Very busy sunday at the Brown-Williams house

This is Viburnum tinus 'Compactum'Spring Bouquet

It is an evergreen shrub with small, leathery, dark, green leaves. The new stems flush wine-red then fade to green. Viburnum tinus 'Compactum' has dense fragrant white to light pink flowers in the spring. The fruit is a blue black berry in the fall. This Viburnum has a round compact upright growth habit and can get 5-6' tall by 5-6' wide making it perfect for small hedges or screens.


I pent quite a while remove some giant overgrown ugly shrub to make room for this little cutie. The shrub in question would obscure the light from the new window I am designing for the back porch area. Hopefully to be completed by June. It would be nice to have it done for Christina's graduation.
I think it is so cool that she will be graduating at or near the top of her class. Quite an accomplishment. especially considering she works full time too.
Aside from shrub removal other Sunday activities for me included planting some peas, carrots, spinach and nearly 100 onion starts. I added 1 more blueberry bush. It is a northern high-bush variety that will fruit in June. My others fruit in July, so i will be able to enjoy them for a longer season.
I mowed the back lawn and then Scott put down a bit more seed and fertilized it. Scott also spent some time putting finish on several stair treads to be installed when they are done.

Heron and hail

Last week i finished the tiles. Here they are. Some of the colors did not come out as i hoped, but they are good enough. I think it will look nice when Scott attaches it to the wall where the banister use to be. It will save him the effort of repairing the damage from the removal of the old banister.

The stair remodel has been dragging on due to salmon fishing. Scott hopes to catch one soon and there is only so much time do it in, so the stairs fall to the back burner.

The weather today is crappy typical Portland weather. i had hopes that i could do a bit of yard work today. I wanted to put in some edging on the back 40 and plant some shade plants there in front of all the rhododendrons, but no, too cold and wet.


At least this weather is an improvement of the bazaar stuff that fell from the sky last week.
It would be sunny one minute, big fluffy snow falling the next, and ultimately tons of hail or freezing rain. that is spring (or nearly so) in Portland.

Even though it is technically not spring, i call it spring as soon as the daffodils start coming up.

Sprouts

I can't believe it is frigging snowing. The daffodils are starting to bloom and its snowing.




Nothing more to plant inside. Now i just need to keep them alive until i plant them outside. All the sprouts have come up, except the Cleome flowers. They were planted last week, so maybe they just need a little more time. I wish it was spring, and i wish i was done with tax season. Tired of working 6 days a week.

Yard and patio show

Yesterday i went to the yard & patio show at the convention center.

I attended 3 seminars.

The first one was about fragrant plants. it wasn't much of a talk. more of a list of plants for each season.

The second seminar was put on by Ed Hume ttp://www.humeseeds.com/. It was about tips for the vegie garden and growing things year round. I did pick up a few tips from his talk. A couple of them were on slug traps, and gopher deterrents.

The last seminar was "bodacious borders" The speaker was Lucy Hardiman a local garden designer. http://www.lucyflora.com/ it was about planning borders, obviously. Thinking about color, texture, size, etc. There were some wonderful slides. I did get a few ideas from her talk. This picture is from her website and is a garden she did.

Today i planted my melons and a few other things. Now my little indoor greenhouse if pretty much full. Lots of little sprouts coming up.