Pacific Northwest Gardening: Gardening Do's and Don'ts, 1 by

wrote:
Laurie! Welcome back! I hope you are posting photos of your spruced up garden. I will have to check the other threads.
Cameras - I love the canon line. Also Fuji is great. I've had both brands. Must have: good optical lens for the zoom. Digital zoom is secondary for me. Also good macro. Must, must have.

Brown finch is just finishing its bloom. I do love! the blooms on that one.

Tills, the rose is to die for. I agree with Laurie's comment about the dancing.

Garden don'ts: Do not succumb to all the enticing, seductive seed catalogs and websites during the long winter months. Put yourself on a strict seed diet and do not waver in your resolve. Otherwise, you will be sorry. Very, very sorry.

Also, do not bother to attempt to start heat loving annuals, such as coleus, from seed or, like colocasia, from tiny bulbs. Yep, they are extremely easy to grow. But making them big and lush enough to make a statement in the garden during our fairly short growing season is the work of commercial greenhouses. Just buy them at Fred Meyer. Nice selection, decent price. The same thing goes for most other annuals unless they are really, really different. Please make a note of this for next year.

Do NOT, under ANY Circumstances, plant an entire packet of seeds, no matter how cool the plant. When one plants an entire packet, the universe swoops in on dragon wings and makes every single seed germinate and grow like mad, and then you are left with 15 different acacias. You won't know what any of them are until they mature a bit, so you are stuck with them.

There is simply no point in planting bulbs when you have bulb flies. Also, please be aware that when you kill a bulb fly, another one will attack you as if it were truly a bee. Evidently they are this smart. It is frightening.

I leave you with this photo, done with the macro setting on my cannon camera. It is Martagon lily Mrs. R.O. Backhouse. I have saved it from the nasty, vicious vole monsters by putting it in a pot. I have determined that it's not that bad to have many potted lilies. I can place them as I like when they bloom and remove them when the bloomtime is finished. So take THAT you voles!