my back yard. They punctuate the landscape nicely. I have to wonder who decides what type of rocks to use as decor, and where to put them? Is there a science? I decided to do my own experiment with one of the existing boulders by moving it from the back yard to the front yard. This particular rock was parked and somewhat hidden under a bushy Vine Maple. It really wasn't being looked at very often. Because...that's what you do with boulders. Look at 'em.Well, it struck me as perfect candidate for repositioning! So, with a light and anticipating heart, I pushed though the maple's branches and sort of rolled this sucker on its side. Predictably, I revealed centipedes and pill bugs running about in naked desperation, their lives upended. Sorry guys.I figured I could roll this rock like one would roll a large heavy snowball. One...oof...side...argh....at a time. I think I got two rolls out of it before I realized I was slowly pulling muscles in ...
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Changing the Name
2007-09-18 08:11:00
...Switching the name of my blog from "Suburban Girl" (which has a nice ring to it) to "Suburban Gal" (which doesn't) simply because there is a movie with the title of Suburban Girl. I'm nervous about somebody big and mean and legal getting mad at me for being shifty... I actually thought of the title before I knew about the movie, then I learned about the movie and gave that name to my blog anyway.But really, I am a gal. I'm Galowar, so it fits. That's all!
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My House in the 'Burbs
2007-09-18 04:22:00
My family, that includes me, moved to Beaverton, Oregon last Summer. It's a lovely place, I can't say enough good things about being here. The people are friendly and we have an outrageous number of resources within our easy grasp...the benefits of living near a big city (that'd be Portland).We moved into a typical suburban home. Cute. Clean. Pleasantly landscaped. But kind of, well, boring. At least the front yard is yawn-inspiring.I'm hoping to change the yard into something interesting, beautiful and original. But I'm not wealthy, and I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I'm trying to learn a little about plants and landscaping at the local community college, but I have not yet taken a course in design. I had a little story in my other blog about some of my trials with sunlight availability, or lack of it. I also had another musing about my lack of design expertise.I'd like to document my work here. It will help me remember things: plant names, locations, good ideas that w...
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Blog Brainstorm
2007-09-17 21:26:00
I'm gathering up ideas, thoughts, brainstorms, and when I have a minute I'll get out and get some photos. But I haven't forgotten Suburban Gal. I've just been busy doing other things and getting over a cold! It's raining out right now. Happy days for the green things in my yard.
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New Blog - Suburban Gal
2007-09-15 02:34:00
Welcome to the new blog! Not the same as the old blog. I'd like to use this here blog to discuss my gardening trials. Mistakes, successes... The whole learning process. And photos, plenty of photos.I'd like to make this a fun read, maybe I'll ask a few questions and answer a few questions? I suppose one would need readers for that to happen. Let's see how it works. More later...
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