Garden
2.11.06
This is my home.
The Garden Project this quarter is exciting to me, as my partner and I just bought our first home this past year. We moved in over the summer: July/August. It was really hot and late in the season, so we didn't get to put much into the ground. However, over the past few seasons, we have been doing whatever we can to work outside.
Our plan is to transform the central garden bed into a vegetable garden. When we moved in, it was full of daisies, and delphiniums, rudbeckia, echinasia, daylilies, some lavendar, and so much calendula. We moved many of these plants to a part of the side garden, so that this could serve primarily for food. We've been collecting seeds from things we've eaten over the past few months: tomatoes, squash, eggplant, to plant. I planted some garlic along the front of the two long beds in early November. They are starting to come up now, about 2.5 - 3" tall. We have gone through catalogs and chosen many of the seeds we are planning to order, focusing as much as possible on Heirloom varieties. I am getting hungry just thinking about all the things we're going to plant! Tomatoes, summer squash, broccoli, zucchini, leafy greens, sweet and hot peppers. Part of the garden we are going to leave as a "wild" vegetable garden for the squash, and maybe some other things that grow more unruly and take up a bit of space. It's the part that is not divide up into beds.
We have many bulbs coming up now, all over, everywhere, and have yet to see what kinds. Last year, when we were first looking at this place, there were so many tulips and daffodils. Then, on later visits, we saw other things coming into bloom.
With so many different areas to work with, each begins to take on it's own personality. Since my partner works in landscaping, he is always coming home with all sorts of different salvaged plants. So, its always fun to see what's going to come up next.
On the hill behind our house, we're going to sow many flowers, and let them run wild. Calendula and poppies are a couple of the things that come to mind. There are also many shade plants down by the stream.
We're fighting hard against the invasive species that abound. I don't so much mind a bit of buttercup and dock, or even the forget-me-nots and shotweed. But, the reed canary grass, velvetgrass, Himalayan blackberry, and English ivy tend to be a problem. Jameson has cut much of the blackberry to the ground over the fall and winter. We have covered the invasive grasses up with cardboard and random rotting wood we have found on the property. I've ripped the ivy off some of the alders. It will be an ongoing 'battle', but we hope to beat them out by planting more things that are native and will grow in abundance. 
Some of the plants that grow wild and in abundance on our property are red alder, vine maple, bigleaf maple, salmonberry, native blackberry, indian plum, cascara, ninebark, willow, swordfern, brackenfern, and licorice fern. There's probably more, that I just can't think of off the top of my head. Anyhow, the property is very enjoyable to just walk around and look at things growing, even in the barren months of winter.
2.27.06
Oh, there is so incredibly much to do in our garden. Even in these dark winter months, there is the dreaming and the planning and the feeling. As I walk our paths, I envision the late spring days when I will walk thru and there will be so many flowers, and so much green; an abundance of life. Things right now are living and dying. Some of them are making it, other, less hardy plants are suffering, and many may not or have not survived the winter blues. But we take it in stride, my partner and I, as this is our first winter to experience the elements so deeply.
This past weekend, we cleared the hill. The hill, you say, what hill? There are only pictures of this flat and beautiful and patiently waiting garden bed. Behind our house is a little hill, probably a manmade hill in my opinion, due to the steep grade, and it's abrupt beginning, and the fact that a railroad once tracked across the property, bringing loads of logs from further west back to the city and the port. And this hill, a probably 30-foot hill, was COVERED in blackberries when we moved in. In fact, we couldn't even walk to the top of it, that's how covered it was. There were a few trees scattered in there, but you could hardly see them. I made a couple of nice pies and cobblers in August and September, from the blackberries I picked. Oh, and they were very good. But, I just didn't really feel that there was a balance between the blackberries and the rest of the garden. They seemed to be smothering things, taking the life of the salmonberries, and swordfern, and indian plum, and alders, in order to gain their quarter-acre magnificence.
Over the course of the fall and winter, Jameson had taken a weed-whacker and cut them back, so we could climb to the top of the hill and look down. That's how I got those nice pictures of the property and the garden. But there were still many still consuming the entirety of the hill. We got out there with plain ol' pruners, just little humble handclippers, and clipped those berries into little footlong pieces, revealing many plants we didn't know were there. It was like finding a whole other quarter acre of property. In addition to liberating swordfern, and indian plum, and salmonberry stands, and giving the alders some more room to breathe, we uncovered a number of rotting moss-covered old growth stumps, which are beautiful and provide a unique interest to this part of the property.
I used to have this anger towards these invasive plants, and at the same time I would love their berries. But this time, as I was cutting them back, I did it with peace in my mind, and I kept thinking to the plants, "You've had your glory and your gain, and you've grown tall and strong. But in your might you have taken over the whole hillside, and now it is out of balance. Now you will assume your place once more, and be a part of this hillside which will also give way to wildflowers, and trees, and ferns. My intention is to create balance." And in all the hours I spent out there, I only was pricked a couple of times by the thorns, which can at times be unrelenting.
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these are pictures of my property and garden in the recent march snows. i love the one of the nurse stump.
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3.14.06
We finally got our seeds in! Last week...
There are radishes, and broccollis, and greens, oh my! and purple beans, and variegated beets, and basil, yum! We are going to build an herb spiral in the center of the garden, once we get together some soil. Everything was covered in snow last week, so I hope whatever's in there so far is doing all right.
I had an idea for the front of the house. We live on a somewhat busy road (its the access from the 
highway to the lake), and we've been wanting to put some barriers up. There's another creek (no-name creek) that crosses in front of the property (you actually have to cross a little bridge to the house, its cute!), and there's a power line above there. This is a picture of the area I'm talking about, and we're wanting to do the planting on the left side. We had to think of something that would not grow too tall, and be pretty hardy, as the soil there isn't very good, and can put up with some moisture (altho it seems well drained in that area). I was pretty inspired by the red-osier dogwood/willow combination at the longhouse, each time I walk by there. And, since neither of those things grow very tall, it shouldn't interfere with the powerlines. It will create a nice wall in the summertime, when there's more traffic, and settle down with a nice contrast in the winter months with the reds and yellows. Also, since both of those things are very easy to propogate from cuttings, I was able to take three twigs each from the plants on campus. Jameson also came across some other willows and dogwoods at work, so he added those to the mix. So, I'm pretty excited about that revelation.
