Rhododendron Hedging (Bets)

We have at least 7 rhododendron plants in our yard.  They vary in color and variety.  Unfortunately I have not yet learned enough about them to know what varieties they are.  They were all here when we moved in and one of them even looks like it may be a "wild" variety (Pacific rhododendron [Rhododendron macrophyllum]) as it is at the edge of the wooded area of the property on the "other" side of the stream.  The "wild" one has never bloomed, so I can't say for sure.

There is one, however, which is the first to bloom every year without fail. 

This is a very large rhodie that is located in the north east corner of the property.  It is flanked on either side by laurel bushes which are also large and bully and crowd the rhodie a bit.  It is on the edge of the wooded strip of land between us and our nearest neighbors and it gets LOTS of afternoon sun on its western side.

When I say it blooms first and early, it usually has its blooms open in March or early April, whereas the rest of the rhodies wait until late April or May to show their colors.  This year - mild winter it has been - this plant had her blooms open in DECEMBER.  My daughter noticed it during the week after Christmas.
 
Unfortunately, we then had two weeks of frost in January, so the blooms have received some serious frost damage.

When I went to examine the blooms, however, I noticed something interesting.  There were 3 different stages of bloom on the bush:  Fully open, and now brown and crispy; partly open, brown-tipped, but possibly not all lost; and quite healthy-looking tiny unopened buds. 


Brown frost damaged blooms.  They used to be pink.

Partly opened bloom with some frost damage.

Unopened blooms.

We talk a lot in the Northwest about microclimates.  The weather forecasters say it is impossible to predict the weather for the Puget Sound area with any degree of accuracy because of all the microclimates around the Sound.  I find the same thing in my garden:  certain areas are warmer than others, receive different amounts of sun and rain, are slightly different elevations (the northeast corner of the property is 50 feet higher than the southwest corner), etc.

So were the blooms on this plant simply responding to the microclimate on their particular part of the branch... or was the plant "hedging" her bets?

Links of interest:
Western North American Rhododendron Species Project
Rhododendron Species Garden Botanical Garden

Brown Creeper

As I was trying to take photos of the very quick Townsend's warblers I noticed another bird off in the woods, about 20 yards away, circling the trunk of a large fir tree.   It was another small bird - about 5 inches long with a brown dorsum and a strikingly white belly.  It was clinging to the bark and hopping around in a spiral up the tree trunk, occasionally stopping to probe into the crevices in the bark. 

It turns out this little beauty is an appropriately-named Brown Creeper (Certhia americana). 

Here are its pages on the Seattle Audubon website and the Cornell Ornithology lab's All About Birds site.  Both sites say that these birds are permanent residents of Washington State and are common.  This is the first time I've noticed one, but will be keeping my eyes and ears open for them in the future!

Townsend's Warblers

A couple weeks ago we noticed a new kind of bird in the yard, but couldn't get close enough to see it.  At first we thought it was some kind of hummingbird because it would hover around the trees.  We decided it couldn't be, though, because it would then land and hop around the branches like a chickadee.  Also, it was in the fir and ceder trees, not around the flower beds.

I saw the birds again yesterday morning on my way back from walking the kids to the bus stop.  The five-minute walk back from the bus stop is often my quiet observation time since there are often birds and red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) around busily gathering their breakfast.  I was able to get quite close by staying very still and listening for the soft "chip" of their alarm call.  They were small - about 4-5 inches long - similar to a chickadee in size and movement except for the hovering they would sometimes do with their wings dissolving into a blur at their sides for 2 or 3 seconds at a time.  They had dramatic yellow stripes on their heads and wings.

Like the black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) we often get, these moved too fast for me to get a photo.  I managed to find a photo in my bird book of a bird that looked similar, so I'm pretty sure they are Townsend's Warblers (Setophaga townsendi).

I found information about them on the Seattle Audubon website as well as the Cornell's Ornithology Lab's All About Birds site.

They eat insects which they glean from the branches and leaves of trees.  They prefer coniferous and mixed coniferous/deciduous forests and they migrate down to Mexico in the winter.  The Seattle Audubon site indicated they they should be gone by now.  I suspect it has been such a mild winter that they have had plenty of food and haven't had the pressure to migrate this year.

In our neighborhood, they were going through the downed fir branches on the ground, the blackberry brambles and salmon berry thicket, the cedar trees and the noble fir by the side of our house.  One could watch them pecking at the joins between needles/branches, leaves/stems, and branches/trunks.

I hope to obtain a picture of these little cuties at some point, but I need a faster shutter!

POST SCRIPT:
Looking through the photos (mostly of branches and brambles) I did manage to capture one, but you get the "impression" of the bird rather than a nice sharp view --

First Frost

January is certainly the coldest month of the year in our neck of the woods. I thought it was rather fitting that the first proper frost of this season in our yard happened on the first of January 2013.

The skies had cleared over the previous weekend and the temperature had gradually dropped until all the moisture in the air solidified and blanketed all the surfaces outside.

The back deck on a frosty morning.

Lavender

The grass turned crunchy and the lavender and strawberry leaves looked like they were made out of sugar.  Inside the humidity dropped dramatically as well.  Suddenly our hair lifted with static like it does in Utah or Arizona and the skin on my hands started to crack.

Our trusty analogue thermometer showing
 the temperature under the deck cover
 at  noon as 34 degrees.

The next two days were frosty as well and it was a good opportunity to teach the kids about checking the thermometer before heading out to the bus stop - if it's below 40, you will want an extra layer or two!

From the garden perspective - all of the plants that I have purposely planted are hardy enough to withstand a short light frost like this one.  Several of them get damaged by heavy snows or prolonged frost, but something light and brief like this isn't a problem for them.  Even plants in pots that I haven't gotten in the ground yet seem fine after this kind of weather as long as I haven't *just* watered them.  I did kill a pot of rosemary last year by watering it the day before a heavy frost. Oops.

Strawberry leaf

Jack Frost making patterns on the front deck!