Travels with George and Marta

Rosa glauca

Our streak of rain-free days has come to an end. It rained Thursday bringing the streak to an end. We matched the previous record of 29 consecutive dry days in May-June. It was nice to hear the rain again. Fortunately it continues to be warm and we have partial sun.

Our garden is mainly a Mediterranean drought tolerant garden. We do not water it much in the summer. Some plants don’t do as well and eventually they are moved out or die. There is also not a lot of order. G often plants things just to get them out of containers and into the ground. But there is usually something in bloom.

The blues and yellow continue but we have streak of pink to fuchia to purple blooms now.

Delphinium “Millenium”

Phlomis tuberosa

Lavandula stoechas

Geranium maderense

Blettilla striata

Salvia leucantha ‘Santa Barbara’

Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’

Salvia semiatrata

Teucrium cossonii

Anna Hummingbird visiting a Salvia

Related Posts:

• Colour My Garden: Yellow
• Colour My Garden: Blue

>
Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’

I don’t have any particular color scheme in our garden. Our garden is totally a plantsman garden. No design. No rhyme. No scheme. There are plants scattered through the area. I love to walk the garden and see the different colors and patterns.

Last week, Yellow was dominant color. Lots of interesting plants. This week the blue and fuchsia are coming on. Let’s look at a few of the blues in bloom right now.

Anchusa capensis

Campanula garganica

Salvia sp (seeds collected at the Rome Forum)

A wild geranium – possibly Geranium maculatum

Geranium splish-splash

Scutellaria alpina

Salvia sp. (from Verona)

Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’

Garden Kitty – oops this one isn’t blue or purple. 🙂

• Colour My Garden: Yellow
• Colour My Spring Garden: Blue
• Colour My Spring Garden: Chartreuse

G loves unusual plants. Can you tell from our travels? We have orchids and loads of salvias. Arums and the related genus like Arisaema is another plant family he loves. He worked many years at Seattle Garden Center in the Pike Place Market. The store always had a wonderful selection of bulbs and tubers. One unusual bulb that they sold was Voodoo Lily – Sauromatum guttatum. Of course, with a name like Voodoo Lily – he couldn’t resist it. Not only did it have an unusual name but it also had a unusual smell. Like so many other plants that are maroon to dark brown, it is pollinated by flies and has the smell of rotting meat. He knew about the smell because sometimes they would bloom in the boxes without being planted in soil and stink up the store. He became curious and it led to him investigating the arum family.

Arums are a Mediterranean plant native of Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East. They are tubers. The flower is a hood like spathe which wraps around an erect spadix. A cob of seeds are produced after pollination which turn red in the fall. The leaves can also be very attractive. They are dark green triangular heart shaped leaves. Some have white marbling which gives an exotic accent to the garden.

He has collected several different species over the years. One which has a large maroon spathe is
Dragon Lily – Dracunculus Vulgaris (aka Arum dracunculus). We lost it a couple of years ago but it does do well in Seattle. It has become wild in parts of Ballard.

One Arum that has come back reliably is Arum Dioscoridis. It has a beautiful mottled hood but a disgusting odor. G and I were working in the yard today. The weather has been dry and warm for the past couple of weeks. Today was no different. I was weeding and I kept smelling this odor like steer manure. Our mulch has some in it but it doesn’t smell. We finally realized it was the Arum. Man, did it stink! Peter Boyce who wrote the monograph on the genus described the fragrance as “a mixture of dung and rotting flesh”. Exactly!

Here are a few more pictures:

First harvest – lettuce

Wow! What a different three warm weeks will make. We have been having gorgeous weather here in Seattle. It has been up in the 80’s this week. You can almost see the garden growing.

I did my first harvest today. The lettuce is ready and I picked an assortment of leaves. We are growing 4 different varieties; Nevada: a slow to bolt green leaf lettuce, Merlot: a deep purple red leaf lettuce; Red Sails: a typical red green leaf lettuce; Mascara: a red oak leaf lettuce. I also have a spicy Mesculin mix. I picked an assortment of the leaves. Aren’t they pretty.

Everything else has leafed out well. The pole beans are starting to twine up the rebars. The bush peas are starting to bloom and pod. The tall snap peas are a little sparse but well see, they may fill out. They are starting to bloom although they are only about 5 ft tall. Seems a little early to me.

Tomatoes are doing well. They are flowering but still no fruit. The nights have been warm enough – low 50’s so hopefully we will have some fruit setting soon.

Garden	Bush Beans
Ready to Harvest	Dwarf Grey Sugar Pod Peas
Sugar Sprint Peas	Greenhouse Tomato
Tomato Blossom	Outside Tomatoes
Mesculin Mix
Peas – Lettuce – May 18	June 5
Pole Beans – May 18	June 5
Squash May 18	June 5

Related Posts:

• Vegetable Garden #1 – May 7
• Vegetable Garden #2 – May 18