🌿 Shaw Island Petals Leaving Town 🌿

Flowering Cherry
Shaw Island ferry landing
Anno fifteen April 2018

"It is the spectrum, not the color, that makes color worth having, and it is the cycle, not the instant, that makes the day worth living."  
      
Henry Mitchell. One of America's most beloved garden writers who wrote for the Washington Post for almost 25 years and could rattle off the Latin names of 3,000 plants.  

🌿 APRIL ONE 🌿

Narcissus Van Sion
A new Gatehouse planting of a Shaw Island heritage
daffodil blooming on time for Easter;
 Squaw Bay Rd.
There will be bulbs for sale again next door at
Market Camp in the autumn.

APRIL 

After so long

hardly anyone remembers: 

April's air

is colder than November's

But April is like 

a pitcher warming up:

gradually the ball 

starts to hop.

Ed Rosemann

🌿 SHAW ISLAND'S SPECIAL PRIMROSE 🌿

Primrose Quaker's Bonnet
(Primula vulgaris flora-plena)
A long-lived primrose compared to the hybrids of today.
A true Heirloom that dates to at least 1835 in an Irish
garden and maybe 100 years later on Shaw Island
where it was grown & shared by gardening pioneer women
Eunice Biendl Copper and Elsie Crawford Wood.
There will be some potted starts for sale at the
Shaw School fundraiser 21 April 2018.
No Quaker's Bonnet seeds for sale at the Gatehouse;
instead, try hard not to be a cheapskate,
buy a potted start and support the scholars
planning a field trip to Washington, DC.

🌿 WILDFLOWERS WILL BE MARCHING IN 🌿

(L-R) Shaw Island brothers
J. "Lee" and Eber Bruns,
Picking wildflower Easter bouquets of
Erythronium oregonum ("White Fawn Lily.")
The bulbs love the rocky, coastal bluffs,
thickets, and woods of Shaw Island.
Seeds of Erythronium not offered
for sale at the Gatehouse;
please leave these flowers untouched
for others to enjoy.
Photo c. 1920.

It was long ago that well-known women, Elizabeth V. Dodd and Harriet G. Tusler completed their monograph Wild Flowering Plants on Coon, McConnell, Reef, and Yellow Islands. It was released in the spring of 1959.
      The compilers of the list of 177 flowering plants said that seven of the plants listed under 33 families are found only on Coon Island, ten on Reef and forty on Yellow Island.
      "Tib" Dodd has identified the plants on Yellow Island, Mrs. Tusler has identified the flowering plants on Coon Island, where she lives, McConnell and Reef Islands.
      Included in the published work is a description of the Islands covered as follows: "Coon, McConnell, Reef and Yellow Islands belong to the Wasp Island group of the San Juan Archipelago. They lie within a few hundred yards of each other about ten miles from the Canadian border in the northwest corner of Washington State. The three acres of Coon Island are mostly wooded with considerable underbrush. There is open grassy point facing N.E., N.W. and S.W. and some small grassy slopes on the south side of the Island. The thirty-one acres of McConnell Island are heavily wooded with some open fields, several grassy points and a small open, swamp area near the hightide line on the north side. The seventeen acres of Reef Island are heavily wooded with much underbrush with a few small areas of open fields.
      The eleven acres of Yellow Island are mostly arid and open, there is a wooded section on the top of the island a few small groups of trees on other parts of the island. the rest is mostly open fields and grassy points. This island is exposed to all winds while the other three islands are more sheltered, especially Coon."     
      Included in the bibliography are eight books used in identifying the plants and in conclusion there are two pages of line drawings picturing Hawkweed, Willow Herb, Cudweed, Wood Rose, Deerhead Orchid, Giant Adder's Tongue, English Plantain, Dog Fennel, Indian Pipe, Everlasting, One Flowered Cancer Root and Nipple-Wort.
      The Orcas Island Historical Society contemplates the compilation of a Herbarium of Orcas Island flora. A start on this work may begin this spring and will be continued over a period of years.
Above text from the Orcas Islander. April 1959.
        When you boat over to Yellow Island this spring to see the wildflowers, remember it was on that gem of an island that Tib lived and did some of her botanizing. Tib and her husband Lewis were friends of Shaw Island.   

❤️ SAY IT WITH SEEDS ❤️

HAPPY HEART DAY

The most top viewed post ever for
Nichols Garden Nursery, Albany, OR.l

🌿 JANUARY–––the BEST PART OF THE YEAR 🌿

Chinese Witch Hazel
(Hamamelis japonica arborea)
blooming on Shaw Island
anno twenty January 2018.

Anyone who thinks gardening
begins in the spring and ends in the fall
 is missing the best part of the whole year;
for gardening begins in January 
with the dream!
Josephine Nuese

🌿 WINTER SOWING TRICK for Summer 2018 🌿

Fresh seeds wrapped in handmade packets.
For an early seed sowing trick listed below,
there are some packets of seeds kept dry
inside two large jars at the Gatehouse Seed Shed,
Reefnet Bay Road,
Shaw Island, USDA Zone 8b. Stop by.

Listed here is a great winter-seed-sowing trick for your upcoming summer garden. With some recycled milk or water jugs to act as mini-greenhouses, cozy beds can be made for seeds to germinate and harden off at their leisure, outside! Of course, Shaw Island seeds are healthy, happy, and most agreeable. 
Here's a link here

🎄 MERRY CHRISTMAS CAMELLIA 🎄

Camellia sasanqua
'Showa-No-Sakae'
A gift from gardener Gwendolyn Yansen.
🎄 Blooming Twenty-five December 2017 🎄