Once we got some real summer weather the vegetable garden grew lots more than cabbage and began to look even more overgrown than usual. This year the space was redesigned using the concept of keyhole beds from permaculture.
At once this created extra planting space, and inspired a new, improved planting plan. The results have been delightful, and tasty.

June went by far too fast even though it didn't warm up much until the past week or so. Its easy to see the effects of so wet a growing season all around the garden. Pea pods are sweet and crisp, the plants over a foot taller than previous years here. We've been enjoying greens and broccoli, spinach is still putting out large tasty leaves long after it might have started to bolt. Cabbage plants became huge by the first of the month (pictured here) and have continued to grow to over three feet wide.

Ten years ago, as I began to plan the garden here, I envisioned enhancing the edges that surround us with native shrubs and trees, where the opening we created meets the forest. My highest hopes were for two favorites: our native dogwood (Cornus nutalli) and rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum). These were placed along the edges among the existing fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) , hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and cedar (Thuja plicata). Existing shrubs were mainly huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum and V. parvifolium), salal (Gaultheria shallon),and sword ferns (Polystichum munitum). Ten years later the reward is great. The rhododenderons have bloomed for several seasons and have grown to substantial size. Last year the first dogwood began to bloom, this year there were many.

Best thing to remember so far this year...remember to plant more tulips. Double tulips were among new things in the garden this year. These pink ones are the best. Only thing wrong...not enough! While fruit trees, azaleas and rhododendrons are blooming in April, not much color is yet happening in the beds. The tulips add so much color and fun sprinkled among all the new green.

March has been lovely this year, with lots of warm days to encourage new growth all around the garden. One perfect day I spent hours taking pictures. Everything is changing so fast now there is something new every day. Meanwhile the house is once again filled with all sorts of seedlings. The natives are coming along slowly but surely, a few yet to sprout. Some may need another try in fall to experience our true winter (rather than a stint in the refrigerator). Its easy to see this could be best from examples like sweet cicely, which sprouts so freely here when just tossed aside after trimming and left alone for the winter. So many seedlings appear it hard to imagine this plant could be finicky, but apparently it is difficult to start in pots.

Warmer than average winter weather has much of the garden growing. Indian plum is blooming nearly a month earlier than most years. Pear trees already look like they're about to bloom and lot of pruning still to do.We are enjoying the first of the new spring greens, lots more on the way soon. Spinach, parsley,leeks, and onion seedlings overwintered nicely in the hoop house, while the lettuce perished, possibly from some sort of rot, though a few survived in the cold frame. From out in the garden, sweet cicely, burnett, miners lettuce, lovage, and chives are fresh additions to our salads. Meanwhile more seeds are sprouting, some seedlings transplanted today, and a new batch of natives started.

Seeds are sprouting! Penstemons, echinacea, hollyhocks, sweet peas among the first. This year I'll try placing some in a protected spot outside rather than having to keep them all in under lights. Its easy to get carried away and get too much going to handle.
That said, I just planted 2 more flats...mostly greens, some broccoli and cabbage, a few new herbs.
Much better results starting penstemons this year, using seed freshly collected from outdoors which had spent the winter naturally in the garden. Good reason to leave things alone rather than over doing fall clean up.

Lots of pruning to do now; the warmer weather makes it seem I'll never have enough time before everything will be growing. Not my favorite thing to do anyway, but very much needed. As I go I'm planning some major changes. A few things, like this escalonia, may have to go. This one got way out of control before I realized how much it needed to be pruned. I thought 'dwarf' in the name meant it wouldn't get too big! It went into a section of perennial border when I realized a framework of evergreen shrubs would be nice when everythig else is dormant. Most of this area has been quite successful, but as I rethink and reset priorities, I doubt I will keep anything that takes much work unless it makes food. So fruit trees will get finished first, then I'll get out my biggest saw...

Posssibly because it has been the warmest January on record here, all sorts of things are already coming up in the garden. Miner's lettuce is already big enough to cut; nettles are ready to make into soup at least two weeks earlier than usual; yesterday I discovered the first lettuce seedlings coming up in the vegetable garden.( A few are always tossed about at seed collecting time just to see what happens.)
The first batch of seeds for 2010 started yesterday, were mostly natives, but it looks like its about time for early veggies to get going.

Water Hawthorne is among the earliest bloomers of the year in the entire garden, by far the soonest to appear in the pond. While admiring them today, I caught my first glimpse of one of the fish since fall. They seem to vanish during the coldest months, must have noticed the unusually warm weather we've had for the past few weeks.