marginalgarden

long awaited post

2009-05-06T13:12:00.001-07:00

I have such a huge following clamoring for a new entry, I thought I better satiate the ravenous public hunger for my writings and bestow a new entry on the world. It has been a while.

Looks like winter is over, but spring is coming late here. My God it is beautiful here in the spring. Spring has always been my favorite time. Let's see what there is to say....

It is still pretty cold at night, around mid 30's to low 40's. No wonder tomatoes don't do well! I'm trying to do tomatoes anyway, but it is definitely not a marginal garden sort of thing. So I am looking into DIY greenhouses and little on the ground growing shelters. I did build one.

Also, for the past few days it has been raining. The rain here is delicious; everyone complains. I love it. It gently drizzles and has occasions of medium rain, and it just goes on and on and on, all night, most of the day. Everything gets completely and thoroughly soaked. What no one seems to admit is that prior to that, we had like 4 weeks in the heart of early spring with NO RAIN. Here we are in the glorious wet pacific northwest and NO RAIN. I did put in some drip irrigation for such times, and it really helps.

My blueberry plants, young though they are, did well through the winter. They were totally buried in snow, but only one got even a branch broken off. They look green and full of sap right now, and are starting to bud, but as of yet no real leaves. I drip irrigate them about 1 gallon an hour for 90 minutes. Of course when it rains like this, I turn that off.

My apple trees, all 8 of them, are behind the trees down the hill by about 2 weeks. They are doing fine, and not only have budded, but have formed small leaves. Now a few have flowers starting to form, and it is very exciting to me. I have a vegetable garden going with onions, peas, lettuce, and some other stuff. The peas love it here. The soil is actually great but I added a load of compost anyway. I am having a terrible battle with weeds because everything loves to grow, and the pasture has never been used to grow anything but weeds before. Add the beautiful soil and the compost and the abundant rain, and the weeds love it.

A friend is really into planting beans, and he gave me about 30 different varieties of bean seeds to try. I am very excited about that, there is something about vine vegetable plants that really excite me as they grow.

I am also growing strawberries, and it is amazing how well they are doing in this climate; green lush, flowering, I can't wait to see the fruits. I put some on the hillside near our house and they are spreading out and taking over.

I also succumbed to ... whatever and planted some tulips and daffodils. I just like to see them sprout up and grow. They are wonderful and garish and colorful. We planted some Dahlias someone gave us as well but no sign of them yet. I don't know what we did wrong.

Both of my riding lawn mowers are broken right now, and I have a LOT of grass on the one side. I need to do something with that, it is too much lawn really. I had to fill in a spot where our friend that plowed the snow kind of missed the road and we drove over the lawn and gouged it out real bad. With all the rain and the mowers broken it is really getting out of hand.

The deciduous trees are turning green again, and the new ferns are sprouting up and uncurling themselves. The young sword ferns are amazing to watch. My glorious Grand Fir has some dead needles on it in various places, I'm wondering if it is OK or if it is natural and healthy. I will have to find out.

We have natural wild bleeding heart flowers growing everywhere right now. I can't believe these grow wild and so abundantly. There is no sign of the Oxeye daisies as of yet.

I am learning that I have to depend on advice and help from many people around here, if I try to be self-sufficient I can't really do it.

I am enjoying being outside, working in it, getting dirt under my nails, digging and inventing solutions to trellises and potholes in the driveway and watering everything the best way and enjoying spring as it unfolds.

lots of moisture

2009-01-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

We had a LOT of snow and a LOT of rain following, and there was some major flooding around here. It was interesting to see what happened to our land because this was pretty much a worst case scenario. There were small lakes in certain areas, particularly around the pond. I was concerned about my trees and blueberries because I didn't want them partially submerged and flooded. It turned out OK, the water spread across and did not flood the area where I planted, except for on blueberry bush. However, in hindsight I probably should have planted a bit further away from the pond. I will have to ask the local nursery where I bought the stuff if it is possible to move things around, probably not. There was also an area out in the lawn that flooded. I also discovered that if you don't mark the gravel driveway, you can't tell where it is when it snows, and you end up snow plowing off of the road and when you drive over the pasture it digs holes and ruins things.

Now that it is somewhat melting off (we've had snow on the groudn for over a month), the grass is STILL green underneath, and the weeds are thriving. Amazing!

So, there is always something to learn, we learned a lot through all of that weather.

owls

2009-01-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

I went outside about 3:30 AM this morning and there were at least 3 owls around, hooting to each other. It was too dark to see them but the sound was unmistakable. One was in the large cottonwood tree in the yard. It was extremely foggy and a slight mist was falling, and the grass is finally starting to show through all the snow.

I had to fix the compost again - my solution is NOT working. I have some cinder blocks set up with chicken wire over them. Some animal tore it up and spread it all over the place; I don't think it was the dog. However, the dog got in on the action for sure. I'm going to look into using lime to make the compost less palatable.

Speaking of the dog, he constantly comes up and stares in the window and whines and scratches at the glass and the side of the house. He is a great dog, but he is having trouble realizing that he is a dog. He is also VERY bad with other animals, in particular our cat won't come around any more. So I am telling him BAD DOG and taking him by the collar and chaining him up for a time whenever he does this to train him NOT to do this any more.

dance (a fall poem)

2009-01-07T19:35:00.001-08:00

from the bare branch it buds
drawing strength it grows
with many siblings
consumes sap and light
and mystery and wonder
takes it shape
green it works and gives
growing old
glorious it shines

and in one final moment
lets loose
swirls and sways on the wind
a single brief ecstatic dance

with its siblings
carpets the mountain path in splendor
and returns to the dirt.

Fall

2009-01-07T19:18:00.001-08:00

I realize I am doing this later, but I am sitting here with time and thinking about it. Fall is truly truly glorious here. The mixture of the conifers all green with the orange/yellow/fading green leaves with some flashes of red is a riotous orgy of color. It goes up the mountain behind the house, and lasts no longer than a very few weeks. I remember the sea of yellow on the ground beneath a bare maple; mmmmmm! It was a time for me to plant some apple trees and berry bushes. I planted 3 spartan apple trees, 3 Jonagolds, 3 fujis, 1 pear, and 9 blueberry bushes. I am going to move the strawberries over to the pasture as well. I can imagine that deer and other things are going to fight me for those apples, I will have to figure that out. In the midst of many other problems at that time, I remember planting trees as a very bold statement; I am of the belief that somehow I will stay in the place. It will be a miracle, but when these trees bear their fruit I will see it; I will eat of it.

I also planted some daffodils and tulips around the ancient apple trees. I had mixed feelings about this; I love these kinds of flowers like I love Hershey's chocolate. It is not the best chocolate, it is kind of artificial, you certainly can't live on it, but it sure is good really, isn't it?

In the midst of this, I discovered that the pasture down by the 'pond', the soil is great for digging, it has almost no rocks. The dirt up closer to the house in the same pasture has so many rocks that you might as well start a gravel pit; it takes FOREVER to dig the smallest trench. The problem is, clearly if there is an excess of water it will pool down by the pond near the good soil. I will have to see how my trees do, because it may have been a mistake but I planted them down there. Now it is has snowed and snowed and snowed and then warmed up and monsoon season hit, I fear that whole area is going to be a lake. I am told that this weather is extremely unusual, so I couldn't really have foreseen what was going to happen even if I were and old-timer. Now I know what is possible.

snow

2009-01-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

silent wild fury

descends from deep heights

quiet I stand

made of secrets

woven of desire fear music stories

almost blind

wonder at the majestic firs

pressed down with white

so weary of the weight I bear

a slight wind

powder cascades

from some high branch

a silent explosion

a salty tear

born of cold, wonder, secret pain

born of mystery like the stars

washes its path down my whitened face

I move on through the thick deep silence

garden books

2009-01-07T18:34:00.000-08:00

I was browsing through a used book store, and I looked through a lot of gardening type books. They are either country kitsch books, how to plant this or that books, or native gardening type books. I'm sure I missed some categories. The point is, the category of book I was looking for didn't seem to exist - a book by a guy who is carving out a relationship, indeed a romance, with his land. It isn't that I don't want to know how to do this or that, but that is all mechanics. If you love the place, you are hungry for mechanics, that is true.If you love the place, you love what is indigenous to it; that IS the place.

But I want to extract the poetry, the music, the dance, the color, the delight from the land. This is different than conforming it to my will. I am part of this land, part of this place. I have come lately and will be here for only a blip of time. I work carefully, I touch it lightly, I walk with worship and see the hand of the God who is real in what is here. There are many and very great challenges, and I realize that this land is much stronger and much greater than I am. I lack knowledge, I lack wisdom, and I lack love, for THIS land, the land where I am. In many cases, this land ends up whipping my butt. I do complain!

However, this does not mean my LOVE for the place, my appreciation of the incredible beauty of the place, the history of it, has diminished in the least. Nor does it mean I demean myself in light of my failures here; I came knowing that I have very much to learn, very much to adapt to. I am in a way a stranger here, and I am in the process of being changed. It is painful and I very much love it, I really do.

Winter 2008

2009-01-04T00:38:00.000-08:00

It has been snowing off and on for 3 weeks! You can see more pictures here:

snowstorm_dec_28

The amazing thing is, it never seems to melt. It is incredibly beautiful, and for the unprepared like me, quite a hassle. I have the wrong car, the wrong shovel, no tire chains, and I need a snow plough. We have wonderful friends down the road with an ATV with a small snow plough, and he has come down a few times to plough, which was a great mercy. The pattern has been, it gets cold, in some cases into the single digits, and snows perhaps a little. Then, it warms up, and glazes to a white snow-like icy shell. This is difficult to trudge through. I did get a pair of snowshoes, but in the ice even they just break through the ice shell. However, it gets cold again and snows over the top of it. Underneath it all it starts to glaciate - a dense sort of bluish snow pack forms. It has been has high as 3 feet of snow with drifts even higher. I waffle between loving it and hating it; it is very beautiful and it produces a great deal of work.

One problem is that you can't really tell where our driveway path is, so the plowed path actually goes through the pasture at one point, so when we were in a warmer spot, we have dug deep trenches through the pasture. The van got very stuck in this; we had other friends come and help pull us out of that. You cannot get by around here without help. Also, the snow on the roof of our house tore off part of our gutters on the back as it was melting and sliding off.

I also wonder what this is going to do to our new apple trees and blueberries, and the strawberries. I really don't know! We'll see. I am starting to wonder if this snow is really going to melt completely before the spring.

I climbed up the mountain, and the snow is thick through the trail going up. It is thinner on the steep sides, and amazingly, the sword ferns are still green! There are a couple of grand firs up there, and the view from the plateau where the little cabin is partially built was spectacular. I was up there when it was a bracing 9 degrees, and clear. You could see the jagged snowcap peaks of the cascades against a spectacular blue sky with a sea of forest below; this is the kind of thing that makes you proud to be alive.

Here are some things I've learned. Even when it is a bit warmer than freezing according to the thermometer, it still snows, and still collects on the existing snow. If you let it collect on anything, it gets very heavy and can damage it as it melts. This is even more true if it actually gets warm enough to rain on the snow. As long as the snow is powder, it is much easier to deal with; if you let it melt a bit, it is 10 times heavier and much more difficult to work with. I need some sort of markers where the road is so we don't destroy the pasture again; I don't look forward to dealing with it. When it is very cold, maybe 12 degrees or below, the snow doesn't really stick to things; the trees look sparser, for example. When it gets a bit warmer, in the 20s and up, it sticks more and seems wetter. There is nothing more aerobic than shoveling lots of wet snow. It is important to keep little paths clear to things you need, like the woodshed. I need a better car for this, I am looking at a AWD subaru.

For all the work, I have really loved the snow and I have a wistfulness about seeing winter pass. The Grand Fir is magnificent when laden with snow; its flat systems of needles catch it beautifully. The conifers all get very weighted down with snow looking much thinner than their usual selves, until a slight puff of wind starts a small avalanche of powder and there is a cascade in the forest of white. The deciduous trees are also beautiful in the snow, with a spider web of white all through. You can't believe that the snow could catch and balance on the tiny surfaces of the systems of even the smallest branches, just balanced there. The topography of the mountain is much clearer somehow with the snow; I am examining it for places to do certain things. I would like to plant more conifers up there, it was clear cut about 20 years ago. Damn them, really, there are some large stumps here and there, it looks like there were some excellent western redcedars about. There is nothing like the quiet of it all, especially while it is snowing; but in the work of battling the elements, you have to remember to stop, listen, and enjoy the quiet; it is easy to forget that this is a place of uncommon splendor. All in all it adds to my romance with this place; every season has its charm.

Lay of the land

2008-07-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

It is my way to go a bit slowly to start; we have only been in the house since the middle of Feb 2008, which as of today is 5.5 months. I'm starting to see what grows where, when things bloom, how long the blooms last, what I like, what I don't like, etc. There is a difference between marginal gardening and indigenous gardening; I tend toward both, but we are starting to add some ornamental flowers in the back of the house at random.

I also choose to say that nothing is a weed; there are things I prefer and things I don't, that grow naturally. Many of these things have more to do with placement than existence. Things grow here such that making a marginal garden is more like taking a marble slab and chiseling away the parts I don't want, than like adding things I do want.

For instance, there is a lot of area with reddish heather with small pink flowers, that blends to a greenish tone and fades into moss or fern areas. This is fantastic and unusual ground cover; I love it but I need it in some different places. The trick is, maybe it just never made it over to grow in the areas that I want it in, but maybe it didn't grow there because the light is too dark/bright or the soil is a little wrong in those areas. I don't know. I can only try. There is some of that stuff growing a bit where I do want it; I think if I start to clear a space around it and give it some water and tend to it, it will spread. I'm thinking of digging some up and moving it where I want as well.

The marginal garden needs design and large areas of texture, using things that don't need a lot of tending, to be successful at being marginal. I also have to really like it there, or it doesn't qualify as a garden. So, I am going slow and learning what I have here, and to become conversant with the lay of the land.

Sheep

2008-07-30T07:39:00.001-07:00

We have a neighbor who has about 120 sheep, which we brought over to graze some of our pasture areas. They kept escaping his electric fence (and our fence), and in a couple of areas they ate some things I now kind of wish they hadn't. Oh well. It was quite an experience herding 120 sheep down the road to our place, I really loved it. It was wonderful seeing 120 little fluff clouds flitting around the pasture BAAHING away, it was really somehow very comforting.

Rain!

2008-07-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

For all of the hubris about the pacific northwest and its rain, the summer has had quite a stretch of sun. Yesterday we got clouds and rain, and the fragrance and color of the place revived. There was the woody forest smell combined with the scent of the great abundance of wildflowers mixed. Glorious.

salmon berries

2008-07-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

I discovered that we have tons of salmon berries along the edge of our lawn, going up to the start of the path up the mountain. I thought they were some kind of wild raspberry, but it turns out that they are salmon berries. They really don't have thorns, but they are amazingly prolific. To tell the truth, I haven't seen any blackberries, it's all salmon berries. As far as the salmon berries, there are small green ones just growing, small yellow ones, large yellow to orange ones, red ones, and dark red to almost blackish ones. I thought at first that the yellow ones weren't ripe and ready to eat yet, but it turns out that the fully formed yellow ones are delicious, especially the large ones. The picture is from wikipedia; I'll take some photos of these soon and post a real picture if I happen to get around to it. The light red or orangish ones are fantastic. If you get them too early they are too tart. I went out with Josh, my 7 year old, and we picked a bunch of them and ate them with vanilla ice cream, and THAT is living!

This all begs the question: these are just growing there without any help from me, and I like them there. What exactly is the place of thinking of something as a 'garden'? Is it only right to call it that if I happen to cultivate it and work on it myself? A lot of the stuff that is growing naturally is growing the way I like it anyway; I love the daisies and foxgloves, the elderberries, the trees, the small trees growing out of stumps, etc.

Marginal Gardening

2008-07-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have just moved into a new 10 acre property in the foothills of the northern cascades in Washington state just south of British Columbia, near a small town called Sumas.

It is a place that demands poetry; I was out walking last night and was very overwhelmed with very deep kind of inexplicable joy at the splendor of this place. The hemlocks look like they are glowing from the spring growth; the Douglas firs are magnificent in silhouette against the orange dusk, and the wild explosion of huge daisies is punctuated by foxgloves which have strings of bells all the way up. Most of these are magenta, but there are a few which are pink and I have found a few which are pure white. There are hundreds of maples and birch, along with red cedars and a few spruces. My favorite is a young but growing grand fir in our lawn, probably 40 or 50 ft tall. Mountains surge across the horizon behind these trees and some still have snow dusted across the top. The birds are an amazing symphony in the early morning. There is a maple-like vine that is growing up the trunk of a towering cottonwood which has brilliant red winglike seeds sprouting from it, all over in a great web. When it is clear like today, it is beautiful, but when it is hazy and foggy there is a special and mysterious feeling; the mountains and distant trees become vague but sharp silhouettes against the white mist and the clouds cling to the closer hills. People say they long for the sunshine but I love it all, I really do. I regret that it took me so long to arrive here.

In my quest to find my right relationship with this very hallowed place, I chanced upon a book by Geoffrey Dutton called 'Some branch against the sky'. He practices what he calls marginal gardening, which means from my reading, gardening by setting environments in motion with plantings and then pretty much letting them take their course without much intervention. It isn't so much about indigenous planting as it is about minimal intervention.

Luckily for you, my reader, I know absolutely nothing. I am barely starting to learn the trees and flowers and grasses that grow here, so you can learn with me and help me out with this if you know something. So this is a blog about my experiences and the poetry that my relationship with this land births.