Autumn Songs of Success

In the few days I have between Gulf trips the most perfect fall weather has blessed the garden. As I posted, new plantings and scaping have been in the works, but equally as joyful has been the attraction of visitors - avians - some just passing through, others have become as permanently passionate about the garden as I.

My office window faces the sunrise, overlooking the back garden and a scattering of bird feeders hanging like pendants off the porch and maples. Every dawn the garden is alive with song and chittering, and wings flashing in the first flickers of sunlight through the bamboo. Little lives reminding me I share this space and with each new maple and moss I introduced.

For those who follow this blog with mixed passions - love for birds and bushes - here is a list of garden visitors this past week, plus one mystery warbler and a flycatcher that eluded me in hide-n-seek:

• Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus)
• Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)
• Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus)
• House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) - pictured
• Lesser Goldfinch (Carduelis psaltria) - pictured
• American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis)
• Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)
• Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)
• Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
• Golden-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla)
• Rufous-Sided Towhee. (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)
• Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus)
• Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica)
• Western Tanager, (Piranga ludoviciana)
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula)

Perfect Planting Season

Changes in the garden are often more obvious to those not witnessing daily ebbs and flows of growth - my being way has helped me see the progress the past couple of years has made. The above photo (looking north down the dry creek bed towards the eventual pond) almost suggest something of a real Japanese sasso garden might be on its way.

Since I'm only home in the garden for a couple weeks before heading back to the Gulf I am trying to get as much fall planting done as possible. This weekend off to Garden World - ya I know, silly name - but they have an excellent collection of native conifers and near wholesale prices. The perimeter of the garden is missing a couple key shade producers. My goal is to add two Incense Cedars (Calocedrus decurrens) in the far right corner behind the single Hinoki cyprus there now. The trio should visually balance the grove of five Hinokis on the far left corner that were planted two years ago as the initial anchors. (Which after the initial first year heat wave have established themselves and are adding wonderful vertical growth. The soil around them was augmented this past spring with a large crumbling western red cedar log I hauled out of the local forest. That log brought with it all manner of micro-flora and fauna which has helped seed the garden and made life pretty exciting for the increasing number of native birds that use the garden - up to 23 species last count!)

This past week five starter plants of the Pachysandra terminalis (sometimes called Japanese spurge - not my favorite name) were planted in and around the rock work bordering the pebble path (photo above - what it looks like established in the Portland Japanese Garden - and below - my humble beginnings). A few more medium sized stones are yet to be places in this area, but already it "feels" right.

One of the happiest successes has been the way the Equisetum (native horsetail) has adopted to its new setting (photo below). My friend and expert gardener/plant guru cautioned me on transplanting Equisetum. So with great caution I did - prepping the subsurface with weed mat and perforated plastic, and course sand mixed into the poor dirt to enable a moderate degree of standing wetness to simulate a tanic wetland. The future for this area is to take the spill over water from the pond and what water floods down the dry creek bed during rainy spring and fall weather. BTW - this is the native Equisetum that does not invade the world.

One last look (below) at the pebble path and the initial plantings along its edge - still much work to do here, but also want to let the "weediness" take its rightful place naturally.