A day in paradise

This is what I see out of my back windows: the ocean and dunes in the distance, the lake, my fenced-in garden plot with vegetable boxes built last summer and planted again this spring. The boxes are made of local Port Orford cedar, a wood that turns grey with age, rot resistant.

Cultivating these boxes is easy for any age, especially mine.

I stand up the entire time; I can stretch across to weed and to plant, and since I am short, I do very little reaching or bending down. I've made only two planting mistakes last season. The first one is the planting of artichoke plants, the tall plants in the top row. I'll have to wait until they die off from the main stock, and then transfer the little shoots on the ground.  Artichokes take a lot of room and need space to expand as they send shoots that will continue to produce for a few years more.

The second mistake was to plant strawberries in the bottom right box with cucumbers and nasturtium all of which sent shoots out, everywhere.  For this season, the strawberries will keep their own box.

Looking up from my boxes, the sea and the sea stacks across the lake, and dunes and clouds offer their own version of a day in this paradise. I never tire watching, listening to the waves and the birds, delighting in the small and big things that continue to surprise me every time I look this way.

This is whale migration season, and we are accustomed to see spouts from entire families on their way to Alaska stopping around here to feed and play.

I can do some fishing here on this stack of rocks, just dipping my pole in. People do catch marvelous eating fish here. I might just do that!

Life's full of Surprises!

These beauties were planted last May, papaveri from Italy, poppies of rich-red splendor.  All spring plantings, in the Northwest weather of 2010 became molded or eaten by slugs. My garden was planted three times with vegetable starters and seedlings.  Even then, I have very little to show for all that money and work.

When I saw these Italian seeds on the rack at 101 Nursery,  I took them home with hope.  I chose an elevated spot next to a struggling fig tree.  I know, what is this obsession with Mediterranean fruit and flowers?  I know, I can't resist  lemon, orange, fig and persimmon trees, even if   70 degrees is our hot spell.

 I'm hopeful!

The lemon trees developed scabby infections, were treated and re-treated, but I still lost two of them.  The fig trees are barely showing signs of life. The persimmons have died once, and have resurrected from their roots, showing promise.

These beauties, however, these stunning Poppies remind me of the wheat fields back home in Italy, where hundreds of them appear year after year among the golden heads of wheat, swaying with the wind, pulling your eyes to the fields.

I'm glad these beauties are mine for now.

Love What You Have.

It's when you no longer have things that you miss them. See this beautiful rhody? We, in the Northwest take these bushes-trees for granted. They are everywhere, native to this area. They bloom for months with hardly any care. Best of all, they are ignored by the wildlife, making them prime landscape choice for front, unfenced gardens as mine is.  Picture then, a cluster of these and their cousins, azaleas, all in different colors, taking your eyes from here to there in a firework of colors.  You'd love coming home to this, right?

Not so fast.

We are constantly looking at ways to subtract rhodies' presence and introduce some exotic plant that has no business being here. In my case, I'd so want to grow more mediterrenean shrubs of lemon, orange, fig.

Crazy girl!

When I lived in Italy, I didn't appreciate those bushes much. Figs? No way.  Too messy, too prolific, too many birds around.  Now, I'm dreaming of terracing my front gravel driveway, (find another place to land the car), wall it with stones, create a warm place to grow my nascent collection of indoor mediterrenean shrubs. I can see myself serving lemonade to my astounded friends, under a glassed dome, the sun, when it does peek, smiling assuredly at us in our woolens, and so on and so on...

It's the Paradise of my dreams. When we lived in California and I could have such a terrace, I had no time to garden; my energies went to my work and my family.  In my dreams, I put these things in priority as my ideal place for retirement: access to water, room to garden, small community to get involved in.  I have all three, and more. 

You'd think my Paradise is already here.

Most days, I think that too.

Then, Signor Serpente sneaks in the garden and talks to me about figs and lemons and warm climates and..........

Growing out of house and home.

Everything inside the house is growing out of its container.

The cavolo/cabbage is entertaining the little piglets in the garden/sun room, used to propagate during the wet months.

Squash and cucumber have taken residence in the kitchen, a warmer place with morning sun now and then.

Lettuces and endives could be snipped already and end up in my salad today.

Notice the plastic utensils standing up to another job.  The permanent marker can stand the rains outdoors too.

The little ceramic houses are left-overs from Christmas, and will be around a few more weeks until the sunroom/garden room gets cleaned up and freshened up for its summer debut.

When guests spend the night in this room, under quilts and sleeping bags, they'll have a fabolous view of the ocean, the lake, the night skies.  Children enjoy this room the most. It's at the end of the house, with its own bathroom, close to the kitchen for late night fridge raiding.  They can run-around on the deck till the wee hours of the morning and grandpa and grandma will not hear a thing.  Animals love this room too, spying on birds and squirrels that land on the deck or nearby trees.  The room, however is too cold in the winter for anything but starting veggies.

You can see where my attention will be focused on in the next few months.

Time for Gardening

It's time to visit my lakeside garden, to stretch those black tarps, weed, plant, fertilize, mulch, worry about winds, cloudy days, soil too soggy, soil too sandy.

It's time to bend and stretch and haul.

All tools will be sharpened and used, including hubby's big tractor. 

The big broken branches will be carried to the burn pile that never gets burned, and the small branches will be mulched.

We planted a dozen blueberry bushes last year. They might bloom and produce this year if I fertilize them in time and mulch carefully to prevent weed invasion and root choking.  The pear tree is in bloom, and its companions will follow soon. 

The soil is sandy, leached by the constant rains.  It will need heaps of composted matter to be added and tilled in.  Worms will come to my aid and the first ray of sunshine will welcome my soiled hands as I dig carefully to position those pea seeds and fava seeds deep down.  By June, I will harvest the peas and favas and follow with squash and cucumbers. 

I'm still learning after seven years in the northwest marine climate how to coax growth when temperatures do not get above 60's in the middle of what everyone calls summer. 

Yet, in the middle of December, when I pull out a frozen bag of favas from the freezer, peel their outer husk and add them to my slowly sauteed onions, those cool days of summer return in their splendor, in the buttery taste of those favas, a taste so  flavorful and soulfull, I'm transported to my childhood days, and an Easter meal Mother would prepare. 

It's time to plant and grow. Time for renewal and celebrations.

Kitchen Gardens-A-la-France.

Here is the plan: gravel or grass paths; neat rows of vegetables and espaliered fruit trees and berry bushes; lots of herbs, vegetables spanning a couple of seasons; lots of flowers to attract beneficial insects and provide the biodiversity for eco-balance.

How does that sound? Perfect. Formidable. Hard-breaking work. Expensive.

First the plan. The neat rows are easier to cultivate and to irrigate with drip tubing. Because we are not building up the rows yet-it takes a lot of soil amendments-we are planting right on the ground with wider plots because that's how wide the expensive poly cover is. Our poly cover will suppress everything except the seedling positioned in a small hole. We do have a miniature version already which has worked well for the last two years; we are expending in the same way.

Second. As far as what grows in this cool zone I have to make some changes, but not much. The most interesting thing are the seeds I can get from Territorial. I can plant varieties of cool crops such as peas, favas, chards, lettuces, spinach, broccoli, beans, cucumbers....................................

Third. My husband's job, besides supervising the assistants when they dig, till, remove debris, use heavy machinery, is to design and build a grid of drip tubing. He has had good results from past experiences too. This job is a bit more complex, but within our reach.

Lastly. When my spring-summer crop begins to grow, I will utilize all that spinach-there will be gobbling up of that stuff, and lots of presents for the neighbors-and freezing the abundance- and freeze the rest for those grey winters. I'll be busy with the fall-winter plot as well, all through November when the fall rains will have chased me back inside.

Stay tuned. I know some of you will enjoy watching me sweat.