We moved here twenty years ago and started gardening as soon as we could fell some trees, but we have neighbors who have been at it almost twice as long. When I asked R.A.T. (who has beautiful gardens and fruit trees with C., his wife) what kind of soil I could expect to find on my lot he thought for a minute and said, “Sparky”. I had no idea what he meant but later that summer when I boot-heeled a spading fork into a future raised bed and nearly started a forest fire scraping the metal against the granite,  I got it. We don’t have dirt here, we have flint and tinder.

I’ve hauled a lot of seaweed in the last twenty years – pickup truck loads of the stuff, first loose in the back of the truck and later packed into recycled contractor bags as I realized what the salt and sand did to my truck. Also leaves, sand, gravel, horse manure, bales and bales of hay, piles of pine needles, composted bio-soils, wood chips and lately, other people’s yard waste and branches as I’ve adapted to the practices of permaculture. I can actually grow things now but that doesn’t mean there’s any fewer rocks, large or small.

Rocks can occasionally be a positive element in the garden, especially in poor soil. I was weeding the strawberries during this last gasp of summer-in-November and found the plants had spread furiously under and around the rocks holding down the landscape fabric meant to suppress weeds. I stood there for a while and considered the situation. The strawberry plants loved those rocks, perhaps because they conserved moisture and regulated temperature changes? The landscape fabric certainly wasn’t doing anything to suppress weeds, and I have a lot of rocks. Why not make the plants happy? The strawberry bed went from this:

to this:

If nothing else, it will be easier to step into the middle of the bed to pick the fruit, and it can’t be any worse at weed suppression than the landscape fabric. Prettier too, and I find that counts for a lot in the garden.

The withy is wonderful where it has enough space but I’ve been leery of starting one in the main garden. I need room around it to easily prune it back (I’m pretty wild with the big shears), and it gets big fast even in Maine. Then a few weeks back a friend showed me an old woodcut illustration of a garden with what looked like large baskets overflowing with herbs. The “pots” had been started as baskets made of green willow with the uprights staked into the dirt, and allowed to grow in place. It seemed like a great idea!

I cut enough basket willow to form the uprights for a semicircular “basket” backed up to a tree trunk. I try to cut the branches at an angle for ease of pushing them into the ground, and remember to orient them the way they were growing.

Then I wove the uprights into themselves to form the basket. I used string to tie them in place at first but as the weave gets thicker the ends stay where you put them. Then I lined it inside and out with mulch hay to cut down on weed competition.

I filled the inside of the basket with a layer of rotten firewood, bark, then hay, then soil, and planted my new flowering (and fruiting) quince. I hope the recumbent form of the shrub isn’t as overwhelmed as it might be by starting 2′ above ground level.

Now to wait for Spring, and “Crimson and Gold”.

Minus (sort of): Remember the scene from the Blues Brothers movie with Elwood and the aerosol can of epoxy? “This is strong stuff.”  Keep hair, clothing, fingers, pets, and tools out of the way because when they say “instant extreme bond” they’re not kidding. I managed not to fold it on itself or stick it to the stepladder but it was a near thing. I realize the product is supposed to be adhesive but really – this stuff is real world Katamari Damacy. And that’s only a problem because,

Minus: This product is expensive. Amazon lists a 3″ x 5′ roll for $24.95. I could have used twice that for this project, and really couldn’t afford to waste an inch.

Plus: There’s some good information available.  I read some reviews (bless you, Amazon) that suggested lining up the two sides before taping. I was dealing with a right angle tear in the hoop house cover that was being held open by tension on the rest of the structure and a windy day, so holding it together seemed like a good idea. After a lot of experimentation (duct tape in various configurations) I threaded a darning needle with fishing line and sewed it. I couldn’t exert enough pressure to pull the sides completely together, but the 1″ gap was uniform and all the pieces lined up, which was close enough for folk music.

Plus: Does what it says on the tin. After all the prep work the actual repair was fairly straightforward. I peeled the backing down about an inch (sticky!) and applied it just beyond the start of the tear. The tape adhered instantly and smoothly. I rubbed it down as much as possible (there was no way to get to the outside of the hoophouse roof to burnish it from the other side) and that was it.

Plus: The repair looks great. The tape is smooth, clear and, according to the box, non-yellowing. I have enough aging silver duct tape in my yard already, thank you.

I love gardening, every day is a new experience.

Before, and after – so far.

. . .was too much for the woven fabric cover on the hoop house. Saturday’s storm included rain and the weight opened a huge rip between two bays. Fortunately, the metal ribs are undamaged and another cover will be easy to come by.

My family gave me the hoop house 12 years ago on Valentine’s Day. I ordered it from an outfit called “Cover-It”, now evidently defunct. They made amazing portable structures: airplane hangers, hospitals for war zones in Afghanistan, portable prisons, and hobby greenhouses. My 12′  x 12′ x 9′ structure shipped on the same truck as one of the hospitals headed for Bangor International Airport and the Middle East.

The company was based somewhere in Florida. When I talked to the guy about delivery there were children laughing in the background, road noises and dogs barking. I told him we lived on an island in Maine and he asked; “What ocean?”. I answered that it was the Atlantic Ocean, the same ocean that he saw in Florida. He said; “What? No! It can’t be,” and I never managed to convince him that it was.

I’ll order a new tarp next week, but we’ll have to wait until spring, or at least until the snow melts down to ground level, to put it on. This is the hoop house in happier times, filled with begonias and a Brown Turkey fig.

I walked farther down the carriage road to the first of the Breakneck Ponds, and found a recent “chew”. Here the beaver has felled a poplar and a carried the tree off for construction purposes.

And this is why beavers can be hazardous to your health – I’m glad it wasn’t windy.

Further down the carriage road the park has been forced to intervene. Beavers have dropped a fairly large birch tree across the road and the park crew has chainsawed it into manageable pieces.

At the last lodge I visited there were two beavers cruising the deep water in front of this impressive dam. Evidently they don’t take weekends off.

This is the back yard of the houses that faced West St. and the harbor, taken from the municipal parking lot. Not a very typical description of pricey real estate, but these little shacks were much too dear to stand.

Now, I have a plan. Last week I dug over the beds, removing the old plants and uprooting the alpine strawberries and miner’s spinach that had become a thick ground cover. Today I dug out rough squares to use as planting areas for the new canes come spring, and covered the plot with landscape fabric.

I removed most of the decent soil and will use it next spring, after subzero temperatures have killed most of the weeds. I’m using my new favorite building material – firewood from the bottom of last year’s stack – to station the landscape fabric and mold it to the holes.

I bought two bushes last year, variety “Killarney”, and transplanted them to the new bed this afternoon. This fall I plan to purchase “Anne”, an ever-bearing yellow, “Royalty Purple” and “Prelude”, and early fruiting red. Raspberry plants are sold bare-root in bundles of 10 or 5 canes, depending on the variety. I plant them in hills, so will divide the shipment up by the size of the holes I’ve dug.

And finally, where is my matched team of Morgans when I need them?

Black Orpington

I read about the various breeds of chickens, their relative cold hardiness, size, adaptability. I got side-tracked by chicken coops – I’m an old hand at the Internets, but the amount of information on housing poultry is a little overwhelming. Then I found out that Egglu makes beehives. Very, very expensive beehives, but there went another half an hour. From there I went to butchering chickens, brining chicken and the general consensus that I’ll need a bigger freezer. Smoking, “jarring” and salting poultry look like activities for after one retires and has whole days to devote to a production line that can’t be interrupted without a considerable risk of food borne pathogens.

The more I think about it, the farther “raising our own meat birds” moves down on the list of available projects. Tide Mill Farm in Edmunds raises chickens according to “pastured poultry” methods; they’re close enough to MDI to be considered local agriculture and their prices compare favorably with the local grocery chain considering the value-added. I’d need a stout coop to fend off the local wildlife: fox, raccoon, bald eagle, the occasional black bear and our neighborhood pack of coyotes – but what I really need is a woodshed. And a garage. And a studio. A chicken from a well-run, local poultry operation is looking better and better.

It will be April before the Ellsworth Feed and Seed has its next live bird shipment – chickens! turkeys! quail!, ducks! – and we’ll see what happens then.

K’s boom truck showed up on Sunday afternoon in the pouring rain. I was on my third pair of shoes and already soaking wet, so a little more water wasn’t a problem.

Now reach into the truck. . .

And pull out a rock. . .

And confab on the placement. Because it’s not going anywhere after that webbing comes off.

A beautiful rock, nestled in blueberries. Note the worked edge – this might have been part of a foundation for a Bar Harbor “cottage” lost in the Great Fire. Now it resides with us, forever or until boom truck do us part.

]]> http://amy.pollien.com/2010/07/12/big-rock-redux/feed/ 0 http://amy.pollien.com/2010/06/21/new-rock/ http://amy.pollien.com/2010/06/21/new-rock/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:27:32 +0000 admin http://amy.pollien.com/?p=1174 Our neighbors across the road are moving. They’ve been wonderful neighbors and we’ll miss them, but as it happens their new home is only 10 minutes away. I don’t get out much, but I think I can still manage to visit. And they’ve promised to come back to Trick or Treat.

Like many households, they are distributing some of their belongings before they move. Unlike lots of folks, they have rocks. Big rocks, all over the lower driveway and they are taking some with them to the new place, and they gave one to us. It is a thing of beauty – 6′ x 2′ by 2′, grey with a few lichen spots and partly cut. S. told me the Japanese term for part smooth/part natural surface, and I’ve forgotten it already. Fortunately, you don’t need to know the word to appreciate the effect.

The New Rock sits partially across the straight-line access to the house, in line with the south window bay. The driveway used to come right up to the house – or rather, the front yard was an empty stretch of fill from nearby Lamoine that one could drive over.  Somehow that open avenue has remained even as the space was populated with peach and pear trees, vegetable beds and a hoop house. This is a “before” photo of the front of the house.

This is the big truck that picked up the stone and dropped it (carefully) here. That’s a big truck.

Here’s the after photo with the stone in place. Rock solid, as they say.