We made a quick trip to the Pacific Northwest over the holiday weekend, and of course I kept an eye out for flowers and gardens during our travels.

I was born in western Oregon, and to me no other natural landscape is as beautiful. My cousins there have pretty gardens, and we also visited the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle and Bellevue Botanical Garden east of Seattle.

Fuchsias

Have I mentioned I love fuchsias? (Apparently not very often since I still have to look up the spelling every time!) As far as I'm concerned, their only flaws are that they don't have a scent and they're not hardy here. I try to buy them as cheaply as possible because I know they'll only last a few months. (Don't even suggest bringing them indoors over the winter—remember I have a black thumb with indoor plants. And I did try a fuchsia once with the usual results.)

My Oregon cousins grow them in their gardens and expect them to be perennials. One has a huge one in a hanging planter that spills down almost to the ground. The Bellevue Garden has a whole fuchsia garden. (If you'd like to see it, there are a bunch of photos of it in the summer slide show at the Seasonal Slide Shows link here.)

Then this planter in downtown Seattle caught my eye. Sure, I saw lots of petunia balls during our trip, but here they don't mess around with anything that ordinary. They fill their street planters with fuchsias!

Advice from Tremaine

I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures of my cousin Tremaine's garden that I can use here; the light was fading while when we visited. She has beautiful flowers that look like my flowers on steroids. In fact, her garden is the first I've ever seen that reminds me of my mother-in-law's. She has a hydrangea bush with the bluest flowers you can imagine. I actually saw quite a few blue hydrangeas in Oregon; the soil there must be pretty acidic. (In our soil they are generally pink or lavender.) Tremaine adds to the effect by putting coffee grounds around hers.

Tremaine's sister had told me she'd complained about how slowly her own garden was growing, and Tremaine had asked if she had fertilized it. Like me, she hadn't thought it was necessary because she had used good soil. Tremaine told her she definitely needed fertilizer anyway. I asked Tremaine about it, and she said she not only uses fertilizer every time she plants anything but she also buys and uses new soil for every plant she pots. (I don't. Blush.)

OK, I knew about fertilizer; fertilizer was my mother-in-law's "secret," too. But I just never get around to using it. I needed the reminder.

So how did my plants do while we were gone?

I'd been careful to plant all the patio plants in plastic pots, and when we left I put them all in the shade. I put most of them in pans or saucers with lots of water.



And here they are after 7 days:


The Trader Joe's basil and some of the strawberries and tomatoes had wilted. However, I immediately watered them and they were all fine the next morning!

Now I just need to tackle all the weeds that grew like crazy while we were gone. Funny how they don't need water much less fertilizer!