Tepee Attempt

Tried to build a tepee this summer. The quest to recreate the simple, mobile, and graceful shelter of the Plains tribes is a recurring theme for me, and while this iteration didn't get lived in, at least it's an adventure worth sharing.

To begin, I had the help of two friends. Excellent bike handling skills and a sense of humor were required for the task ahead.

 

 We secured four giant bamboo poles on each of two bikes and set off to ride 5 miles through the city to the north.

 Motorized traffic was light on that Sunday morning, but there was still enough foot traffic to provide an audience. One man expressed the notion that bamboo carried by bike is more 'sustainable' than anything else in existence. This may be true.

Arranged into formation, the bamboo took on that beautiful form of a giant cone!

View from below.

Blue plastic provided a covering and a canvas for slug meanderings.

And it stood, reflecting the color of the sky.

Urban Wildlife - an exciting encounter

Enormous Mantis @ the PSU Community Garden!

Fall Planting 10.13.13

Warm in the sun today, forecast the same.
Green beans doing their last. Planted summer-grown seeds of kale, radish, fava, parsley, cilantro, and pea. Serendipitous gift of elephant garlic, I shoved it into the ground too. Warmth will fool me as well as the seeds into extra action before true winter cold sets in.

Northern Willamette

Last week in September, a typhoon blew in. And blew through, uncovering blue skies and leaving the river muddy brown.

Garden Harvest 8/13

Zucchini, mass of green beans, pile of kale, beets, windfall apples, alley plums, sunflower heads, tomatoes

gardens still growing

My small plot at the PSU community garden is a micro-patch of vegetable plants turned jungle these days. Kale, parsley, chard, and carrot hold flowers and seeds on stems much taller than I, pea vines finding their way through the mess, california poppy and st. johns wort flowers lighting up the understory. The dish of water I normally maintain at center has become swamp, but fresh water is still to be found - as in this dock leaf cupping rain water into a tiny lake:

 So overgrown it has become, fairies actually moved in. Can you believe that?

 This is the view from their skylight

And these carrot flowers float about in great balls like spaceships made of snow, releasing drifts of powdery pollen

 

 Back at the other garden plot, giant-vegetable-dreams are realized in this fabulous lettuce (key included for scale).

 Delicious beet success, short of soccerball-size, not short on sweet

Beets and Kale, a variety of leaf texture

 Lentils! Handful of dry lentils thrown in the dirt... add water, time, warmth and sun - the seeds show some of their programmed secrets. Fine leaves and tiny pods, nice to meet you long-eaten staple.

Spring Miscellany

What does a pea plant do when threatened? Grab the pistil!

A maple tree without maple leaves? I don't know what to think

One of my most favorite stamp-sized islands of life

 Oppidan forest

Spring in the Community Garden

March First, a warm day. In that garden tucked by the freeway I found: bright winter greens beginning to bolt (the new lush growth delectable steamed), a pile of radishes gifted from a friend, my hat quickly filled with fresh-picked herbs, and volunteer mache growing up quick and buttery.

Spring Planting II

Not a frost since first planting, we may be in for an early spring! Experimenting with new legumes, I threw garbanzo beans and lentils in the ground today beside mache, spinach, and mustard greens. Peas of last planting showing a strong start, tiny versions of leaves prepared, staging a spring expansion show... kale and lettuce just beginning work on first true leaves.

Spring Planting

Yes, maybe it is early, but it is the Willamette Valley and there is an urban heat island. Peas on the right, a wild mix of chard, cilantro, lettuce, calendula, and kale on the left. Favas in the background.