January gardening

Today's temperatures were in the mid forties. That's not really unusual for this region. What is odd is that the day was predominately sunny. January sun, especially of late, is rare. So, I planned my day to include some January gardening and sun in my eyes.
Gardening at this time of year is mostly comprised of cleanup. There's such a load of biomass. Spruce and fir cones are everywhere and in profusion. Fir needles, twigs and branches cover the yard as do any number of opportunists: ivy, tiny and not so tiny holly trees, blackberry vines, etc.
Just raking and stashing this collection filled an entire 3 bucket size clean-green pail! After the bulk of the cover was removed, only then could I spy the new crop of weeds and other invasives along with the first Snowdrops and some older but still sweet Primrose plants blooming in the warm sun.
After working for a couple of hours, the yard looked cleaner, and I "saw" better. I swear, I can look at something, my yard and garden say, and think I see it but don't really. The sun was so lovely, higher in the sky now, and warming the grass around me. I wanted to take some photos but found no focal point. The sight seemed too general. So, I began to look more closely, sometimes on my hands and knees but mostly upright but giving time and concentration and energy to the task. In the winter and late fall, there's little color and flash like that provided by flowering plants and shrubs and yet, like I wrote in the Abundant Underworld piece, there's so much activity. One needs to stop and really look to see evidence of the transition which is beginning to happen.
The picture of the hellebore shows the transition. I keep the old stalks and flower heads all winter to make sure that seeds are available both for new plantlets and for the birds to eat. In this photo, you can see the dead head of last years flowers juxtaposed, seemingly on the same stalk, with this years flowers. I find the sights quite beautiful at any time of the year but especially now with similar actions almost invisible. In a week, a month perhaps, I'll clip the deadhead and compost it but today, this sunny January day, it treated my sunfilled eyes to such visions.
My happy Buddha is included as a hello to a dear friend who is travelling in India.

Rime

We've spent the bulk of the past week or so birding in the region. The past 3 days have been remarkably clear and cold with the mountains absolutely crystalline on both sides of the Sound. It is a bit of a rarity around here to encounter several such days in the winter. Normally we'll get one, maybe two days of such beauty around the new year but 3 together is a treasure. Therefore, we decided to take full advantage of such a gift and get out there!
We took a couple of day trips to favored birding areas where we were richly rewarded with ample sightings of Widgeons, Mallards, Scaups, Coots, Turnstones, Harlequins, Cinnamon Teals, Pintails, Dunlins, Sandpipers, Bald Eagles, Marsh Hawks, Red Tails, Roughlegged Hawks, Harriers, assorted Gulls, and even Stellar Sea Lions along Marrowstone Island.
Today's excursion was a relatively quick one to Spencer Island where we saw many of the above birds. Again it was clear and quite cold this morning and what struck me as I tried to forget just how numb my toes felt, was the rime on everything: grasses, leaves, water, trees, shrubs, etc. As we walked and the sun rose in the sky, we heard glass breaking! Actually, the thin sheets of ice, some suspended midway along blades of long grass and cat-o-nine tails, were cracking and melting and falling in the sun's rays. My attention, then, passed from looking at the birds to looking at the icy landscape and seeing just how beautiful it was.

The abundant underworld.

This is, to me, the most mysterious time of the year. Everything is brown and cold and, seemingly, dead. Under the ground, though, much is happening as evidenced by an amaryllis bulb kit I opened last week. It was a gift from several weeks back which sat in a chair all that time unopened. When I finally did open the box last week, I was amazed by the growth of the flower emerging from the bulb already. There was 5-6 inches of stem and an inch and a half of flower curled inside the box and fighting for what must have been a shard of light and plenty of warmth to activate it's growth hormones. Needless to say, I put it into the growing medium in the pot as soon as I could and, in the few days hence, the stalk has straightened and grown about an inch more already.
The flower will be beautiful, I'm sure, as flowers blooming this time of year especially always are but that's the essence. This time of year with all the brown and cold precludes flowering but one must only think beneath the soil, inside that bulb as it were, to picture all the work and, indeed, activity. Bulbs are resting and restoring. Plants are doing the same. Microbes are working, eating. Recent fallen leaves are decomposing and offering nearby plants protection and nutrients. The underworld is very much alive and preparing to offer us yet another year of food and bloom.

Weaving

Here are a couple of my latest scarves. Besides work, these have occupied my time since my last post.

Gone

It took roughly just over an hour to fell our lovely and very old Dogwood tree. With tears in my eyes, I made myself watch much of the work. I decided, since I was so emotional, to see the operation and, hopefully, get a grip. It didn't surprise me really that I was overcome with such sadness and I didn't perceive it as any sort of hysteria or lack of control. Rather, I saw it as a bit of control of control; it could be called a manipulation of control that would allow a person to grieve for a venerable old living object.
Since the tree was in our front yard, the arborists used a hi-lift to move one man from the top of the tree down who could safely cut branches and limbs swiftly. Three other workers were at ground level moving the fallen wood away to be cut or chipped in their huge chipper. This "de-branching" took all of 15 minutes. It astounded me how fast the process sped.
The next work took the 10-12 foot trunk apart and down. Again, this was done by the one in the lift until the trunk was workable heightwise for someone on the ground. This was finished quickly with the large trunk chunks rolled away to a corner of the yard. Finally, the trunk at ground level was "ground" by a grinder down to about 10 or so inches below the surface.
I couldn't see this part as barriers were placed (not unlike curtains) so that flying chips could be controlled better. It felt a bit as if I was being shuttered from watching an operation or a checkup at a hospital or clinic. When this task was completed, I peered around the "curtain" and saw earth and nothing more. The tree was gone.

Our old friend

This year, for some reason, I've been enthralled by and taken countless photos of trees. All manner of trees have fascinated me and prompted me to ponder their branching habits, shapes, environment, needs, and most particularly, their barks. The eye-level faces of trees have occupied much of my imagination since I traveled to the southwest in early Spring and first encountered an Alligator Juniper tree and saw evidence in that dry "face" of the protection that that skin brought the tree in that arid environment. I'm still thinking about that particular tree and fully intend to design a weaving project based on it. Since that discovery, I've really looked at trees and their "faces" like I never have before and found myself quite unhinged by this second and third and fourth viewing. Alpine Larch and Ponderosa Pine are two examples of very different trees existing in quite separate environments which have equally moved me. The Larch, in more alpine climes, looks almost dead. Many are quite thin looking with dark gray to almost black skins which seem gnarled and unhealthy but are really simply adapted to protect themselves from heavy snow and high winds in the mountains. Plus, the fir boughs which emerge from them in Spring and Summer look like the greenest green against such a dark, dead looking background. To me, these trees are just as beautiful as their much lower sloped Ponderosa Pines, a backbone to the timber industry and a plank in the foundation of Native American life. These Pines are tall and wide and their skin is a coppery/rust color which cracks to a dark brown/ black. Native Americans used every bit of these lovely trees from the roots to the treetops and continue to do so. As small as the Larches look, Ponderosa Pines seem immense enough to shelter gods in the heavens. Both are lovely to me and inspire me to design weaving drafts of them as well.
In the midst of all this " rediscovery of trees" this year, I've witnessed something in my own yard which breaks my heart. Our Dogwood, which bloomed so fully this Spring in particular, is old and nearly dead. It has been "falling to pieces" for years and we've had it inspected by tree experts before but, this year, we've seen a deterioration much more advanced than in the 17 years prior. So, another tree expert was called to have a look and his conclusion was that the tree is at the end of its days. When I asked him how old the tree was, he opined that the house (built in 1941) was built around the tree! If so, our lovely Dogwood must be upwards of 100!
Needless to say, I was both surprised and awed and even more saddened that it's life must end.

We could keep the tree alive for a while longer with heavy, selective pruning but a good stiff winter wind could very well blow it down and cause a lot of damage. So, we will have it cut down. There was a sudden chance to have it done tomorrow but we couldn't do that. It was too soon, too upsetting.

So, the tree will probably remain for another week or so for us to see, love, thank, honor. I'll remove all the bulbs in the rock garden at its base along with all the other plants there: day lilies, iris, hens and chicks, vanilla plant, bergenia, Japanese anemone, Serbian bellflower, epimedian (which cushioned the fall of the fledgeling Chickadee a year ago), Snow in summer, hyacinth, lilies of the valley, sweet woodruff. All will be replanted later. We'll distribute the tree's cut wood to neighbors who want and can use it as well as the wood chips from the branches. We'll save enough of the chips for us to use for mulch in our yard and eventually prepare the same site for another tree. I think that new tree, hopefully planted this fall, might just be another white Dogwood.

Opportunity

We were given the opportunity to visit the Banff Centre to attend a play reading and were able to expand the trip by driving there from here. The weather was unbeatable for the whole 6 days which we came to understand was unusual given the rain and hail that had gripped Banff for days just before our visit. Because it hastened our drive, we crossed the border at a different spot, more rural, and along the way there passed some absolutely beautiful agricultural valleys which continued for miles and miles into Canada. Not to be outdone, our next encounter with beauty came in the form of the Shuswap area which is anchored by a huge long lake/river system bordered by mountains on all sides. It was at this point in our drive that we stopped and stayed overnight in a small lakeside town which boasted a resort sensibility and economy but encouraged an appreciation of nature. There, we were able to walk along the lake and out onto a long pier from which we watched not one but two osprey nests built by the town which both contained this year's clutches of 3 nestlings. From a mere 25 feet away, we hardly needed the binocs to watch feedings. How marvelous!
The next leg of the trip introduced us to the mountains of British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies to Banff, Alberta. I ran out of adjectives on this day. The landscape was so breathtaking and mammoth and unique that it made us silent for hours. We had everything to say and no words to say anything. That remained the case for our stay at the Banff Centre where we saw and heard such sublime performances of musical expression that we could only shake our heads in response.
The only time we really spoke a lot was on a hike at around 7500 feet and the reason for such chatter was amazement that we both made it and lived to tell the tale! I daresay that we were overawed the whole trip and for various and sundry reasons.
The only drawback to the whole trip was the sight of the many forests decimated by the very opportunistic Mountain Pine Beetle. This insect, prior to the 1990's, was usually killed off by the blisteringly cold winters (- 30 degrees Fahrenheit). In fact, according to one forest worker we spoke with, the Spruce Beetle was the former villain of the woods. When the Spruce trees were killed by this pest, planting companies changed the nature of the woods to Lodgepole Pine trees in the hopes of stopping the devastation. At the same time, however, winters warmed up enough to allow the Pine beetles to thrive. With the ample food supply, their colonies spread probably better than wildfire and the evidence of their work is plentiful. Opportunity comes to many living things it seems.
Pictured is Banff from our hike above and a lovely tree bark and fir needle arrangement.