Raven and Sparrow

Wall progress

Projects at our house seem to go very slowly. I'm not sure what takes us so long, but it is always thus. Our big deal at the moment is the wall out front that will form the basis for our new patio. It is an integral part of the house design and was supposed to have been built first, but when that didn't happen it got moved to last place. We have been looking out the dining room windows at our septic tank for three years now, so the time finally came to move ahead. The first thing was to remove the fir tree at the corner of the house, which happened this spring. Then huge, wide footings were placed and poured, requiring the cement truck and the pumper truck to find their ways together down our steep driveway. After that the wall forms were built. I of course would have preferred a beautifully fitted rock wall, but the cost was over the moon, so concrete was the next choice. I was worried that such a tall concrete wall would be harsh and prison-like so we had cedar planks rough sawn and placed vertically inside the forms to give form and texture to the wall face and mirror the vertical siding on the house.

The big trucks made a return appearance and the wall was poured.

Then the forms were stripped off and I could see what had been wrought. I was pretty pleased over all. The texture of the wood transferred well to the concrete and the oil used on the raw cedar imparted a pale fawn color that blends more softly with the house and the woods than raw concrete.

Now we had a huge hole to fill.

Many successive dump truck loads of rock chips were piled in the driveway and two machines, big and little, were employed to move it all into place. The rock dust got into everything.

At this point we can walk out onto our patio, but an edge cap, finer fill, sand and pavers are still to come. Also a railing, because it is quite a drop. Maybe in another three years we will be done.

 

Gardens to the max

This week I've been on garden overload. My dear friends and former neighbors (the fabulous gardeners) invited me down for a couple of days of garden tours. First we took a ferry ride to the Olympic peninsula for an open day at Windcliff, Dan Hinkley's home garden. Dan is an internationally celebrated plant collector and the creator of Heronswood, a garden of magic. After Burpee Seeds acquired and then abandoned Heronswood, Dan moved to a smaller, more open site on a high bluff looking east across Puget Sound towards the skyscrapers of Seattle. There is some woodland on the site, which he has turned into an arboretum of trees from around the world, and a fabulous vegetable garden, but the focus is the cliff edge. Unusual in this land of rhododendrons, it is planted with flowing grasses and low growing tropicals, the better to appreciate the movement of the wind across the bluff. 

The textural and color combinations are masterful and the interplay of intimate plant groupings and scenic vistas made the experience truly special. 

The next day we took the annual garden tour sponsored by the Woodinville Garden Club. Woodinville is a suburb east of Seattle where we used to live on the same street as the aforementioned fabulous gardeners. The garden club tour is always good and this year it outdid itself. We drove around to five local gardens of outstanding quality, looking at large border swathes and tiny planter groupings, each one more exquisite than the last. One garden was carved out of dense woodland around a lodge style log house and had a particularly playful, idiosynchratic spirit. 

The garden I think about the most in retrospect was the tiny yard of a nice, but undistinguished house in a very dense suburban neighborhood. Approaching from the street, standing on the sidewalk with the other garden gawkers, I wondered what could have elevated this property to garden tour heights. What wasn't immediately obvious was that this house was bordered on two sides by forest greenbelt, so when you stepped into the backyard you felt surrounded by primeval Northwest woods, carefully managed and artfully groomed to showcase the native plants in their highest glory. There were huge cedars and firs, nurse stumps and huckleberries, mossy logs and a little stream. The actual property was as small and narrow as you would expect it to be, but made complete use of the borrowed scenery from the greenbelts. Walking along the back of the house studded with attractive spots to sit and admire, it was a little like one of those dioramas in the natural history museum, this one dedicated to the beauty of the vast forests of the Pacific Northwest. The contrast with the front of the house was almost shocking. It gave me lots to think about when I returned to my glorious but messy home place. I would like to show its beauties to such advantage. Altogether it was a great get-away....friends and gardens, what could be better?

Needing navy blue

After embroidering everything I planned on the butterfly cloth I stood back and it was clear: More Navy Blue Needed. Now, how should it be applied? I spent a week trying out various possibilities, thinking maybe just fields of running stitch or small dots or spirals or or or..... nothing really worked. Finally I thought, "How about more butterflies?" and when I tried that it seemed okay. So, lots more embroidery. Adding the patterns for the new navy butterflies turned out to be pretty hard. Even on my light table it was difficult to see through the colors on the cloth and mark them clearly.