looking forward to posting in 2009

My postings have plummeted the last few months for a variety of reasons but mainly because of that damn facebook. It’s like crack!

It’s a lot of fun but very time consuming. I still have a need to get some of this ranching stuff out of my system though so here’s a list

of some topics for 2009.

Landscaping fashion

Tree planting techniques

Finishing the scary house story

More varmit tales

great tools and why I like to use them

the big empty space

burn baby burn piles

recipes

and so much more

Happy New Years!

California dreaminin’

(Letter to Martha Part II)

I took a drive a drive along a country road the other day, west into the hills. It was autumn in sonoma

county, cool and overcast. The land was starting to green again and the valley oaks spread out across

the hills. Muted tones, somber shrubs and a subtle yellow flash of fall color gave a sense of peace to my

inner soul until I turned a bend and there, in our California Mediterranean landscape, was a large Cape cod

house with all it’s frilly east coast trappings. The glare of the pink impatients alone almost drove me off the road. Now I want to tell you, I don’t have any trouble with a Cape cod house, I’ve spent a few wonderful

summers in Sandwhich and I find the sea-worn gray color of the beach houses natural and calming but I

don’t understand why people from the east coast who come to Sonoma county (or the Bay Area in general)

and find it so beautiful that they want to move here and the first thing they do is want to build house and

landscape it exactly like where they came from. We are not in England anymore! This is a Mediterranean

climate. Hasn’t anyone read “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. If not, I suggest you do. A lot of ideas that the

native landscape movement has been talking about for years are summed up rather nicely, first of all that it is folly to

come to a new land and then try to stubbornly impose your own cultural practises on that place. Look at

Australia and it’s plaque of rabbits. This is California! It does not rain here that much. The soils are heavy

and hard. It makes no sense to remodel a house on a rural property, that is surrounded by rolling hills,

native shrubs, oaks, redwoods, vineyards  (which have their own set of problems) and then landscape with a bunch of showy, high maintenance, moisture-needy plants. You’re just throwing $$$ money away. And you

complain in the middle of summer, when you just planted a bunch of trees, that things don’t look so good.

Arghhhhhhhhhh! Would you send your sensitive, artsy kid to military school? Only if you want him to fail

miserably. If you want your garden to thrive , create an environment where they will do so or even better,

plant things that will thrive in the environment that is already present. Plants have a much more difficult time adapting than people do. or do they? sometime I’m not so sure

Martha my dear

Dear Martha,

You have been an inspiration to me and I want to thank you for the marriage counseling. At the very least I learned a lot about myself. This knowledge has also led to the realization that working on your property will not end up satisfying either of us.

As you know is going to I’ve been going through a lot of changes lately and I’ve come to the point where I no longer want to compromise my gardening ideals. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want to support bad landscaping decisions

which is going to be hard because it seems the world is full of them. You may be saying “where does this guy get off saying what’s good or bad” and it’s true most of my gardening knowledge has not come from formal training but hands on experience yet that experience has taught me how to recognize many of the classic mistakes you are now making.

I’m going to point out a few and although you may not appreciate them now perhaps later they can help.

1. Impatience (and you’re stubborn too!)

I know you say you’re an old lady and you don’t have time wait for trees to grow but when you’re

In the middle of building a new house on the property, landscaping now is a waste of time and money. First of all, construction workers don’t care about plants. They happily kill plants because

Those plants are just another thing in the way of completing their job. They don’t think about the

Future of the landscape or how long it takes a plant to grow, they only think about what they are

Getting paid to do. That’s all. That includes ripping out irrigation if it’s in the way. So any land-

Scaping during a building projects will only result in lots of destruction and turmoil in the garden.

Contractors are also often the “shoot first ask questions later types”, so you never know what’s going to go down during the project. This leads to predicaments like when you insisted on planting an orchard against my recommendation

and sure enough the workers damaged the irrigation which killed some of the trees and then they all had to be moved to make way for a mountain of excavated dirt. I know this sounds bitter and I don’t just want to say “I told you so”.

I want to share what gardening has taught me and how the lessons can be applied to the rest of the human experience.

I imagine people who work inside, in offices, who work with the symbols of language and are used to attaining their

goals via scheduling tasks on the calendar don’t realize that timing can be critical in the landscape and that timing

is influenced by the seasons and the weather. It’s kind of like the stock market. Buy or sell at the wrong time and

you can lose a lot of $$$. (Next post- Don’ be no oppressa’ man)

Landscaping vs. gardening

Landscaping works toward shaping the earth, clearing away what’s naturally there or at least what is presently

on the site and imposing a new construction.

Gardening is more concerned with plants, how to grow them best, pruning, fertilizing, preventing disease,etc.

Landscaping may also include planting but it is often just part of an “installation” which includes the

hardscaping elements such as concrete, wood and stone and irrigation for the “plant material”.

Gardening too incorporates design but usually works with the site as it already exists.

Farming is growing plants for food to consume or sell.

Gardeners have to do a lot of digging, weeding, mulching and watering. this is usually done by hand or

with the aid of small motor tools

Landscapers have to do digging too. Lots and lots of digging. sometimes the digging is done with big

pieces of equipment like a backhoe.

Farmers like backhoes too.

Landscapers have to truck in big loads of soil and rock and mulch.

Gardeners like that stuff too but usually on a smaller scale. Good gardeners incorporate compost into

their gardens.

Some farmers use compost.

Landscaping is masculine

Gardening is feminine

Landscapers oppress the earth

Gardeners oppress the plants, sometimes

Can you guess which one I consider myself?

they didn’t call it the landscape of Eden

The Haunted House

I used to live in a little brown house in Alexander valley on hwy. 128. Next door was an old big mint green house. Both houses were owned by the same family and the big house was known for it’s bright green color

and the swastika shaped window on the front door which was really an arts and crafts motif since the house

was built before WWII yet the owners were German and were kind of nazi-like in their behavior.

We were usually friends with the many different tenets who passed through the big house and we shared

parts of the property. The houses had been built by a man named Abshire who had once owned large areas

of the valley and even been secretary of agriculture to the U.S. Anyway, at one point the only neighbor left

was this guy named Jim who then had a mental breakdown. He got crazier and crazier and started

sleeping outside in a tent because he said there were ghosts in the house. He was also drinking heavily and

he didn’t have a job so eventually he was evicted with lots of drama. Well here is where the story gets scary.

Imagine, if you will, a winters night in the country. It’s dark and quiet and still and in the early early morning

and you’re deeply asleep and suddenly the person sleeping next to you wakes up screaming a blood-curdling

scream. This is what started happening regularly. and that’s not all. My wife Sandra and I started dreaming the

same dreams, or nightmares. The dreams involved chickens and Italian field workers who wanted raw chicken.

They would be in our kitchen asking for the chickens. We both dreamed this. There was a peacock who lived

on the property, (Mr. P, more on him later) and sometimes I would dream about just his legs, giant peacock

legs walking, toom toom toom. There was also times I would dream there creepy people standing on the side

of the bed watching us we slept. I would wake up suddenly but I wouldn’t be able to move my body and I would

just lay there frozen looking around the dark room. This went on for awhile and I fell into a pattern of waking

up every night around the same time, 3 or 4 in the morning. It got to point where we were both exhausted in the morning. We decided to contact a local psychic, Pam Bolton, and asked for her help. She brought over

her spiritual woman’s group and they did a reading on the house.

Part II next time

no casual chainsawing

ripped my shorts with a chainsaw-Duh!

I did something the other day that I don’t usually do and I got away with it but now I’m telling you;

Don’t Do It! I had been using the chainsaw in the morning on a watershed restoration project in the

backcountry and when we broke for lunch we left the equipment there. When I came back later

I had changed out of my safety gear and I was wearing my new favorite pair of carthart shorts. As I loaded

the equipment into the truck I noticed something I had missed and rather than put the chaps back on

I (you guessed it) decided to chainsaw in shorts. This is not recommended. Everything was going fine until

I held it just a little too low and literally one cutter just grabbed the top of my shorts and put a big L-shaped rip in the front. No blood, no skin, and I knew I had been lucky. That’s when you promise yourself to never

ever be careless again until the next time you’re careless. A certain blogger from Roshambo winery has been

known to use a chainsaw while wearing shorts and flip-flops. He only burned his leg on the hot engine.

So the moral is: this is a dangerous game!

still more acorns

Hi there!

so many they’re coming out my ears

acornmania

acorn extravaganza

fruit of the oak

It seems we have another masting year here in Sonoma county. Masting is a heavy nut crop and in this case it

applies to oak trees producing acorns. All day long I

can hear the crunch crunch crunch as cars drive over

the nut covered road or “pop” as one falls on the roof,

or my head! Scientists aren’t exactly sure why some

years there is a heavy crop of acorns and others not

but from my own personal observation I believe the

timing of the winter rain has a lot to do with it. Most years

when the oaks are flowering it’s also during the rainy

season and the pollination is average to poor but the last

two years have been dry and I’ve seen oak trees buzzing

with bees for weeks. That’s my theory and I’m full of ‘em.

It’s been said that I’m full of other stuff too but believe me

I’ve got acorns coming out of my ears. The deer like them so that should mean an increase in the deer population plus an increase in things that feed off of deer including ticks. I know some people who eat acorns too and one of them told me that black oak acorns were

the best. They are the biggest and roundest to be sure. The textured cap that holds the nut looks like a fairie

Hat and if you take out the acorn and turn it around and hold it between your thumbs and blow it just right

you can make a loud whistle. Fun on the trail.

Fall foxes

I’ve eard a lot of talk about foxes the lately. People have been seeing them more often and I am wondering if

the foxes are getting desperately hungry at the end of a long dry summer. They are probably watching us all the time.

A visitor to my booth at the plaza arts and crafts fair was telling me she saw one casually resting on a branch

in her big oak tree, ignoring two barking dogs below. Going in the house to fetch a camera, the fox was gone

when she returned. That’s the way they roll. Margie from Red winery Road,(say that like Elmer Fudd) heard a

fox bark for the first time. Hack Hack. It’s more like part bark part hack. She thought it was a bum in the

bushes which I thought was strange since she lives out in the country. In San Francisco it’s fairly pedestrian

to have a bum hacking in the bushes but in Geyserville right out your front door? She does live by the casino.

Anyway, foxes are all the things we think they are; sly, quick witted, lovers of tasty chicken. They also will

bark/hack at you if you’re near their den. When I lived up on the Mill creek ladder one of my ranch hand jobs

was to check the spring-fed water tank and there was a fox that would block the path and bark. I would just throw some rocks at it. (not to hit ) For awhile I was seeing a certain large headed fox on the slope above the

house at night. One night I came home with my two-year old son asleep in the car. I wanted to unload the car before I brought him in, so I grabbed the groceries and I left the door open. When I came back out, just

minutes later, sure enough there was the fox, one foot up in the car sniffing at my toddler. Good thing Rocco

was still strapped in or I wouldn’t be receiving any father’s day cards.

Here comes the rain

The first rain of fall is apparently on the way.  I see flatbeds hauling wattles and other erosion control material

scurrying  to construction sites and newly planted vineyards. The rain may not amount to much but it’s a good thing to have your hillside ready. Evolution.

Recommended reading: “Collapse” by Jared Diamond