We were gone last week for Fathers Day and the garden seemed to erupt while we were gone. Many of the salvias are blooming and I hope to get a slide show next week when I get my new macro lens.
Enjoy! (and don’t forget to click on a photo so you can see the name of the plant).
Today is the summer solstice. Time for mid-summer night madness. Growing up in California, I never noticed the solstice. Yes, the days became longer but when you are dealing with long over 100 degree F days, you don’t think much about how long the day is. You just want to cool off.
It was not until I moved north to Washington state that I grew to appreciate the long lingering days around the solstice. The farther north you go, the longer the day becomes and you also have a longer twilight. The sun sets but the light lingers on; the gloaming. That is such a cool word for twilight.
Here in Seattle, we have a full 15 hours, 59 minutes and 31 seconds of daylight. That means it is light enough to be outside at 5am and at 10pm. Sunset is at 9:12 tonight. But the light doesn’t just disappear like it does in California – it lingers and falls like a soft sheet.
I’ve spent several solstices in France. On one trip back in the early 90’s, we discovered the Fête de la Musique. We knew something was up when we saw the huge stages and sound systems go up along the Seine while we were in Paris. In our broken French we were able to discover that all over France they would be celebrating the solstice with music. On the solstice night, we were in Tours. It was a great festival. Street musicians and bands all over the old city that played on into the wee hours of the morning.
But my most memorable solstice was spent in the mid-90’s. My company had an office in Holland and I had the opportunity to work for 6 weeks in the spring of 1996. I finished up early in June and we vacationed in France. We spent a few days in Paris and then moved on to the Alpes-Maritime region around Nice and eventually to Corsica. We were in Calvi during the solstice. We rented an apartment just outside of town but not far from the beach. Late in the evening, we walked through the pine trees to the beach. The sky glowed red to orange as we walked into the surf. We treaded water as the sun went down and the warm breeze brushed our faces. Cradled in my husband’s arms, we bid adieu to spring.
I’ve finally returned to WBW. My goodness, how time flies. I partipated at the beginning of WFW up to tasting #12. It seems like yesterday but my last WFW post was almost 2 years ago! But I’m back. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to drink a Washington State wine.
I’d like to thank Catie – the Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman at ~Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine ~ for hosting this month’s tasting.
Washington State is an exciting place for wines. Our latitude at 46 degrees is close to the classic French wine regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Being farther north than California, our vineyards get 2 hours more sunlight. Washington is split by the Cascade mountain range into two regions. The eastern region, where most of the grapes are grown, is much drier. The soil is arid and calcerous – perfect for adding mineral overtones. It is actually a desert – a very fertile desert. The mighty Columbia River cuts a path through this region and creates numerous microclimates. The Champoux, Red Mountain, Horse Heaven Hills, Wahluke Slope, Walla Walla and Rattlesnake Hills are all areas that produce unique wines. Washington State is also the 2nd largest premium wine producer in the Unites States.
I’m not going to get any bonus points because I did not choose a Walla Walla wine. My selection is a Januik 2004 Columbia River Cabernet Sauvignon. Price drove my decision. I wanted something less than $30.00.
Januik Winery is owned by Mike Januik. He has been involved in wine making in Washington State since he graduated from UC Davis in 1984. In 1990, he became Head Winemaker at Chateau Ste Michelle, the largest winery in Washington State and helped make it into the world class winery. He also had a chance to work with wine makers from France and Italy including Piero Antinori resulting in Col Solare. Today in addition to running his own winery, he also is a consultant at Novelty Hill Winery and Stillwater Creek. His winery is near by in Woodinville which is becoming a great place to visit when you are in the Seattle area.
I really enjoyed the Januik Cabernet Sauvignon , my selection for WFW #34. It has good tannins so it could be cellared for a few year. It is not overly fruity and has enough alcohol and minerals to make it food friendly. The tasting notes mention cassis, blackberry, cocoa and vanilla.
It went wonderfully with the lamb chops that I happened to have in the freezer. I bought them last year at the Edmonds Farmers Market. I love that I can buy sustainable raised meat at our local farmers markets or pick it up locally as Thundering Hooves is doing this year. The chops were very tasty and went really well with the Cab. Hubby doesn’t eat meat so I got him a swordfish fillet from Shoreline Central Market. Add a saffron rice pilaf and some fresh tomatoes and Garofalo buffalo mozzarella from Costco and you have a great early summer meal.
I am so fortunate to live in Washington State and have access to some great wines. There are also great wineries to visit. There are luxury options such as Cave B Inn which we stayed at in April or the Inn at Abeja in Walla Walla. Come back in mid-July to see how our long weekend in Walla Walla turns out.
There is a special plastic recycling collection for farmers in Snohomish county next weekend. Northwest Ag Plastic recycling will be collecting plastic nursery pots along with hay bale bags and twine. They will recycle these into black nursery items, pipes and truck liners. This is perfect for us because we have a lot of round plastic nursery pots that we have no plans on using and we don’t want to dump them into the garbage.
The closest collection site is up in Marysville. We also have some old chemicals, fluorescent light tubes, batteries and paint so we’ll make a stop in Everett on the way to drop off those items at theSnohomish Hazardous Waste drop off.
But the pots have to be sorted and loose dirt dusted off before they will be accepted. So that was my job this afternoon – sorting and dusting old gallon pots. It took me about 3 hours to go through all the pots. They had been sitting under the nursery benches in a dark corner. Not only were the pots dirty and dusty but they also had a fair amount of spider webs, eggs and live spiders. Fortunately, I’m not afraid of spiders but I did yell a couple of times when I came across a large wolf spider. A good stiff whisk broom cleaned them up and kept the critters at arms length.
By the end, I was hot, dusty and dirty. I couldn’t wait to finish and take a cool shower.
Here is what is in bloom this week in the garden .
G moved the tomatoes up today. They are now in their 20 gallon tubs and located in the sunny corner of the greenhouse. A few of them are already flowering but it will probably still be a while before they set fruit. We’re still on track for August.
Whenever we want a perennial fix, we make a trip to the Bellevue Botanical Garden . This is a relatively new garden which opened 1992. The Northwest Perennial Alliance worked with the Bellevue Parks Department to create the garden.
The highlight of the garden is the 17,000 square feet perennial border. It is broken out in to sections by color; gold, pink, variegated, hot, blue, black lavender and more. Along the top of the border, a filbert-shell covered path winds through old apple trees and climber roses. Everywhere you turn there is a delight for the plants person. South of the main border, under several large conifers, is a shade border.
There are several other areas for exploring. Near the entrance is the alpine garden. We loved the Centaurea fischeri related to bachelor buttons. The bees loved it also. Next is a waterwise garden showing how to use evergreen ground covers. This leads into a small herb garden lined with interesting mediterranean plants.
One of the new areas is a tumbling stream area focusing on ground cover plants. Next to it is the Yao garden, a Japanese inspired garden which has potential but always seemed lacking to us. And the newest garden is a northwest native plant garden with a lovely pond-bog. It has recently been planted and it should be nice in a year or so.
Here is a slide show of some photos from our recent visit.
This is a planting weekend. The sugar snap peas are coming along nicely. They are just about 2 feet high. We have the tomatoes in the greenhouse but they are growing slowly.
We took advantage of the nursery sales and bought a bunch of annuals. This is the first year that G has actually encouraged me and suggested that I plant some annuals. I got two 6-packs of rudbeckias; Indian Summer and Prairie Sun. We put each type in a large pot. We combined the orange rudbeckias with light blue salvias. It should look great. I also got a few other traditional annuals; yellow snapdragons and Lilliput zinnias. I made small display bed and it should be nice for cutting. Zinnias are so cheerful.
Today we picked up a few rose colored calibrachoa. They look like little miniature petunias and will be much better in our rainy weather than the large petunias which can look terrible after a rain storm. G put the in a small metal tub with a miniature purple fountain grass and some sedums.
And it was warm enough to plant green beans. This year’s varieties are Blue Lake pole and Romano pole. We set up a teepee out of re-bar for them to climb on. It will be 6-8 days before they germinate. I’ll put some sluggo out tomorrow to keep the slugs at bay
I have been testing how to link from Flickr to my blog. I set it up a while ago but I couldn’t remember exactly what I did. It turns out that there is a separate web services password in Movable Type to access your blog from another external blogging application such as Flickr. It makes sense but it is not obvious or well documented in Flickr.
