Days of Shades

On Friday, I picked up a great big order from Sound Native Plants, and lo, it was good.

I finally sprung my soopah secret surprise on Erik (took him to the Harvey Feinstein Fiddler on the Roof in Seattle), and lo, it was good!

We had dinner beforehand at a spanish/south-american tapas place called Tango, and lo, it was good!

I went to folklife and got to spend some time with westrider, emony42 & Rob, MLE, and a smattering of Fiddle Tunes peeps, and lo, it was good! (Highlights included freeing my inner hippy, having an old lady dance a flower at me, and seeing the youngest-ever absynthe fairy.)

On Monday, Erik, madalchemist and I worked in my yard, and lo, it was good and exhausting. Some people take the easy, albeit expensive, path to landscaping, and bring in soil to build beds up, rather than digging down. The back of my house is on grade, though, so I'm afraid if I did that I'd have water in my dining room. Hence, Erik wacking away at tree and wisteria roots while I made a path. None of it's done, and none of it's visible from the kitchen window, which is rather frustrating...but it was still good.

Erik called before he came over for breakfast yesterday morning with words that were music to my ears -- "I'm putting on old pants in case you want to work in your yard."

Not only help, but voluntary help! I had to use this rare opportunity to it's utmost. I schemed throughout breakfast, then announced that It Was Time To Tackle The Wisteria.

For those who have not seen my yard, the wisteria is perilously close to the house and right underneath a lilac. It had been growing up through the lilac and snapping off it's limbs until I performed a wisteria-ectomy a month ago. Since I love lilac this was a poor strategic decision on the wisteria's part. It's aggressive nature combined with the fact that it's invasive in much of the US and likely to become so here warranted it's complete removal.

Whacking off the rest of the stems was easy, because I'd done so much destruction when I gave the lilac it's wisterectomy. The saws-all got the main trunk to a manageable size, at which point I set Erik to digging. He started a good 2 or 3 feet away from the stem (while I dug up a rose for transplant and finished removing some small tree stumps). I looked up to hear him moaning that the ROOTS GO EVERYWHERE.

He was standing on the main stem of the wisteria, which was in a giant hole, still supported by roots as big around as my wrist going into the earth, well, everywhere. On the one hand, that hole was already huge, and it was clearly going to get a lot bigger if I really wanted root removal. On the other hand, there's nothing I like more than a man willing to stand on the corpses of my enemies.

(I mentioned that, and he pointed to roots he'd been digging up and said "I hunt down their families, too!).

Eventually Erik left to get ready for rehearsal, claiming dispiritedly that the wisteria was just luring him into digging a hole so big that he could lay down beside it, and I could re-bury them both.I took up where he left off. For hours. I started to understand why, when he left, he looked like a man broken in both body and spirit.

Wisteria roots go on FOREVER. The original hole is now re-filled. It had to be, because I was hunting the roots that went strait under the dirt pile. I've now tracked them several yards away from the parent plant. Several are still too big to be cut with loppers. Wisteria roots are sticking up all over that corner of the yard, which now resembles a war-zone. I've slathered the cut-ends with Plant-B-Dead, but I don't know if it's strong enough to work.

My back hurts. I feel old.

On the upside, a large portion of the yard no longer has sod, and has very aerated soil, so when I figure out what to plant there it'll be easy. And I should do that soon, because after the work I did while Erik started digging the Pit Of Wisteria, that section of the yard is the first to be truly blackberry, ivy, and stump free!

This weekend I ripped up about three square yards of ivy, which hardly makes a dent in the invading ivy horde that beseiges my back yard. I have the creeping (b-dum ching!) suspicion that the sources of the ivy are in the neighbors' yards, so my task will never be done.

I also started taking dead wood out of the willow. It lost it's prettiest limb in the storm last week, and is left with the two that shoot sideways into the neighbors yard, and the one that grows straight up and rubs against all the other branches. The last seems healthy but ugly, and one is supposed to remove rubbing branches, so I'm inclined to take it out, but the tree's pretty scraggly as-is, and it just lost that limb, so I'm not sure how well it could deal with more amputation.

I'm afraid that eventually I might have to take the whole tree out, which makes me sad. I'm going to try to save it first.

Sunday I saw four species of birds in my yard I hadn't seen there before -- Chestnut-backed chickadee, Anna's hummingbird, bushtits, and a townsend's warbler. The poor hummingbird was trying to extract nectar from the fake flowers on the gawdawful flamingo wreath, poor thing.

So far all of the yard work at my house has been clean-up and removal (the pile of rhody branches in the side yard is taller than I am), but as february approaches I need to start thinking about planting things. Most importantly, the area around the bird feeder needs some low (3 feet ish) shrubs, so my lil hoppity visitors have a place to hide after I take out the wisteria. Turns out I don't know about many shrubs that stay that small, so I started research...

...and discovered that one of my possible contenders, a barberry variety, is often invasive. The invasive type is Japanese...just like the wisteria. And Japanese honeysuckle. Is anything from Japan NOT invasive? I'm terrified that one morning I'll wake up and the entire northwest landscape will be singing "I think I'm turning Japanese."

In the hour between getting off work and twilight, I went out to the back 40* and pruned one of the compost bins (pics later, but it's a wire enclosure with a full pelt of ivy). I wanted to clean it a bit before I put leaves in.

Then I got distracted.

I clipped ivy from the cherry tree. I clipped bits off the neighbor's cedar that's in my yard, so my tarp-o-leaves wouldn't catch when I heaved it into the bin. I clipped more ivy from the cherry tree. I ripped ivy from the cherry tree. I YANKED such that a stem as big around as my thumb detached itself for some length, and remained, hanging like a jungle vine, attached by bits twenty feet up that were out of my reach. I looked at the hanging vine and though vaguely of rapunzel.

Suddenly it seemed fitting that Agony, the Princes' song from Into the Woods, was stuck in my head.
Agony!
Beyond power of speech,
When the one thing you want
Is the only thing out of your reach.

What's so so intriguing
Or half so fatiguing
As what's out of reach?

I abandoned the ivy to test the strength of the wisteria.

Everyone else who's been to my yard has said something about how much they love wisteria. It's a beautiful plant, and the way it twines around itself is fascinating. It's also rated in Washington as "Aggressive", which means that though it's not officially categorized as "Invasive: Will choke out native forests and create a great wisteria barrens through which none dare tread", it will eat your yard, house, and pets if given half a chance. Wisteria is the plant equivalent of giant, dangerous African animals: Charismatic Mega Flora. Everyone loves it, except for the people who have it eat or trample everything they hold dear.

At my place, it had already started in on the porch roof supports.

Had.

Great masses of wisteria now lie on the cement patio. The beast is still crawling through the lilac above it, and several more battles (and a ladder) are needed to get it down to a manageable size, but it is no longer an immediate danger to the patio roof.

I think I may just be able to beat the wisteria. It's reassuring to have a task at which I might win to take my mind off of the ivy. Wisteria is mighty, but Ivy is sneaky. Ivy comes up everywhere, where you least expect it, and I can't seem to shake the sneaking suspicion that it's actually higher on the food chain than I am.

*Square feet.

I want to make raised garden beds out of corrugated metal. I like the idea of round ones (picture a two-foot chunk of culvert material planted in the ground) and normal-rectangular beds with the corrugations running vertically. It is of course, easy to find smallish pieces of corrugated metal...if you want the corrugations to run lengthwise (vertical is merely my artistic preference, but it's a strong one). It is also easy to find round bits specifically made for round garden beds! In Australia.

So I suppose I'll have to keep looking, then.

We chatted about politics, and complications, and teeny steam-punk engines.

Now I need to find something to do with beets besides pickling and borscht. INTERNETS! TO MY AID!

1. Golden sage is amazingly hardy, quick-growing, and vibrant. It also looks like ASS next to the red Asiatic lily. One of them must move. Sage looks good with purple things.

2. The Stargazer lily deserves a bigger pot next year, if I don't buy ground to put it in. Try white or pink creeping phlox around it's feet if the artemesia doesn't survive.

3. Don't transplant veggies in a heat wave.

4. If I buy dirt, plant black grass and something orange with the red asiatic. California poppies, tiger lily, or penstemon (penstemon pinifolius is a good orange). There's a creeper with dark blue flowers that'd look *awesome* in front of a red and orange bed...hmmm...rocky mountain penstemon is also that lovely blue.

5. Next time you make a flower bed, PLAN.

Most of my planning notes are around the lilies. I LOVE lilies, but was never allowed to have them when I lived with my folks', and never learned what they look nice with. I *finally* made one good pair - artemesia 'silver mound' and my stargazer - but I don't have high hopes for it, because everything I plant with that lily dies.

I only did a bit of gardening today, but I did a lot of yard work. The back is actually mowed*, of all things! I borrowed mower and weedwhacker from my neighbor, who borrowed them from his parents. His parents are considerably more into heavy duty yard equipment than mine. I had to be instructed in how to make the darn things go. If you pull on a lever, the mower pulls itself! The weedwhacker had an accelerator! And no cord!

Most of me thinks that burning gasoline while gardening is totally counterproductive, but part of me admits that it was really fun to have a garden tool capable of that much destruction. The gas-powered-weedwhacker is now my zombie apocalypse weapon of choice.



My across-the-street neighbor, Rob, bought his place a year or two ago, and it came with an established but unkempt garden. He's been thinning, and seeing me out putting in nasty-black-edging around the front bed, he decided I was easy prey for foisting off free plant starts. We had one of those "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" garden moments, and I ended up with not only the crocuses he brought over, but lots of little alpine strawberries and some raspberry canes. I think the raspberry canes are dead, but he seemed to think they might grow, and they were free. We also talked about redneck-hippy yard decor (the old rag in my front yard? Oh, that's from when I worked on my bro's bike), and I met his cat. Hooray for neighbors!

This is an excellent example of why you should always make garden beds bigger than you need them. I didn't have anything to put in the expanded front bed, and now it's almost full. Dig it and they will come.



Really, the contrast in the two neighbors is pretty hilarious. I happen to know that the one with the gas-powered tools who talks about spraying** the weeds and watered his new little herb pots with a teensy tiny watering can while wearing garden gloves is a total stoner. Learn thy lesson, haters: Not all stoners are hippies! Some are bourgeoisie.


*I really want to write 'mown'. That's correct somewhere, isn't it?

**ICK! Not near my yard, varlot! Even if I am planning on stealing your weedwhacker when the dead rise!

If I ever own property, and I really hope that someday I will, I think I'll experiment with making sod walls. It's not that I really want sod walls for anything, but I really hate grass, and I really hate trying to get all the extra topsoil off of sod after it's been taken up, and finding something to do with it.

Half of the sod Erik removed yesterday is in the blackberry thicket, where they shall combine their evil powers and create stealth blackberries. Half of it is in the city yard waste container, making it weight four times it's norm.

When Andrew and I were kids, mom and Dad built a fort with sod taken from the garden spot and suckers from the apple trees. Walls were sod to two feet up, and then apple-sucker palisade held together with twine.

I'm thinking I could make a wall of sod as a landscape feature, seed it with tough wildflower meadow type plants, and then as it decomposed I'd get a berm.

The only information I found in my brief, rootbeer* fuelled google search was about sod bunkers for golf courses and sod composting. Sod composting is interesting, but takes a lot of space and a lot of time. Luckily it's all moot, since I rent.

*I rode my bike to work for only the 2nd time this year, and when I got home I dealt with the sod pile in the front yard, and then realised I hadn't eaten any lunch. My lightheadedness tells me this was a bad idea. The rootbeer tells me it is tasty.

It's been an eventful day.

My family and I met my grandparents, aunt'n'uncle, and 3-year-old twin cousins at NW Trek this morning. It was a beautiful day, and we saw a decent selection of critters (mostly snoozing in sunny spots). The twins were (unsurprisingly) more enamored of the tram ride than the animals we saw from it, and (surprisingly) incredibly excited about the interpretive signage.

Isa SIGN! Aun' Mary, isah 'NOTHER SIGN!

After they left we hung about for a bit taking a more leisurely look at the wolves and watching the otter frolic. On the way out, we heard a very peeved cry.

It came from the land-bound* bald eagle, who was screeching in protest at the herd of keepers re-landscaping his enclosure, and scurrying back and forth along the fence line in agitation like a giant, feathery rat. The keepers were planting salmon- and service- berries, and were happy to talk about native plants, which lead to the final collapse of my willpower and a stop at Gordon's Nursery in Yelm on the way back.

I rent. You should not buy shrubbery if you rent. But most of the hummingbird-friendly northwest berries apparently do fine in whiskey barrels, which is why there's a bare-root flowering currant in my back yard now.

Our last stop was for groceries, which would have been quick, except that we witnessed an accident in the parking lot on the way out. No-one was hurt, but at least two cars were totaled, and I am reminded why I'm in favor of periodic re-testing for driver's licenses. The poor old man driving the offending vehicle mistook gas for brake.

I hate auto accidents. They rattle me, and not because I'm afraid of crazy drivers someday harming me. I'm deeply afraid of *being* the crazy driver and having that on my conscience. This is another reason I only own a bike. I am more comfortable with the possibility of being a victim than the possibility of being a killer.

So, right, busy day. I'm going to go sit with my sweety and draw, now.