HOLIDAY GARDEN [APRES CHRISTMAS] 2018...

 I am digging back into the studio after the holidays, 

as seen with the pile of garden cuttings 

impulsively spray-painted 

silver, for a decorative "arrangement" now languishing 

while I ponder being safely rid of the leavings...

T'won't compost & probably ought not to be burned. 

I did not think that one out very well...

Solstice has long been the heart-fully factual event for us. 

This year we attended a lively party with a large group of

 good friends... Enjoying much fine conversation! 

On our way home we walked the path around a large pond 

where one Islander gifted the night's magic... 

a millennia of flames... luminaria 

flickering harmony with misty light of full moon! 

Then home to our own lamps for a long recuperative sleep!

Thus Christmas was happily celebrated quietly. Just the two of us at home here at Soundcliff... a very rare thing! The first time in many years that we have not been traveling, either to spend time with family... or seeking to avoid any additional rush of festivities after the period when the Island's Studio Tour absorbs so much of the calendar with the hard work of cleaning & preparing for two intense weekends of "showtime"... ringing in, ringing out & ringing up the bells' business!

We've tried escaping to various parts of the Orient, only to discover the universality of Santa & various versions of decorated trees, even if oftentimes they are more entertaining than in this country. So it is probably easiest to just sit tight & ignore the fuss where we have the most control! 

Our weather, while quite wet, has been mild, so the garden has continued to produce & bloom. I picked greens & salads for the meals to which we treated ourselves. Stephen made a big batch of his specialty crab cakes. There was fresh salmon & ahi for the succession of nights... sweet times!

The reliable gift of produce in this season is Mashua, the starch crop I've grown since learning about it at the Mother Garden in Sonoma County, when I lived in northern California 25 years ago. The abundant foliage climbs high all summer, giving its spicy nasturtium zip as addition to salads, but in late autumn it develops happy blossoms, signaling that its roots are making the tubers for which it is generally raised by the Peruvian gardeners who more famously gave us potatoes.

 

These beautiful organic packages of intense flavor can be eaten raw... I like them thin sliced like winter "radishes" to make toothsome crispy zippity-do-da salad nibbles... 

but are more usually served as a cooked vegetable. Sauteed or better roasted, 

both the flavor & texture soften & sweeten rather ephemerally.

 The hexagonal raised bed produced Trout's Back lettuces & Baby Bok Choy...

The Wasabi Arugula blossoms went in the salad to accompany the Ahi well!

Pineapple Sage blossoms color holiday salads festive...

The small Camellia started blooming to add more red to our view.

One stalwart patch of pansies held-on!

 I brought the Abutilon into the studio to protect 

& display its bell-inspiration during the show...

But this fuchsia made a lovely small show 

spiting difficulties from lack of light & temperature.

I've been celebrating the small mountain of cedar sawdust which covers the new hugelkulture Tom helped build during a week of Indian summer... an experiment in re-sculpting the contour of one large section of the garden from "sagging swale" into a more visually sturdy "rib". A long term project!

Reminding the sweet welcome in/out my plane window as we came home from Thanksgiving in Florida. Tahoma is our beautiful mother mountain... we watch her from Soundcliff's windows every day she isn't hiding in the clouds with which she dresses for her constantly evolving fashion!

These Ibis & Pelicans joined us for lunch at a dockside restaurant one afternoon down there...

Reminding me of the sculpture hiding silhouetted behind the mylar sheet we use as a sun shade in our bedroom window... not needed often during this dark time, but useful when we are journaling & reading on rare enough mornings desiring celebration of any such intrusions of light returning!

Early Bird Blessings For this New Year!

PATH DOWN FROM THE NORTH GATE...

This post has been languishing in my drafts long enough!

A long-time dream-garden design came to fruition just before Thanksgiving, while having been started some weeks before, when Tom & I finally took salvage on an abandoned utility pole nearby... after which the builder in me had lusted for several years.

We went out with the chainsaw, but discovered it had rotted at the ground enough that Tom simply attached a rope to the original stabilizing cable attached near the top & pulled it down!

The theatre continued as we first cut it into pieces short enough to be rolled along our road the hundred-plus foot push to the north garden gate then dancing them into place with his good eye at the chainsaw to cut the subtle angles allowing the evolution as the curbs of the reconfigured path.

This geometric generosity replaces what had been a steep push from the Italian Cypress, in the middle-right of the image below, up to the gate which is at the top in the lower-left.

Over several recent years we have developed paths which allow us to rather easily move about material by wheelbarrows to nearly all the layers of our steeply sloping property. Firewood can come up from below the south slope [although we also have made several sets of rough steps as well, allowing choices to match one's energy & proclivities]. 

Compost, or gravel for paths, can be moved from it's delivery by truck on the road, can be wheeled down this path to the several levels of the north garden beds. We also have a "chute" which drops compost down a level below the road to be shoveled into wheelbarrows for the beds of the south garden. 

The "alley" between the house & the "Forge"... Stephen's writing cottage... transversely connects the upper lawns, both of which drop sloping to the level which connects them embracing the house in front of my studio, which I call the "Hold", nestling in the foundation. 

I posted in September, about this path, which Tom made, impressing me with its graceful simplicity & functionality.

It  inspired this new project. He regularly proves himself... I love being well attracted.

He inspired another project seemingly out of the blue at lunch on the deck one of our work days, to grow mushrooms...

Why not?!?

We  immediately made an order to Paul Stammit's Fungi Perfecti... committing us to choosing logs fresh enough to be virgin for our rough inoculation by drill & mallet after the kits arrived... This maple stump shows the process of plugging wood with bits of dowels impregnated with fungal spores & sealed-over with wax to prevent wild fungi from intruding.

We inoculated most of the nurse logs in the studio which will be moved to find the best seasonal light & moisture, hoping to have harvest beginning in 6-9 months. The instructions suggested that a month in dry warmth at the beginning is helpful. They got moved outdoors just in time to clean for the Open Studio weekends.

Obviously there is an adventuresome story being written for later!

This longer view from out in the "north lots" below the new path shows the permaculture bank we've been building for several years over an old slough in the property with organic material too rough for the regular compost bins... healing that crack by building soil & thus creating space for future planting close to the fire-pit there.

SUMMER GARDEN...

This  season was quite fine... making the garden rather glorious from early spring until now... 

[I still work to learn making photos with the new Nikon... still intimidated by its complexity... so some of these images were made on my iPhone as well, which is obviously more usually at hand...

First, a bit of early spring cleaning brought out a dried arrangement from last year's garden, which had been enjoyed  indoors all winter... Hydrangea, Sedum & Acanthus...  the colors faded mellow on strengthened sculptural forms.

One can see how the acanthus plant influenced the Corinthian style of columns in ancient Greek architecture...

 Camellias begin blooming soon after the holidays...

An early bulb we grew in a pot is a checkered lily called Fritillaria meleagris...

 

This "mouse plant" was gifted us by an Island gardener friend several years ago. Its blooms are a soft brownish purple with long tails scurrying down under the leaves. I've recently transplanted a clump into a taller concrete bed so we will be able to poke down into its delicately dense under-cover to see them more easily.

We replaced an old unproductive & unshapely apple tree with a red Japanese Maple...

We haven't had a freezing winter for a number of years so the rich red blossoms of Pineapple Sage grace our salads all winter long.

Iris are such curious sculpture yet remain favorites for that & their colors. Soon they will be covered-over by those nasturtiums...

There are a number of herbs & flowers which make such abundant seed as to become gentle "weeds" in our compost & soil. Chervil was rampant this year, but I enjoy its light, airy texture & fragrance. It has a vaguely anise flavor & lovely white flowers.

Golden Marjoram decorates & flavors salads wonderfully... the Forget-me-nots just beyond are another of those weeds we celebrate in love-hate relationship, bringing an exuberance of early color, but becoming soon too aggressive about crowding-out it's neighbors.

Looking toward the southern woods...

The planer form of the Viburnum is accentuated when it blooms, seeming to hover over the curved bed of crocosmia, punctuated by a small mosaic-ed concrete sculpture of a Japanese character which Stephen brought to the garden during the Holiday Studio Tour, which later blooms brilliant red .

There are many herbs & flowers which make such abundant seed as to become gentle "weeds" in our soil. Chervil was rampant this year, but I enjoyed its light, airy texture & fragrance. It has a vaguely anise flavor & lovely white flowers.

A Solomon's Seal blooms stalwartly in a bed of threatening Bishop's Weed...

This lovely Maiden's Hair Fern has been in the western border of the south lawn since the earliest version of the garden. It holds delightful court with a Hellebore, which blooms all winter...

A very casual shot of one of the borders when the Ajuga is blooming it's almost blue purple against a  yellow-green companion, all framing a sweet pink azealia.

Unlikely color combinations abound in our garden. A red Rhododendron with Japanese Iris & a purple columbine enliven the way to the Prow Deck, which you'll see a bit later...

Columbine remind me of my mother, who raised many varieties of them at their retirement home in Colorado, where it is the state flower. I want some more...

Hymenocallis returned to the garden after a couple year's absence, reminding me of tropical flowers we saw in Bali

The smaller of our two palm trees has settled nicely after its third move to find a spot it can be happy, with Japanese iris making it look as if it lives in a rice paddy with golden bamboo.

The Chinese Windmill Palm, which is the larger of the two varieties of palm which will grow here has become quite tall on the edge our cliff...

While pruning it, this spathe of immature fruit came down attached to a brilliant yellow stem. I enjoy listening when the ripened seeds are expelled with Pachinko-like popping as they bounce down the resonant fronds.

Adding to our rather "tropical" tastes have been a series of brugmansia which we've kept in pots on the upper "This Is It" deck for many years... in several colors [yellow & purple] but my favorite is this simple white.

A deciduous vine growing on the deck railing was planted soon after the remodel 18 years ago. We still do not know its name or what it is, but it has been blooming more & more frequently over the last few years... the blossom is a curious  sculpture looking a bit like a miniature fuzzy orchid. I think we may not have a pollinator because I have never discovered a fruit.

Its vine has become a twisted architectural feature hanging from under the stairs, here lit at night...

 Ahh, the Ginger which had been dormate for several years when it was first gifted from Santa Cruz by our neighbor, Taylor, began to thrive when moved several years ago to the sunnier border near the poteger [kitchen garden}. I divided it into two other locations this spring & all of those plantaitions bloomed! such lovely spikes scenting the evening air with sweet spice...

 The garden does also grow food...
from lots of year-round kale & chard...

 To my favorite squash, called Trombonchino, for it's long curves of firm flesh, with only a small bulb of ovary with seeds at the end... delicious to saute as small whole fruits or as slices.
It is a lovely vine.

The major part of our garden must always be the larger world of water... the Puget Sound which is a fjord off the Pacific Ocean... it has its spiritual roots in the waters of the entire globe. We husband this precarious aspect with as much appreciative grace as we can muster. We know how blessed we are.

The Prow Deck perches on the retaining walls healing a slide some years ago... we do know such events could happen again at any time.... Our beloved Tahoma [Mount Ranier] is overdue for  an eruption... We love living on this edge.

The view looking from that deck up toward the house is another riot of color in this late season, with purple Asters beyond Anise Hyssop & bright pink Cosmos...

But the exuberance we bring most regularly into the house are the Dahlias of which we've begun to collect more varieties... it becomes a happy chore to change them out every several days,
 with vases in nearly every room.

Ah, but the gardening consists of more than pretty fleurs... we've built some infrastructure as well,... trellising peas, beans & squash... not to forget Mashua; supporting trees with Japanese "crutches" & sculpting our steep slope into evermore gentling terraces.
That to come next post.