Dirt Therapy

I'm a day late for Gardener's Bloom Day. The garden is a wild mess right now and I've got to get out there and start working. The mosquitoes are terrible this year and for the first time in my life, they seem to like me. We've been getting a lot of rain and everything is lush and green. And as a result, more blooms than you'd normally see this time of year. Lily "Scheherazade" Aloe Vera - I didn't realize that the aloe vera bloomed but it does! Orange Daylily ( Hemerocallis fulva ) Lily "Caravan" Tiger Lily Naked Ladies ( Lycoris squamigera ) Naked Ladies ( Lycoris squamigera ) Italian Arum ( Arum italicum ) Fleece Flower ( Persicaria 'Red Dragon' ) Crinum Lily Begonia Rose of Sharon "Bluebird" ( Hibiscus syriacus ) To see what is blooming in other gardens all over the U.S., check out Garden Blogger's Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens. Text and photos by Phillip Oli...

I think I've covered everything on my recent Portland trip and wanted to conclude with a post about Trillium Hollow , the place we stayed at while we were there. Trillium Hollow is a co-housing community. This was a new experience for me and it was absolutely wonderful. It was one of the most beautiful places in Portland and a treat to retire to every evening. This is the driveway leading down to the main house (not ours). Like the name says, it is located in a hollow. Behind the house is a deep ravine with a running creek below. It was deeply forested. This is the community house, located right behind the house in the earlier photo. This is a 3-story house on stilts that sits directly above the creek. Our rooms were in the lower section of the house. It was absolutely incredible, like being in a tree house. The house is also used for community dinners and meetings for the people who live on the property. The back part of our house was surrounded by decks. ...

A block of food trucks in downtown Portland If there is one thing I like better than gardens, it is food! I love to eat and unlike Michael, who prefers to eat at the same places and have the same dishes over and over again, I enjoy trying new places.  The restaurant choices in Portland are mind boggling. You can find any cuisine you desire. Rebecca and McKenzie kept telling me about the food trucks in downtown Portland. I expected a food truck here and there but not an entire block of them! One after another and every type food imaginable. It was quite an experience.     I loved the name of this one - EuroTrash - and I had a huge hamburger here. One of my favorite places was a little vegan restaurant called The Loving Hut . I love Chinese food and this stuff was amazing. It was better than real chicken and beef!     Yum!   This was an appetizer at the Multnomah Falls Lodge restaurant. It is Ceviche. I've seen chefs making th...

Near the bottom of the hill and off to the side of the Portland International Rose Test Garden is the Shakespeare Garden. There is a bust of Shakespeare under the archway in the above photo and I forgot to get a close-up of it. This charming little garden is filled with plants that appear in Shakepeare's works (ferns, hosta, hydrangea, boxwood, banana trees, fuchsias, calla lilies, etc.). Small weddings are often held here and it is easy to see why. Notice the crow. There are crows all over Portland. I was bullied by one in the neighborhood where we stayed but that is another story. Those shrub-sized fuchsias again!         Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy