2016 In Reverse

I knew a guy that used to joke about the Christmas letters people write.  He found it funny that these letters were either chalk-full of the amazing things people did all year or it was a laundry list of their woes.  At the time, I laughed along and said to myself, “that’s so true.”

That was all way before Facebook where this sort of external showcasing of your life is now so commonplace.  But even after a decade of change spurred on by social media’s entrenchment in our lives, I remember the meaning behind his joke: our lives are more complex than our accomplishments and they can be more joyful than our woes might tell.  You don't just have a great year or a bad year - it's almost always a mixture of both.  

Even knowing that it’s impossible to capture the essence of an entire year in a single letter or blog post I find that here on the brink of Christmas, at the end of the year, I wanted to write something about 2016.  If I followed the Christmas letter theme, I’d start with January and work my way through the seasons.  But I think life is most often remembered in reverse, like a movie watched while the tape is rewound.

With that in mind, here's how I remember 2016.

December:  It’s been colder than normal.  We’ve had lots and lots of rain this year which is good.  We need it after years of drought.  I spent a lot of time on the couch, under heated blankets, falling asleep too early in the evening.  We didn’t drive around the neighborhood and look at Christmas lights as much as last year.  The season seemed to sneak up on me and I felt like I missed things that should have been important.  We did spend one magical weekend at Disneyland where I felt blessed to be able to afford a trip like that, blessed to have a daughter just the right age to love the trip.  Blessed to have a wife that knew I needed a little magic and happiness in my life.

Splash Mountain at Disneyland

November: Felt like a hard month for me in ways I wasn't quite prepared for or expecting.  It’s supposed to be a time of Thanksgiving but I felt cheated.  Looking back I can see that I let myself withdraw from life more than I should have.  I kind of closed up and went into hibernation.  

October: I can’t even tell you about this month.  Looking at my calendar I can see it was a busy month at work and I know we did the whole Halloween thing.  But the month, in general, is just a blur.  

September: Just a few months after celebrating his graduation from the Royal Canadian Mounties program, my nephew sent us a picture of himself and his girlfriend on the top of a mountain and she was wearing a huge diamond ring on her finger.  The whole family was thrilled and we can't wait to get back together and celebrate something so joyful as a wedding.  

The happily engaged couple

August: Hot and miserable in Northern California as per normal.  August is also the time when our kids head back to school.  My daughter started 3^rd grade this August.  As with most milestones in her life, I found myself dwelling on the swift passage of time with a mix of nostalgia and excitement for the future.  We picked her up from school and went out for ice cream that afternoon.  I remember wanting to share pictures from that day with my mom who felt so far away to me.

A beautiful night in Boston's Fenway Park

July: At the end of July we took a long-planned-for trip to Boston to see the Red Sox play a couple games and do the touristy things.  It was a welcome distraction for me and I loved getting to show the ladies in my life the city on the other coast that I love so much.  

Earlier in July, we flew back to my home state of Washington and met the rest of my family for the funeral.

June: On a night at the end of June I left work and saw that I had two missed phone calls on my cell.  One was from my brother-in-law and one was from my step-dad.  I instinctively knew why they were calling so I didn’t want to call them back.  Not yet.  The longer I waited, the longer I could ignore what they had to tell me.  

A little while later we sat close together on the couch and told Bailey that her Grandma had died. 

May: We took a quick trip to Portland, Oregon.  I managed to blog about it and post some pictures well after the fact.  My daughter got her ears pierced on this trip.  We were trying to carry on with life and do normal things.

April: I finished building a raised-bed vegetable garden I had wanted to build for months.  April in Sacramento is beautiful.  I proudly sent my mom photos of my garden’s progress.  She loved to garden and loved that I loved to garden.  Every time she came to visit, she’d spend time reading a book in a chair in my garden.  I felt a surge of pride whenever I thought she was enjoying herself in the gardens I worked so hard to create.  

March: Mom called and told me she had been diagnosed with breast cancer but not to worry because they caught it early and her prognosis was good.  I cried that night.  I’m not used to good outcomes when it comes to cancer.  I sat down that night and wrote her a long text message and told her that I was sad but also thankful for her and for the things she taught me, did for me, sacrificed for me, and cultivated in me.  She wrote back and I saved a screen shot of what she sent because I knew I would want to remember her words.  

February: We went to Hawaii for the first time ever and had a wonderful trip.  Life was beautiful and good and we felt so lucky to be alive and to see such a different and beautiful part of the world.  We went to a luau one night and watched the sun set into the Pacific ocean while someone nearby blew into a Pu shell to signify the end of the day.  It was glorious. 

One of my life's best moments

Maui sunset

January: It was a new year and we had lots to look forward to.  It feels like such a long time ago now.  When January of 2017 comes, I hope that there are things to look forward to again.  

When It All Comes Together

One of the best books I've read about garden design, The Inward Journey, talks about creating your garden in a way that reflects your oldest desires.  For me, that meant creating a cove.

I attempted to do that in the far corner of my backyard by sectioning it off from the rest of the yard with a boxwood hedge and a simple iron arbor.  There was an existing mature apple tree that gave me a good start on the feeling of being closed in.  I added several Japanese maples and a chair and after just a couple years it really is starting to feel like a cove.

Japanese maples - Seiryu (in the foreground) and Iniba Shidare in the background

My satisfaction peaked the other day when my daughter came out to read while I worked in the yard.  I wasn't paying much attention while I worked but when I looked up and saw that she had chosen to sit in this uncomfortable chair and read a book I was thrilled.  Thrilled that she loves to read so much and thrilled that something in her was drawn to spend time in this part of the yard.

I could stand to learn a few things from her example.

After she caught me taking this picture she started hamming it up for the camera.  Here's a better view of the way the "cove" is coming together:

Until Then, I Have Enough

Nothing is perfect here yet.  I have ideas and energy to give them shape.  But it takes time.  Time to plan, time to plant, time to turn the leaves and lawn clippings into compost, time to consider water in a dry land, time to let things fill in.  I want intriguing pathways and inviting places to sit – or at least places that would make you imagine we actually sit in the garden.  I want all the interest we’re supposed to have: evergreen structure for the barren winter; pops of color for the heralding of spring; interesting bark, variegated foliage, and shade from summer’s wrath; and heartbreaking, nostalgic color in autumn.  I want a sunny patch of fertile soil for the pleasure of contributing praise-worthy tomatoes to our dinner.  And I want a rock, half buried in the shadowy ground, covered in moss.

I think I will have these things someday.  Or, at least, I will have some of these things some days.  Until those days though, I will remember that I have enough.  I will remember that some day I will want nothing more than what I had today. 

The light from the setting sun gave me pause.  A bright, quiet moment to be savored.

The scent of jasmine, finally climbing the arbor with vigor, was intoxicating.

I live within driving distance of the Napa Valley, aka "Wine Country".  I was pleased to see grapes
already growing on this vine in the ground less than a month. 

Birdhouse and suet created at a birthday party . . . more for us than the birds.

It looks like she's running from the camera but she's really just chasing
her new dog, Gus.  Her laughter and his tiny yips fill the evening with
innocence and my heart with gratitude.

Sandbox Garden

When we moved about a year and a half ago, we did so because we wanted to find our “forever home” before our daughter started elementary school.  It was important to us that we give her the chance to grow up with the friends she would make at school and not have to go through the experience of leaving her best buds if at all possible.   Obviously there were other factors we had to consider as well, but that one certainly drove the timing of our decision to move.   

One of the things I was looking for in a new home was a larger yard where I could stretch my gardening wings a bit more.  I wanted a yard big enough to allow my gardening interests to flourish but still coexist with a child’s inalienable right to play.  I wanted room for a collection of Japanese maples and a Wiffle ball field.  I wanted a yard big enough to grow watermelons in and to lay out a slip-n-slide at the same time.  In short, I wanted a little slice of Americana.    

So when I saw the sandbox beneath the fruitless mulberry tree - the same mulberry tree that had wooden steps nailed into the trunk and ropes hung from a sturdy limb to support a swing, I thought for sure that I had found a yard that would work for both me and my daughter.   

I took this picture on the day of the home inspection.  You can see the swing at left.
I think the yard, in general, looks really different already.

In the months since we moved in, my girl has climbed those wooden planks several times and stood inside the canopy of the mulberry tree.  She’s marveled at the new world from up there and she’s decided that living in a tree house would be “so cool”.  She’s also begged me to find a swing to hang from those ropes too.  A request I have tried and failed to fulfill.  But she never got interested in the sandbox like I thought she would.  Maybe it was the more than occasional cat poop we found.  Or the omnipresent spiders.  Maybe it was the hardened sand, the constant leaf litter, or the fact that she’s already too old for sandboxes . . . if there is such a thing as being too old for sandboxes.  She just didn’t seem to care about it one way or another which was amazing to me because I was a kid that spent days on end in a sandbox.    

On the Saturday before Father’s day, I found myself standing outside, just soaking things in; plotting my next steps.  After my eyes kept stopping on my own misplaced clutter, I determined it was past time to find places for the things I had brought from the old house.  First and foremost was the fountain my wife gave me when I turned 30 a year or two ago . . . give or take the better part of a decade.  Since the move, the fountain had been left out of the way and unfilled under the mulberry tree just because I didn’t have anywhere else to put it.  I would need the fountain to be close to an electrical outlet for the pump.  I would need level ground.  And I wanted it be away from the house because I had learned through experience that it tends to splash and leave hard water stains which are as hard to get rid of as glitter on your skin. 

Tangent: I overheard a guy say to his girlfriend in a craft store a few months ago “Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies.”  I’m pretty sure he adopted that line from a comedian, but I gave him due credit for making me laugh anyway.   

Given that one of the three outside outlets in our backyard is just feet from the sandbox it quickly dawned on me that the sandbox would be an ideal location.  But what would my little girl say to that?  I have seen her, several times, suddenly proclaim her rekindled affection for a toy or stuffed animal only after we decided to donate it to Good Will.  Would she suddenly have a hankering for sand castles or for finally embarking upon her long-planned digging expedition to China through the center of the earth?

The gap in the sidewalk was just wide enough to run the cord AND drip irrigation tubing.  Score!

I drilled a small hole at the base of the sandbox for the wiring and irrigation.

Clearly I was going to have to run it by her and get her buyoff.  So I asked her point blank, “are you gonna play in that thing ever again?” or something similarly eloquent.  And she said, basically, “of course not, Daddy.  I’m a more grown-up big-little-kid and I would prefer to do more productive and creative things with my time.”  So, with her permission, and with her help, we started digging out the sand.  It took a surprising amount of time since I didn’t just want to throw the sand away.  I could use the sand to level the pavers I had haphazardly placed as a walkway around the corner of the house.  So as we dug out the sandbox we also leveled the pavers (in the picture below).  That took us most of the afternoon - a long time to ask a 6-year-old to help you in the yard - but the two of us had a lot of fun working together especially since some of that work was just looking at the bugs that fled their homes when we unearthed them.

The smaller square rocks were leftover from a Tic Tac Toe game (using river rocks) that didn't get much use
after the first year so I repurposed them here.  They could use a cleaning, but I'm otherwise happy with the look.

On Father’s Day, after being spoiled with breakfast and coffee delivered to my lazy butt on the couch, my daughter accompanied me to the “rock store” (basically a quarry with a nursery attached to it) so we could buy a smooth paver to use as a base for the fountain.  Then we went to the nursery to pick out plants for our new sandbox garden. 

I took her to the shade plants section and basically said, “Anything you want we can get”.  She chose a couple good looking coleus plants and I picked a few ferns.   And together we planted them around the fountain.  One of the coleus plants lost a limb on the drive home so I showed her how we could put it into some water and it would grow roots of its own.  This was amazing to her (frankly, it’s amazing to me too).  As we worked side by side I got to listen to her daydream aloud about how we could sell coleus plants to people at a lemonade and flower stand. 

Our first "new" coleus is doing just fine.

We took cuttings from the other two types we bought and put them in a window sill in my man cave.

As far as Father’s Days goes, this last one was pretty great.  I am lucky to be a father and to get to spend time with my family.  And part of my fortune, I realized, is getting to see the world through the eyes of a child and discovering that it’s not always going to look the way I think it’s going to.  Sometimes that world is going to look like lemonade stands and plant sales instead of sandboxes.  And you can find happiness in either one.
  

A few shots of the new "sandbox garden":

Planted with asparagus ferns 'Myers', Japanese Spurge (Pachysandra terminalis), Silver Lady Fern (Blechnum gibbum), Coleus blumei 'Electric Lime', Coleua blumei 'Rustic Orange', and Coleus blumei 'Crimson Gold'.

Vegetable Patch Facelift

The first time I saw the house I’m living in now, it was on the internet.  I scrolled through pictures, ignoring the 70-year-old kitchen and the random placement of the laundry machines right next to where the TV was hung on a wall, and I landed on pictures of the backyard.  And then I immediately e-mailed my wife and the real estate agent demanding (nicely) that we schedule a viewing.

One of the things that struck me about the yard was this picket fence vegetable patch.  I have never been much of a vegetable grower.  What I have grown has almost exclusively been done in containers.  

Although I was enchanted by it initially, I quickly realized that there were some problems.  For one, it hadn't been attended to in a long time.  It was filled with weeds, grass, and a struggling patch of strawberries.  I left the strawberries alone and even got to enjoy a few bowls.

I tried smothering the rest of the weeds with the leftover moving boxes and piled a couple inches of compost on top.  I have used this method with some success in the past, but I wouldn't try it again.  At least not for an area that I intended to plant in within a year's time.  For one, I found that even when I dug holes through the cardboard to plant my tomatoes, they all limped along.  I think the cardboard restricted water penetration and I've since learned that it also deprives the soil of oxygen.

After I gave up on this year's crop of tomatoes, I pulled up the cardboard and abandoned the vegetable patch for the remainder of the summer.  Many of the weeds had been killed, but the surrounding lawn was starting to invade in the absence of the weeds.

Unwanted grass.  Is there anything a gardener despises more?

In the picture below you can see that I have a rose bush planted in one corner.  I originally put it there along with a couple other plants just as a holding bed until a permanent home could be located.  I have since decided to leave it be.  I figure that the blooms might help attract pollinators to the veggie patch.  You might also notice along the edges that I tried placing stones as a border to keep the grass from encroaching.  It worked okay, but the irregular shapes of the rocks created gaps.

Around September I decided that I would try to solarize the remaining weeds and grass.  September is a little late for most people to do this but when I installed the plastic it was still well over 100 degrees here which is more than sufficient for solarization to work.  Unfortunately, the hot weather didn't last long enough and the process was only marginally successful.

In the picture below you can see that most of the grass is gone.  Of course, there's still some lingering beneath the ground and it'll surely rear it's ugly green head in the coming weeks.  I also switched out the rocks in favor of a border of bricks.  I think the bricks will work better to keep grass out from growing through as long as I keep up on the edging.

I scrapped my initial plan of making a pathway in the shape of an X and laid out the form below.  It probably doesn't make the best use of space but I don't need or want a huge vegetable patch anyway.

I filled the middle portion with pea gravel and tamped it down to form a permeable place to walk.

And then I decided to paint the fence "Sweet Molasses" Brown.  The vegetable garden is in a prominent place in our backyard and is visible from nearly every window that looks out on it.  I wanted to dress it up a little bit and also to have it blend in a little bit.  I think the brown will produce a nice foil for the green vegetation and when that white rose starts poking out of the pickets I think it will really make a statement.

I also added finials to the square posts to dress it up a bit and better mirror the shape of the pickets.

Finally, after all the painting was finished, the sand swept between the bricks, and the drip irrigation was installed, my daughter and I planted fava beans and a mixture of field peas and hulled oats. I figured that after the abuse this plot has taken I should give it a good start by planting some nitrogen-fixing cover crops this first go 'round.

I'm happy with the way it all turned out and I'm really happy that it's finished because now I can move on to the next project knowing that I've actually succeeded in finishing something.

Fall Fest at the IGC

My favorite nursery is a locally owned Independent Garden Center (IGC) called Green Acres.  They have three locations and a fourth one in the plans which is quite a testament when you consider how many other nurseries have had to close shop in the last several years due to the economy and competition from larger stores like Home Depot and Lowes.  I'm not a Big Box basher by any means but a few years ago I pledged that I would only buy plants and related products from IGCs.  I still by tools, lumber, bricks, and Christmas lights at Home Depot though.

One of the reasons I made this pledge was because IGCs and other locally-owned businesses contribute to the quality of my life in ways that publicly owned companies cannot.  The 2013 Fall Festival put on by Green Acres is Exhibit A.

My daughter enjoying her scary balloon.

I suppose Home Depot could put something like this together. I know they have Saturday morning workshops for parents and their kids and a friend of mine takes his daughter often.  But this Fall Festival was on another scale entirely.

We left before the stage was used.  I was afraid it would involve a scarecrow strip tease.

The pumpkin bowling, mini golf and duck races were put on by American River College horticulture students.  This is a great volunteer opportunity as well as a chance for the students to spend some time "in the trenches" and get a taste for what it would be like to work in the retail side of their field.

Pumpkin bowling.
This is a much different version of the game me and my hooligan friends played as kids.

Mini-golf course using fresh sod, jack-o-lanterns and some bender board.  Ingenious.

In addition to the games, there were balloon makers and face painters making kids' days for free.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

 And, of course, there were pumpkins and gourds galore.

There were also some educational opportunities for us including some of information on the Sacramento Bee Keepers association (I think that's what they called themselves).  When we first walked up to the bees I started talking to my daughter about them and I was shocked to discover that she knew more about them than I did.  She knew, for instance, that all the bees we were looking at were females.  Apparently the male drones get kicked to the curb much earlier in the season and quickly die from exposure.  So this time of year it's just the Queen Bee and her workers in the hive.  I guess I've been away from school too long.

All these bees are chicks.

I got to sample a few different types of honey from areas close to here.  It was remarkable how different the texture and taste was when the distance separating these hives was less than 10 miles.

They had sno-cones, cotton candy, and drinks too.  All free.

My favorite part of the morning, however, was when my little girl decided she wanted to take a turn taking pictures of the plants.  I think I've got a future garden blogger in my midst.

My little photo bug.

Going in for the macro shot.

Of course, occasions like this aren't the only good reason to spend 100% of my gardening dollars at IGCs.  But I would really miss this type of thing if Green Acres went out of business.  And how do you put a price on the opportunity to make memories like these?