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!

NEW GARDEN INFRASTRUCTURE...

Trellises have become a bit of a joke in our conversations. 

Stephen suggests I have a fetish. I argue function. 

Soundcliff's gardens are anything but level...
no broad horizontal spaces for row crops, 

so to grow up makes sense to me... 

I'll own such fetish.

There have been several incarnations of bean & pea supports
 like this, which I put inside the Mashua trellis
which is 3 years old, I think.

Low plants such as the zucchini I tried there last year were shaded-out. 

This tri-tipi encourages vertical growth of vines in conversation
with the sunlight.

Later in the season that conversation became visible as both vines rose to the tops of their supports. While the beans have made much food for our table, the Mashua, a Peruvian nasturtium produces starch crop of tubers we dig around the time of the winter solstice. I've written about this plant several times.

There evolved a nice symmetry with the White Pine nearby,

  having at least a decade of settling-in on the level below 

where the fire pit centers one of the only
actually level parts of the property.

An early Spring piece of infrastructure was Tom's creation

 of a definitive sensitively gentle firm path in the north garden

 following the edge of an old slippage which we are healing by
 building-up a"permaculture"compost pile 

which after 5-6 yearsis beginning to become a plant-able slope.

This was a project we left Tom to design & make this on his own. 

He used locust logs which were been harvested on the property. 

It is sweetly graceful & we are pleased & proud of it with him!

Tom does sweet work... as you will see more...

Our steep slope requires paths usable by foot & wheelbarrow,
making our beds level & accessible enough to
be usable garden spaces.

Slopes invite the evolution of curving zig-zags
 with some hair-pin turns... & trellises.

A LAZY TREE
This very old wild cherry tree has been doing precipitous yoga since
long before I came along.
It has a wonderful gestural glyph-like quality.

We have had it pruned several times
 to relieve weight & pressure.
Returning from Japan we were encouraged to
experiment aiding it with a support.

Again Tom was instrumental in engineering this proposed fantasy

project about which neither of us had any experience... 

we had numerous problems from the start.

The major difficulty is that the lawn is covering 

the sand filter of our septic system 

over which much of the tree's weight reaches. 

We really had only one choice of placement...

Then it became almost humorous to me 

that we could attempt to "support" such sprawling tonnage?!?

The best we might do is to push a "stool" under it

 & see if it wants to sit...

[I've been questioning a proclivity 

to use the word crutch even as the limb we were supporting 

looks more like an arm than a butt.

Tom realized we needed to begin at the top... hanging the lintel s

o we have some stable point at which 

to begin measurements. This amused me more!

There were numerous re-measurements 

as we informed ourselves of next steps & cautiously cut the  

aged logs we rescued on the land... locust... a durable wood. 

We built secure foundations using old waste concrete 

to develop the final measuremenst, 

all secured by a healthy pour of new concrete. 

There is a very deep impulse, with a very long history, 

for craftsmen to leave their mark...

Tom, my engineer with the muscle...

& me, appreciating the challenge to work with him. 

We dialogue well inside our four years of experience

gardening & building such projects together.

We pleased ourselves!

A garden sofa has been another long-incubated dream of mine, 

more because the extant path was so narrow 

that a wheelbarrow completely blocked passage... 

ultimately unworkable!

Salvaged timbers came together to make a 

retaining wall & a bench

 with Corsican Mint planted as "checkered upholstery" 

which will eventually grow solid on the seat.

After all that work, 

a cool drink on the Prow Deck is in order! 

Its plantings have bloomed a delicious clash of colors.

ENDING A SEASON... ENDING AN ERA...

I broke my favorite gardening tool several days ago... ending a twenty year era using it to fork-up garden soil. I bought it just after my 50th birthday with a gift of cash from Frederick & Rodney in Sonoma County, California, carving an inscription to that effect along the handle. It had been fragile & we had replaced it with another so as to coddle its weakness, but, in a mood of reminiscence. I took it out of its corner in the shed for a gentle chore. 

Its time had obviously come... 

I might have used it to dig the tubers of the Mashua, which has covered its trellis this summer & is now blooming... the first indication that the harvest at its roots is beginning to develop... probably to be ready around solstice...

The entire plant is edible, leading leaflets are great in salad, as are the insignificant blossoms, 

This is a Peruvian nasturtium I discovered when I was volunteering at the "Mother Garden", the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, also in Sonoma. Most years I've had difficulty growing enough "seed" tubers to plant, but last year I didn't let us eat any of the zippy morsels  & we are now going to be rewarded! We happily eat them sliced raw, but they are also delicious roasted, when they mellow n flavor. I've posted about this before with these photos of a previous crop...

 I'll close with these delightfully colored Fava beans from earlier this summer...

Apprentice Chandler took the time to sort them into a gradually spectral line...

Now I will shop for a new handle for the still sturdy tines of the fork... 

perhaps it will yet help to harvest Mashua!