Roses

I love roses. I have planted all sorts all around the farm, species roses, old roses, English roses, roses rescued from construction sites. I've gone out and taken pictures of a few of them.



The deep pink rose is rosa gallaica officianalis, an old rose that dates back to the Romans and from which attar of roses was traditionally made. The small white single one is rosa spinosissima which grows wild near Deer Harbor, WA. I grew this one from cuttings taken from one of those.

This red single rose is a wild rose rosa moyesii which I grew from seed. The big white bush is rosa multiflora, the parent of many, many rambling type garden roses. The pale yellow is Harrison's Yellow or the Yellow Rose of Texas. When I was a kid I rode my horse with a local drill team and we did our presentation to the song, The Yellow Rose of Texas. I have a special fondness for the song and for this rose. The pale pink one is probably my favorite rose, New Dawn. A garden rose at least 100 years old, there was one growing on my grandmother's house when I was little. She gave me a cutting for a present which is still growing on our old place in Tacoma. When I first moved to Waldron in 1972 the cabin I lived in had a New Dawn growing on it which made me feel right at home. I took cuttings of that one and have two big bushes of it here on the farm.

Lettuce and kale

Some of the many varieties of lettuce that we grow: At the top is Emerald Oak, below that is Oscarde, below that Nevada, then Grandpa's, and on the bottom row the green is Jericho and the red ones are Red Eye Cos.



And here is Red Chidori kale, a new variety of ornamental kale that is also good to eat and so beautiful.

Green

This is the greenest spring I've seen in a long time. Often by now things have begun to turn brown and by the middle of August the lawn (which we do not water) and the pastures are more golden than green. But with all the cool, wet weather everything from the garden to the overgrown lawn, trees, pasture, are GREEN, GREEN, GREEN.

The yellow water irises by our pond were planted many years ago and have gradually spread to just about surround it. They are so beautiful in the spring and one day will probably completely fill in the pond.

Cinnabar Moth

A number of years ago the cinnabar moths were introduced to San Juan County because they eat tansy ragwort an introduced weed that is harmful to livestock. We did at one point have tansy growing in our fields probably brought in inadvertently with hay. Joel and Siri would go out each spring and search for the plants to remove them. It is easy to find them when they are in flower with their characteristic yellow bloom, but Siri as a small child was especially good at spotting the plants when they were small and not blooming. Between the two of them they eliminated it from our place. And then a few years ago the moths showed up here. As they were never actually introduced to this small island they have to have flown over from one of the larger islands.


They are incredibly beautiful with their bright red and black wings.


And the caterpillars are also wonderful, yellow and black striped. Although we do not have any tansy for them to feed on, they will also feed on a common weed in the senecio family and as we like to keep them around just in case tansy reappears here we make a point of not pulling all their favorite weeds out of the garden.

Opening for the year at Roche harbor

I spent Sunday at my Roche harbor booth. My friend and partner in this endeavor, Pat McDole had opened the booth last weekend while I was at the Studio Tour. You can see her work at the Island Studios website.

My rugs and some of my hats and bags are displayed on the door of our booth. Our new partner Phoebe Grant Designs from Orcas Island
makes the beautiful silver jewelry in the picture to the right. The booth will be open seven days a week in July and August and I'll be spending two days a week on San Juan Island running it.

Planting out Winter Squash

Well, it finally warmed up enough and stopped raining long enough to get the winter squash plants set out. This year we started them inside in soil blocks because the weather has been so cold. In a warmer year we would have just direct seeded them.

As you can see in the picture we put the plants through holes in a large piece of black plastic. This suppresses weeds so we can plant in an area that has a lot of quack grass or other difficult to eradicate weeds and not keep that part of the garden out of production. At the same time, the black plastic warms up the soil which helps these warmth loving plants thrive. The few weeds that come through the holes can easily be pulled out and eventually the squash plants crowd out anything else. We can reuse the piece of plastic for three or four years.

We have also started our melons inside in soil blocks this year the same way and will put them out on their piece of plastic on Sunday. They weren't quite ready today.

Studio Tour

This last weekend was the annual San Juan Island Studio Tour. I was a guest artist at the lovely house and garden of painter Mary McCulloch. I set up my wares and a small loom in her studio with another artist, Nancy Lind who makes wonderful jewelery, many pieces including twisted and braided yarn. As a fiber artist I am especially fond of her work.




The house is on the Straits of Juan de Fuca and looks out across them to the Olympic Mountains. We hung some of my rugs and paintings by Rudi Weissinger and Mary McCulloch on the walls and fences and set sculptures by William Weissinger throughout the exquisite garden.





We had lots of people stop by to see our art and the garden and to chat. I sold 4 rugs and numerous smaller items. So all around it was a successful and really fun weekend.

Since I got home it has been raining so hard that we couldn't really get into the garden to do any serious work and my satellite internet connection wouldn't work. It can't "see" through heavy rain. Finally today the rain stopped and although it is still cloudy we were able to get out and rescue a bed of carrots that was in danger of succumbing to the weeds. And I could get online to write this.