Home grown...

For me, apples will always be the fruit of autumn, in spite of the evidence right before my eyes, in my own orchard.

Apples grow to their full glory in August, the branches bend toward the ground, the deer ramp up their visits, and we start to see coyotes once the ripe fruit begins to fall. The Macintosh ripen first, then the Red Delicious. And if I'm really lucky, the fallen (but still producing) Pippen will also bear fruit.

A good year for apples... if I'd known, I would have thinned the fruit a couple of months ago. But this tree has never borne fruit like this in more than 30 years.

Late summer...

A garden is a grand teacher

It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; 

it teaches industry and thrift; 

above all it teaches entire trust. 
- Gertrude Jekyll 

Pendulum...

The past six months I've felt like I was on a pendulum... swinging back and forth, stopping here and there, always landing on the one thing that felt more urgent than anything else I should be doing.

In the spring, it was finding balance between clearing out the gardens and quilting. The gardens won out for a while. The early perennials were already up: the forget-me-nots, the orange poppies, the bachelor's buttons, the pasture daisies, and lots of snowdrops. It was the perfect time to clear away any weeds before the summer plants started to push through. And the lilacs... oh, my. The four shrubs were loaded with blooms, and smelled heavenly.

And then quilting won, because I needed to finish up my show quilts by the end of May. For a solid month, I sat with a quilt on my lap every evening, hand quilting or embroidering or binding. And every nice day, I was looking out the windows, wanting to be outside.

And for that same month, I watched it rain, then shine, then rain. I was grateful for the rain, because quilting had to be the priority. But what I really wanted was to be outside, weeding and edging and pruning, keeping an eye out for the perennials pushing up through the bark into the light. 

So I breathed a huge sigh of relief the day I turned in my quilts. Time to garden!

Somehow we found time for some weekends away: Tri-Cities with cycling friends, Port Angeles for two winery weekends, Whidbey Island for a family wedding. Fun... but getting distracted from the yard and flowers was also frustrating.

Another long weekend of rain gave me a chance to wrap up another project: making a list of a huge pile of household items, clothes, and books (lots of books) headed for Goodwill. I've been clearing out drawers and closets, trying to downsize. And everything has landed in our small studio apartment (out of sight, out of mind).

And then, back to the garden. The newly planted dahlias grew fast, and there's much to learn about growing these flowers. The farm stands and nurseries started putting plants on sale, and a few came home with me to be added to the perennial garden before fall. And the weeding never ends. Never.

And neither do household chores, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking. But we won't go there today.

Sea of yellow...

DW's been consumed with the barn project, so the mowing has taken a back seat. And that's good for me... the back pasture and the orchard are awash with bright yellow and green, with the dark backdrop of a forest of evergreens.



I waded out into the yellow, sat down, and focused on the forest of buttercups. I walked around and looked through the viewfinder, looking for photos, and finally making my way to the old orchard and the orchard pasture between the farmhouse and the pumphouse.



I've always wanted to plant foundation gardens around the farmhouse, but there's a deep clay layer next to the house, and plants (and grass) don't grow well there. But the lawn, that's another story. Just go out twenty feet from the house, and the grass grows lush and green.

Quilt room...

I love my guest room. It's nestled in the dormer of my 1923 farmhouse, cozy and comfortable. It's also become the quilt room. Not where I create quilts, but it's where my collection of antique quilts lives. And a bear made from an antique quilt. And a stack of antique yellow suitcases, watched over by a Boyds bear (my whole collection of collectible bears lives in the walk-in closet off the guest room).



It's also where I display the tiny hand-made quilts I love to make from orphan quilt blocks. The blocks either side of the hearts quilt are orphans; the hearts quilt is a panel I bought in the late 1970s. On a visit to me in the Tri-Cities, my sister taught me how to hand quilt, using this panel. My passion for quilting had its roots with her, and I am very grateful.



My ribbon-winning quilt, Field of Flowers, was always destined for the guest room. The colors fit perfectly in this room, with the cream-colored bead-board walls and pale green carpet.

It took Madison exactly five minutes... maybe six... to discover the new addition, and make herself at home.

Last hurrah?

The snow started falling just after midnight, and by morning, another two inches blanketed the ground.

I rolled over in the early morning hours, and DW said, "It's snowing." I think I must have already known, because my dreams all included snow. I think it was the dream about our neighbors cutting through our yard to avoid the deep drifts that finally woke me up.

With a mug of tea, I finished another Dick Francis book, then went out to the kitchen to do the dishes. And while looking out the windows at a snow-covered camellia, I noticed the snow was starting to drip.



So I went to find my big girl camera, slipped into down jacket and boots, and went out to record the snow. It might be the last snowfall this winter, and I don't want to miss the chance of a few more photographs.

I'm glad I did, because the snow was gone by noon.


Big tracks through the orchard


Daffodils swelling toward bloom


The birdfeeder covered in snow, surrounded by bird tracks

Catching up...

The cold is keeping me out of the basement these days. So instead of quilting, I'm working my way through my library of Dick Francis mysteries. So far this month, I've read twelve of them. I love sitting in my favorite corner of the living room, in a big overstuffed chair right by the wood stove. It's toasty and warm there, and I can look outside at the snowy orchard, and be glad I don't need to be anywhere else.

The first few years we were in the farmhouse, before we put in a wood stove, I dreaded winter. The house was always cold, and the only way to be warm was to crawl into bed. We had a waterbed in those days, and it was always warm.

Once the wood stove went in, the opposite happened. I packed away my sweaters in favor of short sleeve t-shirts, because the stove heated the house so well!

But there were those winters when the house won: ice storms would pull down trees and power lines, the power would go out for days, and we couldn't keep the house warm. Those days, I'd pull the love seat in front of the wood stove, and spend the day there (always competing for space with a couple of cats).

More white...

The windows look out over the old orchard and a wall of cedar trees, and the jewel in the crown is the barn red pump house, which protects the original well for my 1923 farmhouse.



In the corner is a woodstove that heats the house, a toasty place to stand and watch the snow fall. The tiny stained glass window has hung here almost as long as we've lived here. It was made by my dad in the colors of spring, with one deep red tulip.

The critter tracks keep multiplying... I can see where the deer have been moving from my neighbor's property across my orchard.



It's the second major snowfall this month, and this one dumped on the whole Puget Sound region. The peacefulness of my little patch of earth is a huge contrast with the chaos out on the roads and highways. I'm so glad to be at home.

New old...

My country farmhouse has always been a blend of new and old... antique quilts and china and furniture are my favorites. A Grandmother's Flower Garden from the 1930s has hung on the wall for almost twenty years, but today I decided it was time for a change.

Yesterday a blue and white oval platter arrived from eBay, and today the armload of forsythia branches burst into bloom. So I went upstairs to go through my antique quilts, and found the perfect replacement:  this red and yellow quilt that I bought at my guild's quilt show last summer. 

Antique quilts and traditional patterns drive my own quilting passion. I love knowing that the patterns I make have been made for decades, some for more than a hundred years.

February snow...

At 7:00 am it was 24 degrees and snowing, about 4 inches on the patio table, even deeper in the orchard. The wind always blows strong across the patio, between the house and the big cedar tree, and the snow is always shallower there. There are tracks on patio and deck, rabbit?

I settled Madison on the platform in the window and left her looking outside at a white world. It snowed all day long, heavy in the morning, stacking up fast... then tiny flakes, then heavy, then tiny again. But all day long, the snow built up.

Beautiful, sparkly, brilliant snow.

Autumn in the garden...

It's done. Finally.

In the middle of this 25-foot-square area once stood a tall fir tree with a trunk nearly 6 feet in diameter. We had it removed a few years ago, and the stump ground to wood chips, and this garden has basically been neglected ever since. It has sprouted volunteer fireweed and iris and thyme and rose campion with little help from me; I pulled weeds, and stayed out of its way. And while I waited for inspiration, I collected plants and transplanted seedlings, and finally this fall, I dug the whole thing up.

I shoved boulders around to make a loose rockery around the outside, leaving room for annuals come spring. I backfilled with dirt, and raked wood chips out to the edges. I left clumps of thyme and sweet woodruff, and planted everything I've been saving (plus some new additions): there's a spiral of rose campion plants around a bird feeder, surrounded by day lilies, rosemary, columbine, iris, coreopsis, purple coneflower, hosta, and black-eyed susan. There's a winding path, and the back corner (under the lilacs) will have room for a couple of Adirondack chairs.

My favorite cottage garden plant is the tall garden phlox. I love the flowers and the smell is heavenly. But unfortunately, it's a favorite of the deer, too. I saved a place for a few more plants, and will just have to figure out a way to keep the deer out of it. I also love purple coneflower, but they've always been short-lived in my garden. This fall I found some cold-hardy varieties, so fingers are crossed that with mulching during the winter, it will survive.



My rosemary died a few winters ago, and the new one will need mulching, too. I just hope I left enough room for it... the tag says it could be six feet high and four feet wide, if I don't keep up with the pruning. But there will be lots of fresh rosemary for any of my friends and family who want it.

Finishing touch...

The deck was sadly gray and black at the beginning of summer; better after being pressure washed. Not bad, actually, considering its age... near as we can remember, we built it the summer of 1988 with the help of a friend and his 3-year-old son. Riley's little handprint and the date are still visible on one of the concrete footings.

DWs new orbital sander did a great job of taking off the worst of the rough wood, and I cleaned up underneath the drip edge and the edges of all the boards using the leftover 60- and 80-grit sanding disks (by hand!).

And then we waited for the weather to cooperate. We needed three solid days of dry weather: a day for the deck to dry after a couple of days of rain, 6 hours to stain the deck, and two days of drying time.

The weather cooperated, thank goodness. We had enough time to get the deck stained and dry, finishing just before nightfall. To keep it dry in case of  heavy dew, we spread tarps and let it dry another day. We finished up the stairs the next morning, and I took pictures so we'd remember how light the wood was when the stain went down.

We had to cross our fingers with the stain color, because it wasn't available at the lumber store. They ordered it for us, and it was exactly what we wanted.

Dead weeds...

Another beautiful day to work in the garden. We were gone during most of a hot August, which killed most of the weeds in my flower gardens. How lucky was that! The flowers were a bit stressed, but are coming back nicely. I've been steadily working through the beds, clearing out dead weeds and deadheading, moving perennials to better spots, and cutting back the sod to give me more room to plant next spring.

The big flowerbed outside our studio apartment is slowly taking shape. I've started to rebuild the rockery we dismantled when we had a big fir tree taken out a few years ago. John and Dave moved the rocks back to the garden for me, and I'm shoving them her and there as I can, and building a new run of stone to form a curvy walkway through the bed. This area is 3 feet deep in bark and wood chips (thanks to grinding the stump), and I'm gradually moving chips to other parts of the garden. When I get down to dirt, I can plant new perennials here.

As I cut down old flower stalks, I've been harvesting seeds from my favorites: rose campion, white foxglove, veronica spicata, campanula. I hope to start these indoors at the end of winter, and have plants to set out in April.

Before setting the sprinkler, I crawled under the hellebores and transplanted a bunch of babies. They'll live in pots on the patio and next summer I'll be able to plant them in the garden (or give them away).

One step at a time...

It was Williamsburg blue when we bought our little farmhouse in 1985, after searching for the perfect property for 16 months. It had a home for us, a barn and pastures for my horse, lots of space for gardening, two orchards, a big pond with a duck house, a miniature of the house to protect the original well, and a chicken coop. The farm also came with a family of Toulouse geese.

A few years later the gardens were thriving, we'd grown a flock of Rhode Island Red chickens, the flock of geese had grown to fifteen, and we'd replaced the roofs on all the buildings. It was time to bring in a painter. We chose teal, with bright white trim and dark blue-green for all the fancy molding.



Colors
For years, we talked off and on about how to paint the buildings the next time around. We hashed it out so much, that when it came time to make a decision, it was pretty easy. Both of us wanted barn red for the outbuildings. And I wanted dark gray for the house and garage, something that would be a neutral background for the green grass and trees, and the flower gardens. In the end, after much research, we chose a medium gray for the house and garage with dark gray for the gable ends, and ebony for the fancy trim. We thought the perfect barn red would be tough to find, but the grays were much harder. We drove around nearby farm country, holding up paint chips and making notes, and we're completely happy with our choices.




New doors
Once the paint colors were settled and John (our builder/painter) started in on repairs, we went shopping for doors. The old front door (which is now the unused back door) was in poor shape and needed to be replaced. Plus, I wanted a door with a window to let in more light. We were lucky and found fiberglass Shaker doors for half price, because the leaded glass windows were put in slightly crooked. We decided we could fix them easily, and decided to replace both of our doors. I love how the window reflects the trees around the patio, and love the extra light that streams inside in the afternoon.




Garage
The biggest construction part of the job was updating the garage. We wanted it to match our 1923 farmhouse, so added a belly band and replaced the cedar siding above the trim with shingles. We also added a pair of corbels to the ones at each end and at the top. This was DWs brilliant idea. There was always something out of place about this long stretch of roof, and the corbels brought the whole building into scale.

John used gray-tinted oil-based primer on all the buildings as he finished each one, not just the new wood. This made sure that the new paint would hide in one coat.





The end of the garage near the house has a mother-in-law apartment, with a classy beveled glass door. Once the building was painted, it was clear that we needed to replace the old light fixtures. Something in dark metal or black, and Mission style I think.



John drove in one morning and said he thought the garage doors were too plain. What would we think of using the dark gray to highlight them? I thought it would look too modern; doors just like these with frosted glass panels are all the rage right now. But he was sure it would be perfect, so he painted one row. We stood back and looked, still not sure. So he painted another, then another, saying if we didn't like it, he'd painted it medium gray again. But when one door was done, we loved it. He also painted the foundation, the perfect touch.




Barn
The machine shed forms an "L" with the garage, and houses lumber and the John Deere tractor and the farm truck, and always stored hay and grain when I had horses. I've always called it the barn, because a farm isn't complete without one. It was never anything but plain jane. But John had the perfect idea: add a belly band to make it match the other buildings, and battens to break up the long expanses of plywood.










Chicken coop
Our little chicken coop changed the most of any of the structures, because it was never really finished. It sits on concrete pier blocks, has a wall of windows, and a door at one end. It was sheathed in scraps of plywood. A few hours with wood and a nail gun, and John added a belly band to each end, battens all the way around, trim around the door, and a sill. The old door has a coat of ebony paint, and even the chicken's door is painted in ebony. All it needs is a ramp... and chickens!










Well house
The original hand-dug well is protected inside a tiny replica of the farmhouse. One of the windows was missing, replaced by a sheet of plywood. But we found the window in the barn and re-installed it. John repaired damaged siding, and DW and I pulled out the rotten boards over the 3-foot-diameter well casing and replaced them with ground-contact boards. There's a perfect little wedge-shaped flower bed in the corner, and come spring I will plant something there. Something suited to a farmhouse in the country, like rudbeckia or purple coneflowers, or maybe a hosta.



We couldn't decide what color to paint this little building, so we painted all three colors on one side and took our time making up our minds. The lighter gray was out right away. I loved the dark gray, and thought it would look perfect, separated from the big house by a smooth green lawn.

But I couldn't get the image of a tiny red house out of my mind, surrounded by cedar trees, the red a beautiful contrast to the green, a jewel nestled in the snow of winter. So it became red.




The farmhouse
We saved the best (and the most work) for last:  our classic farmhouse.

Like the garage, the farmhouse will be painted in two colors of gray: dark gray in the gable ends, and medium gray for the rest. The belly band and window trim and barge rafters will be white, and the fancy moldings will be ebony. This turned out to be a very cool color... in the right light, it has a purple cast, which I love. The front door will be barn red, and the other doors will be ebony.

While John worked on the other buildings, I scraped paint on the south side. It was kind of addicting. The last week before vacation we both worked on it, scraping and sanding. And it was hot, many days in the 90s. Great for drying out the wood, not so great for the humans out in it.



When we got home from vacation, everything was done and perfect.





The rest is up to us: new light fixtures and door hardware, and refinishing the deck. And building a back porch.

Next year.