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.

My manuscript is safely in the capable hands of Sasquatch Books, my dusty office is somewhat cleaned up (I have the asthmatic wheeze to prove it) and I think I’m over the post-project-flatline.   It’s time for some fun and games!  So here’s today’s version of fun - although, given that the rain has let up I hope to get out for a good  hike in the park as well.

My theory?  “Tags” that circulate among bloggers are a barometer of our neglected workload - that is - what we should be doing were it not for the fact that we’re out on the play yard in cyberspace.  A lovely diversionary tactic.  Frankly, I know I’m in somewhat of a (supremely thankful) post-election vacuum.  I suppose I could go outside and finish planting my bulbs…but where’s the fun in that?!?

So, this is how the game goes…  Flowergardengirl “tagged” me with the following challenge:

Grab the nearest book at hand (no fair looking for something intellectual, just what’s within arm’s reach of your keyboard)  Turn to page 56, go to the 5th sentence and post your results - include the 2-3 sentences that follow to provide some sort of context.  Then turn around and “tag” 5 or so more blogging friends to do the same.

I guess it’s sort of like those origami “fortune tellers” we used to make as kids… random snippets give us a peak into ourselves.  At any rate, writers, bloggers, and communicators are generally readers as well.  I think it will be fun to see what books we surround ourselves with at any given moment…so here goes:

…”this is only practical in climates where the sun is especially strong, and where plants such as cacti are tolerant of severe conditions.  In gentler climates, this degree of enclosure will force plants to grow straight up in search of light, making it difficult to incorporate plants that need to be grown in a natural way.  An added interest of this scheme is the way in which Martha Schwartz has updated the concept of garden design used in the traditional enclosed gardens of the Renaissance, the hortus conclusus, and the more recent tradition in England of subdividing the garden, popular during the golden age of Edwardian gardening.”

OK, even I can’t believe that my snippet includes the words “Renaissance” “hortus conclusus” and a discussion of Edwardian gardening!!!  The book at hand is The Minimalist Garden by Christopher Bradley-Hole; it was still piled on my desk because I was using it as a reference when I wrote my last post and referred to contemporary landscape designers working in a more sculptural fashion.  I’d like to tell you that my mind is all neatly categorized and references fall from my lips with a graceful whisper…but, not-so-much.  Instead I have hundreds of post-it notes, scraps of paper and, my favorite - a killer library!  I would rather buy books than anything else…except perhaps food!

Now, true confessions.  The book which was actually even closer than the above mentioned learned monograph was Wordpress for Dummies!!!  But unfortunately page 56 was filled with (unintelligible) charts and graphs - hardly the stuff of fun and games.  However, this book is far more indicative of how I’ve been spending my days; lost in the miasma of SEO, plugins, meta descriptions and … you get the drift.  Wordpress for DUMMIES, only points out how very, VERY much I still have to learn.  Fortunately, I’ve put myself in the capable hands of blog and web consultants who are trying to lead me out of the dark  and into the brave new world of digital media.  Me, I’d rather talk about gardening, food, travel and books!

 Now…here are my “tags”
1. Shedstyle - Debra Prinzing is a dear friend, a wonderful garden and design writer based in the LA area, and my companion on many a garden adventure.
2. Here’s the Thing - Lorraine is a longtime friend of the ages and my heart; a gifted and multi-talented woman
3. Idaho Gardener - MA is a riot!  I love her laugh, her enormous heart and sparky life perspective.  A self-avowed “book slut” I can’t wait to see what she’s reading!
4. A Photographers Garden Blog - David Perry is an extraordinary artist who helps us to see what is right in front of us.  He’s also a busy guy - don’t hate me for tagging you big guy!
5. Passports and Seedpackets - Marty Wingate has my dream job (well one of them) she’s a columnist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, regular gardening contributor on our local NPR affiliate and she designs and leads fabulous garden tours throughout the world, how cool is that?
6. Red Dirt Ramblings - Dee is a new acquaintance I just made at the Garden Writers Symposium in September.  Her abilities and knowledge about the web, digital media and blogging are an inspiration…I want to be Dee when I grow up.
7. Diggin Food - Willie Galloway writes about growing food and bringing community to the table.  She’s also got some sweetheart chickens!

 Go have some fun today browsing your bookshelves and these blogs.

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

“I have my litany of frustrations, as everyone does, but ultimately I try to be hopeful because I don’t see any decent alternative.  I want to believe we can turn things around.  It would be cynical to give up on life and turn our backs on the kids:  Cynicism is irresponsible.  And having hope is a much more healthy way to live.  I think of hope as a design decision.”

-Barbara Kingsolver

I found the above quote (somewhere?) many years ago, shortly after “the events of 9/11″ as they say.  I typed it up, made copies and stuck one on my office wall and tucked one into my wallet right there next to the red Chinese New Years envelop that was a gift (filled with a Starbucks card) from my friend Big Dave.  These scraps of paper, mixed in with receipts, credit cards, my library card and various other “you’re-a-member” cards are precious talismans to me.  As I search for my Costco card, trying to calm my nerves from the hell-that-is-the-Costco-parking lot, I come across the bright red envelop or the Kingsolver quote… and breathe.  The paper has become so worn it feels felted; smudged with dirt and lipstick, creased and torn from the nearly 7 years it has accompanied me.

I love Barbara Kingsolver.  Yes, her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is compelling in a way that has changed many lives, my own included.  But it’s her 1995 book of essays, entitled High Tide in Tucson that I found transformative.  Especially the essay by the same title as the collection, about a little hermit crab that hitched a ride in a shell collected on a beach vacation in the Bahamas all the way to a house in the middle of the desert in Arizona. 

With the gift of a storyteller and the sensitivity of a naturalist, Kingsolver tells the tale of her daughter discovering the crab–”EEEEEK”–and how, together, they make a home for the poor creature so far from it’s native habitat.   A revolving wardrobe of shells is offered as is a roomy terrarium - even a name, Buster.  I won’t spoil how it turns out, or what became of Buster, but this simple essay opened my eyes to the connectedness - across miles, habitat and even understanding - of all living creatures.  I can just hear my kids, “you are SUCH a NERD, Mom.”

Anyway, Kingsolver has been a hero of mine ever sense and her sentiments on hope struck a deep chord with me.  Too often, we are accused of being naïve, or unsophisticated when we express hope.  Hope is often mistaken for “wishing” and “desire”, as in “I wish for success, or enough money…or for someone to come clean my house!”  Hope is something other, an attitude, an outlook… “hope is a design decision”…I love that.  Not passive wishing, or covetous wanting, but a deliberate decision to approach the world from a certain perspective.

We hear a lot about hope these days, in the news, campaign materials, and fevered rhetoric 24/7.  What if we deliberately made the decision to hope?  To open our eyes to our need for community, support and relationships, and acknowledged our connectedness across miles, habitat and even understanding?   Yeah, yeah, yeah…it’s getting thick in here; but what if?

It’s like the hours I spend down on my muddy knees planting bulbs each fall.  I always put it off until the rains begin, not for any reason other than bulb planting is not one of my favorite garden chores and I always put it off as late as I can.  Digging in cold, wet dirt to bury very unpromising-looking nuggets of vegetable matter in the HOPE that they will blossom into lovely, colorful, often fragrant bloom in 4 to 5 months time is something I know to be true.  Just as I know that those bulbs which remain on the potting bench withering in their paper bags will most certainly, not bloom.

I’ve planted a few bulbs so far this season, early for me!  But dozens more are waiting for me to get out there and get busy.  But first, I have to finish my manuscript - it’s crunch time ’round here, and truth be told, why I wish someone would come clean my house; I’m definitely not attending to such matters.  No, I’m caught up in cured meats, pickles, drip cheeses, and herbal libations.  The other night I dreamt about salted lemons!  But the beginning of November is almost here.  Hope is a design decision.  I know I’ll get the book done, the bulbs buried, the floors swept, but most of all I wish for…desire…yearn for and crave a collective spirit of hope.

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)

This past weekend my husband, myself and two of our best friends set out to explore the Puyallup Fair.  This is “the big one”, as fairs go in this part of the country and the experience is as much about the thrill-seeking rides and packed performance schedule as it is about the exhibits.  For me?  Not so much…

It was a beautiful day - blue, blue skies and warm temperatures; just the September we deserve here in the Pacific Northwest before dark gloom and impending rain descend on us in the coming months.  None of us had visited the Fair in quite some time.  I think my son was an infant the last time I was there!  Now he has facial hair!!! 

It was with great anticipation that we set out to explore classic fair standards… Miracle creams for dry skin, cookware that just about makes dinner for you, foot soaks and teeth whitening, wondrous chamois, kitchen mops and jewelry cleaners.  Deals on new windows for your house, tractors for your lawn(?!?) and questionable appliances that will grant you every leisure.  It was all a bit much, and before long it felt like my head was going to explode.  Although I’ll admit they had me with the fancy food mill - until I saw the price!!!

As the day progressed and the crowds grew in number, things took on an even more hectic air.  I ask you -why do they even offer those noise-making horns?  What says “country fair” about their screech…and WHY do parents cave in an buy them for little ones???  They know they’re only going to blow them incessantly!!!  I’ll take the call of the “Carney” vendors any day.  That food mill was really, really cool… 

We escaped to the barns and grange exhibits and there we discovered the heart of the fair still beats warmly.  Lumbering dairy cows contentedly chewed their cud as their 4H handlers brushed them, braided their tails and refreshed their sweet hay.  Those eyelashes and big brown eyes were enough to win me over to country life…on the cows, not the 4H kids, who tended to be somewhat tough looking and well, high school-like; heavy makeup, baggy jeans and tight sweaters.  But dedicated affection and commitment to their animals shone through their worldly ennui. I adore my highly capable and responsible children but I just don’t see them maintaining the necessary and routine care of large barnyard animals!  Feeding the cat on an irregular basis is considered a chore.

My favorite moments of the day?  Well, the teeny, tiny, oh-so-pink, 2 day old, piglets were a riot and we saw some quilts that were truly humbling in their craftsmanship.  Hint: one of the titles was “OCD isn’t always a bad thing”.  We perused displays of jams, jellies, pickles and jarred meats, as well as slices of pie, cake, brownies and something called “cereal bars”.  But at the end of the day it was the vegetable displays that won my heart, closely followed by the floral exhibits.  The colors, textures and utter variety was staggering and to me represented the daily devotion and countless hours invested by honest gardeners up against whatever the season was dishing out. 

So, leaving nothing but footsteps and taking nothing but pictures (and a certain caloric load!!!) here are my snapshots from our day at the Puyallup Fair.

a veritable rainbow of veggies!

award winning flowers!!

No passion is without its Control Issues, Gardening is no exception.

The following is an excerpt from Hortus Miscellaneous, my first book, a humble little hodgepodge of gardening information and instruction that, like the Ouija board of kid-dom, always seems to have something to say about the human condition:

Pollard: a woodland management technique traditionally employed to produce crops of firewood or lumber in which trees on a single stem were cut back to a height just above that of grazing livestock.

 Pollarded sycamores at Filoli

Pleach: Tree branches are trained in a single horizontal plane above a clear stem, eventually knitting together with the branches of adjacent trees; an elevated hedge as it were. 

Topiary: the traditional craft of training and pruning plants into a variety of forms be they strongly geometric or whimsically representational.

Espalier : a restrictive form of pruning consisting of a central stem supporting several tiers of paired horizontal branches on which short fruiting spurs are maintained. Espaliered fruit trees are often trained against a southern wall where they benefit from retained heat, ripening their crop more quickly. 

Parterres and Knots: meticulously clipped plants form intricate geometric patterns representing the gardener’s ultimate control over the garden; generally designed to be viewed from above for the most impressive display

Miniature knot garden at Filoli

As gardeners, we’d like to think we’re in charge.  Actually it’s pretty human to want to CONTROL our environment, keep our loved ones safe and happy, deck our surroundings and adorn our image.  In our pretty little heads the birdies sing, the tomatoes ripen and no one gets hurt! 

Gardening seems pretty harmless in the grand scheme of things.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been drawn to knot gardens and topiary; their clipped formality is a paragon of control.  Having tried to manage a full blown knot garden for several years I’m now willing to let the groundskeepers play that game. 

Hats off to Kathy LaFleur and the amazing (& huge) knot she manages at her garden in Rancho Santa Fe.  I met Kathy last fall when I had the opportunity to stay in her guesthouse.  Waking in the morning to see the clipped rosemary spangled with dew was magical.  Note:  do you know how fast rosemary grows???  This is not standard knot garden material this is ART on a nearly daily basis!!!

These past several years I’ve narrowed my formal aspirations to a series of small table top knot gardens and Lonicera nitida ‘Red Tip’ standards.  Tough day at the keyboard?  Clip, clip, clip… Spouse being all too human or it’s too much to think about actually weeding in the heat?  Snip, snip, snip.  Not fit for polite society?  Trim, finesse and detail the poor things!

Life can be a slippery slope fraught with heartache, loss and fear and anxiety.  A wise person remarked - our lives don’t  necessarily have a goal, in the sense that we never truly  “arrive”.  Instead what we are given are “moments” every day - our present.  A beautiful bloom, a beloved partner or child, the taste of a ripe berry.  If we can identify and cherish those moments, then we are living our lives. 

But in the meantime, when things get dicey it’s nice to be able to exert a little control, even if it is on my little radio flyer table top knot garden!

We have a custom in our house.  Every first day of school, the kids get their picture taken in front of the Blue Door.  Actually, most of the doors in our house are blue; “Blue Door Day” is code for Very Important Event.  School, athletic events, proms, finals, travel adventures - you know the sort.  There is generally much rolling of the eyes and impatient sighs…”mommmmm, I gotta go!”  But the real magic is when you line all the Blue Door shots up together.  Together they tell a story of the growth of a family.

This year we’re finding the Blue Door a little slippery.  My son is due at school (across town) at 7:10 AM!!!  To say that he is not a “morning person” is to call rain wet.  I’ve missed the opportunity to snap my BD shot these past two days as he’s lucky to even be dressed, equipped and mobile…feeding is optional. 

Today is my daughter’s first day student teaching.  Talk about the circle completing itself, from first day of Kindergarten to teaching!  We got the shot this morning.  (She was generous enough to have roommates take her BD pictures, minus the blue door, during the years she was off at college - see, she gets it!)  We’ll keep trying for the moving target that is Max flying out the (blue) door every morning around 6:45am!!!

I’m not what you would call a “helicopter mom”, ever hovering and orchestrating my kids’ daily lives - not even close.  In fact, I’m more apt to declare “stick a fork in her/him - she’s/he’s DONE!”  Well, Max is almost done, we do still have to get him out the door every morning for the next 9 months!!! 

It’s not necessarily an easy transition to watch your kids go out into an oh-so-flawed world.  It can cause a mother to cramp up with control (or lack thereof).  So, what do I do?  I go out into the garden, of course, where I can capture compositions of color and contrast and still a moment, caught in pixels, where everything works. 

In keeping with the Blue Door Day here are my snaps of garden blues:

A shade composition of Dichroa fibrifuga, or Blue Evergreen Hydrangea, and the finely cut, nearly turquoise blue foliage of Dicentra ‘Langtrees’, or Fringed Bleeding Heart.  The real WOW is still a month or so off when the blossoms of the Dichroa give way to 1/2″ metallic blue/purple berries that hold on the plant well into the winter.  A few dangling racemes of heart-shaped white flowers on the bleeding heart are still in bloom as they have been since early spring - now that’s a satisfying plant!  Note: Dicentra ‘Langtrees’ is apt to scuttle through a bed mingling and generally insinuating itself into the crown of everything nearby, as you see here.  Finally, the white leaf margins of Hosta ‘Regal Spendor’ brighten the dark green of the groundcover.

I’m all about the edibles…ornamental edibles are even better!  ‘Sunshine Blue’ Blueberry is a winner on so many accounts.  A dwarf plant, to about 3-4′, clothed in beautiful chalky blue evergreen foliage that takes on rich autumnal hints with cool weather.  Fat berries set in numbers - the plants are self-fertile - and taste like the sweet, tangy wild native blueberries of our Cascade mountains.  No bland, mealy berry on this star!  The plants have only been in the garden since May but already are earning their keep in so many delicious ways.  ‘Sunshine Blue’ was originally developed as a commercial crop but because the berries set underneath the canopy of leaves they were problematic to harvest and were not considered a success.  Factory farm loss is the homeowners win!!!  The berries are hidden from the birds and crop over a long period of time.  I can’t say enough wonderful things about this beautiful landscape plant.

Climbing Blueberry, or Billardiera longiflora, is not in fact a real blueberry but one can clearly see how it got the moniker! An evergreen vine to about 6′ that twines itself neatly up the railing of our back stairs.  Narrow dark green foliages remains clean throughout the year and shaggy, copious, somewhat nondescript limey-green flowers appear in May only to give way to these beauties in late summer.  Oh MY!  This is another one of those plants that, for all it’s relatively small dimensions, totally steals the show when it is in fruit!!!  Brilliant plantsmanship, clever compositions, vintage trailer be damned…  this little guy wins ‘em over every time.

Okay, technically more black than blue, but like I always say - a gal’s gotta eat!  The himalayan blackberries are ripe in the weedlots and greenbelts throughout the city.  Their perfumed, winey-tart flavor is our ONLY reward for fighting their wicked brambles and thorns all the rest of the months of the year!  A pernicious weed if there ever was one, thickets are quick to engulf empty lots, fences, and small buildings.  This is the Northwest’s Kudzu…only we can make a delightful jam from it’s fruit.  Truth be told, I would probably miss these thugs if we ever did erradicated them…which there is absolutly no chance of ever happening. 

The coming week promises to be sunny and warm.  Isn’t that always the way on the week the kids have to go back to school?!?  I think I’ll wander over to the greenbelt, pick some more berries and make some tarts, a nice treat to get us all over this seasonal hump.

Nothing like a book project to focus one’s attention.  The Encyclopedia of Country Living (or ECL) Guide to Preserving and Canning is proceeding at due pace.  Chapters on Freezing, Canning, Drying and Live Storage have been fleshed out and I’ve got the blackberry jelly, raspberry jam, peach jam, cherry vinegar and quick pickles to prove it!

It is with no small amount of concern that my household anticipates salting and cured meats but I’m having a ball.  I’ve always had a streak of Little house in the Big Woods in me…that chapter where they make maple taffy on freshly fallen snow…?  Trust me, it doesn’t work with Aunt Jemima and city slush, I tried in the fourth grade!  But the romance, the independent spirit and the stubborn streak of frontier self reliance is so attractive to me.  (When I presented my package of freshly procurred LARD this afternoon my husband anticipated the day when I would don a buckskin and wield a knife in my teeth…but he’s just being dramatic!)

Last week we celebrated birthdays with a household of family and a pile of pulled pork!  Seemed like the perfect opportunity to practice my quick pickles.  Pork, pickles, slaw…what’s not to love?!?  It’s quite a responsibility to test, taste and sample one’s way through an entire battery of preserving skills, but you do what is called of you (YUM!)  I’ve always loved pickles and the intrigue of “quick” fits my impatient nature (as well as my minimal storage space).  Here are my results:

Provisions were gathered:  organic carrots, radishes, sliced fennel, green (& purple) snap beans from the garden, shallots, sweet and hot peppers and cherry tomatoes - a colorful and nutritous blend! 

Everything was duly sliced (the radishes and shallots got a quick blanch i.e., dip, in boiling water followed by an icewater bath to chill)

A pungent and flavorful broth was made by combining 6 cups white wine vinegar, 1 1/4 c. sugar, 2 tablespoons kosher salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns, bringing the whole mixture to a boil over medium heat in a non-reactive saucepan.

Clean jars were filled thusly:

1) Carrots, peppers (hot & sweet), and a fresh bay leaf

2) Radishes, shallots and fresh thyme

3) Beans, fennel and fresh chervil (Note to self…purple beans fade to an unsightly almost, but-not-quite green when doused with hot liquid)

in the way of full disclosure I must add that I also tried cherry tomatoes and thyme - but don’t go there.  Too mushy.  I’ll just take one for the team here, trust me. 

Once packed with beautiful veggies, the jars were then topped off with the hot, flavored vinegar solution, capped and left to cool.  They spent most of a day in the refrigerator and then debuted in their colorful goodness the following evening to fabulous aclaim.  They were crunchy, spicy, and leant a real zest to the richness of the pulled pork sandwiches.

Nearly a week later I’m still pulling out a few morsels to liven my lunch!