Popcorn Snow

Today started off all sunny and (relatively) warm, with only a few clouds in the sky, so we got outside and started gardening.  We've been working for a little while on this new flower bed on the east side of the house.  It's a sunny spot in the early spring, but shady in the summer, so I think it will be a real good spot for ferns, rhubarb and some early spring flowers. 

Then suddenly, our sunny day was replaced with a snowstorm.  We watched in awe as a white wall came across the fields to the east.  It looked like hail at first, but they were actually small balls of snow, not ice.

Conan dubbed it "popcorn snow".  It not only looked like popcorn, it also sounded like popcorn popping as the pellets pelted down and bounced off the walls and roof of the house.  We had a great time trying to catch them on our tongues.  Conan ate great handfuls of snow, until inevitably we got cold and went inside for some hot cocoa.

Within 10 minutes, the ground was solid white.  It snowed for about 20 minutes total, then stopped and the sun came back out.  An hour later, we had blue skies from horizon to horizon and most of the snow was gone. 

Several times later in the day Conan would stop what he was doing, give me a goofy grin, and say "Guess what?  I have snow in my tummy!" and then laugh like it was the funniest thing ever. 

CREP Project

In the spring of 2011, through a fairly random chain of events, we were put in touch with the CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program) office in Whatcom County. I'd seen their signs (and blue plastic tubes) around big wetland restoration projects, but I didn't realize they also did smaller projects. It turns out that our property was a perfect candidate for restoration - in fact, the "pangborn muck" (yes, that's the technical term) in our swamp is especially desirable.  No kidding.

 Not only do they pay for the work, but they'll pay us "rent" for 15 years as well! It took a bit of paperwork and a couple meetings, but overall it was really easy to get set up with them. The people involved are all really friendly and took the time to answer all our questions, even the ones we felt kind of silly asking. It's been a great experience so far, and we haven't even gotten paid yet! :)

 The site prep work started last fall, with the rather spectacular removal of the blackberry patch at the east end of our property. We went to work one morning and came home to find that suddenly we could walk right to the banks of the pond! I still don't know exactly how they managed to remove all those blackberries (and haul away all the debris) in a single day. Frankly, that alone was worth signing up.

 Then in October/November they cut large swaths through the impenetrable spirea thicket, and planted willows in the watery muck underneath. It's an impressive feat of landscaping.

 Now this week they are back, finishing up the planting of the field and stream bank areas. There are a LOT of little blue tubes out there!

 

 

 

All in all, the planting list calls for 1,875 trees and shrubs to be planted on the 3.9 acres we enrolled in the project.  The specific plant list, if you're interested, is:

•  300 Red Osier Dogwood 
• 100 Pacific Ninebark 
• 100 Black Twinberry 
• 800 Hooker Willow 
• 150 Western Red Cedar 
• 100 Shore Pine 
• 125 Sitka Spruce 
• 50 Oregon Ash 
• 50 Quaking Aspen 
• 50 Nootka Rose 
• 50 Snowberry 

The evergreen trees will be mostly clustered up around the eastern end of the property, where the blackberries used to be. Our original mitigation planting is part of the enrolled CREP area, which not only means that they will plant some more items in that area, but best of all, they will take over the maintenance of it! In fact, they will maintain all the plantings for 3-5 years, coming out annually to cut back the brush and grass until the new plants are thoroughly established.

It's really an amazing program, and we're really glad to be involved in it.

Outside Fun

Conan is really enjoying the nice spring weather. He's very interested in birds, flowers, rocks, and puddles. Puddles, as everyone knows, are for stomping in.

He's also a connoisseur of rocks. It takes forever to walk to the mailbox (aka toddler death march) and not just because it's a long way. No, the biggest problem is that there are rocks all over the road, and Conan needs to pick up and inspect most of them.

He also constantly points out birds, saying "Birr! Birr!" whenever one flies by. It's extremely exciting when a whole flock flies by. We've been seeing large flocks of red-wing blackbirds (they sing so beautifully!), as well as Canada Geese moving through the area. They make Conan smile and clap his hands.

I picked up some ranunculus starts and put them in the planter by the front door a couple weeks ago. They suffered through a few hard frosts but are doing quite well, and now are blooming nicely. Conan is fascinated by the blossoms.

Today we had a great work day, we got all the mitigation plants ringed with bark, planted a couple of cedar tree starts, removed the sod from a strip by the garden where we're planning to put in some raspberries, and nearly got the front flower bed all weeded and edged. There's just about 5 feet left to do. It sure feels like spring! I have to keep reminding myself that it is really only early March. :)

Fig Tree

A couple of weeks ago* we planted a fig tree. I know, it's a little optimistic to think we can grow figs, but we just had to give it a try. It's a newly introduced, super hardy variety called Violetta which is expected to be quite sucessful here in the northwest. So far it is doing very well, it actually has a fig on it already!
As you can see from the picture, we planted it close to the south wall of the house, it's actually under the sunshade/eave as well as near the foundation drain so hopefully it will not get either too wet or too cold. This is a very sunny spot, and with the heat reflected back from the wall of the house I'm hoping we can not only keep it alive an healthy but actually ripen some fruit! The plan is to train it as an espalier on the trellis, keeping it small enough that we can wrap it with straw to insulate it in the winter if necessary.

*I'm a little late posting this, I actually uploaded this picture a couple weeks ago but then forgot to actually finish & publish the post. Whoops.

Flying Dragon

I'm really excited about this unusual shub we picked up at Cloud Mountain Farm this past weekend. It's a super hardy citrus relative from China with really wicked thorns called "Flying Dragon" (poncirus trifoliata). Of course ours didn't come with fruit on it, but I'm hopeful that someday it may actually produce. The fruit is supposed to be super sour, no good for eating fresh, but aparently it can be used for marmalade or the juice can be used like lemon juice in cooking. We haven't planted it yet, still trying to decide the best place for it...

Sod Free

All the sod has now been removed from the garden, and the first few wheelbarrow loads of 3-way brought over. Most of the snow has melted off, there are just a few patches left in the shady areas. Still lots of water everywhere though, especially in the bottom corner of the garden.
The rhubarb doesn't mind the snow or the wet, it knows it's really spring. Time to get growing!
Today was a little more like spring, sunny except for the tremendous thunderstorm complete with 15 intense minutes of pea-sized hail at about 3pm. Or maybe that's exactly like spring, come to think of it...

Rototilling Postponed

We had reserved a tiller from Hardware Sales rental dept for Saturday, but we woke up to a couple of inches of sloppy wet snow on the ground, and more coming down so we decided to cancel it. We'd almost removed all the sod from the garden space, only 1.5 strips and a few scraps to go, as you can see below:
Thanks to the snow and rain all week, the area where the sod has been removed is a wet sloppy mess with several inches of standing water. We're going to work in a LOT of 3-way (topsoil, sand & compost) to improve the tilth, as well as to raise up the garden above the surrounding lawn for drainage.

The snow makes it easy to see what we've been doing with the sod in the front yard:

Basically we're layering it over the top of the existing grass to fill in the low spot between the house and the fence. This is an area which is (was?) very prone to standing water.

The snow is beautiful, but I'm really disappointed that we had to cancel our rototilling plans. Instead we had to do inside chores, like cleaning the bathrooms and the kitchen. Which is good stuff to do, but not really fun to blog about!

Sod is Heavy

We started clearing the sod off our garden site, and it's a lot more work than I thought it would be. We rented a sod-cutter on Saturday and cut it into strips. I thought we'd just roll up the strips, move them across the yard (we're layering the sod over a low spot to fill it) and voila! we'd be ready to rototill by dinnertime. Well, no. The sod is incredibly heavy, even on a relatively dry day. We had to cut the strips into 3 foot lengths and make lots of little rolls just so we could lift them. If we rolled up a whole stip we'd never be able to move it, it'd be a sod boulder! We got two strips moved on saturday... and then it rained. Hard. Which did not make the sod any lighter.

This is one of those projects that is going to take a while. I want a garden NOW, so its frustrating, but the truth is it's still really early so I wouldn't be able to plant much yet anyhow. I just have to keep telling myself that...

Spring Is Here, Again

One fun thing about blogging is how easy it is to look back and see what was going on a year ago. Last March I blogged about the singing of our resident frogs, visits to our chimney from our neighborhood Northern Flicker, spectacular spring sunsets, torrential spring rains, pussywillows and other signs of spring. Now we're going into our second spring, and the frogs are singing again, the flicker is back banging on the chimney, the rain is still falling, the pussywillows are out, and when the clouds happen to clear away the sunsets are amazing. I really enjoy this feeling of getting to know the seasonal cycles of our little place, recognizing the patterns of nature, having a bit of history to fall back on.

Not everything is the same as it was last year though. Looking back at the blog also gives a clear sense of how much we've accomplished in the last year. The biggest change is that we now have a lawn, rather than this muddy mess surrounding our house:

We no longer have to use a pallet bridge to cross the mud from the driveway to the house.

Nor do we have gigantic slag piles to burn.

We have a long way to go, still... but it's good to take a minute and appreciate how much we've already accomplished. It's easy to get discouraged about our huge to-do list, but having looked back at the last year's progress makes me feel confident we'll get it all done, eventually. We'll get started just as soon as it stops raining.
:)

Puttering

Today we went shopping (with our wedding gift cards - yay!) at some local nurseries, and then came home and puttered about the yard until it started raining. One thing I did was buy some tree-heal and tape, and take care of this huge wound that the Japanese Cedar suffered sometime previously in the winter. Poor little tree! It looks much happier now, I trimed the branches and torn bark away and got it nicely sealed. I have no idea how the damage occured.

We also got some new strawberry plants so now the raised garden bed on the south side of the house is 100% strawberries. Last year this was our whole garden! We are planning to dig up a new, big garden for this year. In the background of this picture, you can see some of the corner stakes marking out where we are thinking of digging.
We also got a base for the sundial we received as a wedding present, and a clear half-dome cover to better protect our birdfeeder from the rain. Last but not least, we got a beautiful red oxalis to put in the plant holder by our front door, which really brightens things up!

New Flower Bed

We had lovely early-spring weather this past weekend, so we got out and dug up a new flower bed along the newest section of fence. Here Sprout models the latest addition to our landscape:
In the front I planted Daylillies from Keeley, Lavender bushes from my mom,a couple of Coral Bells and 8 "Jersey King" asparagus roots. The back row is entirely blueberries, all different varieties. We planted 5 of them, and have two more still to go once we finish working a few more loads of nice dirt from our pile into the far end of their bed.

It seems a little wierd, after last summer's obsessive focus on establishing a lawn, to be out there digging up our sod! But most of all, it feels good to be out in the sunshine with a shovel again. :)

Happy Valentine's Day to us!

We celebrated yesterday by getting a big pile of dirt delivered! It's nice stuff: a 3-way blend of compost, topsoil, and sand. Romantic, no?
I can't wait to start making garden beds and working this nice soil into planting holes for shrubs and fruit trees. Also check out the fence - it is now finished, at last! It took a little over a year, but it really looks good.

Spring must be on the way, I'm really starting to feel the urge to plant things!

Berry planting

Today we took advantage of the clear sunny weather and planted some more raspberry and blackberry plants. We've still got a lot of plants living in pots in our nursery spot, but we've set ourselves a goal of getting them all in the ground before winter. We made good progress today, planting 5 raspberries along the driveway, and 5 upright blackberries along the edge of the lawn near the pergola.
This little blackberry seems to be confused as to what season it is!
We have another 5 or 6 raspberries in the nursery, as well as blueberries, lilacs, daylillies, coral bells, and lavender plants. We should be able to find places for all of them before the ground freezes up though. It's perfect for digging and planting right now, not too wet yet but not dry and hard either. It felt good to get out in the yard and get dirty - we've been resting since the wedding (which was wonderful) but I'm ready to get back into some projects. :)

Busy Day

Moira helped Cary and her Dad calculate the bracing angles necessary to re-inforce the observation tower to withstand an onslaught of wedding guests.

Dave came out also and made good progress on the railing. The observation platform feels really safe and sturdy now. :)
I fertilized the lawn, worked over all the container plants, and then put my signpost up at the branching of the trail between the house and the parking pasture.

In the evening a fellow from Lynden came and delivered the hay bales we bought from him, and Cary and Nick stacked them at the edge of the yard. We got a really good deal on them because they are three years old - no longer good for feed, but perfect for seating around a bonfire.

Hog Fuel & the Dingo

A few weeks ago we had 20+ cubic yards of "hog fuel" delivered in the form of a gigantic pile in our front yard. Hog fuel, for those of you who don't know (I didn't) consists of shredded trees, shrubs, stumps, yard waste, and the like. It's MUCH cheaper than wood chips, and also much dirtier & irregularly sized and shaped. It's commonly used by farmers to fill in a wet corner of a pasture or as bedding material for dairy cows. This is what the pile looked like this morning:
That machine parked in front of the pile is a Toro "Dingo", which I rented for the weekend from Hardware Sales. It was a pretty impressive little machine, really fun to operate once I got the hang of it. Here Tombi and Moira watch as I back away from the pile with a full bucket...
Gabe & Cynthia really helped a lot too, pushing wheelbarrow loads (the dingo fills the wheelbarrow fast!) in addition to the Dingo-loads out to the various dumping sites and raking out the hog fuel once it had been dumped. We got a nice early start in the morning, and worked until about 10 am while Cary & his brother Eric fixed us all a delicious pancake breakfast! :)

It took a lot of trips with the machine & the wheelbarrrows to move all that material and spread it around where we wanted it. The finished product looks pretty spectacular, as Kess models below:
That's the path through the bushes from the parking pasture above. Below is the new & improved rope swing landing area, complete with a path leading up to it.
It finally decided to start to rain, so we called it a day at about 4:30 pm with the pile reduced to a mere sliver of it's former self. Tomorrow, assuming we're not all too hungover after the bachelor & bachelorette parties tonight, we'll quicky finish it off.
All in all, a good day's work! I'm pretty impressed with the Dingo. It's a really odd machine, not like any other I have operated, but it really made this job go a LOT faster than it would have with shovels & wheelbarrows alone. All the extra labor by people who thought they were just coming up for a party weekend didn't hurt either! :)

Riding Lawn Mower

The only thing better than a riding lawn mower is a FREE riding lawn mower! We are now the lucky owners of what I can only describe as the neighborhood hand-me-down riding lawn mower. It once belonged to someone named Randy, who gave it to the retired school-teachers at the end of our road, who then gave it to the Farmer family on the other side of us when, who passed it on to us earlier this week. Is that about the most awesome "welcome to the neighborhood" present ever, or what? Big thanks to everyone involved in this generous neighborhood network. Someday I hope we can pass it along to another household with a huge lawn to mow. :) Naturally we couldn't wait to try it out. It works just fine, the only thing wrong with it is that it tends to overheat after 20-30 minutes of operation. We might try to fix that, eventually, although it really isn't that big of a deal to let it cool down for 10 minutes or so and then go back to mowing. And man, is it ever faster than the walk-behind mower (which was also free, a hand-me-down from my parents who got themselves a brand new riding mower this spring), although it can't get quite as close to the house and other obstacles. There's nothing wrong with free lawnmowers, of any sort!

Pasture Mowed

Earlier this week our next door neighbor, Mannix, kindly mowed our pasture for us as an early wedding present. It looks about 70% larger now that it has been mowed! We're going to use this pasture as wedding parking and camping. Depending on how fast the grass grows, we'll probably mow it again a few days before the wedding. Mowing it now is great because it will be all nice and green with new growth instead of all brown and stubbley.
Here's the view looking back towards the entrance to the trail that goes over the bridge and back to the house. We're planning to hang a large banner/sign between the two trees at either side of the opening to help people notice it.

Thanks Mannix! It looks terrific. :)

Tower Improvements

Dave came out on Sunday, and we added stairs to the observation platform. Much better than the ladder!
We also roughed in the railing around the top of the platform - it needs some more supports before we call it done, but it already feels safer. Big black thunder clouds moved over us all day, but it never actually rained more than a few drops on us - too bad, because now I have to water the lawn.

The bridge got a railing too, and the brush clipped back away from it.

We also started working on our signs for the trail, but that will be a multi-day project because waiting for paint to dry is boring.

Also - I mowed the lawn again! Now that's excitement. It just keeps looking better all the time.

Cary's Aunt Chris & Uncle Reimar came down in the afternoon and helped with the tower railing and spreading wood chips on the path, and then they camped overnight in our field and watched the meteor shower. This was the first time anyone's camped out here since the house was built, so it was an inauguation of sorts, or perhaps it would be better to consider it a trial run on the wedding accomodations. They declared it quite comfy. :)

Bonfirewood

That's two fewer piles of logs around the place, which is a good thing also. This is for the wedding night bonfire, now we just need to make the fire pit bigger.

Wedding Work Party

This Sunday, August 5th, we are planning a wedding work party. Anybody who is available to help, we would appreciate your labor! We're planning to work on at least some of the following projects (depending on how many folks show up and what y'all are motivated to do):

~build the observation tower
~spread wood chips on the trail to the parking pasture
~make & install directional signs on the trail
~build the rest of the cedar rail fence
~cut up and stack firewood for the fire pit

We've got a good selection of gloves & shovels & wheelbarrows and the like, but feel free to bring your own tools & equipment if you think it would help.

And of course we'll be firing up the grill and drinking some beer in the evening!