the furry buds have popped open

and now the sweetest fragrance
of star magnolias
is perfuming the air.

here the cherry tree creates a watercolor of petals as background.

today's garden

prunus 'accolade'

wild mustard

ribes sanguineum alba

ribes sanguineum

ribes sanguineum

hummer magnet

katakanasince i ran out of japanese hankies to fill out the quilt matrix
i painted a quilt square with my name in katakana.
quilters are always supposed to sign and date their quilts,
so i signed it right on the front in big black inky script.
a friend from college taught me how to write my name
in katakana(the script used for foreign names + places).
when i was little my sister's friend
(whose parents were in ww2 internment camps)
taught me how to say, "i don't speak japanese"
in japanese, along with a bunch of other japanese phrases.
i would love to be able to sit in on the classes
taught at the high school and learn
how to write and speak japanese.
then i would be able to read all the
fabulous craft books i've been buying at uwajimaya.
i hope that mariko, our japanese exchange student,
when i was little, will enjoy seeing this quilt
when it is finished since she gave all the hankies to my mother over many years.

ribes sanguineum

i love this plant!
i have white ones, palest pink ones, rose pink ones, but i think this one is my favorite.
it is not a named variety.
maybe i should clone it and name it.
flowers are such perfection right now.
they are at the stage when the buds are plump and colorful yet not fully opened...my favorite stage in a flower's life cycle. the grape hyacinths are so lovely in perfect shade of blue. lilac buds are swelling with anticipation. the cherry is gorgeous.
the fuzzy buds of star magnolias are shut tight still.
the fur on their calyxes look like little white hamsters.
the buds have broken on all the willows this year and so i've missed another year of harvesting their beautifully colored branches for basketmaking.
too many projects i want to do all at the same time.
i need about four lifetimes to accomplish everything i want to do.
if i am reincarnated will my new self just continue what i have in mind?
or maybe i'll be a geologist, a profession that i could have readily enjoyed.
i wonder if i am related to the richter that invented the earthquake magnitude scale, since my great grandmother's name was richter. additionally there's gerhard richter, the german contemporary artist, that would cool if i were related to as well. hmmm.

machine quilting
day 2

starting the machine quilting
day 1

just finishedthe back side of my japanese hankie quilt. now the huge task of sandwiching the front, batting and back together then quilting the whole mess. it has been quite a while since i have worked on this quilt. the front can be seen here.

rugged beautytalk about a plant that can take it...
these beauties have fought off large hail pellets,
three days of snowfall, + rain,
and still hold up under the pressure.
the best of the spring bulbs!

this has to be a record! three days of snowfall in a row! only today it's the big fat falling straight down to the ground kind of flakes. no sunshine today so it looks entirely different than yesterday. today it is a purely winter scene. i'm glad we fed the rabbits before it started coming down this morning. you can get pretty wet coming in after those huge flakes cling to your coat. wow those flakes are huge today!

okay, off to an entirely different subject: sewing/sailing
my son said to me yesterday, "haley has this really cool mat that she can change on so her socks don't get wet." he knows that any hint of a sewing project and i am on it right away. give me a problem and i will find a solution. or at least try. so i gathered up all my polar fleece scraps (i knew that some day all those bits would become useful), the waterproof pack cloth that i bought a long time ago for sailing bags, and some pack cloth for the binding. so without concern for style, just trying to piece enough scraps to make a continuous fabric that was big enough for the mat, i stitched away. it needed a bit of embellishment so the S went on there just to make it personalized. it should be nice and soft to stand on out there on the dock.

ahhh snow on the first day of march!

i love being an island within an island.
here, way at the top of the hill, we sometimes have the benefit of snowfall when it occurs nowhere else on the island. tromping through the soft crunch of snow under foot in the early morning sunshine my mission was to chop up some firewood from a tree i just felled.
was i in vermont?
oh i love the sound and feel of snow under my gardening shoes!
such softness in my quiet strides.
only the nearby stellar's jay breaking the perfect silence.

update:it's snowing again,
yet i can see blue sky to the west!
it's the dry tiny kind of snow that falls so gently.
what a magical day!

eucalyptus girlmaking these bead dolls is so much fun. with the patterns in japanese they're stretching my underdeveloped brain to figure out how to make them. here miss marigold, named for her flowered skirt, stands atop my harvest of eucalyptus branches. i love the smell of eucalyptus, which transports me back to my roots in northern california. i am thrilled to have hardy varieties of eucs that can take the cold temps here. i copice one every year yet the other one i had let grow into a big tree until this year. the trunk was being ravaged i think by deer rubbing their antlers on it. i thought that with the cambium layer of the trunk ripped away from a sizeable area that the tree might become susceptible to a blow-down so i chopped it down to a newly copiced stump. it will likely resprout (eucs are tenacious buggers) and i will be able to keep it at a manageable size from now on, and harvest the lovely red petioled leaves. i have got to paint those leaves one of these days!

viburnum bodnantensethroughout the winter this sweet shrub, near the livingroom window, brings a little happiness into long grey days. its fragrance, if weather permits to enjoy, is a delightful reward for venturing outside.

annual arrival of the pink petals

when the accolade cherry buds are bursting
it is a fluffy pink reminder
that my girl's birthday will soon be here.

crocus of any sort are delightful but i think i like the stripey ones the best.
hellebores are a late winter treat.
one of the first trees to bloom...cornus mas...cornelian cherry, which isn't a cherry at all but a dogwood.
after pruning the roses (how do they manage to grow so fast in one season?!), chopping back some of the clematis and scooting accumulated leaves from the emerging crocus i went inside to work on the tiny scale of bead dolls. the instructions are in japanese so i do as best as i can.

our new bunnyshe's a chocolate tan

in the detailsin my travels i love the details that make a place alive with character. in lausanne it was the colorful banners that i just had to sketch to remind myself of the designs and colors. i abbreviated the colors used on each one so i could try to replicate them at home some day. i wonder if there is a book documenting the amazing array of flags that pervade swiss streetscapes.
throughout italy i would measure travertine steps and benches and the delirious designs of marble paving. there time had the means to produce perfection of scale in design elements and i wanted to know their exact proportions. notes on color, pattern, and scale were sketched as a reminder of their qualities. paving patterns so easily translate into quilting patterns, so i guess my passion for paving patterns is symbiotic to my love of quilting. here i added a bit of digital watercolor to a sketch of paving found in san giorgio maggiore in venezia to highlight the three dimentional characteristics of this particular pattern.

more fragments of paintings

this one is on the way to steps beach on nantucket
where wild rabbits regularly skip across the path
right in front of you. this part of nantucket is so special
because there is no hint of the culture of opulence,
just sand, rugosa roses, shore pines and grassy meadows.
you hear birds and feel the salt air.
the sand crunches within your flip-flops
with anticipation of the near shell covered beach.
the humidity is ignored here.
its just pure delight in the
quiet soft eastern shore afternoon light.

the original (unaltered) painting is an oil on panel.

birdie fragments

boogie boards, hibachi, bikes, towels drying on the line,
putter, aqua socks, sand pail, beach umbrella,
sun-bleached shingles, screen door....
it's all there under the canopy of scraggly trees
and the watchful eyes of a multitude of birdies.
that's summer on nantucket.
original (unaltered) oil painting on canvas

Endemic Plant Manifesto

Lately I have been thinking about Robert Oppenheimer and how after he developed the atomic bomb he realized its destructive power and deplored it.

After years of using ornamental plants in hundreds of projects I have come to the realization that their use has been so ultimately destructive to the environment that I wonder if it is too late to restore the endemic environment. Since middle school, when I would walk two miles each way to school through the pristine native veldt of northern California, I developed a profound appreciation for native plants. I think that windswept delicate landscape dramatically influenced my desire to work with plants, so I went on to study landscape architecture in college. Yes I did produce plans that restored lands back to native habitat in my career, but I may have done more harm on other projects where seductively opulent perennials, abundantly flowering shrubs and non-indigenous trees were planted with abandon. The use of ornamentals created spaces that were and continue to be enjoyed, unbeknownst to the observer of their underlying consequences.

But as I age I see how readily available nursery stock is not screened for its destructive behavior and becomes a pest or worse an invasive species. I used to love butterfly bushes. But after observing them seeding regularly into my driveway and parts of my garden I questioned their place in ornamental horticulture. I then went to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle years ago, and found that Buddleia had been listed as a noxious plant by the state. That was all I needed to confirm my suspicion and come home to remove all four of the mature butterfly bushes from the garden. They had such sweet honey fragrance and long bloom times, but that was overshadowed by their menacing nature. You see I grew up where scotch broom and pampas grass were evil. They wantonly squeezed out indigenous vegetation and made chaparral impassable for grazing deer.

When I worked on a native plant restoration project on the Oregon coast years ago I read in a United States Department of Agriculture publication that three scotch broom plants were originally brought to Vancouver Island in 1850 by a man to remind him of his native country and within a century they have colonized the entire west coast. Broom seed is so amazingly viable that even after 80 years they can still germinate. The plant is designed for rampant propagation. A mature broom can produce over 15,000 seeds. Its seeds once ripe can burst out of their pea like pods and be flung twenty feet in any direction.

When I was a member of the University of Washington Arboretum I received their periodical, which would describe plants that have gone out of control elsewhere in the world, and had become on watch lists here. One of those plants had started to seed in my garden after a short while following its purchase. I proceeded to yank it out of the garden after spending twenty-five dollars for it at a great nursery. I then called the nursery and mentioned to them that this plant was considered a threat for being invasive and they dismissed the idea of pulling it from their stock. I have asked other nurseries to pull stock of other plants that I have found so aggressive in my own garden that they are impossible to remove completely. Why would nurseries willingly offer plants that are obnoxious?

It is hard to reconcile my love for lilies and kolkwitzia and the desire for a solidly responsible footprint on the land. So this year I have decided not to go to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, because I think the push for new and exotic plants is a very destructive practice that should be questioned. Much, but certainly not all, of my garden has been developed using bare-root stock from the annual county’s Conservation District Tree Sale, which is coming up soon by the way. When we have drought through the summer those native trees and shrubs carry on like “so what…I can take it!” When we have extreme low temperatures they say it again instead of wither under the bite of hard freeze. So with a vast selection of lovely indigenous plants available (that were highly regarded by early explorers from England) which withstand all that nature dishes out what more could you ask for in a twenty-first century garden? It could be that consumerism is well represented in the plant world and that new and improved has always had an allure.

Native plants have been seen as raw nature to be managed. Native plants are a static list, rather than an evolving list, so how alluring is that? Can we look at endemic plants through a new appreciative lens? Buy a guidebook to native plants and see the glory that can be all around us. I have created a card that can be left at nurseries, based on the model from the California Invasive Plant Council, that might encourage nurseries to stop selling invasive plants. Please download your card here and let nurseries know that it is bad form to continue to sell noxious plants. Using endemic plants will enable us to tread more lightly on the earth and bring back a remnant of the balance that once was to this land.

hmmm,

my husband brought back two colorways of a fabric from australia this weekend for me and when i looked at the pattern i was amazed. the outline of the "land" is a close approximation of this island! and further x nearly marks the spot where we live!
aboriginal patterns always tell a story and this one is called, "watering hole".

fragmented paintingas i clean up my winter garden, clipping away desiccated spent flower heads, removing soddened chlorophylless iris leaves along with heaps of styrax japonica seeds mashed in with its fallen leaves, i am keenly aware of the process of decay. what would it be like to have my paintings look as though in the process of decay? were my recent gilded bird paintings old, were they new? the patina of age is sought so highly in furniture yet on a woman's face it is banished in popular culture. in an attempt to further fragment my paintings, in photoshop, in a spring-like manner rather than winter's harsh hand, i've been experimenting with flower petals and forms reminiscent of germanic ironwork to decay the image.

aaaah, as i look out the window spring is appearing in little jewels about the garden. spare canary yellow crocus and a pink bud on the cherry tree whisper the change of season is upon us. who is shouting outside? well it is the witchhazel of course. "come smell my intoxicating elixir perfuming the air", it beckons through the window, resplendent in a mellow fringe of yellow petals.
spring!