Love your pictures -- I can't figure out how to post pics here. My Colchicum is adding new colour to the garden. It is amazing that they know when September is here when they are underground and can't see the light change and they don't wait for the September rains. Another mystery. Other than that I watched a doe and her small fawns walk through the garden this morning. Gardening is a challenge with them around.

Brightest note Amaryllis belladonna. Acacia retinodes now well above facia and still flowering but not as conspicuous.

Posting pics here is sort of a pain, but once you get the hang of it it's not bad. I just upload mine to shutterfly.com and then right-click on them to get the address/server and add that as part of the "text" of my messages. Feel free to email me and I'll write the tag/text that I use. :) Shutterfly is free and fun and you can order prints too. (oh, if you have pics you'd like posted you can always email them to me and I can plop them up here too)

In any case, thanks for the comments on my pics. Dotty your fall bloomers sound great, and the deer sound cute too, though I know how much damage they can do. I've always been a fan of late-summer and fall bloomers. I've planted some colchicums too, and they're just about ready to bloom, though they're just individual bulbs for now. I'm always envious of more established gardens with large clumps in bloom at the same time.

And don't even get me started on Ron's amaryllis. Talk about envy! Hopefully my new ones will settle in and bloom some day. Your acacia sounds great too--love that tongue-depresser foliage.

Who else has some nice looking plants they'd like to talk about? I'm in love with the new foliage my seedling hollyhocks are putting up since each leaf is so much larger than the previous, but they're hardly photo-worthy at this stage, heh heh.

Take care,
Grant

Your photos are just too perfect, Grant. Here is my queen of the roses, Zepherine Drouhin

with a color echo in the background of a dahlia with 4th of July-

But why just notice flowers, when there is Liberty
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Greensleeves
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and Jeminez

Great color combo on that coleus and pelargonium Grant.

I'll post my neighbor's fuzzy photo on behalf of Dottie and her deer. Thankfully I've used Liquid Fence religiously this year and kept the little family and cousins out of my perennial bed quite a ways from the house.

It's all about dahlias around here, more every year. Here are some cut and ready to go to the florist. They are not liking the recent rainfall much, but the gardener certainly is. It's been hundreds of hours on the business end of a hose all dry summer long.

Here are some multicolored ones ready to go

Today..........ferns

Many of the plants in my garden are showing damage from heat and drought. :( Everywhere I turn I see brown and dried foliage ....I was gone on business when we had the really cold snap in Feb and when it got really hot in May and then for ten days in Aug. DH tried....

The Caryopteris look fabulous, Knock Out roses too, Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and some of the hardy fuchsias look great.

I would have to say the Bananas, Tree fern and my blooming Sabal minor are looking very good at this time of the year. That little bit of precip. sort of perked things up. Banana Joe

Thanks for the new updates--they're really fun to read. The pics are all terrific too. Love them all. Nancy, I love how you appreciate fruits/veggie in addition to flowers and foliage. How do you keep your apple foliage so nice and clean? My neighborhood has several nice ancient pear trees with perfect foliage and fruit (and I'll be planting some this year) but apples in my neighborhood have really mildewy/blackspotty foliage. Is 'Liberty' just a good variety, or do you have other tricks or tips? Love the deer and dahlia pics too. Pooch, do you sell your dahlias to a florist? or are you one? Just curious (they're lovely by the way).

I'm noticing a lot of nice caryopteris too, buyorsell, and some neighborhood sedums are really lookin' good. My new-at-this-garden fiber bananas are looking really nice now (though nothing like some clumps my friends have established)...Joe, yours sound great.

Keep the updates coming. I've got plenty of things that don't look great (maybe we'll discuss in a separate thread, heh heh) but sometimes it's fun to relax and think about what's looking good, or great.

Take care,
Grant

Grant- perhaps there are more foliar diseases for apples near the Sound. Apples and pears are pretty healthy for me. I am strictly non-spray to the point I don't even notice foliage problems on roses and trees. They either make it in my yard without spraying or they don't. On the other hand, I have lots of problems with stone fruits and have had a couple decline and die, while others don't fruit.

I bought 3 Caryopteris last year and was all enthused about lovely blue fall bloom, but none made it through the winter. Maybe it is a sharp drainage thing.

I got a tiny caryopteris at the Green Elephant Swap last year and it is blooming at about a foot high- nice light blue so far. It made it over our very, very soggy winter last year.
It seems I read something, maybe even right here on the NW forum, about wintering it over successfully. If I run across it again I'll post it.

Thanks Grant, yes I am selling to the floral trade this year for the first time. Too much time and effort for me to give them away like I have for years. It's a win- win situation where I like growing them, they like getting them.

Many apple trees you see around are the wrong cultivars for this area. Same as with ornamental crabapples and other popular rose family plants, including roses themselves selection for disease resistance is critical if you are to have clean plants without a spray program. And with a spray program those so treated have a chemical coating, so they aren't really 'clean' even then.

I have a young 'Mohave' pyracantha just above my pond growing on a cedar lattice fence that is loaded with berries which turned color in the last couple of weeks. It's quite striking. I wanted some winter interest above my rock garden so I put the 'Mohave' on one section, the next section I put a 'Profusion' beauty berry, and the next section I put a 'Gnome' pyracantha. I also added four different campsis. This time next year I'm hoping that everything else loooks good as the 'Mohave' :-)

Hi everyone,

Interesting reports on the caryopteris plants. There's one by my bus stop in full bloom, right next to one of those fun orange Seattle poppies (what species are those anyway? You know the ones you see all over old gardens and alleys....not oriental, not California poppies, not shirleys or Iceland, but those fun orange-sherbet colored ones? Very olde tyme. I got seeds from a friend who doesn't even like his and now have some babies going for my garden...I love them and think they're very iconic of this area). Anyway...fun updates!

Love the idea of pyracantha with beauty berries. I bet the contrast is going to be striking this autumn! Any pics?? I put in a few different colored trumpet vines (Campsis) along my sturdy front fence. I can't wait for them to intermingle and clash and be obnoxiously bright. :)

Apples: yes, you're all confirming what I suspected that many of the varieties aren't well suited here. I refuse to spray anything (unless it's like with baking soda or something but even then I'd probably be too lazy or busy), especially something I'm going to eat. It's thrive or die in my garden. Worse, actually: it's thrive and look good or die, lol. I'm two blocks from the Sound and three from a nice active salmon stream so I'd feel so guilty if I used any poisons or anything. The apple tree down the street from me is just nasty! And they're fabulous gardeners too as their garden is beautiful, organized, diverse, and well-maintained. Ron, you're right about crab apples of course. I see some that are perfect and then right next door in the same garden is a different type whose foliage is hideous. I should start a different thread on those. I'll definitely be getting some grafted pears from Raintree as I've had excellent results from their pears and Asian pears. The pear next door to me is perfect. Apples I'll need to think twice about or just mimic Nancy's choices! :)

Happy gardening indoors and out,
Grant

Also check out Burnt Ridge nursery. They grow their all their own stock. The poppies are probably Atlas poppy (Papaver atlanticum). Nurseries sell it. Three other locally reseeding species are listed by Jacobson, WILD PLANTS OF GREATER SEATTLE, including P. dubium which may be similar to P. atlanticum. I don't remember. There is a complex of poppy species similar to P. atlanticum.

Locally prevalent crabapples are described in Jacobson, TREES OF SEATTLE - SECOND EDITION. See his web site for both titles.

The worst apples I have grown are Braeburn and Brown Russet. Liberty, Freedom, Sweet 16, Greensleeves, and Lodi have a low level of damaged fruit even when other apples have codling moth damage. Spitzenburg, Winesap, William's Pride and Spartan are variable. My favorite pears are Harrower's Delight, which is early, and Rescue, which has gigantic fruits.

Thanks for the apple and poppy comments. Nancy, I love your apple list--thanks for providing it. I planted 'Rescue' at my last garden and it did really well. I think I'm going to start this year with a four-way-grafted pear from Raintree (anyone tried 'Orcas' which is one of the grafts??) and maybe a 'Rescue' plus a medlar (one of my favorites from my last garden too). 'Harrower's Delight' may fall in to the cart too! I'll check out the apples suggestions too of course, oink oink.

Ron, you're right-on with the poppy, it's an Atlas poppy. Good to know the botanical name. My little seedlings are making awesome progress. I have the first addition of Trees of Seattle and you're driving me nuts because I haven't unpacked it yet from the move to this new-for-me house, lol. Is the second edition a revised one ( as in, does it have additional or updated information or additional pictures??).

Take care,
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1090925}}

Where to start....great reading what's happening in everyone's gardens. Plums are great this year....especially Green Gage and a standard prune type. Grapes are wonderful too. One of our 30 year old semi-dwarf antique apples, Northern Spy went down in an ice storm but is producing a huge crop lying down. Actually all of pear and apple trees are heavily fruited this year. I'm feeling guilty because the Sptizenberg crashed during the summer probably due to its exceptionally heavy load. What a tangled mess as it overlaps with the Northern Spy. Golden Russet which is a super apple for us is still standing as is the Jonathan, always a favorite and the Transparent. The Red Delicious is standing but as you all know it is not a good westside choice. Even had a huge first crop on my fig (Atreano) with the second crop showing some promise of ripening this year. Enjoying antique tomatoes (green zebra, pink accordian, black prince, gold medal) along with my old standbys: principe borghese, siletz, carmello.
In the perennial bed the asters, rudebeckias, caryopteris, salvias, agastaches and some old roses are putting on a nice bloom show while color is beginning to show in the vibrinium, blueberries, aronias, etc.
I am relieved that I did not lose too many plants to heat, draught or deer this summer. Transplanted a few shrubs yesterday to shadier spots in hopes that they will be happier next summer. Divided some daylilies and japanese iris too.
Time to get started again......I think i wore myself out yesterday with the gardening and preserving but am ready to go out and enjoy the rest of this sunny day in the garden. Hope you are all doing the same! jwww

Judywww- I'm not getting a clear picture of why your apples fell. Did branches break out from heavy fruit load or did the whole tree fall over? Your apple trees falling sounds like what happened to my Gala- roots eaten off by the voles, it fell over, a large tree full of fruit, and continued ripening fruit on the ground. Could voles be responsible for your trees falling? I also lost a couple of just-planted trees- their leaves withered up and they died, from voles eating off the roots. I saved one large tree by staking it up and running water under it a long time.

Nancy...
Both the tree that went down under the winter load and the summer one began to lean over 10 years ago.....the result of the same major windstorm that downed a lot of our timber. We had braced them but gravity was winning. The whole Spitzenberg came down this summer and i believe the really heavy fruit load was the last straw. Unfortunately this trunk is cracked whereas the Northern Spy that came down last winter has it's trunk intact and at least half of its roots in the ground. The vole question is interesting. We certainly have a lot of them around but I did not know that they could undermine such a large and well-established tree. Sorry to hear that you lost one also. It is always sad to lose a well established productive tree. My favorite prune plum went over at about a 60 degree angle after another ice/snow load about 4 years ago. We pulled it upright with the tractor and braced it and it is doing ok but I palnted a replacement just in case! jwww

My apples are all 12 years old or younger. A 30 yo tree might be a little different in susceptibility. It does seem incredible voles could bring down a big tree but summertime damage is certainly different from ice storm damage. I haven't noticed vole damage on pears, plums, peaches or cherries.

We have an old orchard that is at least 70 years old. It has some interesting apple trees, but I have no idea what they are. Is there a site that can help me with identifying them? And this year they are all loaded with fruit and the fruit is huge, despite our dry summer and no additional watering. The person who owned our property previously was an excellent gardener and we find remnants of his gardens -- we built our house in a different place. One year, I found a miniature daffodil growing near the original house site -- I didn't know they had miniatures that long ago. I'm rambling...

If you can take photos of the apple with leaves, and one cut open, you could post them on the fruit forum and someone might be able to help you. Even if you don't have a digital camera you can take photos with a film camera and have a CD made when developing. Resize photos in photoshop or some other program, upload to photobucket.com or other photo hosting site, and paste the url link in the box below or tag in your text.

I forgot to say thanks for the tip on Burnt Ridge Nusery. I'm surprised I haven't heard of them before. I requested their catalog and have been enjoying their website too.

Oh, and Nancy, I've printed out your list of bests and worsts. Thanks!

Take care,
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: Burnt Ridge Nursery