In praise of tools

I forgot to mention that I have been enjoying my gardening even more than usual this summer thanks to the addition of the scuffle hoe to our tool shed. I took a gardening class in March and the teacher suggested everyone use one. I'd never heard of it before. Here's a picture:




This thing makes weeding almost a pleasure, and certainly more doable. It allows you to weed right next to cultivated plants without disturbing them. Given that you never vanquish weeds, I think it's possible to say I've achieved something like weed detente.

Garden report

This is long overdue, but better late than never. Thanks to pal Barry for helping me figure out how to post pictures within text and how to edit the HTML.

Here's a picture of our vegetable garden; as you can see, it's a pretty small space, about 18' x 8'.



Here are some of our first harvest of potatoes; these are all leftover volunteers from last year's crop. Thanks to the volunteers, we expect to enjoy potatoes over a longer period of time, instead of all at once, like last summer. Unlike our other crops, (carrots excepted), we have no idea what the potatoes look like or how many we've got til we dig them up. Harvesting them is like uncovering buried treasure.


Here's a cuke closeup on the vine:



And here are our latest cukes and zukes:



Just a few of our Sungolds; they're so sweet they're like candy, and I get a double zing out of eating them because they are selling for $4/pint at the farmer's market.


And here are some of our basil seedlings and our second crop of carrots (we ate the first crop before I could get a picture). We planted starts as well, but decided to try seeds too. Not sure how big they'll get before the end of the summer, but it's cool to see them come up. We've been doing a lot more from seed this year: carrots, parsnips, lettuce and basil. I don't know what is considered a normal yield from seeds; some of the crops we've sown have not had good results (50 butter lettuce seeds but only five plants, for example), but others, like the red lettuce, show quite respectable yields. Any thoughts or advice on this? (Aside from the fact that I need to thin them, I mean :-)

And last but not least, our volunteer sunflower, which is growing smack in the middle of our zucchini patch. Not over by the bird feeder, where sunflower seeds have killed off a patch of our lawn, but ten feet away. Go figure.

Don't believe everything you read

Just when you'd had enough of hearing about struggling arts organizations, here's another story to chew on, from the Portland Business Journal:

Struggling Symphony Fights for Survival

But you should also check out David Stabler's blog in response (see link on right).

All this as I just turned in my first notes of the 2008-09 season. The fun just never stops, I guess.

As local as it gets

I've been meaning to write about the fact that we are eating out of our garden every day now. The zukes are producing in unspeakable numbers, the cukes are ripening at the rate of 2-3 per week, I just harvested our first batch of carrots (the best ever since we started growing them), and sampled our first Sungold cherry tomatoes. I wanted to post pictures and everything, but am racing a deadline for the symphony, so the pics will have to wait. But the satisfaction I get from eating food I grew is a daily joy.

New template

I was getting annoyed with limitations of my old template, so am trying a new one. Comments?

More pics from our hike

Here are the rest of the pictures I took on Black Butte: a row of snags near the top, Mts. Jefferson, Hood, and Adams (Adams is kinda faint, but it's there, north of Hood, and Broken Top, South Sister and North Sister. To be up there, seemingly at eye level with all these mountains, was staggering. As Sweetie likes to put it, "I am wrecked with beauty."

This is where the planet greatened

Just got back from our annual pilgrimage to the Metolius River in Central Oregon. We discovered this paradise four years ago and since then we've made it a point to go back every summer. Oregon abounds in beautiful places, and even though I've lived here almost 20 years there are still parts of the state I have yet to visit, but the Metolius is so beguiling that I may never get there. 

The Metolius is a 30-mile river that emerges from underground springs at the base of Black Butte, about ten miles west of Sisters, and flows north into Lake Billy Chinook. It's crystal clear, and because its source is underground, drinkable, at least at our campsite, which is very close to the headwaters. It's a mecca for flyfishermen (catch and release only), and the water is a bracing 48 degrees year-round.

This year we weren't able to hike into the back country, as we have in previous years, because snow still blocks the roads above about 5500 feet. Instead, we hiked along a stretch of the Metolius we hadn't previously explored, below the Wizard Falls Fish Hatchery and spent a day cooling off at Scout Lake, but the highlight of our trip this year was climbing Black Butte.

We have a rather eccentric hiking guide that is full of interesting tidbits about spots in central Oregon. According to the author, Black Butte is older than any of the other mountains in the central Cascades; it was formed more than 780,000 years ago (the last time the earth reversed its polarity from south to north). Iron oxides in the rocks at Black Butte point south, unlike those in rocks in other central Cascade mountains. As a mountain, it is distinctive for its symmetry and its placement, just north and east of the Cascades proper. 

The hike itself is more challenging than some of our previous jaunts; it's a steep 2-mile trail with a 1600 elevation gain to the top (6436 feet). I begin feeling the altitude at about 5000 feet, so hikes like this make me very slow, as I must stop often to catch my breath. It's a bit humbling, because I'm in good shape, but I have to keep reminding myself that it's not a lack of endurance on my part, just that my body is used to absorbing oxygen at sea level, and there's just not as much oxygen up there. So I went slowly, but I had no doubts I could do it (I climbed Mt. St. Helens in 1990 with my brother, which is 2000 feet higher. 

The trail begins in forest, mostly Ponderosa and lodgepole pines, and ascends into meadows that top the mountain. Stopping often allowed me to really study and admire the myriad wildflowers we saw. The red trumpet-shaped ones are harebells, while the other reds are western columbines, and the purple ones are lupine. As we went higher the trees became shorter and scarcer; near the top I took a picture of a row of snags.

But the real views are at the top. There are mountains in three directions, nine peaks in all. We were surprised to find we could see Mt. Hood and even Mt. Adams (in Washington), in addition to the local mountains: Broken Top, South Sister, North Sister, Black Crater, Mt. Washington, Three-Fingered Jack and Mt. Jefferson. I felt as if I were walking on the roofline of the world. It's been awhile since I climbed a mountain; they are problematic for me, as previously mentioned, and I've forgotten how wondrous it is to stand at the top of one. I felt simultaneously proud of my accomplishment and humbled by all the beauty surrounding me.

Three days later, I am still stiff and sore from the climb, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat (albeit with more stretching before and after next time).

I wanted to post more pictures, but Blogger is being very slow. I'll put them into a separate post.