Gardening

Gardening with Ciscoe and Helen

One of my favorite things about summer in lower Wallingford is Helen Glazier's garden at 3628 Burke Ave.  Helen's garden is like the proverbial box of chocolates:  you never know what you're gonna get.  Stupice tomatoes, huckleberries, romaine, Fun Jen, Chinese Pink garlic... lots of stuff! Meeting neighbors is great fun, too.  At Helen's garden I've chatted with Cyrus from Growing Food Growing Community.  And Janelle, a neighbor who writes the fantastic food blog, Talk of Tomatoes.  And of course, Helen…

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You Don’t See One of These Every Day

I haven’t received any urgent garden questions from Wallyhood readers lately, so I decided to take a tour around to see if there were any notable horticultural wonders. Sure enough, I spotted something. More on that below, but first, a reminder to send your garden questions anytime to me, Jeanie, at [email protected]. So, the horticultural wonder: when they're not in bloom Chilean fire trees (Embothrium coccineum) blend in to the green background we Seattleites are used to. They tend to be…

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Wallingford Garden Tour

Are you ready to see spring in full swing? Our neighborhood has an incredible assortment of gardens, and if you come out to the Wallingford Garden Tour on Sunday, June 5, from 10am-4pm, you'll get a chance to talk with the owners and creators of several gardens and meet other garden lovers. Jennifer Veninga, Wallingford's Garden Tour coordinator gives us a summary of what you can expect to see on the tour: Enjoy a self-guided tour of ten private gardens in…

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Late Spring Flower ID

If you were looking for something positive regarding our cold spring, the slow start means the bright, hopeful spring green foliage lingers. Some trees haven't leafed out, apparently having trouble deciding, leaving more light for the plants in bloom. Also, it seems like the early bloomers are lasting longer in this refrigerator-like climate. Here’s another installment of flower ID, helping you get to know the flowers growing around Wallingford. I hope you enjoy it! The electric blue of Ceanothus (California lilac)…

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Call Before You Cut

The life of an urban tree is not the greatest. Two of my clients have had tree vs. sidewalk situations lately, so it's likely many others will have to address this too. Count yourself lucky if the tree in your parking strip has grown into the space allotted for it without heaving the sidewalk, getting into overhead power lines, or becoming a hazard. I hasten to add, these problems are not the trees’ fault, but the result of being planted in…

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Eat the Sun!

Craving a closer relationship with this elusive object, I recently picked up Richard Cohen's Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star That Gives Us Life.  It explains how life on earth depends on the ability of green plants to harness the energy of the sun, thus making almost all other living things plant parasites (the only exception being deep-sea life near thermal vents but this still requires oxygen created by plants on the surface and you don't want to…

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You heard it here first – plus herbs for beginners

Moss update: after the post on Wallyhood about moss, there were two more mossy articles – one in the Seattle Times, and one in the NY Times. However, we can proudly say that Wallingford residents had their fingers on the pulse (also Ciscoe, who mentioned moss in his column on the same day) because our moss articles came out first! Marina writes: Could you write a beginner's guide to growing herbs (ideally on a porch) here? Are some herbs better than…

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