Has it really only been 3 weeks since my last posting? Just seems like a lot has been going on around here and I haven't had time to think about this blog. So where shall I start?

How about with the worm bins? I finally decided to move them down into the gardens. There is a space on the north side of one of the tool sheds that is just right for them, not sunny and hot, out of the way of the other gardeners and yet easy to get too when it's feeding time. I kinda miss having them in my office, but it's best that they go outdoors.

Next, have I mentioned anything about the espliered fruit trees that got planted in the English Meadow? Well they did get planted. Up against a cedar post and rail fence, which is where I espliered the trees. Three apples, three pears, a Plumcot and an Apricot. That was in March. I just went and looked at them and they all are blooming and starting to grow! Hurray, in just a couple of years we will be able to enjoy all kinds of fruit from these trees, I even labeled them so we will know what kind of fruit it is.

On to the Health Center patio area. Back when I planted strawberries into the market garden I also planted strawberries into two of the patio area beds. Along with 4 blue berry shrubs I took out of one of my market garden plots. And this last month I added a Necterine tree and a fig tree to the patio beds.

So the folks in the Health Center will have lots of fruit to eat right off the plant. While I was planting in the patio beds I happened to have 9 herbs left over from a talk I gave this month on container gardening, so I planted them into the patio area beds as well. There will be lots of things to eat and flavor food with this summer, and all of it right where the people who live in the health center can get at it.

Opps almost forgot about the 6 wine grape vines I just brought in and am about to plant in the South Patio area of the health center. So now in 4 or 5 years we can have homemade Pinot Noir wine in the Health Center from our very own grapes.

The big news I guess is down in the market garden where the planting of veggies just goes on and on. Onions, radishes, arugula, corn, lettuce, carrots have all been planted in the last several weeks and now the radishes, arugula and the onions are already up! but the most exciting thing is how all this got planted.

I’m working with some kids from the Oak Grove Grade School just down the street creating a gardening group. And I can tell you that at first the idea of being in the same room with 15 4th graders was a bit, well, terrifying. But they soon made me feel welcome and a part of the group; it’s amazing how many of the kids have ties to Rose Villa in some way. Parents work here or have worked here, grandparents lived here, and a few of the kids are already looking to get a job working here in a few years.

I've been over there 4 times now and the kids have been over here twice planting veggies. And a more serious bunch of planters I’ve never seen, some of those seeds are well and truly planted I can tell you.

Needless to say the worm bin was a big hit.

I kinda felt sorry for all those worms, the kids really got up close and personal with them. I suspect that several of them went home that day with worms in their pockets. I wonder what their parents thought of that?

On to the front circle where those three diseased and dying fir trees were taken out in January. Much has been going on there as well, The grounds crew has been very busy clearing the old plants out of the way, planting new pear trees around the enterance and getting ready to landscape the front circle.

The excavator took 100yds of old dirt out, plus several of the stumps of the old trees. Then we had several truck loads of good topsoil brought in, along with a load of boulders. Right now the sprnkler system has been installed, the water feature is being built and the pathways are just starting to get built.

All this work is being done by our very own grounds crew. Who will I am sure be very glad when such a huge project is done and over with. This will have completely changed the way the front enterance looked. When it's done you will have to come by and take a look.

A time for everything

‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…to be born, to die, to plant, to uproot, to kill, to heal, to tear down, to build, to weep, to laugh, to mourn, to dance, to scatter, to gather,, to embrace or not, to search, to give up, to keep, to throw away, to tear, to mend, to be silent, to speak, to love, to hate, to have war and a time for peace’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

I don't often quote the bible, but as a gardener I have learned to let the seasons of the year dictate my activities in the landscapes where I live and work. I have learned this through many years of watching nature go through her cycles of the seasons. Paying attention to what happened each season and how what I did during one season affected the landscape in later seasons.

This first photo is of a forsythia that was trimmed down in winter. It was a slow time of year, a dry day perhaps and it would save some time later in the year when things got busier.

The second photo is of a forsythia that had been trimmed in the late spring of last year. These photos were taken the same day.

To trim a forsythia a month or two before it blooms, cutting off and throwing away the glorious show of flowers the plant took all year to grow is something that I do not understand. It just goes against everything that Ecclesiastes was saying in the bible quote I opened with, and while I am not a religious man in the formal sense I do believe Ecclesiastes spoke the truth.

Here's another couple of photos of two sward ferns that happen to be planted 30 feet apart. Again, the photos were taken the same day. The one that did not get trimmed has looked pretty good all winter while the one that got trimmed in December has looked like a brown hedge hog the last 4 months. While I have to admit that trimming the fern in early winter has saved some time, I have to ask; Was it really worth 4 months of looking like a hedge hog was squatting in front of the welcome mat?

"There is a time for everything....." The incident of the forsythia and the fern are small, and perhaps insignificant and I am sure some would say the convenience of saving time far outweighed the waste of the flowers of the forsythia and the long winters ugliness of the fern. I'm just an old fashioned hopeless starry eyed dreamer; I believe as a gardener it is my job to bring the beauty, wonder and grandeur of nature to others.

The person who trimmed the forsthia and the fern above may have done their job as a landscape mantenance person but as a gardener they have failed.

I will stop now with just a couple of photos of some of the trees here at Rose Villa. And during this spring time of year so filled with renewal and rebirth, please dont just maintain, be a gardener.

Wiggily worms

I have started down the wiggily, crawly gooey path of worm composting. Which means that in my office I have 3 worm bins sitting where I can keep an eye on them and check out every day just what is going on with my wiggily friends. The first couple of days they seemed to want to get out of the bins and wonder around the office, unfortunatly if I didn't see them in time that kind of activity meant a slow death as they dryed out. But I am pleased to say that they have settled down and accepted their new home. And I am learning just what worms like to eat and what they dont like. These guys are just not all that fond of potato peelings or carrot peelings, but toss some green stuff in to them like lettuce or bits of celery and they really get excited and proceed to make slimy goop out it.

And it seems they are really coffee hounds, sprinkle some used coffee grounds in to them and it dissappears in just two or three days. Which reminds me, I will have to get some sort of tray to set these bins on as they are starting to leak 'worm tea' out the bottom. Which is a really good thing as worm tea is an excellent fertilizer for a wide varitiey of plants. It is a living fertilizer that can not only provide the nutrients plants need directly, but also help make the soil itself into a living thing that is much more willing to give up its nutrients to plants.

And then of course there's the castings from the worms, which, to put it rather directly is the worm poop. This is really good stuff. As with worm tea it is a living compost full of all the good bacteria and microbes soil needs to grow plants.

One final word on worms, the bins in my office have been here over a month now and they are really starting to 'work'. I'm seeing worm castings start to accumulate and worm tea starting to seep out of the bottom and these bins have never smelled. I expected they would smell like the garbage can under the sink when it's been left too long on a summers day. But, nope, not a wiff of garbage, the only thing I can ever smell is a composty, dirt smell, which, being a gardener I dont mind at all.

I have been told that worm bins can go outside in all weathers, that in the winter when it gets really cold, like below freezing you just have to make sure the little beastys are kept from actually freezing. So then the bins should be up against the south side of a building, or, if it gets really cold the bins can be covered like you would a plant to keep it from suffering freeze damage. But I have to admit I have kept these 3 bins in my office because it was cold outside and I felt bad about shoving the worms outside so soon after I got them, but, now that the weather is warming up a bit I'm thinking I should find a spot outside for them to live.

Or, maybe I can find an empty apt to put them, nobody would mind them in an empty apt and there the tempurature would be even throughout the seasons. Or, maybe I'll just keep them in my office and fix up a leak proof tray under them. They aren't really doing any harm on the other side of the room, and it's not like they play loud music or have wild parties over there.

Stay tuned to see where the worms wind up.

Sunshine, chainsaws and Rot at Rose Villa

We've had absolutely wonderful weather the last few weeks here at Rose Villa. Sunshine, warm days with cool nights. Hopefully the last few mornings of frost, I have gotten real tired of scraping frost off my car windshield in the morning!

The garden plots I am getting ready for planting are finally ready for planting, just have to wait till time to start popping seeds into the beds. It took longer then I had figured to dig compost into the beds and create raised rows and put newspaper and straw on the pathways. It's called no-till vegetable gardening. Which at this point I find rather a humorous choice of words. Between spreading compost by shovel and wheelbarrow, digging it up into raised beds, putting down newspaper and straw and then wheelbarrowing and shoveling more compost onto the raised rows I've spent a good long time with a shovel in my hands. Here's before and after photos of the same bed, just a different angle.

But it's done now and the first thing I will be planting are the strawberry starts I got from a nursery down the valley about a week ago. I'm thinking I will need at least twice the starts as I first purchased which was 25, so that will give me a chance to get something different. I'm trying to get at least two whole rows of ever bearing strawberries going so we can have lots and lots of berries as time goes on.

Otherwise, I'm starting to hang out at seed displays at the local garden centers, it's amazing to me how many different kinds of beans, lettuce, corn and etc there are, how I am going to decided what to get and what to plant is still a guessing game. I'm leaning toward fast maturing veggies and veggies that can be companion planted together. Things like onions in with the strawberries, at least until the berries start to take over the row. Which shouldn't happen till next year.

Another project that is getting started is the cedar split rail fence going into the English Meadow. I will be planting and espaliering 9 fruit trees on this fence. I know that this year I cant expect a very large fruit crop, but by next year and the year after we should be able to harvest a goodly selection and quantity of apples, pears, and plums from this fence row.

The big news from Rose Villa however is what's been going on in the front entrance area. We have had three full sized Douglas Fir trees and a medium Blue Spruce tree in the front circle lawn area since before the Villa was built, back in 1959. The firs were between 3 and 4 feet in diameter at the base, unfortunately they have been battling a root rot disease for at least the last 10 years. After several treatments for this disease we came to the decision that the trees were not savable and needed to be cut down before they fell down. So after some rather spectacular work by the tree climbers who cut the trees down and several days of brutally hard

work by the grounds crew splitting the wood into firewood the trees are gone. Here's before and after photos of the front area from the side, I think it appropriate that it's raining in the after photo.

Only stumps and mounds of sawdust left now. And what stumps, they all showed signs of rot but this one was particularly spectacular. That's all punky wood in the center of the stump and it went at least 20 up the center of the tree.

So now we have around 10 cords of firewood curing down in an empty garage and the entire front entrance looking, well, pretty bare and unlovely. Now it's up to the Grounds boss to re landscape the front area and make it look good again. I'm thinking this will be a dramatic change from what's out there now and what was there before the trees came down. Something to look forward to for sure.

It's been a month since I last posted anything here and lots has been happening at Rose Villa. The third snow storm of the winter I wont even mention as it was such a small insignificant event compared to the snow storm before Christmas. Instead I'll talk about the exciting new developments in the resident vegtable gardens.

Mainly that I have been assigned 6 garden plots to use to supply the main Rose Villa kitchen with produce this summer! Which is exciting because despite having worked in the landscape maintenance industry for well over 35, almost 40 years, I have only actually had maybe 10 or 12 vegtable gardens. And while I know the principals of growing plants are the same I also know there is a world of difference in growing plants for ornamental reasons and growing plants for food.

So the first photo is of one of my plots after I had put 4 to 6 inches of compost on it and then worked it up into raised rows. As soon as I get some more dry weather, newspaper and straw will go in between the raised rows for pathways and then more compost on the raised beds and then they will be ready for planting. It is a modified no-till / intensive gardening method, which, once you get the beds created shouldn't require the regular tilling or digging up that most gardens need. We shall see.

The second photo is of a compost bin I built from plans I found on the local Metro website. It's three bins with removable slats in front for ease of working. The grounds dept will be suppling me with appropriate material to get the composting operation going. Leaves, small clippings, dead weeds, other select material that will work in a bin that is only 3ft by 3ft.

These next two photos are of one of the three big fir trees in Rose Villa's entrance circle. All three of the trees will be taken down because they are all in varying stages of terminal root rot. Which is soil disease that is fairly common in firs. It's too bad to lose them, but it's better to cut them down now rather then wait to have them fall over later. The photo on the right is of the top of the first tree, it was topped maybe 25 years ago and you can see what happens when you top a fir. The tree tried to 'callus' over the cut, but the cut was so big that is started to rot out right down the trunk. Looking at the next several cuts I could see that the rot had proceeded to make it down about 8 feet into the trunk.

We got about 4 1/2 cords of firewood from this first tree, anyone want to buy some firewood?

The next photo is of the last section of the tree being cut down, it landed between the blue spruce and the big piece of trunk already on the ground. Really precision falling. The next two fir trees in the front circle will also have to come down, they are are even more badly affected by the root rot. However, because they are so close to the electric wires special rules apply to working on them. We will have to get a different company that has different training and insurance to clear the wires. So it will be a week or two before they come down, but come down they will.

The final photo is what I saw in my walk around today. If you look really closely you can just make out the eagles mate sitting about 6 feet down the tree. I talked with one of the people who live here and she told me that she and her neighbors have been watching these two bald eagles hanging out in this tree all winter. I wonder if they will be nesting here? I'll keep you posted.

That was sure some interesting weather we had over the holidays wasn't it? But it's over now, at least till the next time. But for now the sun is shining, it's a warm afternoon and all the plants are waking up for spring.

This daphne is just a few days or a week or so away from popping out and the roses are starting to push out new growth. It will not be long before that glorious scent of spring, daphne, drifts ac cross the landscape.

It's always a bit worrying to see this kind of growth on roses this soon in the year. There is still time for a hard freeze to hit in late January and if it does this new grow nth would freeze right off. Which is why I always try to wait to do the spring trimming of roses until Valentines day in February. And the cold December winds did in fact kill some of the top growth on the roses. But we had planned on that and had left lots of cane to trim back in spring.

Usually my first harbinger of spring are the snow drops. Which from the picture below you can see are still quite a ways from popping out. Maybe by the end of the month they will be out and swinging in the breeze. The other harbinger of spring is the sight of the groundskeepers here at Rose Villa walking along behind a fertilizer spreader. And sure enough just this morning I saw one walk past my office window pushing a spreader with lawn fertilizer in it. And what that means to an old gardener like me is that it's time to get the lawn mowers out of storage and make sure they still run.

Update, the snow drop by my office is blooming! Hurray!

Did anyone else besides me notice the strange resemblance that Portland had last week to Narnia, where it's always winter, but never Christmas? It just seemed to snow and snow and snow. Here at Rose Villa everyone turned out to help shovel snow. This is Louis with his mom in the background, and yes he did indeed do more then just throw that snowball. He helped his dad shovel snow off the sidewalks. Good lad.

At my house it was a measured 17 inches deep and I think it was that deep at Rose Villa as well.

If you look real close you can see the humming bird feeders. My wife put 'hats' of cardboard box lids over them to keep the snow off the feeding stations. She still had to keep bringing them inside to thaw out every few hours. In the 'snowy' photo the hats have cones of snow on them.

The last time it snowed as bad as this was way back in the early 1980's. Back when I had just started working here as the grounds boss. Now I am happy to say it was the new grounds boss, Bob who had to spend hours and hours, day after day moving snow around. He spent at least 6 or 7 days on snow patrol and when I talked to him just yesterday he was tired and worn out, but to his credit still upbeat and cheerful. Of course that could have been because the snow had melted by then. Here's a photo of a beautiful birch tree with a small yellow snow plow in the back ground.

And finally, what's an article about snow without a photo of icicles? These were off the laundry building roof.

And that's it for now, the snow has melted away, the temperature is above freezing and it's raining. Just like it is supposed to be in Oregon.