Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family.  Whatever you call it, who ever you are, you need one.

Jane Howard

It’s Christmas eve; time for a festive lunch downtown for an intimate group of around 30 or so.  Granted, I don’t even know most of these folks, but they’re all part of “the Tribe”  - a tightly knit, at times loosely related, family that has graciously embraced my household as part of their extended own.

We’ve been a part of this ongoing party for the past 11 years beginning in 1998 when we were invited along on a post-Christmas getaway to Vancouver, Canada; Saturday we leave for our 10th such trip.  Our vacation routine has become nearly ritualized, or maybe it’s just pared down to it’s essence; an early morning train ride North, our now familiar welcome at the hotel where we always stay, lazing by the pool, lots of G&T’s, evening strolls around the neightborhood, movies, and a celebratory feast for the adults and the “big kids”.

Follow a tradition through enough years and you trace a very human history.  Weddings, births, graduation, awards, college acceptances, new jobs, left jobs, travel, and of course, separation, pain, illness and death.  Today at our annual Christmas Eve lunch, amidst the laughter, the reunions, the flying wrappers and many toasts, we’ll all be thinking of Big Dave - the loving Father of this tribe, whose passionate commitment to family and friends has cemented our place within it, bloodline or not.  The greatest gift of all, and one that lives on and on in his loving memory.

Piney woods, an enormous, venerable ranch house, the occasional animal head and bearskin rug and a river runs through it!  Pine Valley Ranch is in the capable hands and loving stewardship of a good friend of mine.  The ranch has been in his family for nearly 50 years; at one time a working cattle ranch, today the property - some 500+ acres along the Yakima River outside Cle Elum, WA - is home and retreat.  Work is underway to establish permanent protection of this unspoiled habitat, home to salmon, trout, elk, bear(?), and “every sort of migratory water fowl” around. 

I try and get myself invited to “the ranch” at least once a year.  Generally, some great weather event befalls my stay and we battle snow, floods or other climatic calamity; it’s funny how I always come away so rested in spite of it.  This year the weather cooperated (although the river had jumped its banks just a few days earlier when a warm, and very wet front moved through the area.)  We arrived on Saturday afternoon under blue skies and relatively warm temperatures considering the time of year and the fact that we were at about 3,000 ft.

A trip to the ranch is a trip back in time.  Heavy, handcarved wood molding, banisters and framing outline the majestic scale of the great room, warmed by not one, but two roaring fireplaces.  A benevolent 14 point buck (or at least the front 1/3 of him) gazes down on us lolling on comfortable chairs and sofas as we drink red wine and nosh on appetizers.  Pendleton blankets and Native American rugs furnish deep armchairs and benches; family photos, NW art and an autographed photo of JFK (I kid you not!!!) hang on the paneled walls.

Outside the stacks of multi-paned windows, old pines, firs and cedars line the river and wander off through meadows, around ponds and up to the nearby freeway, which you can sorta hear in the distance (but we pretend is the river.)  Apparently, the fishing is top notch in the river, if you go for that sort of thing.  We northwesterners sometimes get jaded to our green forests and magnificent woods; if you had to put up with the rain that grants us these beauties you’d understand why.  But this little part of the Cascade range never ceases to impress me with its dense timberlands, roaring waterfalls and lush undergrowth.  I love the smells; the camphorus trees, the duff on the woodland floor, the “green” smell of the river and ponds.  The golden retriever who rolled in the stinky dead fish - that’s another matter.  But he was soooo blissed out it was hard to grudge him his grunge.

We dined like honored guests, talked like old friends, slept like babies and returned to the city refreshed and restored.  What a treat!  For more pictures of this magical place visit Roadtrips on my website.  Ahhhhh.

An easy recipe in honor of our “Grand” forests

Delicious Grand Fir Infused Oil

in a shallow pan on the stove over medium heat, gradually warm 1 cup of olive, grapeseed  or other mild flavored oil.  Place clean, dry sprigs of Grand Fir needles (Abies grandis) into the warm oil and allow to sizzle gently for 10 minutes.  They will give up their resinous oils and deep green color to infuse the oil with flavor and fragrance.  Remove from heat and cool to room temperature before bottling and storing away from heat and light.  Drizzle on potatoes, pasta, and cream soups for a hit of goodness and the NW woods. 

I first learned of this preparation when we stayed at the Sooke Harbour House Inn in British Columbia last fall.  It’s delicious and it occurs to me that it might make a lovely holiday gift as well.

Thundering wings and a flurry of feathers; white blurs in the cool, darkened coop on a dusty, hot afternoon.  Roughly 300 birds are roosting, resting from their travels earlier in the day.  I just didn’t expect to come across homing pigeons in the course of a recent outing to the The Getty Center, a bastion of art and architecture, on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Blindingly white in the southern California sun, The Getty’s imposing walls loom over our heads as we approach the broad staircase that leads us to the first of several massive buildings which house the galleries, offices, and public spaces that make up this walled city-like compound devoted to Culture, History and permanence.  Architect Richard Meier manifests these heroic concepts in roughly hewn travertine - 1.2 million square feet of it; nothing says permanence like stone!  Sightlines are tightly focused, artfully directed and frame a murky diorama of LA and the Pacific Ocean in the near distance.  Nearby hills are still smoldering from a wildfire the day before.  Epic scale made this visitor feel like an ant; the reflected light and the 90 heat were oppressive.   I was impressed - as I was clearly meant to be, just hot!  The Central Garden designed by artist Robert Irwin, forms a lush, always changing, sensuous contrast to the monolithic surroundings; a live, pulsing vein coursing through stone. 

It’s nothing shy of a marvel to inhabit a space so familiar from pictures; very Alice-through-the-looking-glass.  Irwin’s gardens made quite a splash in the garden press when they were first unveiled 10 years ago.  I was fortunate to be with garden writer and friend Paula Panich who has made a study of the Getty gardens, traveling from her home nearby to visit the site once a week over the course of 6 months.   Her intimate observations and experience of this landscape throughout the seasons (such as they have in LA) and in different light was a gift and greatly enhanced my visit adding layers and layers of perception to my sun-stroked mind - did I mention it was hot?   

Renowned artist, Robert Irwin began as a painter in the Abstract Expressionist movement.  He later turned to sculpture and installation art in an exploration of light and space.  He was a somewhat controversial choice for the garden project but the Getty was committed to the creation of a space that would bridge their art collections indoors and out.  And so it was that a sculptor - not a garden designer- was selected to create the environment using plants, water, stone and hardscape materials as his medium.  (Remember this was in the early 90’s; today more and more garden designers are working in a sculptural fashion to create temporary and permanent garden/art installations domestically and abroad.  See Chaumount, Cornerstone, Martha Shwartz, Topher Delaney, Andy Goldworthy, Charles Jenks, et.al.)

The scale, colors, textures, sounds, fragrance, everything is managed and controlled, yes maybe even manipulated, to Irwin’s vision.  But all gardeners, even the most “naturalistic” among us, insert our ideas and impose our constraints on the process. Maybe we don’t all pluck our London plane trees (Platanus acerifolia ‘Yarwood’) to affect the “correct” level of dappled shade but every time I cut back a fading fall perennial, or trim a shrub so we can get past it on the pathway I am interfering in some way with the natural course of growth, fruition, decay and senescence.

Water is the lifeblood of this garden. It spills from a font in the wall at the top of the hillside, the “Amphora” or “Urinal” depending on who’s doing the naming, (apparently there wasn’t a lot of love lost between Meier and Irwin.)  Huge, craggy boulders break and direct its flow producing a deep, throaty rumbling.  Paved diagonal paths lead into the (most welcome) shade only to immediately emerge back into the glare on the other side of this narrow falling rill of trees, water and stone.  Beneath the canopy of oh-so-perfectly calibrated shade, intricate woven tapestries of mixed plantings draw the eye down to an intimate human scale; leaving  this relatively cool glade you are face to face with the tall imposing creamy stone walls and swards of turf that defy nature in their manicured state.  The effect is to be embraced and briefly sheltered by plants, cushioned with the sound of running water and surrounded by thousands of shades of green only to be reduced once again to insect scale in the face of the beautifully textured but imposing walls; strangely, I don’t remember the sound of the water carrying beyond the shade. 

And so it goes all down the hill, zigzagging in and out of the light until I’m delivered, slightly dazzled, to the Plaza level garden.  Park-like and restful by comparison, the Plaza is furnished with HUGE playful tuteurs of rusted steel; tall columns of bougainvillea fizz from their tops in hot tropical colors.  In the shade beneath these bowers intimate seating areas are created with simple woven wicker chairs that would be perfectly at home in a European park or under a shade tree in your own backyard; a pleasantly pedestrian touch within this monumental environment.

The plaza terrace also forms a viewing platform from which to look down on the Bowl garden, perhaps the most talked about, debated, and sometimes derided element of this amazing landscape.  A large circular pool is centered by what appears to be a floating knot garden of heavily sheared evergreen plant material.  The sinuous forms are rounded, curved, interlocking and absolutely perfect in their symmetry.  The choice of evergreen azaleas as the foundation for this feature attracted a great deal of scorn from critics and “haughty-culturalists” as my friend Linda used to so aptly name them; “gardeners” who felt deeply wounded and offended at what seemed to be such an inappropriate plant choice for such an exposed, hot and dry exposure.  Cool, northwest woodland glade this is NOT! 

The question begs, why so threatened by these choices?  If gardening is - by definition - interfering with the natural process isn’t everything else only a matter of degree?  And where do the moral issues figure into this equation?  We used to have a saying when I had the nursery, “grow it, kill it, know it” - as in push the limits, explore the boundaries, try things on, surprise yourself and move on or get over yourself!  Actually, we didn’t say “get over yourself” out loud as we prided ourselves on our sensitive customer service.  But we were always trying to lure people out of their comfort zone.  Hey, this is horticulture not medicine! We’re allowed casualties; it’s a sign of growth!  Remember?  It’s supposed to be FUN.

So, back to the birds and FUN.  Generally speaking I’m not a big fan of birds; they’re too close to the reptile end of the spectrum for my comfort level.  I suppose that means I don’t like snakes but frankly, I never come across snakes or any other reptile in my cool, temperate, rainy western Washington garden, so I can afford to be magnanimous with cold-blooded creatures.  So the very notion that I might find myself in a coop with 300 pigeons, beating their wings against my head and shoulders is worth noting.  

After spending the day confronting that line where culture meets horticulture we stopped for a quick visit with a local garden designer who was hosting a lovely luncheon on her back patio for some colleagues.  I should note that while in SoCal, I was the guest of my friend Debra Prinzing, an indefatigable woman if ever there was one.  Debra gets a lot done and knows how to fill the day with interesting people, beautiful gardens and new experiences - and still get home in time to crank out a couple of batches of fresh persimmon cookies! 

Our generous hostess for the afternoon plied us with cool rose wine and fruit tart.  We lounged on cushy chairs with a view out over the neighboring hills and watched a small contingent of pigeons (perhaps only 50) swoop and dive in expansive figure eights, their pure white bodies stark against the afternoon blue sky. Later, during a tour of her garden - is there a more beautiful tree than a California Coastal Live Oak?!? - the mistress of the acrobatic flock encouraged us to take a couple of the birds home to Thousand Oaks about a half hours drive away.  Once released, their homing instinct would lead them back in no time at all; literally she said they’d probably be home in 10 minutes!  Her only stipulation was that we had to capture the birds ourselves.  Our only instruction was to pick birds with an identifying pink bracelet.  Have you ever tried to pick out a teeny tiny pink bird bracelet in the midst of a whirling storm of feathers?!?  It was exhilarating. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced - very, VERY “bird-y.”

With the birds tucked safely into an animal crate in the back of the Subaru we drove up hwy 101 amidst the din of pigeon protests.  Once home, we took them into the backyard and quickly posed for a few pictures, marveling at their skeletal frames, their wing strength, scratchy feet and perfectly round eyes, (their lids close from the bottom up - it’s a little thing - but very “other”.)  Alex, Debra’s 11-year old son and I counted to 3 and with a whoop of laughter tossed the birds into flight while Debra shot a mini-movie.   As a couple they swooped in controlled yet incomprehensible formation; they circled a few times and were off.  We assume they went home.  I was left with a huge grin on my face and the sense I had just touched something much, much bigger than I.  Between the grandeur of the Getty and the pigeons I’d say it was a toss up; both were truly magnificent.

Here’s a bonus add on…Debra just sent me a link to her video of Alex and I releasing the birds…short and sweet but filled with laughter, blue skies… and D’s toes!

Pigeon release on YouTube

Am I in heaven?  No, Paradise.  The night is dark, the moon has yet to show it’s face.  I don’t even know what time it is–10?…  Midnight?… probably closer to 7:30; this is country-time.  I’m waiting for my bath - yes my bath - to cool.  With a gooey bowl of carrot cake for sustenance, tonight  I shall bathe in paradise by lantern light.  Night creatures are chirping and moths are bombing my laptop  screen–eewwwwww.  But remember, Paradise had snakes.

I’m on a tiny wooden deck that cantilevers over a woodland clearing, attached to a tiny aluminum shed (complete with slamming screen door) that serves as a stitching studio.  Out here, giant pines loom overhead, and thickets of wild roses carpet the undergrowth.  Indoors, the floor is pink, the walls creamy white, laddered with shelves holding all manner of fabrics, spools of colorful thread, scraps of tatting , embroidery samplers, lace and all sorts of very feminine ephemera.  Again, am I in heaven? 

On the deck is an old, green painted bench - my luggage rack. Nestled beneath a hedge laden with autumn rose hips,  an old cast iron tub is filled with water from the hose and has been heating over a propane burner for the past two hours–a sublime use of a turkey fryer if you ask me.  I’ve been cautioned that the bottom of the tub might be hot from the burner beneath it - rather like a stock pot on a stove top - and shortly, I intend to be soup!  Apparently one should test carefully; if I showed up with a blistered backside I might have some explaining to do when — and if— I return to the big city.

I’m trying to decide whether or not to light a campfire in my fire bowl, just to the side of the tub.  It seems excessive… critters trilling, lantern light, outdoor tub and carrot cake should be enough, don’t ya think?  But on the other hand when will I next find myself in heaven…or paradise?  I know I plan to light the candlelit chandelier that hangs from a pole protruding from my outdoor sleeping inglenook… Oh, didn’t I mention that?  My bed, my single, sweet, fluffy, white-down-comforted bed is tucked to one side of the deck beneath a shallow, shingled overhang.  Enclosed on three sides it is open to the north, and the sky, the critters, the lantern and…

Earlier this afternoon, I took a little nap only to awake in a puddle of late afternoon sun.  Groggy, relaxed, languid…this must be heaven - no paradise.  We’ll see how the rest of the night goes.  Rabbits are skittering in the trees…I’m telling myself they’re rabbits, that’s my story–I’m sticking to it.  They said the coyotes were out last night, yipping and yelping and doing their screaming coyote thing.  Moose routinely come through here..deer, and elk.  Mostly I’m just glad the yellow jackets have abated along with the heat of the day.

And now, a bath, cake and so to bed.

(I really did write this by lantern-light a couple of weeks ago on my Eastern Washington and Idaho road trip.  It seems a long time ago now.  These days I’m locked in my office, surrounded by resources, pegging away at the final draft of my preserving book and trying not to listen to the sound of the economy crashing around me. 

Two self-employeed artists with one kid in college and another just graduating from high school–and looking at colleges… these are not comfortable times.  And we’re the lucky ones!  No one can take our jobs, we drive old-really, really old, cars, and you can hardly say our nest egg is in danger.  Actually, our nest egg is more “nest” than egg, as we live in it.  We have lived our adult lives (and by definition, those of our children,) investing in our present, pursuing daily goals and dreams, and yes, paying a price at times.  That’s not to say we’re the irresponsible grasshopper of the cautionary fable.  There’s plenty we choose to go without–see old cars above–and we’ve earned our fair share of anxious moments, but how else can we do what we do?

In the end, I think we’re satisfied with our choices.  I know I wouldn’t change much, its been a rich ride, and one that allows me magical trips to Moscow, Idaho.  I’ll write more when I finish my oh-so-looming manuscript.  In the meantime a heartfelt THANK YOU to Mary Jane Butters, Nick, Carol, Brian, Katie and everyone at Paradise Farm.  I was touched by your warm hospitality and generous spirit…not to mention the delicious carrot cake!!!)

…First 5,000 years, almost everybody is a farmer.

Last 50 years, almost nobody is a farmer.  The 2 percent of Americans who farm are exotic, largely invisible pixies who magically turn petrochemicals into grocery-chain products encased in plastic wrap.”

The above quote, and my headline, are from an article entitled Satisfying an Old Hunger, by William Dietrich in this morning’s Footprint section of the Sunday paper.  Go there, read it, it’s encouraging, enlightening and entertaining–a farmer who “calls and sings” to his pasture-raised cattle to get them to return to the barn, instead of confining them to “filthy feedlots.”  I’m in love…  In fact the subtitle for the entire section reads:

Real Food Makes a Comeback:  You may now kiss your local farmer

Ethical bananas, urban communities, and pretty potagers.  It was a good read and I hope a permanent addition to the Seattle Times’ Sunday offering.  Admittedly, it was a bit uber-hip - Picks for veggie-growing virgins - but I only felt really old and not-uber-hip a few times.  Obviously, they don’t let the farmers write the headlines!

It was a perfect way to start my day as I head out on a solo roadtrip through Eastern Washington to Moscow, Idaho.  Blue skies, wheat fields, “blue highways” and roadside farmstands.  NPR on the radio…and QUIET!  What am I doing?  Lorene, go pack and hit the road!!!

 One last quote from the article that I think I’m going to post in several places throughout my home and office:

“At some point people in the resource industries gain their self-worth from what they do, not in how much money they make.” — Bob Hart, farmer, La Conner Flats Farm (and my newest hero)

 It’s an old saw…Time began in the garden and surely we track it’s passage in the growth of a tree, seasonal blossoms or a delicious harvest.  Winter into spring into summer and fall - rinse lather and repeat as my friend Jim says.  While long, lazy days futzing in the garden can stretching into languorous twilights on the deck all too soon it seems the leaves are falling and the nights are chill.   That is how this gardener tends to keep track of time.  There is a natural rhythm to the years and somehow 48 1/2 of them have carried me to this point.

I’m sitting here in southwest Utah.  All around me are red rocks, canyons, rusty adobe buildings, and the turquoise green fescues and sagebrush of spring in the high desert.  To find a more divergent landscape from that of my familiar Pacific Northwest  it would probably have to be lunar.  My eye scans the ground for something, anything in the way of recognizable plant life; I am a stranger in a strange land. 

For all that temperatures rise into the mid to upper 70’s each afternoon, mornings and evenings are cool and brisk. Spring comes later to this part of the world and the cottonwood trees remain bare and skeletal against an AMAZING blue sky.  It’s a good vacation for one who tends to never stop tending.

Red rocks and canyons, a sere and seemingly desolate land save the occasional lizard and song of the canyon wren.  Day hikes and excursions have taken us through hundreds of miles of more of the same.  It takes a 3 hour boat ride on Lake Powell - freezing, chapped and cranky in the windchill of 25 knots - for me to really see what is right before me.

Time.  Not time like it’s time to plant the peas, or time to harvest the tomatoes. Time, as in geologic time; scribed into sandstone bluffs, canyons, valleys and gorges carved from flattop mesas. Time has honed an entire landscape recording its presence and prevalence for millions, even hundreds of millions  of years with a language all it’s own.

…”synclines and anticlines, faults and folds, laccoliths, cinder cones and extinct volcanoes, eroded canyons and mountains of metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary origins: a big geological conundrum…” - Rocks and Plants, a pocket field guide to the geology and botany of the St. George basin, 1997, Eric Hansen

The boat slows down and our shivering bodies began to bask in the warmth of the afternoon sun as we slowly enter a narrow channel sculpted by the Colorado River that wends between sheer cliffs and rocky outcrops.  We are awed at the massive scale of the terrain and humbled by our tiny insignificance in this giant landscape.

Our destination is a short dock that is the trailhead of a path that leads to the Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the world’s largest known natural bridge carved when an ancient watercourse broke through the standing rock.  Ironically, when I finally opened my eyes to the rock I began to see the plants.  Seeps in the rock walls support little colonies of maidenhair ferns and tiny clumps of alpine primroses just coming into bloom. 

Primroses?!? In the desert?!!?  This is what I find endlessly enthralling about the natural world; I’m always learning and I’m always learning to see more.