Beauty in the Greenbelt: Oceanspray

We’ve planted more than a dozen oceanspray shrubs in our forest restoration site. Some of them may have had a few blossoms last year, but many more have them this year.

This week I saw oceanspray shrubs in other Seattle parks that were 13 feet high and nearly as wide. It will be interesting to see how big the ones in our restored forest grow.

FOTD

Beauty in the Greenbelt: Bleeding Heart

One of my favorite Greenbelt flowers is the bleeding heart flower; they are so small and delicate. On June 9, I took what I think is an amazing photo of one of those plants.

To me it looks like a bleeding heart flower birthing a seed pod. I look forward to learning how and when to harvest and spread the seeds. Even more, I look forward to seeing a lot more bleeding heart flowers in our Greenbelt restoration site next spring!

FOTD

Beauty in the Greenbelt: Bald Hip Rose

This spring has been very exciting for me. We planted our first trees, shrubs and ground covers in November of 2017. This year most of those plants had a tremendous growth spurt. Several species bloomed for the first time. One of those was this bald hip rose shrub.

The beginning of the path between the Mt. Baker light rail station and the Hanford Stairs is lined with bald hip rose shrubs.

One day in late May, this is what I saw as I was walking home from the Mt. Baker station.

I realized I was getting a glimpse of what our Greenbelt site is going to look like in a few years. WOW!

FOTD

A Surprise on Alki Beach

I saw this fun sight when I met Chaitanya and Akshay at Alki Beach yesterday.

The babies were like little bundles of fluff as they were still covered with down instead of feathers.

Feathers

Beauty in the Greenbelt: Pacific Ninebark

In April of 2017, I took a live stake workshop. The participants cut branches from a variety of shrubs, took them home and planted them in containers. The stakes rooted throughout the summer and early fall. In November of 2017, I planted the ones that had in our forest restoration site.

Three of the Pacific Ninebark stakes not only survived, they thrived. When I was walking through the restoration site today, I noticed that there were many buds on the shrub. One of the flowers had partially bloomed. I think it is SO beautiful.

There are many flowers like this one on the shrub. The photo below shows about a third of the plant’s flowers-to-be.

This shrub will be so beautiful when all of these buds open. At this point, it is still a fairly small plant. I can only imagine what it will look like years from now when it is fully grown.

Cee’s Flower of the Day Photography Challenge

An Afternoon Surprise

When I walked out of my house onto the back deck yesterday, this sight caught my eye:

I couldn’t believe it. When were these built? The nest on the right was biggest and they descended in size for seven rafters.

I’ve had bird nests in the rafters before, but only one at a time. And why did the bird not finish any of them? I looked on the other side of the beam and saw this:

The wasp nest was very small, but it is more than likely the answer to my question. I wouldn’t want to raise babies there!

GreenFriends Newsletter: May 2019

To download the newsletter, click on the photo.
Enjoy!

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge: Mood

I’m excited. I’ve been watching two ferns beginning to awaken since one of our teams took all of the blackberry vines off of them in early March. They are so close together you can’t really tell that there are two of them. This is what they looked like today!