http://www.tallcloverfarm.com Homeward bound on Puget Sound. Putting in a good day on Vashon Island time. Wed, 16 May 2012 17:03:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/5213/spreading-the-chestnut-love http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/5213/spreading-the-chestnut-love#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:40:36 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=5213 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Autumn’s bounty: a bowlful of chestnuts, a tabletop of squash I have a thing for chestnut trees; let me count the ways. I love the tasty nut and the porcupine casing that protects it. I love the tree’s reaching habit and stately form. I love the way the sawtooth leaves dry to the color of [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/5213/spreading-the-chestnut-love/feed 20 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/4514/how-to-make-your-lilies-last-longer http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/4514/how-to-make-your-lilies-last-longer#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:05:50 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=4514 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Boz and I share a love of lilies; me for its beauty and perfume; Boz for its vertical nature. August is the month when my garden really goes full-on Victorian, a color explosion of old fashioned flowers plucked from a John Singer Sargent canvas. Hollyhocks, phlox, lilies and roses dot my landscape as if applied [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/4514/how-to-make-your-lilies-last-longer/feed 18 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/4102/flowers-time-to-rise-and-shine http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/4102/flowers-time-to-rise-and-shine#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:33:58 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=4102 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } For most of May my garden flowers languished in bed, hunkered down and hitting the snooze button thanks to an endless month of unseasonably cool, wet days. With the first week of June delivering  temperatures a few degrees above 70, my plants are finally beginning to answer the wake-up calls. Ferns unfurl. Lilies tower. Snapdragons [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/4102/flowers-time-to-rise-and-shine/feed 19 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3735/salmonberry-flower-pretty-in-pink http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3735/salmonberry-flower-pretty-in-pink#comments Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:42:08 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=3735 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } I don’t have a whole lot to say this morning (now there’s a switch), but this blossom from a volunteer salmonberry bush (Rubus spectabilis) caught my attention, and I thought perhaps yours would like to be caught, as well. Related Links: King County Native Plant Guide Salmonberry fact sheet: University of Washington Washington Native Plant [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3735/salmonberry-flower-pretty-in-pink/feed 10 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3230/one-green-world-nursery-delivers-the-goods http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3230/one-green-world-nursery-delivers-the-goods#comments Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:58:51 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=3230 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } I read seed and nursery catalogs like dime-store novels. Will the characters within the dog-eared pages deliver on their promises. Will their potential be realized, or will some find their end in a wheelbarrow ride to the compost heap? Will their shortcomings haunt me every time I come across a wilted leaf or withered branch? [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3230/one-green-world-nursery-delivers-the-goods/feed 20 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3105/orienpet-lily-garden-bombshell-va-va-va-voom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3105/orienpet-lily-garden-bombshell-va-va-va-voom#comments Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:12:05 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=3105 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } My two-year-old stand of Satisfaction Orienpet lilies in late July My days as a plant snob are over. There’s room in my garden for both the brash and the understated, for flowers the size of snowflakes as well as blossoms that standout like a chorus line of bodacious beauties.  A marigold deserves my respect just [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3105/orienpet-lily-garden-bombshell-va-va-va-voom/feed 12 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/2732/royal-grevillea-garden-dynamo-from-down-under http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/2732/royal-grevillea-garden-dynamo-from-down-under#comments Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:33:32 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=2732 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Hi, my name is Tom and I’m a plantaholic, unable to leave a nursery without a plant, incapable of ignoring a nodding bud, lacy leaf or fancy frond. Adhere to a climate zonal chart? Nah, not me. One place where I always find unique and wonderful plants is Colvos Creek Nursery right here on Vashon [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/2732/royal-grevillea-garden-dynamo-from-down-under/feed 8 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/2287/hollyhocks-signal-summers-last-stand http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/2287/hollyhocks-signal-summers-last-stand#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:04:21 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=2287 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } As summer wanes, my hollyhocks mark its passage, each blossom a page in the season’s story.  June finds an optimistic sprout fighting off the early advances of ravenous slugs and resident rust. July showcases a robust adolescent, standing tall above the sword ferns, taking on the foxgloves in a race to touch the sky. August arrives with a floral flourish; plants dotted [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/2287/hollyhocks-signal-summers-last-stand/feed 5 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1860/foxgloves-towers-of-flowers http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1860/foxgloves-towers-of-flowers#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:26:44 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=1860 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Foxglove (digitalis purpurea) is the flower of the hour in my Pacific Northwest garden, towering three feet above my close-to six-foot frame. (That’s height not width, for clarification and the time being.) Their show began three weeks ago and will likely continue for another two before the plants brown into equally handsome and imposing seed stalks. Later in the summer, [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1860/foxgloves-towers-of-flowers/feed 9 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1472/taylors-pink-perfection-camelia-or-lipstick-color http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1472/taylors-pink-perfection-camelia-or-lipstick-color#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 15:22:55 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=1472 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Nature doles out some amazing colors. When my camellia Taylor’s Pink Perfection began to bloom for the first time, I found its blush exuberant, unapologetic and very reminiscent of a hue I’d come across before: the lipstick color of my fourth grade teacher Miss Wells. In my recollection, Miss Wells and Delta Burke are now the [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1472/taylors-pink-perfection-camelia-or-lipstick-color/feed 4 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1452/bart-your-primula-is-doing-fine http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1452/bart-your-primula-is-doing-fine#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 03:51:24 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=1452 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } In some cafe, perhaps in Amsterdam, maybe in Bruges sits a man whose interest in the works of Van Gogh and Rubens is only rivaled by his love of works in nature, in this case unusual plants. So Bart, fear not; while you’re enjoying a European holiday, your primula sits protected on my porch. The blossoms are exquisite, the [...]

]]> http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1452/bart-your-primula-is-doing-fine/feed 12 http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1398/periwinkle-vinca-major-covers-a-lot-of-ground http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/1398/periwinkle-vinca-major-covers-a-lot-of-ground#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:21:01 +0000 Tom http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/?p=1398 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } I’d have to say the periwinkle Vinca major saves me about a bazillion hours of weeding each summer, smothering out just about any weed bold enough to insist on staking a claim. If periwinkle can easily engulf a pot topping 30 inches (above), dandelions don’t stand a chance of permanent residency. While the individual  flowers are real lookers, like little blue polka dots floating [...]

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