Dragonfly Farms Retreats

06/09/2026

This morning, after feeding the pigs and placing my new art piece in the sanctuary garden, I was just going to do a quick walk around the property and remove the old blooms from the hydrangea. 3 hours later the hydrangea looks great, the rhododendron has been pruned, there's a wagon full of trimmings, and 10 primroses and 2 hostas have been transplanted. It's not work if you enjoy it, right? 🥰Thankfully I had a massage scheduled for this afternoon!

06/07/2026

What's blooming today? Although we got a bit beat up by the rain and hail today, things are still vibrant and beautiful!

05/31/2026

This weekend’s project: the berry patch!

Last year we tripled the size of the berry patch and fenced it in to keep the deer out. This year, the older beds needed some thinning and the trellises needed some love 💕

Thanks to a couple of great helpers, we’re set for berry season! The bees are so happy and we’re excited for yummy berries! 😋

And bonus- a bird’s nest with 2 little eggs behind the blueberry bushes!

Now that the creeping buttercup is gone- for the moment- I’m thinking of some companion plants for the berries. What do you think they would like?

05/28/2026

The Duvall Farmers Market is open on Thursday afternoons. Lots of yummy things! Check it out!

05/23/2026

Here's another ongoing restoration project. We're fortunate to have wetlands on the property, and this is an area where water enters the land before flowing downhill through some culverts into the pond. When I started pulling out the creeping buttercup and yellow archange; a couple of years ago, I realized there was already a nice little pool there, as well as lady fern, elderberry and salmon berry growing along the fence. I've planted vine maple, Pacific ninebark, slough sedge, some Nootka rose, checkermallow and moved some geum that pop up on other parts of the land.

As a bonus, a fountain that I recently ordered was shipped with a lot- and I mean A LOT!- of biodegradable wood shavings as packing material. So what's a gardener to do but use it as mulch! I'm hoping it helps to keep the weeds down and encourage healthy plants!

05/18/2026

I learned about foraging spruce tips when I lived in Alaska. I’m fortunate to have a large Sitka spruce on the land on which I reside, and she produces a lot of tips! We’ve foraged about 5 cups is so far this year, and are making some spruce tip syrup, and spruce tip infused gin. This morning, since it’s still rhubarb season, I tried a rhubarb and spruce tip crisp. We’ll see how it turned out!

Update: the crisp was delicious ! The spruce tips gave it a nice light citrusy touch. 😋

05/16/2026

Work with the conditions you have, right? This part of the lawn has a lot of shade from the beautiful rhododendrons, maple and evergreens. So what to do but expand the border, making a nice grassy path to the porch. Anchored by a transplanted azalea, and planted with native ferns, evergreen huckleberry, pacific bleeding hearts, wild ginger and fringe cups as well as hostas and a hardy fuchsia. This week's rains are helping them get established!

05/09/2026

Here are a couple of successful habitat restoration projects!

One area was completely taken over by Japanese knotweed when I came to the property 5-1/2 years ago. After several years of effort- pulling it out, covering the whole area with tarps for a couple of years, and planting native shrubs and sedges, it is this lush healthy oasis with other natives re-establishing themselves. And less of a muddy mess!

The second "save" is this non-native snowball viburnum. It was all alone in a section of the garden, and was almost completely destroyed by viburnum leaf beetle a few years ago. We cut it completely back and planted the area with a diversity of native plants- mock orange, snowberry, pacific bleeding heart, ferns and grasses- and now all are thriving.

And hopefully the "bug hotel" will make even more of a difference!

05/02/2026

05/02/2026

I love the exuberance and abundance of Spring! After being gone for a bit over a week, I returned to this bounty. The first pick of rhubarb yielded about 10 cups of fruit (2 loaves of rhubarb bread, a shrub- aka drinking vinegar- in the works, strawberry-rhubarb pie) and leaves to mulch newly planted plants. And our resident garden gnome found his way off the steps to visit the other woodland creatures.