Ell Alley: garden

Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2020

July Garden 2020

Spiraea douglasii (Hardhack)

Kniphofia 'Alcazar' (Torch Lily)

Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' & Erigeron speciosus (Showy Fleabane)

Sidewalk Garden

Native Meadow

The garden in July was disappointing. There was only 0.17 inches of rain. Average rainfall is 0.70 inches. Last July the garden got 1.15 inches. Irrigation can't compete with adequate rainfall. The garden started turning brown earlier than usual. Flowers were smaller & less profuse. At 76.8 degrees, the average maximum temperature was 1 degree higher than normal. Perhaps it's the new normal. The highest temperature was 94 on July 27. The lowest was 54 on July 14.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

June Garden 2020

Erythranthe cardinalis (Scarlet Monkeyflower) & Erigeron peregrinus (Wandering Daisy)

Potted plants near the front door

Lilium 'Yellow Whoppers' (Asiatic Lily)

Achillea millefolium (Yarrow)

Hypericum hybrid (St John's Wort)

June 2020 was warmer & wetter than normal. The mean temperature was 61.8, 0.9 degrees above normal. The highest temperature was 85 on 6/23. The lowest was 49 on 6/14. Total precipitation was 2.28 inches, 0.71 inches more than normal. However, there was a gap between 6/16 & 6/26 when it rained only 0.04 inches. Plants slowed their growth & some began to wither. More than an inch (1.03) fell during the last 4 days of the month.

Friday, June 12, 2020

May Garden 2020

Fragaria vesca (Wild Strawberry)

Rosa chinensis 'Mutabilis' (China Rose)

Camassia quamash (Common Camas)

Rubus parviflorus (Thimbleberry)

Clematis alpina 'Stolwijk Gold' (Alpine Clematis)

Camassia leichtlinii 'Alba' (White Great Camas)

Erythranthe guttata (Yellow Monkeyflower)

The garden in May was spectacular! May is always the month when the greatest number of flowers are in bloom. The average high temperature was 68. The average low was 50.5. Both were more than 3 degrees higher than normal. The highest temperature was 87 on May 10. The lowest was 39 on May 4. Total rainfall was 3.12 inches. That was 1.18 inches more than normal. Warmer temperatures & more water contributed to making the garden more abundant in foliage & flower.

Friday, May 1, 2020

April Garden 2020

Polystichum munitum (Western Sword Fern)

Viola tricolor (Johnny Jump Up)

Camassia leichtlinii (Great Camas)

Tellima grandiflora (Fringe Cup)

Pacific Coast Native Iris hybrid

Paeonia mascula (Balkan Peony)

April 2020 was warmer & drier than normal. The average monthly temperature was 52.3. That was 2 degrees above normal. The highest temperature was 71 on 4/17. The lowest was 35 of 4/4. Total rainfall was 1.70 inches, 1.01 inches below normal. There were 8 days with rain, 7 days with clear skies, 16 with partly cloudy skies & 7 days with cloudy skies. Spring really took hold in the middle of the month with temperatures of 66-70-71 on April 15-16-17. Many flowers opened & foliage dramatically expanded then.

Sunday, April 5, 2020

March Garden 2020

Ribes sanguineum 'White Icicle' (Flowering Currant)

Veronica 'Georgia Blue'

Euphorbia myrsinites (Myrtle Spurge)

Anemone blanda (Grecian Windflower)

Helleborus x hybridus (Hellebore) March 2020

The garden in March was damp yet encouraging as plants flowered & shoots pushed up from the ground. Hellebores had been blooming for more than a month. The average temperature was 44.8. That was 1.7 degrees cooler than normal. Total rainfall was 3.17 inches. That was 0.55 inches less than normal. It rained a significant amount on 11 days & a small amount on 15 more. The skies were mostly clear on 6 days. There were 2 days when the temperature dropped to freezing at 32 degrees. It was wet & gloomy as it often is in March. The highest temperature was 62 on March 20. The average high was 51. The average low was 38.

Thursday, December 12, 2019

November Garden 2019

Phlomis 'Edward Bowles' (Jerusalem Sage)

Thujopsis dolabrata (Deerhorn Cedar)

Heuchera cylindrica (Alumroot)

Polystichum munitum (Western Sword Fern)

Fatshedera lizei 'Aureo Maculata' (Tree Ivy)

At 1.74 inches, November 2019 was one of the driest Novembers ever recorded. That was 4.86 inches less than normal. The least rain ever recorded was 1.37 inches in 1976. The most ever was 19.68 inches in 2006. There were only 6 days with at least 0.10 inches. At 46.6 degrees, the average monthly temperature was 1.2 degrees warmer than normal. The highest temperature was 59 on November 11. The lowest was 16 on November 30.

Sunday, November 3, 2019

October Garden 2019

Clematis integrifolia

Sedum pluricaule ‘Rose Carpet’

Mahonia repens (Creeping Oregon Grape)

Quercus gambelii (Gambel Oak)

Euphorbia myrsinites & Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard'

October 2019 was cooler & slightly wetter than normal. A total 3.67 inches of rain fell on 12 days. It rained on 7 consecutive days from October 16 to 22. The average temperature (50.8) was 2 degrees below normal. The highest was 65 on 10/6. The lowest was 33 on 10/30. Several mornings had light frost. Most leaves fell from the trees & shrubs in October, a dramatic change. They were raked day after day.

Friday, September 6, 2019

August Garden 2019

Pinus pinea (Italian Stone Pine)

Sedum hispanicum

Clematis integrifolia

Stack of rocks

Sedum 'Autumn Joy'

The garden in August was preparing for fall. Growth slowed, leaves turned brown, seed pods ripened & there were few flowers. The average monthly temperature was 69.1. That was 3 degrees above normal. Total rainfall was 1.20 inches, 0.32 inches above normal. The highest temperature was 89 on 8/28. The lowest was 55 on 8/23. Watering was done every 5 days, adjusting for days of significant rainfall: 3 days when it rained 0.30 inches, or more. The greatest rainfall was 0.38 inches on 8/10.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

July Garden 2019

Achillea millefolium (Yarrow)

Hemerocallis 'Root Beer' (Daylily)

Geranium 'Blogold' (Cranesbill)

Paeonia veitchii (Veitch's Peony) seed pods

Echinacea purpurea (Purple Coneflower)

There weren't many flowers left in the garden by the end of July. Many of the perennial plants had turned brown, even though there was more rain than usual for the month at 1.15 inches. Average rainfall in July is 0.93 inches, the least of any month. The average monthly temperature was 67.5 degrees, 1.8 degrees higher than normal. The highest temperature was 91 on July 21. The lowest was 55 on July 4 & 19.

Monday, July 1, 2019

June Garden 2019

Helenium bigelovii 'The Bishop' (Sneezeweed)

Spiraea douglasii

Heuchera hybrid (Alumroot)

Fungus species

Eryngium 'Big Blue' (Sea Holly)

Hemerocallis hybrid (Daylily)

Erigeron philadelphicus (Philadelphia Daisy) & Erythranthe cardinalis (Scarlet Monkey Flower)

Hemerocallis 'Bela Lugosi' (Daylily)

We had a short heat wave. It was 79 on June 10, 87 on June 11 & 95 on June 12. Those were 7, 14 & 20 degrees above average for those dates. 95 set a record for June 12. The highest temperature ever recorded in June is 96. It was 80 on June 13 & cool in the morning. And then on June 14 it was 70, just 2 degrees above average. After the heat wave, the weather stayed fairly cool with temperatures only a few degrees above normal & cloudy skies. There was rain on 3 days from June 18 to 20. But rain was well below normal for the month & for the year so far. It was slightly cooler than normal on those rainy days. June 21 was the 1st day of summer. The sun rose at 5:11 AM & set at 9:10 PM, almost 16 hours of daylight. The temperature reached 72, which was 1 degree above normal. It remained cool until the last 2 days of the month.

About Ell Alley

Ell Alley is the home of Jetta, Jordan, Kitty, Rusty, Steve & Toby. It is named for the alley beside & behind the house that forms an ell: the shape of the letter L. It is located in the Rainier Vista development, in the Rainier Valley of Seattle, which extends 7 miles southeast from Downtown Seattle to Rainier Beach, between Beacon Hill & the lakeside ridges of Mt Baker, Lakewood & Seward Park. Ell Alley is 4 miles from Downtown Seattle, 0.4 miles from the Columbia City Station & 0.7 miles from the center of the Columbia City Landmark District.

Rainier Valley History

The first settlers arrived in the 1850s, but settlement was slow until the forest was cut down & milled, as it was throughout the city. Developers bought logged-off land toward the end of the 19th century. They laid out the communities of Genesee, Columbia City, Hillman City, Brighton & Dunlap.

Cheap land in the valley, just outside the City of Seattle, attracted Italians of rural origins & they planted large, productive gardens. The north end of the Rainier Valley became known as Garlic Gulch. Japanese immigrants also had farms in the valley. The produce filled local markets including Pike Place.

The Rainier Avenue Electric Railway opened the valley to greater development, reaching Columbia City in 1891 & Renton in 1896. In 1907, the City of Seattle annexed most of southeast Seattle, including the Rainier Valley.

At the start of World War II, Japanese residents were forced into internment camps east of the mountains. Tens of thousands of war workers came to Seattle to work at the Boeing Company, the shipyards & the port. The US government constructed thousands of temporary housing units at Rainier Vista, Stadium Homes (now Mt Baker Village) & Holly Park in the Rainier Valley.

After the war, the temporary housing became public, low-income housing. Suburban development took many white residents away from the valley. Blacks moved into the Rainier Valley from the over-crowded, nearby Central Area. Interracial couples found acceptance here. Filipinos arrived in large numbers.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, refugees came from southeast Asia: Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Lao & Mien peoples. Many settled in the Rainier Valley. Chinese continued to arrive, although most settled on nearby Beacon Hill. There was a small influx of Mexicans. Somali immigration began after US involvement in Somalia in 1992.

Work on new housing at NewHolly (formerly Holly Park) began in 1997 & continued for a decade, with 1400 units sold to private owners. The rebuilding of Rainier Vista began in 2003 & still continues. Columbia City rapidly gentrified starting in the late 1990s. Many units of new housing were built in the form of townhouses, condos & apartments.

The current population of the Rainier Valley is about 41,000. The racial breakdown is 34.1% Asian, 26.9% Caucasian, 26% African American, 1.6% Pacific Islander, 6.5% Mixed Race, 1% Native American and 3.4% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race are 7.2% of the population.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.

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