Collomia debilis
POLEMONIACEAE, The Phlox family

This plant has already been featured as plant of the day, but I am so taken by it that I must write about it again. The resilience and persistence of these tiny plants growing in such harsh conditions is amazing to me. They are so efficient, so tough and yet they are also beautiful and delicate looking.

All of the growing, blooming and seed-making these little plants do during the year must be completed in a few months. Luckily they have the speed demon hummingbirds to help accomplish their tasks.

This particular Collomia was growing on Old Snowy Mountain in Goat Rocks Wilderness, at around 7200 ft. elev.

“Perhaps his Rock Garden is the greatest of his undertakings. With aeons of time at his disposal, he spared ho efforts to have this garden perfect and so he has given us the unique possession of a garden where one may climb from summer back to spring and even to the very edge of winter in the short space of a single hour.”

Annora Brown, Old Man’s Garden, 1954

Rhododendron
ERICACEAE, The Heather family

Along the Pacific Crest Trail and other paths in the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Gifford Pinchot National Forest, these deciduous rhoddies were blooming heavily.

Viola sp.
VIOLACEAE, The Violet family

These tiny violets were growing in the meadow near our campsite in Snowgrass flats, Goat Rocks Wilderness.

For several months the sparrows have been nipping the tops of the sweet pea vines before they have a chance to do anything. Finally the plants achieved some critical mass or the birdies found something else to pick to death. So they are blooming now, and I hope they will be able to hold it together and bloom into the cool fall weather.

Sweet peas can be planted now for fall bloom, or in late winter for spring bloom. It’s best to soak the seeds over night before planting. This helps them ‘imbibe’, or soak moisture through the seed coat and plump up the embryo and cotyledons (seed leaves). The water pressure in the cells helps the seed break out of it’s coat and push forth the radical (first root). It’s all very exciting.

Allium christophii
LILIACEAE, The lily family

Early summer’s best bulb. These flower heads are metallic balls of stars, 12″ across. Summer bulbs are such a great idea. They are easy to over look when planing and planting, but they add so much summer to a garden. Callas, cannas, dahlias, oriental and asiatic lilies, martagon lilies! It you haven’t enjoyed Sargent’s ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’ for a while, do. It could hold one over for a little while longer though this dull, chill weather.

Surprise

Originally uploaded by mulysa_may

Not it’s technical name. This florist’s type iris popped up on it’s own where the previous owner had a mishmash flower patch (which I thought I had torn throughly out). It’s really brilliant. I think I’ll keep it.

Astrantia major ‘Ruby Star’
APIACEAE, The Parsley family

I love the RHS Online Plant Shop: Only a British gardening site would tell you the price of the plant along with how many hours it would take to get it. ‘I must have ruby stars masterwort! In no less than 48 hours!’ It also shows a chap in a cap for a sense of scale next to a silhouette of the plant: This allium would come right up to woolen vest height, whereas that Dahlia would just graze your blazer.

Astrantia is a fabulous plant for partial shade. This particular fancy one has blooms of maroon with dark bracts and the foliage has a purple cast too. I have it grouped with Buddhist pine, Libertia, fringe flower ‘Fire Dancer’, and Japanese painted fern. And dragon tail fern. And hart’s tongue fern.

New Zealand Spinach

Originally uploaded by mulysa_may

A friend gave me a few starts of this old favorite of mine that I had forgotten. In Minnesota, where the weather seems to go from being frigid to boiling in a matter of days, spinach was a tricky thing to grow. All those cool weather crops that like lingering, cool-but-not-freezing days don’t have much of a window. But this plant, not really a spinach but a succulent ice-plant relative, thrives in hot weather. It can grow in poor or salty soil as long as it gets enough water… and it might be hardy in Portland.

It’s kind of a sprawling thing, with 1 - 2 inch leaves that can be harvested all summer. The stems get woody but it keeps sending out new leaves if you keep picking them. When I grew this in Minnesota, I was eating every different kind of sautéed veggies with pasta. My family’s favorite variation was nutty greens such as New Zealand spinach sautéed in olive oil with cherry tomatoes, walnuts and cubes of feta cheese over bow-tie pasta.

Thank you, dear friend, for the bag of nettles. The taste of spring, the taste of earth. I (carefully) sauteed them in butter, chopped them and served them over quinoa with parmesan.

Besides being delicious in soup, quiche and the like, nettles can be dried and made into tisane. It may help allergy sufferers. Other medicinal qualities include diuretic, treatment of muscle and joint pain, urinary tract infection and insect bites.

Nettles grow most places humans live, on nearly every continent. They like fertile, disturbed soil. I think of them as a lot-line and flood plain plant. Luckily where I grew up jewel-weed often grew nearby in the same habitat, and is a good antidote if you’re stung by the glass-like hairs in the leaves and stems.

A Pacific Northwest lichen also known as candy lichen or spray paint. It looks like a green matt (the thallus) with pink bits (apothecia) stuck all over it. It’s fast growing, for a lichen, and can cover moss, peat and soft rotting wood.

Thanks, Karin, (who identified this on her friend’s facebook) for this delight.