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.

!YES! FENCE ME IN...

Our Island's deer population is increasing since there are few predators... excepting automobiles. Any suggestion of introducing cougars seems unpopular... while my favorite fantasy of a "bevy of bare-chested bow-hunters" has proven complicated as well! After gardening here for years with only minimal damage, the past several seasons have seemed to educate their palates to a boldness which I can no longer tolerate... I vowed this summer to not garden until they are fenced out!  I took inspiration from our neighbors' having recently enclosed their garden with recycled fish netting.

Because they now are nibbling many plants in our landscape beyond the potager kitchen beds... even ornamentals which have been "safe" for many years... I wanted to fence the entire property, meaning almost 400 feet of length. A project made more daunting given the steep slope & uneven terrain through the woods from one cliff edge up to the road & house then down & around to the cliff edge again.

Fortune smiled when a young man named Tom arrived to help me realize such solution. He'd gravitated to our bell booth at our local Strawberry Festival in July... with a charmingly wide smile. At 19 he has finished his Associate's Degree & is heading to Evergreen College to begin studies anticipating his becoming a farmer… how could we not put him to work?!?!!

Tom wore this wrap of the netting so as to carry it down through the woods to keep it from dragging & snagging on  the brambles before it got hung & fastened...

Here he contemplates throwing a line to fell a small tree for a fence post...

But we first needed to have some major tree work done, a clump of huge, too-old & diseased Alders were required to be brought down, before another fell as inopportunely happened last winter… blocking the road during a big snow storm.

The cherry tree which has always reclined will remain a character.

In this part of the yard has long been a shade garden...

Now the light has broken through... to our mixed emotions.

Aaron has done such work for us before, although not at such scale

The result is now much more open...

Even as the trees fell crashing into heaps below...

Piles of wood were bucked into lengths ready to  split...

Stephen consults with Tom about the work he will do...

He contemplates the task...

 Answering with his predictable attitude...

Those random piles became some 6-7 cords of fire wood,  split & neatly stacked by this young man's energy... now curing until next year... clearing space we needed for completing the fence line.

A large pile of debris awaits the end of our unusually long dry spell's  burn ban.

While he certainly did the major part, he also put me to work. He's small & wiry & energized in a way quite unfathomable, with all the necessary experience & tools to make improbable work seem easy. He's regular & reasonable.  He's bright & creative. We worked well together, having good mind connections wrestling with the problems we tackled. I became his go-fer & assistant, while maintaining an eye toward design.

We used as many standing trees as possible, filling in with fence posts as necessary. We acquired a quantity of salvaged netting & rope we found for free in the city.

The north end of the fence begins down at the cliff to the left in this view 

... continuing along the road approaching the house.

Looking back from closer to the house...

down, around the wood piles, to end at the cliff on the south..

The aesthetic mostly works...

Looking south, the coil of extra rope will be gifted to some other...

Tom ultimately gave me one last of his deliciously big hugs... habitual to our hellos & goodbyes... on his way to his next admirable adventure... leaving me quite wallowing in the blessings of a fine Platonic love.

Such definition of territory protects & gifts me with new richness.