danger garden

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

I'm (STILL) not in the desert southwest

Acting on a tip from a blog reader I stopped by an exotic animal hospital in Beaverton, OR. Why? To check out the plants of course...

These are quite fitting for an office that specializes in exotic pets. After all, you don't see blooming cholla on every street corner in this part of the world.

Technicolor flowers and fruit.

Oh my now that's exotic! A variegated Cylindropuntia imbricata flower.

The title of this post is a play on another post from back in 2011, when I shared photos of a drive-by home garden that happens to belong to the same person who owns this vet office, see that here.

These agaves appear to all be the same species.

Pups of plants from the home garden maybe?

There are a lot of them!

I should know which one this is, but my brain isn't connecting the dots.

This big bad boy was behind the office building.

Nearby yucca...

Okay what the heck, here's another garden I stopped to photograph a few weeks ago. This one closer to me in North Portland. These plants were all blooming in a wide hellstrip.

Maybe you don't see blooming cholla on every street corner, but there are more than you might think.

It turns out summer in Portland can look a lot like the desert...

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Monday, July 21, 2025

Y is for yellow, and for yesterday—which was my birthday

Hey, what do you know! There's a happy yellow flower blooming on the NoID opuntia next to my front door...

Funny, as it just recently occurred to me that I'd managed to place a pair of yellow bloomers on either side of the front porch, and I wasn't even thinking of the opuntia. On the north side, Bletilla ochracea 'Chinese Butterfly'.

When I bought this orchid it was dormant, and labeled as Bletilla striata, which would have been pink-blooming. I was thrilled to end up with the yellow version.

On the south side of the porch, Santolina chamaecyparissus 'Lemon Queen'. The flowers are past their prime, but hopefully you get the idea.

Other yellows in the front garden include multiple Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard', a moving cast of blooming Verbascum (all volunteers, I'm never sure where one will pop up) and Trachelospermum asiaticum 'Ogon Nishiki', one just visible to the far right in this photo.

So that's it, a quick post today as yesterday was my birthday, family is visiting, and I've been going nonstop for the last month or so (breathe...). Summer is going too fast!

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Friday, July 18, 2025

An early July tour of the back garden

The evening of July 8th I walked into the back garden at just the right moment, the sun was low and shining into the garden from the west, working it's golden hour magic. Naturally I started snapping photos, and so I'm sharing a rare summer garden tour...

Walking in...

Looking to the left.

And to the right, along the back of the house.

What initially caught my attention was the bromeliad bowl, it's visible in the first photo at the top of the post. I've not seen the plants backlit like this before.

This weekend marks a year since this low metal bench came home with me. I bought it at VanLierop Garden Market during the Puget Sound Garden Fling, I'm so glad I did!

Panning to the right, the orange wall is the neighbor's garage...

Looking at the back of the house now, due east. It's crazy how much the light changed from the last photo.

Looking south now, at the side of our garage, the orange wall is behind me. I've stepped back and I'm using that crazy iPhone feature where you can pan out for a wide angle photo.

The Metapanax delavayi (tall lacy shrub/small tree to the left) is looking so good this year! It's gotten really large. Also, I must share my frustration over how much the process of uploading these photos to the Blogger platform degrades their quality. I noticed it on Monday with the photos of Ann Nichols' garden and it's really evident here too. Bummer!

Southwest now, towards the shade pavilion.

Zoomed out.

Some of the vertical plantings on the trellis next to the garage.

And turned around now to look back at where I'd been, roughly northeast.

This area is an odd mash-up of agaves that have been there for a long while, and shady characters that I've planted over the last couple of years.

The ferny bits I planted last summer when the Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica' died...

I'm down on the patio now, looking up at Sammy (the tall Yucca rostrata) and friends.

The table planting on the stock tank base is holding up well.

Turning to look south towards the shade pavilion.

The stairs and pathway up and out of the garden...

Southwest corner of the patio...

Closer views of the shade pavilion and all the plantings on the fence...

The tall pedestal planters in the southwest corner...

And the back of the garage.

And looking down at the patio...

I hope you enjoyed this tour. Some of the photos had better light than others, but it was nice change from the cloudy day photos I'm usually forced to share for a tour, since sunlight means crazy harsh shadows.

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