I hope you didn’t get
seriously frightened On Halloween.  Here
are a few seriously scary tricks to spook you:

Erosion!  This insidious evil claws away precious soil
and fouls streams and rivers.  Native
plants drive a silver stake through the heart of erosion, stabilizing slippery
slopes with their roots.  Sword Fern’s
fibrous roots are especially protective of soil, and its evergreen fronds break
the force of a hard rainfall, allowing water to gently soak in.

Extinction!  Manufactured by the Frankensteinian ill of
blind progress, extinction overtakes poor creatures displaced by human
activity.  In our area, we have nearly
extirpated the Western Pond Turtle and the Western Toad.  Development has destroyed their
habitats.  Native plants are probably the
best way to re-create homes for sensitive species like Red-legged Frogs.  Native plants help filter runoff water,
keeping streams and rivers pure for salmon and freshwater mussels.  Ultimately, the species you save may be your
own.

Existential
angst!  This psychological Jack-the-Ripper tears at
our souls and hinders our ability to enjoy life.  Counter it with ample treats from
nature.  Give yourself some time with –
what else? – native plants!  The other
day at Tadpole Haven, a customer found a pocket wilderness in one pot: a Red
Huckleberry was growing with Small-Flowered Wood Rush and mosses.  All she had to do was put her face up to the
little scene to immediately get a soothing dose of nature.  Soothe your soul.  Fight the darkness with the help of
nature-spaces.

Climate
Change!  This monster stalks the earth, creeping up
slowly, chuckling at our casual, inertia-bound attempts to wake ourselves into
action.  All over the globe, loss of
forest cover and “biomass” has fed the monster.
One solution to corralling the beast:
Plant and protect native trees!
Carbon-absorbing, water-holding forests.
Even enlarging patchy back-yard suburban and urban forests contributes.

Climate change used to be
less well understood.  Back in the 70s or
80s, we feared “Greenhouse Warming”.  But
last Saturday, that term had a positive meaning:  We celebrated a Greenhouse-warming for Tadpole Haven’s newly completed
greenhouse!  Shirley made brownies.  That’s scary.

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A tree frog has
been voicing its soft, slow “crrr-i-i-ck” sound in our yard off and on for the
last few weeks.  We heard it several days
in a row, then heard it in a neighbor’s yard one day, another neighbor’s the
next, then for a few days we didn’t hear it at all.  But now it has been back for a few days.  We are sure that it has decided that our yard
is the best yard for a tree frog.

Our home is in the
bustling heart of that megalopolis, Carnation, a 15-mile commute from the
nursery, where tree frog tadpoles in the kiddy pools are getting ready to turn
into frogs.  The voice of the frog at
home reminds me that I haven’t checked on the tadpoles for a few weeks.  Have they already metamorphosed and hopped
away?  I’ve been too preoccupied, doing
my modern human stress-out scramble thing, to pay attention to these creatures
undergoing this wondrous transformation, a once-in-a-lifetime event!  Just think what it would be like if your
whole life was in a bright blue kiddy pool, with some algae to nibble and some
rushes and water parsley and marsh cinquefoil to hide among.  And the one day, everything changes.  These little feet that have been growing
handily enable you to crawl up on a reed, into Another World.  The sky IS the limit!  The whole earth is before you.  It’s a little scary, though.  Danger lurks everywhere.  The garter snakes that hide under the flap of
black plastic are on the lookout for tasty green snacks.  Hiding is an important ability for a tree frog.

Our yard is over a
quarter of a mile from the pond our resident frog must have started out in.  That’s a lot of earth that little frog has
seen!  And it seems to have settled in; Brian
has planted lots of native plants for it to hide among.  Brian owns a landscaping business, Biosphere
Company, and especially enjoys working for clients who use his knowledge of how
to create a welcoming environment for frogs, birds and all sorts of insects. He
puts that know-how to work at our house.
By design, not laziness (!), the Sword Ferns wear a skirt made of a few
years worth of old fronds.  That is a
good spot for frogs and salamanders to keep cool in summer and warm in
winter.  The Redwood Sorrel in the shade
of the three Western Redcedars grows thick and is good cover for a little tree
frog.  In the sunnier part of the yard, shrubs
like Mock Orange, Tall Oregon Grape and American Cranberrybush provide protection
from predators, especially since they are surrounded by native perennials –
Penstemons, Western Bergamot, Western Columbine and Henderson’s Checkermallow.  We have an amazing amount of beautiful diversity
around our house.  No wonder that
invisible little frog is happy here!

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The morning fog matched my foggy brain.  I’d like to think the fog (in my brain) was because my body is so in tune with nature.  It’s more likely due to all the junk food I ate over Labor day weekend as I greedily snatched at the sunshine, knowing that I can’t expect much more, and feeling gypped that summer didn’t start until it was nearly over!

While the humans are desperately squeezing in their last barbeques and summer brews, and breaking open their last MSG-laden chips, the squirrels are thinking long-term, stocking up on healthy snacks, nipping off Douglas Fir and Western Redcedar cones from high in the tree canopy.  Other animals are fattening up for winter.  The deer finally discovered Tadpole Haven’s smorgasbord of shrubs.  They have enjoyed the lush, well-watered nursery plants, preferring them over the less pampered shrubs in the woods.  While deer enjoy “pruning” juicy leaves and twigs (thanks for the help, guys), many other critters favor berries.  This summer brought a terrific harvest of Red Huckleberry.  PJ the Springer Spaniel demonstrates the coyote technique, deftly nibbling low-hanging huckleberries, Salal and blackberries.

I have also been collecting — and planting — seeds. I spent a few hot afternoons recently grappling berries from Bitter Cherry and Cascara trees.  I had these berries and several other bags of various seeds in the potting shelter for several days while I worked on getting them planted.  Each evening, the thought flitted through my mind that if I don’t put them inside, perhaps some little (or maybe not-so-little) critter might get into them.  Aw, what’re the chances?  Neatness is such a hassle! One morning, I arrived to find the garbage can upended (SOMEONE had left food garbage in it) and some of my bags of seeds tipped over.  The fruit-muncher had nuzzled through the Oregon Grapes, but was really after black gold – cascara berries – and had gobbled most of my take!  Sometime during the day, a large black seed-laden pile of poop appeared in the driveway, confirming that not only was our nighttime visitor a bear, it had been in the woods next to the nursery as we worked there during the day!

I feel a bit guilty; I’ve committed the sin of tempting a bear to lose its fear of people, an attitude that gets bears into big trouble.  So now, I am belatedly stashing all temptations away each night. This episode with the Cascara berries shows Cascara’s value as a wildlife plant.  This small tree is popular with dozens of species: mammals (large and small), birds and insects.  I have lots of beautiful little Cascaras (Rhamnus purshiana) in the nursery (the deer snubbed them!), waiting to become part of your backyard wildlife habitat. It may have been a marketing blunder to mention “cascara” and “bear” in the same sentence.  But there is no need to run screaming from native plants just because some little old bear might some night wander through.  Just respect their wildness and don’t tempt them with attractive morsels left out at night, such as unburied food garbage or bite-size pets.

The deer and bear visits remind me of the great need for habitat replacement all over the Puget Sound area.  Wildlife needs wild space.  Pockets of habitat serve small creatures and many species of birds; that’s easy to create even in a small city yard.  But contiguous natural areas are extremely important for all wildlife. Anything you can do to help creatures large and small find refuge, food or safe travel space in your yard, local park or open space, helps.

Planting natives is a start.  Thoughtful community planning with input from citizens is important. How can you help wildlife in your eighborhood?  How can you help your community work through the knotty issues that too often pit humans against other creatures?

Time to put away the corn chips, pack in the barbeque (and clean up its tempting drippings!) and come out of your late-summer fog.  Make some plans and get to work!

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Well, we’re almost at the Summer Solstice, and I can’t recall having Spring yet …do you?

But the plants in the nursery and along the local trails noticed Spring – they have been growing like crazy! It’s a jungle out there!

It is gratifying to see the fruits of our labors in the nursery. Many of the plants that we potted during the Winter are rooted-in and ready for homes. Plants that we fertilized are looking terrific. We mainly use Walt’s Organic Fertilizer products. Great stuff! Check out their shop in Seattle, almost under the Ballard Bridge. They carry a wide variety of organic soil amendments PLUS native plants (great in-town source for Tadpole Haven plants), vegetable starts, seeds and books.

A few of the plants that showcase the fruits of our labors are Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus), Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) and Cascade Oregon Grape (Mahonia nervosa). All three are fruit-bearing shrubs, though it’s still too early in the season for their berries. All three form thickets. The Oregon Grape will take several years to do so, eventually forming an evergreen ground-cover layer 2-3 feet tall. Snowberry and Thimbleberry, both deciduous shrubs, spread quickly and generally range in height from 4-6 feet. Their quick thicket-forming talents make them very good at stabilizing soil on slopes and providing cover for birds and other wildlife, but less good at behaving themselves in a small garden.

Thimbleberry has big, soft, maple-like leaves; attractive white flowers (~1 1/2″ across) and tasty berries for people and other creatures. It thrives where it can get lots of light, but not a lot of intense sun.

Snowberry’s tiny pink flowers give way to pretty white berries that will often last all winter. The berries are inedible for humans; and birds prefer other berries, but will eat them when other food sources run short in winter. It will grow in shady areas (even fairly dry shade), but also does great out in the sun. I have seen it in wet places and dry places – definitely versatile.

Cascade Oregon Grape’s stalks of yellow flowers attract butterflies. The tart berries are perfectly edible and are eaten by many species of birds. It is at home in full shade to mostly sun, though in a sunny spot it may need to be watered for the first few summers. In a sunny place, its leaves sometimes turn dark red. It is a perfect choice for dry shade, along with its natural companions, Salal (Gaultheria shallon) and Sword Fern (Polystichum munitum).

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To-do lists: helpful tools, they can also be overwhelming. I and other family members spent ten hours on Sunday helping my sister move into her new house adjacent to the nursery. And there is still so much to do! Standing in her pretty new living room on Monday afternoon, surrounded by stacks of boxes and upended chairs, Kay rattled off The List. I listened to her, the energy draining out of me. This is how Superman felt when handed a chunk of Kryptonite, I thought. The day before, I was actually RUNNING, hoisting things, loading and unloading three vans, a truck and a trailer. Now I was immobilized.

I managed to stumble outside to work on one of my to-do items: repair some of the ugly destruction done by the septic installer’s trackhoe at the edge of the forest. Where to start? Well, here’s a bucket of Piggyback Plants (Tolmiea menziesii) that need to be planted; maybe that’ll do it. Oh, and those four Sword Ferns (Polystichum munitum) heaped in my trunk that I meant to pot up – those would look nice. Oh, ugh, have to haul mulch.

My sister-in-law, Nancy, showed up. She was also suffering from list-induced Kryptonitis, so she half-heartedly began to help me. She dug holes for the ferns. They looked good. We wandered through the nursery, grabbing this and that. That cheered us up a bit. And how about that Red-Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum) that I’ve been torturing in a patio pot for the last three years? Look how pretty and happy it will be next to this mossy nurse log! Nancy’s shovel-strokes picked up steam. I hauled more mulch. After a while, the area looked pretty nice. Not the most organized way to design a landscape — it kind of designed itself.

Now a couple of Currants and a clump of seedling Red Huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium) soften the damage near the forest edge, and Wood Ferns (Dryopteris expansa) comfort a mangled left-behind Cascara (Rhamnus purshiana). In front of those on the edge of the new drainfield sprout Piggybacks, False Solomon’s Seal (Maianthemum racemosa), lots of Inside-Out Flower (Vancouveria hexandra), and Sword Ferns. Western Meadowrue (Thalictrum occidentale) hides the ugly green septic lid. There’s room for more, but for now, we are satisfied. The green things gave us some of their energy. Mending the damage felt good. We accomplished something.

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True confession:  I am a lousy gardener.  Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE spending time in the garden!  Sitting.  Or strolling about, holding a glass of wine.  Lucky for me, Brian likes working in the yard, even though he does a lot of that for a living.  Lately, while strolling in the garden, I’ve been admiring our lush patches of Siberian Miner’s Lettuce.  They look like a field of stars! 

 Siberian Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia sibirica) is a cute little edible wildflower, good in salads or as an accompaniment to a glass of Pinot gris.  It is a perennial, but each individual plant seems to live for just two or three years, seeding itself around liberally in light shade.   I notice that at home, where the soil is dense and clay-ey, they are very upright, each clump is very dense and their stems are dark green.  In the little garden by the nursery office, the soil is much sandier, and the plants are more spreading, their succulent leaves intertwining with those of their neighbors.  Their leaves are bright green.  If a plant is in an exposed area, it will be very stout and low-growing and dark, almost turning deep red.  The flowers are white to pink, with tiny stripes of pink on the petals.  It is native along the west coast from Alaska to northern California and throughout the Northwest.  And in Russia—hence the name.  It’s also known as Candyflower and Siberian Springbeauty.

 At the Spring Garden Fair last month, a neighboring vendor made fun of my Miner’s Lettuce – “I rip that stuff out,” he wise-cracked.  I refrained from being rude, but maybe I should have made fun of HIM – here he has a beautiful, easy-care, tasty, native groundcover and he is silly enough to think of it as a weed!  Why would you rip it out?  Why wouldn’t you at least give it a patch of shade where it can cavort freely?  You may want to redirect its energies a bit, pulling up volunteers that pop up next to perennials that haven’t gotten fully established yet, but wherever you can, I say let it go!  Wherever you have bare ground, SOMETHING will grow, so Siberian Miner’s Lettuce is a pretty alternative to some pesky, non-native weed. 

 A clump of Siberian Miner’s Lettuce will get larger, spreading out using short rhizomes, its main method of spreading is by seed.  Now is a good time to plant some in your garden (if you are not already blessed by its presence) so it can settle in before fall and go to seed, ensuring a good supply next year.  It’s an ideal plant for a lousy gardener. 

Spend some time in your garden!   😉

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I have been forced to get out into the woods this week – what a hardship – to look at our family’s forest area adjacent to the nursery.  My daughter and I are enrolled in WSU Extension’s Forest Stewardship Coached Planning course, which is helping us create a forest plan.  So we need to traipse around the property, identifying different stands of vegetation, checking on tree health, figuring out what wildlife features we have – snags, downed logs, etc.  Even if you have only a couple of acres, this class is a terrific way to gain knowledge of trees, ecosystems and forest resources.  And it potentially qualifies your property for a tax break.

 I love the trees, but my eyes are always drawn to the little understory plants.  Everything is finally popping up, and one of the plants I see frequently is Piggy-back Plant (Tolmiea menziesii).  The Piggy-back Plants that are in the nursery waiting for homes are descendants of our forest’s Piggy-backs.

Piggy-back Plant has ardent fans: one customer first came to Tadpole Haven in pursuit of the Piggy-back.  She had fallen in love with them in California when they were popular houseplants in the 60s, and while living in southern Oregon, visited the Puget Sound area and was amazed to see them growing wild and lush in the forests here.  So when she retired to this area, she was excited to take home two plants for her small yard.  Now she has a rock wall that is populated with Piggy-backs.

 Piggy-back Plant’s appeal is in its lush growth and playful appearance: tiny leaves perch on large older leaves – riding piggy-back.  It is also called “Youth-on-Age”.  As the new leaf grows at the base of the old, their collective weight eventually causes the pair to settle onto the ground.  The new leaf has already sprouted anticipatory roots and as its host decomposes, forms a brand new plant.  The purply-brown flowers are not showy, but have a graceful feathery look, stretching above the foliage, up to 3’ tall.  In the fall, as the spent flower stalks collapse, they too will often sprout piggy-back leaves and roots at the nodes.  You may often see Piggy-back in quite wet spots in the forest, but it does fine in drier shady spots where the soil retains moisture.

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The Pacific Chorus Frogs already laid eggs in the kiddy pools; an occasional tardy frog sings now. The Juncos have paired up; one is busy building a nest in the nursery. The Varied Thrushes and Robins sing through the raindrops. Hummingbirds buzz the Salmonberries (Rubus spectabilis), and a Sapsucker uses a telephone pole for a tapping post. The pole is right next to the wood-chip pile. The Sapsucker clings to the pole and taps on a piece of metal that is about a foot below the top. Then he hops up to the top of the pole and looks around before jumping down to tap some more.

Wouldn’t it be fun if we humans could hear PLANTS? Just imagine the satisfaction of hearing them grow…

I’m walking through the nursery, minding my own business, when I hear a series of exploding pops! I turn around to notice that a Snowberry’s (Symphoricarpos albus) tiny leaves are suddenly bigger. Overhead, I hear a series of sticky -sounding smacks that turn into soft bubbling noises as the big Cottonwood’s (Populus trichocarpa) buds open and begin to release their leaves. I walk over toward the big Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) trees which, for all their size, are only emitting tiny low-frequency grunts from their branch tips. Under the trees, the Lady Fern’s (Athyrium filix-femina) fronds are creeeak-creeaking as they unfurl. Isn’t that cute? I think, when a shrill squeal accosts my ears – the Wild Lily-of-the-Valley’s (Maianthemum dilatatum) newly emerged shoots are unscrewing themselves, beginning to open their shiny leaves. I have to stop for a minute, take off my work gloves, and clean out my ears, open my jaw and shift it back and forth a couple of times to get my eardrums back to normal.

I think things have calmed down, when from my left a deafening roar sends me to my knees! Beside me, the False Solomon’s Seal (Maianthemum racemosa) is rocketing up from the soil!

Well, I’ve heard (from better smell-ers than I) that False Solomon’s Seal’s long white flower clusters emit a beautiful fragrance; I know that their juicy red berries appeal to birds and look pretty; I knew that they are a showy perennial for shady spots, even somewhat dry shady places; and that they often hang out with Cascade Oregon Grape (Mahonia nervosa). But I had no idea they could raise such a ruckus!

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I drove across the Snoqualmie Valley this morning – early – in a foolish attempt to beat the traffic, all funneled onto Woodinville-Duvall Road because of Snoqualmie River flooding.  The road was a causeway across “Lake Snoqualmie” which flowed and roiled near the shoulders of the road.  The flooding always reminds me of my place in nature.  Of course, humans build dams to control rivers, but locally, our experience with the Howard Hansen Dam and the Green River should remind us of our tenuous grip on the reins of power when it comes to driving nature.

We can change nature deliberately to our liking, and we do change nature unintentionally through lack of attention and care.  But nature always has the last word.  We are part of nature, not masters, NOT owners in the larger sense.  Earth owns US. 

One of my favorite movies, Out of Africa, evokes early 20^th Century Kenya, when colonization was dramatically changing the landscape.  “We are not owners here,” cautions Dennis, the Robert Redford character, responding to the Baroness’s casual possessiveness of “her” farm, “her” stream, “her” Kikuyu people who lived there.  “It WILL go wild,” he says.  Humility – a recognition that we are not really in control – helps us choose a healthier, more cooperative way along our own temporary sojourn here on earth.  We are not owners here.

This has EVERYTHING to do with native plants.  No fooling, I could take any number of angles to link these thoughts to native plants!  But I will focus on two plants, one which lets us jokers know who’s really in charge, Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) and a second, Twinflower (Linnaea borealis), which allows a needy human ego to carry on with the illusion of control.

Salmonberry forms thickets by sending out underground rhizomes that send shoots up around the mother plant.  The shoots eventually form their own root system and rhizomes and turn into more 6-8-foot bushes.  They are “edge” plants – you’ll see them along the edge of forests or wetlands.  The shade of trees can keep Salmonberry under control; it needs light.  Very dry or very wet soil will act as a brake on its spread.  Or an active gardener willing to dedicate time each year to tug up the new rhizomes before they get too solidly rooted can, conceivably, keep Salmonberry corralled in a corner of the backyard.

Don’t get me wrong – I LIKE Salmonberry.  It provides much more than an exercise in humility.  Thickets of Salmonberry and other spreading shrubs like Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus), Nootka Rose (Rosa nutkana) and Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus), are VERY important to small creatures.  The tangle of branches and foliage shelter animals and birds from predators.  The big orange berries feed birds and all sorts of mammals, including humans.  I find them quite tasty when ripe.  Their flowers are a wonderful bright magenta, about 1½” across, and attract hummingbirds and bumblebees.  Do you have an appropriate place for a Salmonberry thicket?

On the other end of the spectrum lies Twinflower (Linnaea borealis), my favorite plant.  An evergreen groundcover, Twinflower has read all the plant etiquette books and behaves nicely.  But that’s not why I love it.  I love it because it forms a dark green carpet of shiny round leaves which max out about the size of a dime.  I love it because the tiny pairs of fragrant pink flowers are exquisite, old-fashioned street lamps in miniature.  I love it because it is sexy, in a demurely sensuous ground-hugging four-inch-tall way.  Twinflower takes a couple of years to establish before it begins to spread at a moderate pace.  It needs shade, but not deep shade.  It does fine with morning sun or dappled sunlight.  It needs moderate amounts of moisture in the soil.  Read more about Twinflower in my COOL PLANTS post from March 2010.

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The early morning sun is too bright in my eyes.  I can barely see the ducks and cormorant I’ve disturbed as I walk out onto the icy dock.  I turn my back on the pond and the sun and let the heat penetrate my jacket.  The sun illuminates bright green cones of emerging Yellow Pond Lily pads sticking up in clusters near the shoreline.  Foraging ducks have already tattered their tips.  A robin in the 20-acre patch of forestland sings vigorously, not even stopping for air.  When I leave the pond to walk back to the nursery, a raccoon or some other creature with a big tail – I didn’t get a good look – clambers down from an old broken Pacific Yew.  These creatures have not a care for me except to stay out of my way.

 I’m grateful that my forebears – out of foresight or lack of ambition – left a small wild place behind.  To keep small and large wild places, it’s not enough anymore to count on the benevolent neglect of their owners.  If we are owners, we need to actively support our wild places – 20 acres or 20 square yards – and re-create wild spaces if we have over-civilized our land.  These places bring beauty and healing to humans, too.

We are all owners; even if you live in an apartment in the city, you own your city’s parks.  We all own vast tracts of state and federal forestland.  Private land or public, benign neglect is not enough to provide for wild places.  They need our help and protection.

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