Daffodils are among the first flowers of spring here in West Linn. These are by our front entry The line of yellow daffodils marches on our property along Petes Mountain Road.
The Star Magnolia was the first of our shrubs to come into bloom, along with yellow spirea.
A few days of warm weather (70 degrees!) in mid March brought out the pink Magnolia near our front entry.
And then the flowering cherries by our front entry. They can be seen from far away! Our brand new gate complements the shape of the cherry tree.
We also added a gate by our garage to complete the deer fencing blocking access to the main garden. Many thanks to Maksim Bikmurzin who carefully installed the 7′ deer fencing and gates that now protect (hopefully) our roses, blueberries and other plants from nightly nibblers.
Our blueberry orchard is beginning to show its colors. We will need to install the netting around the cage soon to keep the birds from eating our delicious blueberries. I make blueberry jam, blueberry crisps and freeze blueberries for future shakes. This patch always reminds me of my youth at Camp Geneva in the Poconos where a favorite activity was blueberry picking!
We moved the Marion Berry (a blackberry grown in Oregon) to its own raised bed because it was encroaching the raspberries. We built a special trellis that allows the fruit bearing vines to crawl along the top and the first year’s growth (next year’s berries) to grow along the bottom. Next year, all we need to do is cut back the old vines and lift up the new ones! Many thanks to our friend Chad Harris of Mt. Pleasant Iris for letting us steal his concept and to Rob Johnson, our stalwart handyman, who knows how to build anything!
Now our raspberries have room to flourish. Here they are beginning to leaf out. I’m looking forward to filling the remaining raised beds with seeds and plants: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, strawberries, sugar snap peas and more. Last year, we harvested 165 pounds of vegetables (those heirloom tomatoes are heavy!)
We planted this pear tree soon after we moved to West Linn in 2022. We will see what happens this summer.
The flowering current is chock full of flowers after we gave it a hard prune two years ago.
The roses in our herb garden are leafing out, as are the 60+ others on the property. Should be real colorful come summer. I’m looking forward to it!