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Friday, June 17, 2005 |
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Today's columbines...  11:18:58 AM  comment []
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Sunday, June 12, 2005 |
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THE GREAT TREE HUNT AT DAY'S END
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Creating a garden out of what had been a temporary holding place for plants. Looking forward to getting help from my brother today, fetching creek water. He is an Aquarius, so carrying water should be second nature. Later this week I'll drag out the creek water pump and set up a system of hoses like the one we had last year. We will run out of creek water this summer. It will be dry for several months. I know this because the source of the creek is the great mountain that used to be in my header, the one covered with snow. Consider that that photo was taken just before I moved here, July 2004. We had water all last summer (except for a week or two when some rancher far upstream diverted it to fill his livestock ponds). Now, as of a month ago, and to this moment, that same mountain is bare and black as it gets. Absolutely bald. So no snowmelt to feed this creek; all that rain carried it off. The ponds are empty because of the flood. And because I can't spare well water to keep these guys alive, they will have to be well-mulched--very well--to get through July-August-September and possibly October. End of Day Two. We are making a garden with tweezers. Uncovered today: two Artemisias, two thymes, a great healthy globe of Melissa (lemon balm), three mulleins (yes, I actually transplanted these "weeds"; there simply weren't any here and they give the garden such a beautiful vertical shape, and make medicine, too); rue; lamb's ears; a violet on its last legs (the only survivor of the violets, I suspect). And a clary sage!! I can't believe my eyes. Poor drooping thing already trying to bloom; I nearly killed it with the wheelbarrow, it was so invisible in the grass. I'm sure it will recover readily and be magnificent. I see more and more--yarrows, catmint, bee balm; things-I-can't-remember-what-they-are-but-I'm-pretty-sure-they're-garden-herbs. But we ran out of llama manure (heaped nearby last summer) and the cache they made in their pasture all year was wiped clean in the flood. Once I get the bridge more or less back in place (which I plan to do now that the water level is low, using a come-along), we can wheel over some new stuff. Meanwhile I do have sacks of composted manure from the nursery to use; more than enough. But then we ran out of moldy hay. So we watered the remaining plants one by one, what we were able to pinpoint, and next week I'll find more somewhere and I'll haul home a truckload or two and then pick up where we have left off. So we have our great initial continent of mulched plants, and now here and there an island, the occasional isthmus, peninsula. Pretty funny looking. But I know what those guys are capable of. Just wait a month. You'll see.
Break time. Animal dinners. Now I go to dig a hole for our first transplanted tree. (Soil near the creek is likely to be penetrable, don't you think?) I hope I find a good one and can move it without irremediable damage. |
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Saturday, June 11, 2005 |
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Sunset Saturday Garden 20 percent revealed. Plants perking up. Found so far: giant yarrow; millefoil yarrow; four clumps of chives; germander; lovage; thyme; a wan, etiolated comfrey; three blueberry bushes; catmint; three columbines blossoming away.
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I can't get a fork, spade, or shovel into the soil. It is like concrete. The grasses are glued in place. A pair of kitchen shears is my only hope at this point. As each plant is revealed I pull as much grass from in and around it as I can. then I lay down a layer of llama manure, a layer of bought compost, and a heavy mulch-flake of rotted hay. Then I pour in a gallon of creek water per plant.
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First, remove the staples that secure the ugly blanket over the door to the back garden:
Reveal door:
Open door:
Believe it or not--somewhat like a sculpture trapped in a block of marble--there's a garden under all this:
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