Vashon Panorama

This panorama is actually three photos stitched together. It was taken from the bluff across the road from our Vashon house and looks north-east over Puget Sound.

Downtown Seattle is lurking in the haze above the dark strip of land that is West Seattle. Nearby Blake Island is to the left of the Douglas Fir trunk. Puget Sound's iconic car ferries can be seen leaving Vashon Island for Fauntleroy (right) and Southworth, on the Kitsap Peninsula (left).

It is quite windy today, and the water is a little choppier than usual. I didn't spot a single pleasure craft. During the summer months, this scene would be dotted with dozens of sailboats and cabin cruisers and fishing boats.

A Photo Excursion: Vashon-Maury Island

Autumn Glory

This Big Leaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) near our house has the most amazing fall color thing happening. I can't wait to see how it develops over the next couple of weeks.

Ain't nature grand?

Early Fall at the Farmstands

It's officially fall, and the items available in the island farm stands are reflecting the change in seasons.

Besides these gorgeous sweet peppers, we found garlic, storing onions, amazingly sweet green-striped tomatoes, Desirée potatoes, and purple kohlrabi.

We also found island-grown melons at the island organic grocery store.

I love harvest time!

Wealth

’Nuff said.

A Stumpery

The island we live on is home to the largest stumpery in the United States. What, you ask, is a stumpery? It is a type of garden first popularized in the Victorian era in England, when a romanticized interpretation of nature was in vogue. Simply put, a stumpery is constructed of tree stumps, uprooted to expose the roots, piled aesthetically, and planted with woodland plants, especially ferns, which the Victorians adored.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we emerge from winter with a fair number of trees blown down, especially shallow-rooted Douglas firs, and soft-wood trees like Alders. Clearing for construction results in still more stumps. The makers of our local stumpery thought it would be a good way to recycle this material, rather than seeing them chipped or burned.

The gardeners have created a 9,000 square foot garden, filled with fantastical piles of gnarled roots, interplanted with magnificent Tasmanian tree ferns, thousands of ferns, hostas, trilliums, terrestrial orchids, and over 100 different epimediums. It's truly an otherworldly place, and will only grow more so over the years as things develop a coat of moss and lichen.

To see an article about this stumpery, including a photograph (it's the second of two photos), follow this link. To read about stumperies, including the one at Highgrove in England, check out this Wikipedia entry.

Touring Gardens

This beauty is Lilium 'First Choice.' Ain't she grand?

Today, instead of working in our own garden (not that it doesn't need it), we decided to go on the island garden tour, an annual fundraiser for various arts programs. This year, the tour included six gardens ranging from an extravagantly planted garden surrounding a French provincial style house, complete with a stunning view of the largest harbor on the island, to a "stumpery," a more woodland garden that contains over one hundred large tree stumps salvaged from various sites and then underplanted with thousands of woodland plants. We visited three gardens today, and will see the other three tomorrow (including the stumpery, which we're intrigued by).

The gardens we visited today all had extensive hard-scaping in place, which certainly helps define a garden. If we actually owned the house we lived in, we'd be doing that, too. The first garden we visited was the densely planted one, where everyone seemed simply dazed by the sheer amount of plants present. It was quite impressive, especially in that most of the plants were not that unusual, and some were downright old-fashioned (Maltese cross, peonies, lilies, roses). Despite the sheer volume of plants, the garden is broken up into neatly defined zones that made it seem more intimate. My favorite plant was a primrose with a tall, fox-tail of a flower spike in pink, with a tuft of red a the top. Stunning.

The third garden we visited is located on a pretty steep site, which has been terraced, with lots of clever little paths stepping down here and there. Full of old-fashioned roses that smelled great, and little enclosed "rooms" with raised beds for growing vegetables, the most enchanting detail were the many places where small beach rocks had been set on their sides to form patterns. Lovely.

Tomorrow, the stumpery.

Meanwhile, here's a couple more shots from our garden. The first is Asarina scandens, sometimes called Trailing Gloxinia or Trailing Snapdragon. The last photo is Clematis 'Niobe,' one of the most beautiful large-flowered clematis, at least to our eye. This year we're getting quite a prolific number of blooms. This clematis continues blooming for us over a long period, making it a definite winner in our book.

A Perfect Summer Day

Yep, we had one today.

We got out of the house at around 10:30 am and headed into town (or, at least, what passes for a town on the island) and found a great parking spot right in front of the Village Green, which on Saturdays is home to our local farmers' market. We ran into our landlady and chatted a bit, looked at the fresh salad greens, prepared foods, and crafts, all the while listening to some great bluegrass music being played by a duo on the lawn.

We bought some great bacon, made from Berkshire hogs that are grown on the Kitsap peninsula. Hey, they had free samples! Looking forward to breakfast tomorrow, for sure.

Looked at some really beautiful turned wood bowls and boxes. Gorgeous.

Bought a few organic yellow delicious and gala apples from east of the Cascades, then headed over to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, then on to the produce stand at the main intersection for organic cherries, asparagus, strawberries, and young Walla Walla sweet onions. Ducked inside the restaurant at the same intersection and had some lunch, then took off for a couple of nurseries, where we bought some fantastic plants for an area under a large alder, including a loropetalum, several kinds of ferns, and a new hybrid alstromeria that has intense violet flowers flecked with white.

Traveling further south on the main drag, we went to the historic building that housed the original roasting plant for Seattle's Best Coffee, now home to a healthy grocery store and cafe. They have the only espresso machine on the island that still has the pump handles, and the espresso there is really good. Today we weren't in search of caffeine, though (strange, that), but were signing up for a series of classes on treating various inflammatory ailments through diet. These classes are all the rage on the island this summer, and we know many folks who told us they were worthwhile, so starting in July we'll be making some changes to the way we eat.

We cut west across the island, then up the west-side highway, one of the more scenic and picturesque routes on the island, all the way back to where it rejoins the main road, driving through its many curves and marveling at the lush ferns and other plant life along the way.

Once home, we planted everything we bought today (which almost never happens) and watered it in well. Sat for awhile in our little seating area, admiring the garden, drinking some water, listening to the birds. While working in the garden today, we saw the first zebra swallowtail of the season, so graphic against the dark violet Papaver sommniferum blooms. Lots and lots of bee activity, as well as hummingbird battles over the best blossoms.

We are seeing many more Anna's hummingbirds this year and boy, are they cute. Some are brilliantly colored. We see them feeding, but also perching on several of the trellises we have installed. We've only seen a couple of the larger rufous hummingbirds, though. The Anna's seem to especially love the red and yellow Aquilegia canadensis and the Billardiera longiflora, which has little one-inch tubular bell-shaped flowers, as well as the native Twinberry (Lonicera involucrata).

While the new plants were being irrigated, I made dinner: barbecued baby-back ribs on the grill, those young Walla Walla onions, split and grilled, and a green salad. We had some ginger syrup and Grenadine over ice with club soda, and it was pretty much perfect.

Much like the day itself.

Taking Things in Stride

So, we're sitting on our little front porch this past Saturday, as we like to do, looking at the garden and having some water in-between bouts of hard physical labor, when we hear voices on the other side of the screen of Western Red Cedars that separate our house from the road.

We live in a small neighborhood of mixed houses, near the intersection of two roads that run along the crest of steep cliffs, right out on the northwest point of the island. If, for some reason, the houses were to vanish tomorrow, it's not hard to imagine the landscape quickly reverting to alders, Douglas firs, cedars and hemlock (along with the ubiquitous Himalayan blackberry that has made itself so at home in the Pacific Northwest), populated with deer, raccoons, and dozens of bird species.  In other words, it often seems like a Herculean effort to keep the yard from "reverting" to a wild state. Then again, that's the very definition of gardening (and agriculture).

Anyway, we were relaxing, looking at the first of the Himalayan blue poppies (Mecanopsis betanicifolica), when the voices became louder. Looking out toward the street along our short driveway, we saw three women walking west on the road. One of them was in a wedding dress, with white pumps and a bridal bouquet.

"I do believe that's the first time we've seen that since we lived here," I commented to my sweetie.

"Yup."

Not a total mystery. We knew a wedding was scheduled at a neighbor's house. We just didn't expect to see the bride strolling along the road.

Then we got back to work.

Violets, Frogs and Woodpeckers

Three thrilling harbingers of warmer days to come:

The swoon-worthy scent and luscious color of Viola odorata.

The sound of frogs from the woods.

The rat-a-tat-tat of woodpeckers and flickers echoing around in the neighborhood.

Bonus: the emergence of trilliums.

Could this horrible winter finally be behind us?

Here We Go Again

More snow. Huh.

This has certainly been one of the snowier winters that I can remember here in the Puget Sound region, but then, my memory might not be what it used to be!

As lovely as it is, it tends to throw the whole population into a panic.

At least today's snow is already melting, although with the temperature here at our house hovering just below freezing, tomorrow's morning drive might be a tad exciting.

A Reverence of Convenience, Apparently

One of the best things about living on an island in Puget Sound is the trees that surround us.

Until they fall down and take the power out.

The power went off last night around 9pm, came on this morning just long enough to for us to reset the cable modem, fire up the computers, and reset the clocks. Then it went out again. The house was a brisk 60° and the cats were not happy.

Now, I absolutely love trees. I love to look at them, draw them, paint them. I don't even mind raking leaves all that much. I love the shade they cast in the summer, the shapes they form in the winter, the beautiful dappled light they filter, the homes they provide for birds and squirrels and the occasional raccoon. The thrill of hearing bald eagles cry from their perch high atop the Douglas Fir in the backyard gives me a thrill every single time.

In addition to Douglas Firs, we have Western Red Cedars and Red Alders in our yard. It's hard to love the Alders for many reasons—they seem to be dropping things onto the yard and garden during each season, be it catkins, leaves, branches, their little cones or the copious leaves that refuse to fall all at once, guaranteeing many sessions with the rake.

I don't particularly like pulling the hundreds of seedlings out of the garden beds, from the gutters, even from crevices on my car, but they do pull up easily. The fallen leaves get raked into piles and left to decompose or added to the compost pile. Robins and Varied Thrushes love rooting around in them, looking for unwitting earthworms. We pile the fallen branches up in brush piles, which provides shelter for all sorts of little birds, and perches for the Dark-Eyed Juncos and various Wrens.

Still, it seems that if you look sidewise at an Alder, something breaks off and crashes to the ground. Even a mild wind sends them tilting and crashing into their neighbors. And a little snow followed by wind, which we had last night, sends them toppling into the power lines, plunging whole swathes of the island into darkness and cold. Douglas Firs, notoriously shallow-rooted, also seem prone to falling over in wind, and frequently send large broken branches crashing to the ground.

At 2pm today, the inside temperature in the house was a toasty 52° and I was lying on the couch, one cat under the comforter I had draped over me, the other one lying on my chest, trying his best to smother me. There's nothing quite like having a cat's whiskers thrust unceremoniously up your nostril to rouse you from a nice nap. As I was lying there trying to re-position the cat so I could breath, I found myself railing in my thoughts against the power company, whose recorded message had informed me that our outage was caused by "a tree falling into power lines" and than an "investigator" had been sent to assess the damage. It was the same message all day long, and I wanted suddenly to get an axe or a chainsaw and go find this tree that was the source of all my suffering and deal with it.

As it grew darker and darker, I sighed and set about relighting candles, then prepped some food by lantern light so we could eat supper in our cold house. I got out the butane burner that we keep for just such times and got everything ready to go, then sat down with a flashlight and a book to read—and found myself brooding. I got about two pages read when the lights came back on.

Suddenly, all thoughts of tree murder fled from my mind, and I had to laugh at myself for my "reverence of convenience." I happily set about turning the heat up, reset the cable modem, went from dark room to dark room turning on a few lights, just because I could.

Now I'm left pondering my dependence on all the mod cons, as the British would say, and thinking about things I can do to make the next power outage (and there will be more) more manageable. Something well short of cutting down all the trees seems appropriate.