Owen Rose Garden in Eugene

Here is a nice place to see some roses. It is the Owen Rose Garden in Eugene, Oregon, with over 4,500 roses. I visited here in 2011 so things may look different now. I found out there is a live webcam. The link to the webcam can be found at the bottom of the rose garden's website:

Owen Rose Garden

Spider!!

We were enjoying a Memorial Day dinner on our back patio when my son noticed this spider beneath his feet. And after searching on the web I came up with the reference to a false black widow. Now I am freaking out. If you search the web long enough you can find various definitions of how poisonous they are, from, its "bite is significantly less dangerous to humans" to stories of mass panic (mainly only from the UK - they must have had an infestation of a certain subspecies that actually were more dangerous). They will prey on actual black widows, so that must be a good thing. But I'm still worried. My spider-loving family let it go on its merry way. What if there are hundreds of babies?? Hopefully it was just passing through our yard rather than taking up permanent residence.

Stop and smell the roses

Roses are now in bloom in Oregon. I walk past these first pink ones everyday and they are so very fragrant.

Oregon coast flora

This is a black twinberry from a walk on the dunes in Newport over the weekend.

Have a Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Several booths at the farmers market on Wednesday were selling strawberries. We absolutely love berry season. The boys will gobble down pint after pint. It's also time to start thinking about jams and what to do with all of those yummy strawberries, marionberries, raspberries and blueberries on their way.

We were picking strawberries on the first of June last year, so, yes, it's getting to be that time.

Wednesday farmers' market

I headed off to the farmers' market in Corvallis yesterday. The Corvallis and Albany farmers' markets opened in April. They will be overflowing with customers come summer. The landscape of the Corvallis market is changing as you can see by the construction going on in the background of this first photo.

Primary voting day

The roses are out and lovely for today's Primary vote in Oregon.

Weekend work wrap up

Saturday was a good day for getting some work done. I planted a few little plants that had been waiting around for some time and some watermelon seeds I received for Mother's Day.

There is now an ad-hoc trellis for this vine.

The left side of this picture was weeded by hand and seeded about 4 weeks ago. We finally got to the rest of the area as you can see on the right side of the picture. Most of it was weeds.

Nootka Rose

Today there are lots of little pink blooms on the Nootka rose (Rosa Nutkana).

A different kind of school fundraiser

Last week I received some plants I had purchased from my son's school fundraiser. They were selling tomatoes and peppers planted by people from the local homeless shelter. The fundraiser was a combined event with profits going both to the school and to help the different parts of the shelter, such as its soup kitchen, thrift store, garden market, wood lot and Christmas tree lots.
I can't wait to see how our plants do. We came home with Betterboy, Celebrity and Roma tomatoes and one Northstar Bell pepper.

By the way, my son found the name of the spider in yesterday's post. It was an Apache Jumper.

Four little plants and a spider

I brought home four little plants from the Thyme Garden. They are from left to right (with their tag descriptions):

Brown's Butterfly Geranium - double dark maroon flowers with a touch of pink
Tennessee Coneflower - endangered species; pink flowers with forked tips
Polar Summer Mullein - striking white foliage with spikes of yellow flowers
Lobelia Queen Victoria - red flowers; hummingbird favorite



And the boys found a little spider. It is toward the bottom left of the post, with a red back.

Mother's Day at the Thyme Garden

The Thyme Garden in Alsea celebrated Mother's Day with its annual event over the weekend. People brought picnic lunches, perused the art booths and wandered the grounds of the nursery. And the weather turned out nice on the day we were there.

A sunny post on a cloudy day

This is the Whitespires Church (1891) in the Monteith Historic District in Albany, Oregon.

Rhododendrons and azaleas

The rhododendrons and azaleas are showing their brilliant colors right now. Here are some places to see some right now in the Mid-Willamette Valley.


This is a photo from last year at Bush's Pasture Park in Salem. The path with the rhododendrons is located a little bit in toward the center of the massive park.

This is from the rhododendron garden at Hendricks Park in Eugene. It was taken in 2009.





















These next three are in Central Park in Corvallis. I took these photos last weekend.

Corvallis also has a rhododendron walking path located toward the far back side of Avery Park.


This yellow azalea is from a walk in my neighborhood this morning.

Peonies

The Buckeye Belle peonies in my garden are in full bloom today. I bought this plant at the Adelman Peony Gardens in Salem a couple years back. It's amazing all of the display gardens that are in Oregon this time of year. Peonies, rhododendrons/azaleas, irises and then later roses. Adelman's website says their nursery, fields and display gardens are open now through June 15.  Lots of choices for Mother's Day trips!

Corvallis Spring Garden Festival 2014

The rain held off for most of the day but the wind was sometimes strong at yesterday's Spring Garden Festival. There were booths filled with local vendors and organizations and a nature-themed art exhibit in the Arts Center. There was information on beekeeping and also Natural Areas Celebration Week, which includes a whole slew of events going on now through May 11. I brought home a couple of small plants including a golden lemon thyme and a dwarf conifer.

One of the information booths held a small planted garden bed and your task was to identify four weeds in a row on this bingo chart. I wish I would have taken a picture of the garden bed, darn.

Another activity sponsored by the Civic Beautification Urban Forestry Commission (CBUF) was a tree identification quest. The passport asked you to identify the tree and provide different values on that specific tree, for example, atmospheric carbon reduction, storm water intercepted annually and the year planted. It is my understanding that the chair of this commission, a recent Oregon State University graduate, did the wood burning on these medallions.