My Own Personal Jungle

A design created with a handful of wildflower seeds

The Difference Between Gardening and Designing

I was reading Piet Oudolf and Noël Kingsbury’s book ‘Designing with Plants’ last night, a gorgeous work that dramatically illustrates how the shapes, colors, and life history characteristics of perennials can be used to manipulate the visual and emotional palette of a garden. As I gazed upon the carefully constructed designs, I began musing over the fact that I create gardens based upon what will survive in a give location, and to accommodate the handful of plants that I can easily afford. If I truly designed with plants, if I sought an expression of what I felt was really beautiful or told a story in color and form, I would first paint what I wanted to see, then buy large sweeps of artful species to fill in the places that would create the feeling that I wanted to convey. I would work harder to adjust the ambient conditions to meet my specifications, rather than humbly working with what I had. I’d have the wherewithal to rid myself of the bushes, or rocks, or trees, or whatever stood in my way.  In short, I would be an artist, coming from a sense of control and confidence. As it is, I act as an ecologist more than a designer. I’ve no grand plan for this 10 acres (on paper anyway) that tells a story beyond ‘right plant right place’. Perhaps this is the difference between gardening and designing.

My current approach to design seems to reflect my own life to some extent, which is a story of accommodation and working within existing circumstances more than making the world bend to my wishes and needs. Perhaps this a more feminine approach to life; seeking consensus, doing what we can with available resources and connections, making do with the current situation. Women have traditionally had to work within the constraints of reproductive consequences and a pervasive cultural masculinity that once limited what they could do with their lives.  As I look back upon my life choices, I think I have allowed perceived constraints to direct my life for some time. Yet I am much less constrained than most: I’ve no children, no mortgage, and I’m divorced. I’ve held steady jobs, but never taken on the financial burdens that would have forced me to stay put in a bad situation. I have many assets and few debts. I am, at this turning point in my life, essentially free to do what I want. I can dream beyond what I have done in the past.

A reevaluation of my approach to life and design could be the way in which to overcome what I now see as self-imposed limitations on what I can do. This place at this time is mine, and I can do with it what I wish. My desires need not necessarily be monetarily driven either. Large numbers of plants can be made or even acquired for free through barter. This is the time to define a story, an emotion, that I want this empty canvas to convey.  This is where I can pour my energy into expressing the story that I want to tell.  Then shall I truly be a designer and not merely a gardener.  

A Plan Takes Shape

the basic layout with eight planting beds divided by gravel paths

 The last local garden tour gave me the idea for a more formal garden within which to grow vegetables and herbs.  It would fill a flat area that was formerly a horse arena but now hosts a large shed and a pile of fill dirt. It would also create a welcoming view from the driveway, and provide a sense of order and grace in the otherwise free-wheeling universe of my previous designs.  I envision sweeps of thyme, lavender, and sage punctuated by tall spikes of color and interspersed with vegetable gardens.

 Originally, I was going to design a clump of twisting willow branches surrounded by stone as the centerpiece, but a local plant sale convinced me otherwise. I came home last week carting a seven-foot tall Magnolia x sieboldii, the sort with downward-turned flowers and bright red anthers, and have chosen it for the centerpiece. I felt the choice to be more life-affirming than dead willow branches. Large river rock will surround the central planter with small stones as fill.  The other beds will be edge with 2” x 6” wood set about halfway into the dirt. Since the underlying fill dirt is mostly clay (and immediately turns into a frictionless substance when wetted), I will be amending it with composted manure and native topsoil. I am considering a fence with espalier apples or something of the sort on the driveway side to break up the view and necessitate having to enter the garden to really see it.

Planting will start in the fall, once I figure out what to do for deer management.

hilltop garden layout

A delicious edible landscape for deer

My peace with the deer came to an end this year, when the twins borne to a local doe began exploiting a territory that expanded beyond the lakebed to include the uplands where my fledgling barn garden was located.  Starting out naïve to the ways of deer and how to manage them, I went through the standard stages of grief:  anger, denial, sorrow, etc. Then I decided to get even.

Tomato plant browsed by deer

I learned a bit about deer from my goats, which I sold in May for many of the same reasons as to why I combat the deer. Both are artiodactyls, members of a group of cloven-hooved mammals that include horses, deer, hippos, and peccaries. Deer are in the family Cervidae, while goats are members of the Bovidae. Both families consist of multi-stomached ruminants, which chew cud as part of their daily regime. Neither deer nor goats have no upper incisors, so they tear at vegetation leaving tell-tale evidence as to who ate your flowers.

Both the goats and deer act like garden dilettantes, never delving into one item but rather flitting from one place to another, nipping fresh growth. In that sense, they are somewhat useful for controlling meadows of creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) and Himalayan blackberry by nipping back new growth. Continuing attacks on the new growth of more sensitive ornamentals, however, can severely stunt their growth. Both goats and deer delighted in my plantings far more than the lush growth on the rest of the acreage. Perhaps the concentration of edible delights was an attractant.

Research suggested that PlantSkydd™ (http://plantskydd.com/), initially developed in Sweden for commercial forest applications, works well against deer, and having tried it a few times I would concur. First, I tried it on the goats, and was satisfied with the vehemence of their reaction, stepping back from the offending substance as though it was threatening their very lives.  Consisting of a mixture of blood and sticking agents, the stuff smells horrendous but is relatively easy to apply from a spray bottle and is said to last for several months. However, I would recommend it only for small areas or specimen plants given the cost. A gardener at my local nursery suggested blood meal, a somewhat less-expensive though still pricey fertilize which I can only find locally in 3 lb bags. I sprinkle it liberally on the soil and leaves, and have thus far found no evidence of damage on treated plants.

For the garden, which is about 0.1 acre, I spent the summer trying a variety of fencing methods, from a mesh work of electric polytape to barbed wire jutting three feet away from the top strand. After watching my peas and beans disappear and my currents, raspberries and gooseberries loose their leaves, I determined that deer, like goats, are more than willing to step through fences. The goats were even able to break the welds on the mesh fence of their pen through sheer force of boredom and determination.

At last, I sunk the money into a five-foot high, 1”x2” mesh fence on top of the existing three feet of wide mesh field fencing for a total of 8’ of mesh to overcome. So far, so good; one month into it and my raspberries have new growth and I can harvest my chard and turnips. Sections of the five-foot fencing also make secure cages for fruit trees and bushes, and cheap plastic bird mesh has saved my ravaged witch hazel from further damage.

However, as the growing season has waned, the eating rampage has grown less even on unprotected crops, so I cannot discern if it is my efforts or the declining palatability of aging plants that is affecting deer foraging choices.

The most recent addition to my anti-deer arsenal is the Scarecrow™ motion-activated sprinkler from Contech Electronics (http://www.contech-inc.com/products/scarecrow/).  The device gives a short burst of water when an animal is detected, frightening it away.  I’ve not had the pleasure of witnessing deer being deterred (see YouTube for that sort of entertainment), but I have two Scarecrows which I set up in various locations at different times so as to add to the element of surprise. I suspect the real test will come with this winter’s tender vegetable crop.

After I had spent the spring and summer months fighting for my right to grow vegetables and ornamentals, a fellow master gardener recommended the book Deer Resistant Landscaping by Neil Soderstrom.  This is an excellent resource not only for the control of deer but other pest mammals as well such as gophers, mice, rats, and, yes, armadillos. The author has done his homework interviewing numerous experts in the field, and delving into the life histories and habits of deer and other animals to help gardeners understand why they behave as they do. For instance, detailed information on how deer choose plants make it easier to select appropriate deterrents.  The book also features a comprehensive list of deer-resistant plants compiled based upon the experience of garden designers and growers. Take note, though, that plants can change in toxicity and palatability with the season, and that during periods of drought when natural food choices dwindle, plants that otherwise would be ignored become choice fodder. Or, as another local master gardener put it, “deer don’t read books on deer-resistant plants”.

Anything beats chasing deer around the garden at 4:00 am in bathrobe and slippers (true story), although I think my ‘crazy lady’ act has added to the deterrent effect. I can only hope.

A sampling of my personal list of what deer will and won’t eat:

WILL EAT

• Acanthus mollis – Acanthus
• Acer circinaum – Vine maple (young tree)
• Cercidiphyllum japonicum  – Katsura (young tree)
• Cercis occidentalis – Western redbud
• Cornus kousa  – Kousa dogwood (young tree)
• Geum ‘Chiloense Red’
• Hamamelis x intermedia   – Witch Hazel
• Hemerocallis – Daylily
• Penstemon ‘Garnet’ (young plants only)
• Pyracantha koidzumii  ‘Victory’  – Firethorn
• Prunella laciniata  - Self-Heal

DO NOT EAT (Not mine anyway)

• Kniphofia uvaria – Redhot poker
• Lavendula spp.  – Lavendar
• Origanum vulgare – Oregano
• Rosemarinus officinalis – Rosemary
• Salvia officinalis – Sage
• Senecio greyi – Senecio
• Tagetes spp. – Marigold
• Thymus spp. - Thyme
• Viburnum plicatum var. tomentosum ‘Mariesii’
• Yucca spp. – Yucca (green and variegated)

The Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden: a landscape like this can take a lifetime to grow

Gardens take a long, long time to establish. A year and a few months have shown me this valuable lesson. Somehow, I’d been led to believe that three years later, the trees and shrubs would be approaching full size, groundcovers would sprawl verdantly about the landscape, and everything would be well on its way to looking like the landscapes in my favorite parks and gardens.

How wrong I was. Somehow, the jarring realization that it decades to achieve mature garden status had not occurred to me until sometime earlier this year when seeing that one year had passed with only mere inches of growth achieved led me to recognize the obvious. I suppose that I’d been too focused on the plants to see the garden, so to speak.

The trees I’d planted – the peaches, the pawpaws, the redbud, the Kousa dogwood, the katsuras, maples, cedars and crab apples – take a decade or more to reach a mature size sufficient to dominant or fill in a landscape. So I do the math, and realize that at 43, I’ll be at least 53 before things look they way that I wish. In the meantime, I’ll be finding ways to fill the spaces between the long-lived plants that will someday expand into one another to form the green jungle that I had envisioned. 

The unfortunate thing about this is that unlike many of my generation and those previous, I have lived a comparatively rootless life with no more than three years in any one place. I have initiated many gardens, but seen none to fruition.  Now, choosing to settle for at least a few more years than usual, I see the time that I spend moving as having been frittered away from a gardening perspective. Nor can I easily return to the sold houses or torn down rentals to review the progress of my plantings.

Beyond the daunting linearity of garden time are the broader dimensions of spatial distribution. Like old friends or lovers, garden elements grow together with time, shaping each other, relying on another, building shade for some, creating soil for others. Dependencies develop, and relationships change as plants grow and senesce. How did I miss this? How did I mistake the photos for a singular finality? I feel as though I’ve missed out on a long-term marriage. Some things in life do take time, and are worth more so for the effort.

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Yet, here I am, and my obsession with gardening is still strong and so I continue my efforts to design and landscape my own territory so that perhaps in 20 years, when I am a respectible yet spry 63, I can enjoy at least a semi-mature garden. If I can keep the deer at bay….but that will be the subject of another post.

The Barn Landscape Project: A Story in Photos

During the months of my silence, I have been building my new businsess, Belle Terra Landscape Design LLC www.belleterradesign.com , and working slowly but steadily upon my most recent project, the well-abused landscape that surrounds what was once my old horse barn. This is the first sight that greets visitors, not the main house. As a barn with surrounding horse corral, it wasn’t bad. After that, my father removed the fencing and added a few civilizing touches – a sidewalk and brick-and-lattice entryway, flowers along the foundation, and a tiered basalt planter on the left (south) side that held up a bank that was once a manure dump. The rest took care of itself to create a snarl of grass and weeds.  In the first photo, the front side is being used as a wood pile.

The full effort took about 8 months, and some $500 worth of plants, fine gravel for a path, basalt rock for the retaining wall, newspaper for mulch, and shredded bark topdressing (which I later got for free from the local tree grinding service working on county roads). Topsoil, goat manure, and large landscape rock was free, as was the excavator work to remove a large Douglas fir stump.  Deer and goat damage was an external cost which, along with a plant list and specific planting techniques, I will cover in subsequent posts.  The result is a drought-tolerant perennial garden and shrub border comprised of native hardscape materials that compliment the rather rustic surroundings and give visitors some hope for what comes next. Not shown here is the nascent berry patch that I have started around the right (north) side of the barn as a tribute to my dedication to permaculture.  That too, will be fodder for subsequent posts.   For now, I can’t help but smile everytime I see the colorful flowers that now grow here!

I awoke this morning to the distant sound of tree frogs. When I walked outside to feed the goats, a tiny flock of song sparrows flew up from the ground and sang in the trees as I delivered the hay. Glimmers of color emerge from the brown earth as a few of my hundreds of crocus begin flower along the walks where only mud and weeds had been last year.

This is my first spring here, and I now come close to completing the cycle of seasons that began for me when I arrived last May. I’ve learned every detail of this place: where the fine red pyrrola stalks grow, where the thimble berries emerge from the blackberry briers, the moist crumble of forest soil, the mysterious barred owl whose silhouette occasionally emerges from the dusk and whose startling hoots and howls awaken me at night. My mother knew this place, too, when it was 40 acres. She knew it by being here every day while my father and I were away at work and school, respectively, and she knew if far better than either of us for that. Now, I take her place carrying a borrowed knowledge that was left with me when she left it behind.

I have empathy for this place, for its trees, for its soils. As a biologist, I see it raggedness, its mistreatment, the scars of logging, and slashing, and road building. I have known it long enough to realize that the encroachments of scotch broom and ivy are recent. I see where plants that once thrived have now been choked out by blackberries. I mourn the loss of diversity, and the muddy ruts that replace what was once grass. I try to enfold it in my arms, to protect it, to beautify it, but I realize that I am too small to carry it entirely.

So, I do triage. I make selections in my head as to what can be resuscitated now.  My plans exist in my mind, and on the many bits of paper that follow me from meeting to waiting room to classroom, scratched onto notepaper as I waited or listened, drawing out plans and schemes that if collected together would doubtless now make an entire volume of writing. Now and then, I break forth from my mind and take measurements and plan how many, how much, how long. It works, and I move on, bank account wincing, and I yet unsatisfied with the small progress that I am making.

My virtue is not patience. It is creativity. It is in seeing the entire panoply in my mind, fully formed. I work without a blueprint, without lists, because I see in my mind how it will look in the broader view. I know the endgame. The large-scale details require contact with earthly methods like pencil and paper, but beyond that, I happily paint without guides or anything else that would otherwise resemble a plan to onlookers.

Sometimes I feel as though people watch me slogging through the mud with a few stones in my wheelbarrow and wonder why I’m wasting my time here, a small woman without a job trundling about pointlessly. Sometimes, I step away and watch myself and seeing the same view, wonder what I am doing as well. Yet, unlike my detractors, I see a garden of earthly delights surrounding me, already perfected and complete, and I know what others don’t. With my magic goggles, I can see the future and live for it even as I endure the wet, the cold, the mud. I see what they don’t, and while I suppose that is the very first sign of crazy, so be it. I’d rather see my view because it keeps me alive.

Mostly, I work on faith, on the faith that I can own this place someday, that my father won’t run out of money or become ill and sell it. I hope to create a paradise on earth with garden beds and walking trails that will elevate this place in the minds of those who might care, and might give to see it perpetuated. Yet I do so in the realization that it might never be, and that the time that I put into it could have been time elsewhere at a high-paying job that might have supported the cause without my being there. But that wouldn’t be living. That wouldn’t be me. I took this chance for me.

A conundrum indeed.

The Lake – Summer 09

I defected to Southern California this Thanksgiving to visit friends. The weather was warm, as usual, and I spent two days drawing and taking photographs at the Los Angeles County Botanical Garden in Arcadia, one of my most favorite places. Still, I was glad to return to this place where I was raised, where the sun never gets much above the horizon in December, and the ground is already saturated and muddy. Of course, it is wet, chilly, and above all, gloomy in winter. Yet looking beyond the human need for warmth and light, it is only just another place on earth with its own grace and beauty beyond what we demand of it. Peace can be found anywhere, and the tone that we set for own lives makes us flourish despite the weather.

My outdoor activities have slowed considerably in the wake of the heavy rainfalls. I have injured my shoulder, and the soil that I had hoped to place in my new rock garden is too wet and heavy to haul. Still, there are numerous chores requiring less endurance that await me, one of which is planning.

Between my design and business classes, I have sketched and schemed until I have the layout for my penultimate garden firmly fixed in my head. How to get it onto paper is a far different matter. A back issue of Pacific Horticulture featuring a man near Woodinville with a 30 acre garden surrounding two wetlands that he restored after years of logging gave me hope. If he can do it, so can I.

I need a landuse plan first of all, something that inventories what I have and where I want to go with it. I know what the final outcome will look like, now, how do I get there?

The Lake – Fall 09

My goals are as follows:

1. House and three acres: A Northwest Naturalistic landscape (after Ann Lovejoy) that incorporates both natives and non-natives in a mix of perennial gardens, rock gardens, meadows, and rhododendron gardens.
2. The rest: A natural woodland devoid of invasives such as ivy and blackberry, with a few trails that allow an easy walk around the lake and up through the back of the property to the house.
3. Around the barn: A small permaculture-based agricultural section with a chicken house, blueberry field, vegetable garden, fruit trees, and potting area. Some of this is already in place.

The information that I need to map so that I can develop a plan for where things should be placed will be:

1. Gradient – I have a contour map in AutoCad that I can start with.
2. Soils – based upon the web-based Natural Resource Conservation Soil maps.
3. Vegetation – my own inventories of vegetation types, mostly upland Douglas fir with evergreen huckleberry, swordfern, and salal, lowland redcedar and red alder, willow riparian, and wetlands ranging from skunk cabbage marsh to seasonally inundated sedge and cattail wetlands.
4. Exposure – based upon observations of wind and sun.
5. Wildlife habitat – the deer bed in the lake, pileated wood pecker nests, barred owl nests, etc.

 Future sitting area by the lakeshore

 I am fortunate enough to have already spent 10 years on the property in the 70’s and 80’s, so that I already know the lay of the land. Now, I view it not through the eyes of child, but as an adult ecologist, so I see it quite a bit differently now.

My rules to live by will be:

1. No deliberately introduced invasives (including ivies and periwinkle (Vinca))
2. Maintain areas of no non-natives, particularly around the lake.
3. Maintain snags and wood piles for wildlife.
4. Restore and maintain the original channels that feed the lake.
5. Maintain soil integrity to the extent possible, which translates into minimal grading.

Each day, I observe the patterns of the sun, the shady areas, the wet areas, where the water flows in winter. I have noticed that the driveway has potholes in the low areas and have planned where the water bars should go. I’ve learned where the seeps area and planned how best to allow the water to cross the driveway and reach the lake. I’ve noted which Douglas firs are too spindly and close-set to survive and should be removed. I see the barred owl pair that peers at me in the thin light of dawn from an alder, and wonder where they nest. I mull over which snags the pileated woodpeckers prefer, and I see the Douglas tree squirrels moving to warmer quarters under my father’s shop.

My head spins with plans. It will be my challenge, both with this project as with my life, to take a deep breath, set my priorities, and find the strength and tenancity to see each one through to its conclusion.

This will be my first winter in WA in two years, and already my instinctive rainfall calculations are off.  My carefully planted woodland garden, intended in part to provide a buffer zone to capture driveway runoff before it reached house, has instead become a minature Mississippi. 

A mature cedar tree under which this area was planted  justified my refusing to add soil to elevate this part of the yard above the side yard that runs to the south side of the house. Once the front yard was done and the roots partly compacted on that side from the excavator back in June, I figured it best to leave the poor tree alone. Cedars have a network of shallow roots that are easily damaged, and I was concerned that the weight of a few more inches of sil might suffocate them.  Instead, I placed about two inches of much lighter mulched wood chips and horse manture  over the area and edged it with a low rock wall to hold the material back off of the side yard, which was about six inches lower.  These few inches, I felt, would absorb any surface runoff.

Front yard with excavator, June 2009

However, even before full soil saturation was acheived, a hard overnight rainfall October 17 was enough to flood my little garden. What went wrong?  The amount of water collected over about 70 feet of open driveway at a 0.5% gradient combined with soil compaction and a lack of vegetation probably combined to overwhelm the buffering capacity of my short strip of mulch.  Although I had planted a lace-cap hydrangea, two Pieres ‘Mountain Fire‘ and a few sword ferns, it was not enough to slow the surface flow.  Subsequently, both the volume and velocity of the water was sufficient carve a drainage through the rock wall and down into the back  yard where it disappeared into the septic drainfield.

As I stalked about the yard in the pouring rain with my camera, I pondered my options. I had been considering installing a small reflecting pond surrounded by vegetation in the path of the current flood. That, however, would not be sufficient to absorb the flow.  Digging out a small retention pond would be  infeasible if I want to protect the cedar tree. I tend to avoid berms as a way of delaying the inevitable (kind of like pushing rocks uphill, really), so I ruled out shunting the water further along the drive and into woods. Filling the area with vegetation will probably be the only way to baffle the flow and keep it stationary long enough to sink into the ground before it reaches the back yard and drainfield.  I need a rain garden.

According to a University of Rhode Island website on sustainable landscaping (raingarden.htm),  a rain garden “is a natural or dug shallow depression designed to capture and soak up stormwater runoff from your roof or other impervious areas around your home like driveways, walkways, and even compacted lawn areas…The rain garden is planted with suitable trees, shrubs, flowers, and other plants allowing runoff to soak into the ground and protect water quality.” 

Planting dense grasses or multi-stemmed, creeping vegetation should protect the surface from channelization and the give the water time to soak in.  My observations the morning after the heavy rainfall confirmed that the soil quickly absorbed the water after the rain ceased, despite the relatively high clay content.  This may change as winter progresses and the soil reaches saturation, but experimentation with other temporary methods of water baffling, such as pieces of wood, may prove that slowing the flow will be enough.  Some calucations of slope, anticipated runoff volume, and soil absorption capacity based upon composition will aid my work if I feel like playing engineer for a day.  Things are far too wet right now for planting, but I’m already designing a plan for spring.

I think it’s the combination of problem-solving, geology, engineering, botany, and creativity that makes this enterprise sooo much more fun than my previous paying job!

The site of the future (now completed) detention pond above the house. At present it is a bit ragged, but will be completed with a mixture of obligate and facultative wetland vegetation.

When I first arrived in late May, progress was easy because there was everything to do and anything that I did looked good relative to the way that it was. The front yard was re-established with an attractive perennial garden on one side, and a burgeoning woodland garden on the other. I rebuilt the retaining wall by hand using a two-tiered approach to add planting space for ferns. A nasty weedy area by the garage has become a perennial garden fronted by large red dahlias I got for free from a local garden giveaway. I built pond and waterfall, and oversaw the construction of a detention basin (below) for controlling runoff such as what flooded the basement last year.

Now, as it turns September here and the fall rains begin, I look upon what I have done and realize that it is no longer so easy to prioritize. I’ve gotten to the easy stuff and left the trickier elements for last. For instance, the crumbling walls of stone along a weed-filled planter with rock-hard clay soil which greets the visitor long before the gorgeous new perennial garden. Then there are the other elements of the larger plan, the back 20, including the 2,500 square foot vegetable garden that required tilling and mulching, and I realize that 1. I need a plan that will best use my resources to complete the creation of my 10-acre garden, and 2. I need a business plan to earn some money at this rather than watching my recession-tattered savings drain.

There are some rays of hope. I am applying for a Master Gardner class that will provide me with opportunities for volunteer work and networking. I will start two community college classes this month, one in business and another in executing landscape design drawings. I also plan to get a business license and begin advertising.

Ultimately, I see myself being a landscape designer and writer, but also the conservator of an amazing 20-acre preserve that includes gardens and natural areas accessible by modest trails flanked with a diversity of native plants from throughout the region. The task before me seems so overwhelming at times, though, I almost don’t know where to begin. Each day, I step outside my door and think of the thousands of things that I could be doing and wonder which is the most important. And even this question has two parts:
which is most important for bringing me to the point of being fiscally sustainable, and which is the best for my heart. For in the end, it is not the money, but the creation of a dream, a garden of my own, that draws my heart. For that I would work endlessly without pay, at least in an ideal world.

A muddy area where the first wall went

A lesson in the do-it-yourself ethic

Eons ago before I could remember when or why, my parents built a house on Fox Island with an associated retaining wall of basalt about five feet tall and thirty feet long. I played on it, over it, ignored it, generally, except as an impediment between the front and side yards.  Mom’s creeping phlox poured over it, ferns sprouted forth from its crevices.

The wall lasted for 30 years until the day last January when my father called me at my home in sunny Pasadena to tell me that the house was ‘flooded’. From where? From the outside, of course.

But Dad, it’s on an island, and a small dry one at that with no rivers to be had. Wetlands, granted, and lots of them, but none near his house.

He insisted that the water currently cascading down the basement steps was real, and that he had gone so far as to take his personal excavator and dig up much of the front yard next to the house to find the source. His hydrologic exploration was unsuccessful, but he was able to locate the electrical trunk line feeding the house although not before he dug. I put my head in my hands and said a silent prayer for my mother’s once beautiful garden. My preview of it in February proved the site to be nearly as bad as I had thought. The wall had been decimated, a chunk was missing from the brick trim on the house, the yard pavers had been cracked, and the place was knee deep in mud. There was no sign of grass or flowers, or any of the place’s former grandeur.

By May, I had quit my job moved in for good. Hence, the beginning of my story. The front yard became my proof of point for developing a landscaping portfolio and I was going nowhere with it until that wall went back up.

It was black and white thinking at its best. My first challenge, and I never saw it coming. My tendency to fix things back the way that they were so that I could sleep easy overwhelmed any thinking that may have occurred outside of the box. In two weeks, I proceeded through all of the stages of the self-created problem: acknowledgement, choosing a course of action, instant frustration at how long it is taking, seeking alternatives to achieve the goal despite cost, personal trauma (in my case physical), and feelings of hopelessness.

By the first week, I had reopened an old shoulder injury and could no longer sleep for the pain. I had stood and watched my father run the excavator above and below the wall attempting to create the 2:1 grade that I had assigned him and struggling against physical exhaustion, mental fraility, and diabetes to work the giant machine for more than an hour at a time. The rocks that went into the original wall exceeding two hundred pounds in some instances and were impossible to lift into place without mechanical leverage. Rocks were placed, removed, dirt shifted about and compacted. I wept for the cedar tree whose roots reached out under the wall and were being torn up by the tracks.

Seven days later, I was willing to call a truce. A hydraulic line had broken spilling a pool over the cedar roots. I hired a kid to move rock, but he proved less than up to the task, so I rented a bobcat. Finally, at 3 am the night before the delivery of said bobcat, I sat up in bed with pain shooting through the inflamed nerves of my hands and concluded that I was missing a critical point in all of this.

6/10

Why must we use large machinery to move mountain when the very winds and waters around us can move more than we humans can ever dream to move, one grain at a time.

Well, that’s the point – time. And time is money, as I was constantly reminded during my wage-earning life. But this is just time, and time that I have set aside for doing the different thing. So I may not get it done this week or even this month. This season will do.  So I go out every evening and I stare at it. Soon, I have imagined it into two courses of rock, reducing the need for the structural integrity that might demand larger rocks and more demanding techniques. Still, I persist in the use of the excavator and spend a morning in a light mist with my father setting rock until his patience runs thin with yelling at me to quit moving them myself. He wants the bobcat; this is taking too long. I am losing patience with his losing patience, but more than that, I don’t want this to be dependent upon outside forces like machines with nuts, bolts, fluids that leak, tanks to be filled, and tracks that compact the earth until it is hard and barren as cement.

A few cedar branches drift over where the excavator sits as I stare down at the wall. This is not about a wall, an end point. It is about the way in which I approach it. I consider my mother, who rolled rocks as large as these by herself using leverage. My father was amazed, but when you have nothing but your two hands, you find a way. The Egyptians and the Aztecs both lacked excavators. They made up for it with sheer numbers and brains. On this scale, I could possibly shun the sheer numbers but I had to use my head. This is about learning patience, and working within my own bounds. If noisy machinery and my father’s impatience took the fun out of it, then I had to find my own way to reclaim the process as my own.

I’d climb down to the bottom and begin twisting and rolling a rock that exceeded  my own weight at least one time over. When I considered the rock’s pivot point, and moved it around that, it was suddenly not so difficult to move it ten feet to the wall and shift it into place. A rock a day. I can do that.

So each evening, I began slipping out after my father had gone to bed early and worked in the northern twilight literally under his second story bedroom window to set rock. I preferred to do it clandestinely to avoid argument. I considered each two-man chunk of basalt, viewing its flat sides and rounded points upon which it might pivot. I would prop them up, placing a smaller rock beneath to hold it steady until I could angle it the way that I wanted it and roll it back over. One by one, the larger stones were set. The first morning, my father commented on bringing the excavator back over to start work but I demurred. The next day, the excavator already sat in position under the tree where he’d apparently moved it while I was away. I moved three large rocks that evening, under his window. I wondered when he would notice, what he would say. After begging shamelessly for him to help me, my sudden change of direction might seem odd. That was, after all, a common complaint from my various ex partners. Internally, it made sense to me even if the rest of the world refused to acknowledge it. It didn’t matter anyway so long as I honored my own needs and let my father know honestly why I preferred to do it this way.