Seeking Shade

As predicted..... Summer is flying by! And the weather appears to be making headlines again. We are headed for another heat wave with temperatures into the triple digits during this last week of July.

I'm just recovering from a very successful week long design conference put on by the Association of Professional Landscape Designer's here in Portland from July 12- 19th. During that time we had temperatures in the mid 90's, which surprised a lot of people coming from other areas. Our last rain was back in early June, when I last posted, and we've had no rain since. ( this is very typical for us, but many people think it rains here all year long) Talks were scheduled for the morning hours, with garden tours in the afternoon. Our private gardens, as well as the numerous parks and commercial projects, seemed to be surviving the heat pretty well..... it was the people who were wilting! Now it appears that we're headed for even higher temps. And on the East coast, where rain and cooler weather have been the norm, I'm sure my friends and relatives are wishing I could send some of our heat their way! Extremes of weather do seem to be more frequent....a product of Global warming?


While touring the gardens and urban parks, it became apparent how important structures are to the garden. They not only help to connect the garden to the house, but also can offer up instant shade, (pergolas, arbors, and shade houses) and bring in cooling elements such as water, sound and the colors of a refreshing oasis. Our own house has a deck on the West side covered by a wooden trellis. Honeysuckle vines cover the top and hummingbirds hover overhead while robins nest in the large rhododendron below. It's our outdoor dining room, complete with an antique iron chandelier, and framed views looking out over the garden.


While I was enjoying the APLD Conference, my hubby was busy redoing the curved steps that were first installed over 30 years ago around the deck. The main treads were aggregate, surrounded by the then popular
'railroad ties'....which had rotted away to the point of being unsafe. Once the wood ties were removed, new forms were built to enclose the remaining aggregate with a new aggregate edge. Our old gate, brought from Pennsylvania, was given new posts and installed at the top. The path looks wider and brighter! Now I just have to keep the ground covers from creeping onto the path.


When you live on 12 acres, there are always projects to be done. Having neglected my garden for most of June and July I had a bit of catching up to do. Perennials such as Alchimilla mollis, Geranium, and Oregano had taken over some of the beds, covering up the smaller gems. Other plants needed to be deadheaded and trimmed. Needless to say....I've filled up my compost bins and lost a few pound in the process! The veggie garden is also producing an overflow of produce.....and so far the deer have kept away. We have seen a mother and two fawns return to the property lately, but there aren't many new fresh leaves available to them at this point, and the garden is securely fenced.

On a sad note...our little 'Kitty', who was 20 years old and grew up sleeping on top of both of our Rottweiler's, succumbed to old age last week. She enjoyed spending her entire life on our property under the protection of our two dogs, and particularly loved to follow me around as I worked in the garden and flower beds. She never wandered too far away, which probably accounts for her longevity! She was buried under the trees next to our new Pagoda Fountain. ( A topic for another post)

Back to Normal

June has proven to be it's normal, fickle self....the sunshine left the day after my last post as the Portland area was hit with a violent thunder and lightening storm accompanied by high winds. These storms always bring back memories of my childhood days growing up on Long Island, not far from New York City, but they are not a common occurrence here in the Pacific Northwest. It was downright scary watching our large trees bend and twist in the wind, seeing branches flying through the air, and hearing the cracking of limbs. It bought the temperatures down and left a lot of debris. Anyone want to play 'Pick Up Sticks'? Luckily our grapevines had just been 'tucked' under the first row of wires so the majority of the new growth remains intact.



My weekend on the Oregon Coast, where I attended a fabulous sketch workshop, was even cooler and wetter than Portland....a typical phenomenon. The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology is truly a unique place. Located on Cascade Head, it is surrounded by lush rainforest and open meadows opening to views of both the Salmon River estuary and the wild Pacific. I stayed at a pole house right across from the cluster of buildings housing the art studios. For two days I sketched and was inspired by Ken O'Connell, a Professor from the University of Oregon, who has over 64 sketch books under his belt. His enthusiasm was catching! Aside from coming home with a filled sketchbook and new ideas, I gained a new appreciation for our natural environment and what it can offer. The beauty of a simple meadow, with long grasses and wildflowers laying over one another as deer and elk wandered through, will remain with me. I woke up to this image, for the bed was pushed up against tall windows looking out over the large meadow that came between the house and the estuary and ocean below. The house, a small cabin, had no phone, or television, or radio, or computer!



Back home, somehow refreshed and rejuvinated, I am waiting for the sun to reappear! It will.....for July is just around the corner, and that is when Oregon's Summer truly begins. I am happy for a bit of indoor time now....having a few designs to concern myself with. The clouds, with a few periods of fine drizzle, aren't hurting the garden, and actually make it easier to do some of the clean-up needed. And the Rose Festival just wouldn't be the same without a little of that
'liquid sunshine'!



















I look forward to starting another sketchbook and incorporating some of what I learned into my August workshop here at Cloudrest. I have come to feel that art, in all it's forms, is an ingredient of life just as important as food and drink! It can nurture the soul, slow you down, and sustain you when life becomes too complex.

We need this in today's world. We need to go back to a simpler time when things didn't seem so frantic or hurried. As we get older .....we need to stay busy and active doing the things that truly matter to us ....and not what is expected!

June is HOT!

For the past two weeks we've had many days with temperatures in the mid to high 80's and it's felt more like July than late Spring. It is especially unheard of to have warm, dry days during our annual Rose Festival in Portland! (our big downtown float parade is scheduled for June 6th) June is usually a transition month, with our 'real' rainless Summer starting in early July and often extending into October....an important weather trend for anyone with a vineyard!

The high temperatures have caused an explosion of bloom and growth in the garden.....Iris, roses, peony, daisy, rhododendrons and azaleas are all at their peak....and the grass is still green from all of our earlier rain. It is truly a beautiful time in Oregon.

But it's created a lot of work. Just when I've got a full schedule of designs to work on, I'm also having to think about sprinkler systems and daily watering. ( not to mention the burst of weeds that have sprouted and need to be pulled ) The Veggie garden is taking off.....16 tomato plants, beans, cukes, squash, lettuce, basil, eggplant, kale, spinach and swiss chard.... and the grape plants are doing a lot of catching up. The vines have been sprayed with their first round of sulfur and are in the process of having the trunk suckers removed. Every day I make new discoveries walking down the vineyard rows and wandering through the garden spaces.....and it brings both inspiration and renewed energy. It's becoming harder to find places in the garden for the iris my neighbor keeps bringing me....but who can resist? The birds are also singing a virtual symphony during the early morning hours. We've discovered a wonderful Robin's nest built of grasses, twigs and lichen with three robust and hungry babies inside. It was built in a large rhododendron next to our kitchen deck making for perfect viewing. The three babies are growing fast and are having trouble fitting into the nest!

I've come to the conclusion that birds have to work a lot harder than we do when it comes to raising their young and keeping their house in order!

It's not all work and no play....this weekend I'll be heading to the Sitka Art Center on the Oregon Coast for a two day sketching workshop. I'm looking forward to being in the beautiful and rugged Cascade headlands, which juts out into the Pacific Ocean and runs along the North boundary of the Salmon River just above the town of Lincoln City. Nature is at it's best there, and should provide unlimited possibilities for sketching.

I'm wondering what the rest of the Summer will be like.....I only know that it will go by way too fast!

The Color of Spring

I'm back to drawing leaves.....a photo of Fall leaves touched with frost inspired the sketch to the left, but the soft colors are also reflected in the new leaves of Spring. Our typical fickle Spring has brought on a chorus of fresh leaves. It's amazing how many different shades of green exist, but leaves can add more than one color to our outdoor world. Flowers aren't the only vehicles that add additional hues to the Spring palette. Our walnut trees are usually the last to leaf out and the orchard develops a hazy, rusty, burnt umber canopy as the new coppery leaves emerge. Then there's the Tri-Color Beech with its bronze red leaves fringed with white hairs! And the wonderful Cornus Hedgerow Gold bringing flecks of golden yellow, white and green leaves into the picture. Rosa rubrifolia is one of my favorite foliage plants and seems to sprout up in the best places around the garden, showing off blue-grey leaves, followed by tiny pink flowers in June. We can't forget the new leaves of Spiraea Goldflame or Limemound, and the rich reds of Berberis.

I haven't posted in over a month, partly because the garden and classes occupied more time than I realized! We also traveled North, spending a few days in Seattle and then participating in the 'Tour de Lopez' bike event on Lopez Island in the San Juans. I took it easy....only doing 21 miles! Sunny weather but only 52 degrees made for an invigorating ride. Back home I started my Colored Pencil Workshop here at Cloudrest that continues every Wednesday this month. After some warm up exercises with the pencils, my students started out by doing a leaf study.....selecting from a collection of dried Fall leaves that exhibit interesting colors and veining patterns. We'll be moving on to sky studies and more complex scenes over the next few weeks.

Hints of Spring have also brought out interest in renewal.... leading to three new garden design clients. Deb, Izzy, and Adriana are all in various stages of getting plans drawn up. It's always exciting to cooperatively work on design solutions. I'm also hoping to plant out my seedlings in the vegetable garden soon, but the cool nights and frequent downpours have slowed things up a bit. The fountain has been cleaned ( and for some reason, our resident frogs survived the ordeal!)...the grass has been cut.....it's time for Summer!

Misplaced Summer

Since my last post, Summer came and went in Oregon.....and it's only April! It just shows how fickle the month can be. With temperatures above 70 degrees for a few days, it appeared that everyone was out digging in the garden or visiting the garden centers and nurseries. I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to move my Lemon tree out into the courtyard where it could be washed down and renewed after a Winter inside. Still holding on to about a half dozen lemons, it seemed to welcome the change. My resident frogs appeared to croak louder in a chorus of agreement, and the bugs seemed to multiply and dance around the property in droves. Nature was celebrating! With the ground not quite so soggy and the plants perking up, I spent the first day of 'Summer' just walking around taking stock of what was actually reappearing after our nasty Winter. The standouts this year are my Hellebores, which have increased in quantity and seem fuller than usual . A new favorite is 'Pink Beauty'.....just one of the many hybrids that have been appearing. They sure do brighten up the Winter landscape, with the fading flowers lasting all the way into early Summer, not to mention the large clumps of decorative leaves that are renewed each Spring. On the East side of our house a large clump of Helleborus foetidus has massed itself with Forget-me-nots and Carex. I love the fresh green flowers tinged with red edges! One note....the deer don't seem to like them, which around here is an added bonus. They do like the large leaves of Bergenia though....mine were all eaten down to nothing over the Winter and are now trying to grow both flower stalks AND new leaves!

It's been a busy month ( the reason why I haven't posted as often as I would like to) I've started teaching my Landscape Illustration course for Spring term at Portland Community College, and also have a Workshop planned for May at Cloudrest. (see my website) that will concentrate on colored pencil ) We've also been busy in the vineyard and garden. All the Winter pruning is complete and the grapevines are tied and ready to break bud later this month. The deer fencing will be going back up during the next few weeks and Round-Up will be sprayed in the rows before the tender new shoots appear. I have lots of new vegetable seedlings coming up in the greenhouse and have started cleanup of the flower beds and our enclosed 100 x 30 foot vegie garden. Our Winter snows and cold temps did more damage than I had realized. Mexican Orange (Choisya ternata) is one plant that suffered and had to be cut back....but from past experience, I know that it will recover nicely with new growth.

Over our warm weekend I finished a fun project which left me aching and sore ( the curse of being afflicted with severe osteoarthritis) ....but it was well worth it for the satisfaction involved. I created a 'dry streambed' running along a section of our South-facing foundation that gently slopes into an aggregate patio below the house. This space is shaded by both a large Dawn Redwood tree and a Walnut tree. A 30 year old Viburnum davidi had been pruned back and opened up to allow light into a basement window. This left some empty ground space for new low-growing plants, but also exposed dry dirt and cement along the foundation. After carving beds out of this property for over 30 years, it's not often that I have new space to deal with, so I saw this as a great opportunity. A trip to the 'rock store' brought back 4 large rocks and about a dozen buckets of river rock ( in three different sizes). After the ground was contoured with a slight swale, landscape fabric was pinned in place and the rocks were strategically placed. ( throwing them seemed to work best since I wasn't able to even lift the buckets!) My husband helped by bringing all the buckets down to my work area. It's amazing how hard it is to imitate nature. The trick is to make the 'stream' both narrow and wide in places and not to line it with the largest rocks. Over the years we have hiked in the NW Cascades and I've taken many pictures of real streams. Studying those helped me to see how the flow of water moves stones into certain pockets and channels. Once the stream was in place, an assortment of fern, Hellebore, Carex and Heuchera were planted. It will take awhile for the plants to knit together but the tapestry of color and texture that they create should really compliment the space. I can't wait for our real Summer, when steamer chairs occupy the patio and we can gaze upon the new garden. But .......today......it is raining again and the temperatures are once again in the 50's!

Carib thoughts.....

With the rain (and occasional snow showers) still coming down , it is hard not to think of the warm water and breezes of my recent travels! The garden clean-up will have to wait for dryer weather. I have all my seeds in hand....just need to get the greenhouse organized for Spring and emptied of all the plants and pots that were hastily put in before our December snows hit. Even my Meyer Lemon tree, housed in a large Italian lemon pot, is looking forlorn. It spends it's Summer outside in our entry courtyard, but Winters here at 1000 feet elevation require that it be brought inside under the North facing skylites of our living room. It obviously perfers being outside, but must wait another month before it will be warm enough to chance it!

This is the time of year when I gravitate to my sketchbooks, preparing for teaching my Spring term 'Landscape Illustration' course at the local Community College. Over the years I have forced myself to switch to sketching with a pen rather than pencil. I combine sketches with my journal writings and have enjoyed the way my sketches help to slow down the pace of a vacation. It takes quite an effort, especially when traveling with others, to sit in one place for 30 minutes and just absorb what you are looking at! The Granadines are a very colorful group of islands, as my last post illustrated ( not only the flowers, but the boats, houses and dress of the people reflect a love for saturated colors washed by the sun), so drawing in black and white can be a challenge. You realize that you are paying more attention to edges and to how the light molds a shape. You must also translate the value of the colors (their lightness and darkness) to the various textural scribblings of your pen.

March in Oregon is a very fickle month! Everyone is anxious for the rains to stop, but still loving snows in the mountains so skiing can continue into the Summer months. Our Mt. Hood has a glacier on it and even boasts a 'Summer Ski Season'. Right now it is still covered with a deep mantle of white. The valley is displaying it's Winter dress of green, with grass, moss and lichen in their glory! During the Summer months when the dry season begins, watering systems will be needed to keep gardens fresh looking. I like these seasonal changes and even though Caribbean weather seems ideal, I think I'd miss the anticipation that change brings.

In with the new

It's been awhile....After our cold and snowy end to the year we slowly dug out and resumed our normal routine. The garden looked as if a giant had visited and sat down for a long nap! I watched as the snow melted and the deer continued to munch on our back lawn. We put a temporary fence around the new Magnolia 'Edith Bogue' that had replaced our large white pine in the front yard. ( the Eastern White Pine was one of the first trees we planted on our property over 30 years ago, but it had succumbed to a root disease, with needles that became smaller and smaller as each year passed!) Renewal is part of life. When designing a garden you can achieve just as much by editing as by adding, so while I will miss the original soft-needled stature of the larger pine, I am delighting in the open space and new textures of 'Edith'.

With the economy crumbling and the weather severe, I contented myself with ordering vegetable seeds from Oregon based, Territorial Seeds. Cleaning up the garden beds would have to wait, but I have big plans for a larger vegetable garden this year. I am also convinced that, come Spring, clients will be eager to do the same. Edible gardens with decorative touches will be the new niche! Looking back on my garden log of over 30 years, I am amazed at what I attempted to grow and how the garden adapted to our changing family. When our youngest son was married in the garden, roses, flowering herbs, and lawn took over where the corn and beans had been....now I was making room again for the vegies, and the flowers will be forced upwards onto pergolas.

In February we escaped the cold, snowy weather and flew to Southern Florida ( Sarasota and Venice) to visit my sister as well as college friends. Visiting tropical areas is great- you can enjoy the gardens without feeling obliged to remember, or even know the latin names of the plants! I am one designer who doesn't try to grow tropicals in our NW climate! But I certainly appreciate the wonderful colors and intricate compositions of both the tropical foliage and the flowers. The Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota is over 9 acres of tropical paradise. The photos that I took will one day form the basis for a botanical drawing.

We continued on our journey East and spent 10 days sailing with college friends who have a 40' boat based in the Caribbean. We've been sailing with them almost every Winter since 1999, but getting there has become harder each year. This year our destination was the island of St. Vincent and the Granadines....not an easy place to get to! Delta got us to San Juan and then LIAT, a Caribbean airline took us to SV. ( we later learned that LIAT stands for 'leaves island anytime, which proved to be true...and another story!) We discovered this year that the short rain squalls and constant winds were more frequent and bigger. Great sailing, but not so great for snorkeling or sleeping. On the last day of our trip we hired a driver to take us into the interior of the big island of St. Vincent. Our destination was a private tropical paradise called the Montreal Estate Gardens, owned by Tim Vaughn. To get there we drove along a rugged coast that reminded me of Oregon.....then up through the lush Mesopotamia Valley to the side of a hillside transformed by one man and a small crew. The photos that I took will provide me with years of sketching inspiration! I especially marvelled at the complexity of the plant and floral structures, not to mention the hidden creatures who suddenly came into focus on a stem or leaf.

So already it is March and I am anxious for the soil to warm and dry up , giving my newly arrived seeds a home in the ground. I am planning my Spring term Landscape Illustration course that starts March 30th, and setting up a few design consults.....I am reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and cleaning out the closets......ahhhhhh Spring!