Cabin Fever?

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”
Twyla Tharp

Illahe Nursery and Gardens during a late February snow

So here we are at the end of February, I found myself with several weeks off on account of switching careers from a bureaucrat back to a gardener. I had the best of intentions to get all the winter garden work done in that short period, and to my credit I did get my grandpa's old orchard sprayer working and did a prune and dormant oil application on the orchard. However mulching, weeding and such will have to wait until the thaw. 

I threw a couple of photo's in of a project this wonderful change in work scenery has rekindled. So I've never in my life taken two weeks in a row off work since I started into the career world. Which when I look back on it, it is a terrible travesty, now that I realize how wonderful two weeks in a row of doing whatever you want is. We get so caught up in chasing the paycheck that we start to put off things that bring joy and pleasure, and pretty soon you are trapped in the Ouroborus circle and chasing your own tail, we consume more than we produce so we must earn more pieces of paper to pay for the consumption, which locks us in a cubicle for most of the days of the week. I was watching a really great talk by Rick Steves, entitled "Travel as a political act". In it he was talking about how most of Europe works a modified schedule so vastly different from ours, some countries the work day is 5 hours long and some the work week is 4 days, this leaves them time for art and fellowship. Yet the production level they output is remarkably close to that of the United States, because they are more productive in the shorter work period by way of coming in happy every day, having enjoyed time with family and friends in greater life to work balance. I realized as a I was staring at an unfinished project that I thought I had started 10 years ago, that it had actually been 22 years since I first crafted this guitar neck and inlaid my name in Mother of Pearl and Gabon Ebony wood. Sure a lot had happened in that 22 years, university, diplomas, marriage, raising baby, buying houses, selling houses, moving, starting over etc. But why did the art have to fall by the wayside? 

Working on the fishcaster, a custom telecaster project I started 22 years ago 

I don't know if I have a good answer for where the art went, But this week I dusted off my old box of inlay tools, threaded a new blade in the pearl saw and got back to the work on the Fishcaster, my custom made telecaster guitar that I started as a kid and now intend to finish as a slightly chubbier, somewhat wiser kid. I got some bookmatched pieces of oldgrowth Oregon Myrtlewood (Umbellularia californica) for the top of the Oregon Ash body, (Fraxinus latifolia) the neck is Oregon grown Red Alder (Alnus rubra) and Rosewood (Machaerium scleroxylon), I have an idea for some fern leaf inlays to work in as well. This is the year I bring Art back into my life in one of the forms I enjoy it most, music.

I know you can never really claim to be an artist, that moniker has to be bestowed upon one by others, but you can choose an art form to work with and my preferred outlet for art has always been inlaying mother of pearl and abalone shell into wood. I think in another life I probably would have been happy as a Luthier.

Yes this is a flower blog, but as I've said many times previous it's also my garden journal, and notes to myself sometimes, a weather observation portal,  as well as political commentary and social justice zine. I know I should have a glitzy website with just photo's of the flowers and no stories about about how I moonlight as a guitar maker. But this is my thing and if you want to see flowers you simply have to put up with the fact that I have a voice and whatever little message I want to get out I get to get out here. But for those that want to see what's blooming here is what a walk around the garden yielded:

Chinodoxa, Muscari, Scilla and Ipheion all lending shades of blue or perwinkle to the winter display.

Muscari psuedomuscari in the snow 

Seed heads of cardoon with the farmhouse in the background. 

The Chimonanthus is still going despite the late February chill. 

Narcissus hispanicus ssp. bujei
This is a rare one from Iberian Andalusia, of course it looks like so many of the big early flowering golden Narcissus to the those who don't notice the subtle. It's a fantastic increaser,  short stems and early and strong bloomer and for some head scratching  reason hardly sells the last few years I have offered it. 

It's 29 degrees outside but the sun is shining strongly. 4" of snow cover's pretty much everything. It sounds like we are in for that clear, cold Feburary week that is almost always a given. I will point out that in past years, it hasn't coincided with a blanket of snow and it's usually the week I use to get much of the pruning done around the gardens.

Cheers to making more art in this lifetime!

Mark

P.S. if you haven't seen or read "Travel as a Political Act" do yourself and the world a favor and look it up.

Winter Projects

"Substitute "damn" every time you are inclined to write the word very, your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should have been"

Mark Twain

Fritillaria obliqua is blooming now in the greenhouse.
What a queen mother of the Chocolate lilies, can you even name the color of those flowers?

Got a few weeks to get some winter projects done, So far I replaced the soil heating cable in the greenhouse. This should make for some good propagation projects this spring. My old heating cables went out 2 years ago and I just winged it for a couple of years. I also started redoing my grandpa's old orchard sprayer. That's been a satisfying project, hopefully by next week things will clean up a bit weather wise and I'll be able to get a dormant oil application on the orchard. No more 20 tank fill ups and getting soaked with a backpack sprayer. Grandpa had a battery operated 20 gallon tank sprayer, Yesterday I got it all cleaned out and the pump running again. 

The snow was actually falling this morning, giant puffy flakes but the temperatures have been in the mid 30's over night. 

Lot's of bulbs are up and growing now, I did a dilute P and K application to the Greenhouse bulbs, but I'm waiting for more warmth before I give any nitrogen. I've been liking my mix lately since I went to a bit of a loamier mix to hold some moisture through our lately very, er Damn warm summers. I think it balances the nutrient distribution a bit from the composted cow manure and I don't see any signs of a lack of nitrogen early in the growth period when temps are so low that nitrogen probably won't get assimilated well.

Chilly as we hit midweek, with a mix of snowshowers and clouds with ample rain.

Cheers,
Mark

Whats blooming in the Middle of February?

"We are all born ignorant but you must work hard to remain stupid"

Ben Franklin

This edition of a walk around the garden is dedicated to those who work hard to remain stupid, like so many folks I know in local government and unfortunately now days that plethora of stupidity seems to go all the way to the top. Really, a state of emergency? To build a giant wall? That may be the most ignorant thing I've heard in my life and apparently the leadership of this nation is working over time to remain stupid. 

Colchicum hungaricum 'Valentines'
It's been cold and rainy with most of the early species in the garden staying somewhat closed up.

Fritillaria obliqua
The stuff in the greenhouse is a fairing a little bit better with the weather, mostly on account of the drier but cool conditions these early bloomers seem to love. 

Crocus x leonidii 'Early Gold'
The potted specimens in the greenhouse are about a week ahead of the material in the rock garden.

 

Fritillaria crassifolia
These are my mixed pots of the JJA collections from Iran

Just some roguish hellebore seedlings foiling the rock garden.

That's what quick walk around the gardens at illahe showed on a mid Febuary day with temps staying in the 30's most nights and copious amounts of rain falling, it seems like winter decided to condense itself quite readily into the last few weeks. If you have been following this seasons weather reports we were so mild for all November through well into January. It will be interesting to see if Spring comes raging in sooner than expected. But for now welcome is the heavy snow fall in the cascades and to those that take comfort in the grey and damp, it just plain feels like an Oregon winter again.

Cheers,

Mark

Valentines Day 2019

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a mans character give him power"

Abraham Lincoln

Chinodoxa 'Valentines Day'
A Selection from a garden in Liverpool, made in the 1980s. It's a reliably early flowering selection of C. lucilliae. 

Happy Valentines day! Today I ended a decade of government service, After years of being a government mule for the Federal, State and two local governments I finally got a chance to get out. Now I will say that I got to do some amazing things in those 10 years. I lost count after having planted over 3000 trees in that time. I sowed literally hundreds of thousands of native wildflowers in wetlands and restoration plots. I restored miles of river bank to it's native state, and educated countless folks on the importance of protecting the environment and how our rivers and streams are constantly threatened by pollution from urban runoff. These things will always bring me the satisfaction of knowing I worked hard to make a difference in my local habitat and I truly believe this little part of the world is a bit better off for that.

However in that 10 years I also met some of the most disgusting and truly terrible characters one could ever imagine. I'm not sure how it is that pretty much everyone that ends up in a position of power such as management or as a director of human resources absolutely recinds any sense of empathy or human connection. Its as if to step into a position of power in a local government you must check your character at the door. Now this is a flower bulb blog, but it's also a measure of my character and to that end it's absolutely a diatribe on social justice and anything else I want it to be for that matter. I feel deeply and truly sad for those folks that have checked there character at the door for a fat paycheck. The tax payers and workers absolutely deserve better than you. Mr. Lincoln pointed it out and someone else down the line said this "a true measure of character is determined by how you treat those with less power then yourself". Well in a decade of working in far ranging bureaucracies I found that unfortunately those in power treat those with less power as less than human. You know who you are. Shame on you. History will absolutely remember your character and at some point you will face the truth about how you treated others.

Cheers to getting away from the social inequity of disgusting people and to finding new paths where people treat others with dignity and decency.


Rainy, windy and highs in the 40's

Peace and love to you on this Valentines day!

Mark

It did actually snow

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” 

                                                                                                      Douglas Adams

Colchicum hungaricum 'Valentine'
This one always seems to enjoy a good dusting of the white stuff. I have mentioned phenology before and perhaps this is where it comes in to play. I think I have more photo's of this flower partially covered by snow then any other. It's better than an almanac for my backyard, if Colchicum hungaricum 'Valentine' is coming up, there is a better than good chance you are gonna see snow.

Seed Flats covered by a white blanket.

I really just wanted to point out that it did actually snow, since I slept in enough yesterday to miss it and this morning a fresh coating forced me to get up  and drive to work in it.

I remember a story Jack Poff told me once, He said Mrs. Berry when she would have a particularly choice batch of Alpine seed come in from one of the collectors she funded, would flat them up and have Jack drive them up to a spot she had picked out off the road just past the small community of Rhododendron, Oregon. At about 1,600 feet in elevation, it reliably gets more snow then the Dunthorpe neighborhood where Berry made her garden. Jack would have to find a particular tree and make sure that the the old wooden flats she used weren't seen from the road and tuck them away for the winter. When spring would come he would make the journey back up Mt. Hood to find the flats and pack them back down to the garden. Jack remembered her insisting on this treatment for  her precious collections of Primula cusickiana from the Wallowa Mountains in particular.

I tell ya, ever since that story I have always welcomed a blanket of snow on the seed flats, I haven't taken the time myself to make a similar drive to Marion Forks in my neck of the woods to hide seed flats behind a tree near a road marker, but I have made always smiled a bit to myself every time I set out a seed flat only to have it covered by a welcoming blanket of snow.

Maybe it's a bit of the freeze thaw action that works the seed coat in it's bed of grit that makes the difference? Or the pressure of the snow on top of the flat that puts some hyraulic pressure on the seeds? Maybe it's just one of those old time tricks that you can't really explain but you just know it works.

I do need to apologize to the folks that have been dealing with these polar vortex issues, as I am about to state that our lowest predicted low for the year is about to it 23 degrees F, and folks have had to weather -56 degrees F.

But then again this is Oregon and the generally mild climate is what makes it such a good place to grow a wide variety of plants. And sometimes necessitates the wishing for snow or driving to find it.

Cheers to thinking like the dolphins,

Mark

The First Snow of 2019

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”  Lewis Carroll 

It did actually snow this morning but by the time I got up to take some pictures and walk around the garden it had all been melted off. It was only a light dusting and now it's 39 degrees with some sun poking through. The forecast says it's not supposed to get much below 27 this week, although it's suppsed to be clear and I'm guessing it will be cooler here at illahe.

Narcissus romieuxii 'Julia Jane'
This one was originally selected out of a batch of seed collected by the Legendary James Archibald in Morrocco in the late 60's. It's a pretty amazing winter blooming hoop petticoat that offsets as fast as you can divide it, blooms reliably in the coldest of winter seasons and the buttery, lemon yellow blossoms are just wonderful. 

Fritillaria crassifolia
Another one we owe to Mr. Archibald, because of him and Jenny's forays into Iran.  I threw this one in mostly because of the pheonolgy factor, I've been tracking bloom times on this blog now for a few years now and this one is rarely the first Fritillaria to flower, usually it's F. agrestis or F. obliqua. Both of which are close but not the first across the finish line. Phenology with bulbs in pots is an interesting thing, so many factors really, did it get repotted this year? At what depth? Was the summer extra dry? The winter extra warm? 

A winter walk around the garden on a cold morning, like I mentioned I missed the snow. The chinese Mahonia is just starting in, but the Chimonanthus in the background has been blooming for a month now and the fragrance is awesome. In milder winters it's gotten the blossoms blasted off by hard winter frosts in the teens.

Good Stuff coming for the future, 2019 is going to be the best one ever!

Cheers, 

Mark