Gardens Au Natural

A couple of weeks ago, we went to visit two gardens: one in Vancouver, belonging to and designed by a recently-deceased famous Canadian architect (Arthur Erickson), the other belonging to and designed by a Point Roberts neighbor. Both gardens were very beautiful, very similar, and very different, and they put me to thinking about the nature of gardens and what we are doing with them.

There’s a goofy old movie with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall called ‘Old Lions,’ in which these two old bulls have retired from a life of crime and spying and moved to a farm in Texas where they have taken up gardening. This is being done because, as Michael Caine explains to Duvall, ‘they are now old and that’s what old people do.’ A lot of gardening is done by the ‘old’ and retired, by those who no longer have kids nor jobs to tend to, and, I think, who have taken to gardening as a way of creating something special. Now vegetable gardening is a very different matter. I’m thinking about landscape gardening, flower gardening. Up here in B.C., cottage gardens continue to loom large, but down in Point Roberts, not so much. There, there seems much more sense of design, as evidenced by the (usually) annual Garden Club Tour.

Anyway, the two gardens we visited: both were relatively small, enclosed gardens with a pond. Ed took the photo above, which is from the Erickson garden and is looking down into the pool from the ‘moon viewing deck’ immediately in front of the house. Each of these gardens has a small house at one end, with the rest of the yard devoted to garden, a garden whose structure is determined not by their water features but by their small number of trees. As if the trees were the skeletal structure.

Erickson’s house/garden was apparently used for parties (one of his former students told me about being invited there at the end of the term for a party). And, as a party setting, it is a fairly open garden with a small variety of native plants and areas where people could walk about or stand in small groups. By contrast, the P.R. garden was very close, with pretty much every inch of land not covered by pathway filled with carefully selected plants. It was much more a 'looking' garden for a solitary viewer. Neither had ‘lawn’ in the usual sense of the word. Both gardens were ‘natural’ (as contrasted with ‘formal’) gardens, but their naturalness was entirely unnatural, of course. Erickson’s native plants are contained in 2 lots in the middle of Vancouver (in Kitsalano, I think) and I’d judge there hasn’t been any salal growing naturally in that neighborhood for a very long time. In a similar way, the P.R. garden was ‘unnatural’ in that the density of planting and the intentionally narrow color range would not occur in nature.

As I thought about this, I eventually realized that landscape gardening, itself, is inherently an unnatural activity. It is, pretty much, a human-dominated activity. Creative, beautiful, and all that, but it is yet another way in which we attempt to impose our sense of ‘order’ on the world we live in. And then I came to some tentative conclusions about why I always feel a lack of commonality with other gardeners. It’s because I’m not a gardener. What I am is something more like a grounds manager. A grounds manager with a theory and a plan, however, which I will explicate more fully as soon as I am able to drag it out into my conscious understanding.

What a surprise! I'd always thought I was a gardener

The Garbage, But Briefly

The All Point Bulletin's account of the Thursday night trash and trashing meeting is now posted on its website. The County is providing a website with some gathering of factual information.

Other than that, there is no possibility of there being any trash pickup in the next two months, although one company has applied for the thankless job. The two months figure is the amount of time that it will take for Freedom 2000's application to be assessed. (Freedom 2000 is Dave Gellatly's company.) Maybe Freedom 2000 should consider updating its name? Or is the implication that that was the last date for Freedom as we know/knew it? My intuition says nothing happens for way longer than two months.

Trash Redux and Encore

The information flies fast about the trash problem. Councilwoman Brenner has written to us all again saying that when she said that the County and the WUTC are responsible for garbage being picked up in Pt. Roberts, she didn’t mean to say that the County or the WUTC were responsible for garbage being picked up in Pt. Roberts. What she meant to say was that the County was responsible for running the Transfer Station where you can take your own garbage and the WUTC was responsible for approving rates for such person/company as was certified to actually be responsible for picking up garbage in Pt. Roberts. Actually, she went on, what she meant to say was that she knew we had the kind of community spirit that would make it possible for us to help one another pick up our own trash and take it to the transfer station and that, Golly Gee!, if it were actually necessary, she would drive her own truck up here and help us with our community spirit or just join in our community spirit, or something like that.

Then we got a message from the County Public Works Director and he said that unless something turned up, we’d be taking our trash to the transfer station ourselves for the next month or forever because although one person had said he might put in an offer to do it, he hadn’t gotten any offers yet. Further, that though he’d talked to some other trash collection companies, they hadn’t stepped up to the plate. And finally, he pointed out to us that there were three problems associated with this trash situation: "(1) turnaround time for solid waste disposal (garbage cannot be imported to Canada, so containers must be transported to Bellingham through two border crossings), (2) the small number of collection customers, and (3) recent contraction of recycling markets. There are no ready solutions to these problems.” Suggesting that Ms. Brenner might be making repeated truck trips up here for some time to lend a hand.

Then, the Voters’ Association sent an open letter to the County and us urging the County to have a meeting so we could all talk about this, although I’m not sure what it is that we are going to say to the County when we talk. I mean, when the Border people came up, we all pretty much agreed about what the problem was. With respect to the trash, as far as I can tell, no such agreement exists, although I guess we can all agree—County, WUTC, Pt. Roberts residents—that trash pick up as it now exists will come to an end on June 30. But other than that: well, it’s a topic that some people have agreed not to discuss. The County has now agreed to hold such a meeting on this very day and I, sadly, will not be there for it. Or, perhaps, I fortunately will not be there for it. Anyone who goes is surely free to post their assessment of the event on this blog. Just go the 'post a comment' at the end of this day's writing.

Then an open letter from a neighbor vigorously pointing out the way in which the County had failed to address this problem over a long period of time and suggesting that, as the political blogs are always saying, ‘hoocoodanode?’ is just not a viable defense.

Yesterday, an announcement of a brief radio interview with Dave Gellatly, a Pt. Roberts resident and trucker who now seems to have applied to be the WUTC and County certified trash and recycling hauler for Point Roberts. When asked by the radio interviewer how he planned to overcome the situation the current trash certificate holder found himself in (not being able to make a financial go of it because of the three reasons that the County Public Works Director also cited), Mr. Gellatly assured us that he would do it smarter, based upon his prior trucking experience in which he hauled people and money. Well, Okay! I guess. I never realized that anybody other than Brinks was in the money hauling business, but why not Dave Gellatly in Point Roberts? Trash and money and people might be the combination that would work.

And today, a ‘statement of facts’ about the trash situation, again from Ms. Brenner. As near as I can tell, the point of this statement of facts is to suggest that when the musical chairs game stops, it is the WUTC that should not have a chair, not the County. Let the music play on!

Update: a reader proposes: "How about a garbage barge that doubles as a ferry?"

Cooperative Living

(A cheeky bunch, the deer; or maybe they just have a special appreciation for Ed when he comes by with his camera.)

Here is the deer thinking; here is the deer eating. She and her friends have consumed all the still-very-small fruits and leaves off the lower branches of our (remaining) apple tree and off of all our neighbors’ apple trees. In the same way that she and her friends ate the leaves and not the flowers from the hydrangeas, she and her friends have found a way to share by leaving the fruits on the higher branches for us. I am hoping that she is discussing this effective strategy with the bears. As well as pointing out that if you break the tree down to the ground, as he did, there are no fruits after that for anybody.

But quite apart from that, this is the first year the deer have paid any attention to our apple tree, either early or late. Must be something going on with this big change in eating behaviors.

Non-Stop Fun in Canada

Here it is Father’s Day, and not a festival in sight. The Sunshine Coast, where I am right now, is a genuine tourist economy. Its largest single employer is a pulp mill, of course, which does provide tours on Thursdays, I believe, but that doesn’t make it a part of the tourist industry. In fact, if it doesn’t stop laying off workers (lower demand for wood pulp, I believe), it may not even continue to be the single largest employer.

Nevertheless, because this is a tourist/resort kind of place--what with the ocean and the mountains and with being about the warmest place in Canada—the Sunshine Coast spends its summer doing festivals. All festivals all the time AND a depressed economy. How festively cool is that?

We are just finishing off a Jazz Festival and a Blues Festival, and are now looking forward to Canada Day on July 1 which really begins the festival season. We are going to be having the Showcase of the Performing Arts, the Sea Cavalcade (the Queen of which is an elderly woman with civic spirit), the Bonfire Music Festival, the Wooden Boat Festival, a Country Fair, Creek Daze, something called ‘Commotion on the Ocean,’ the Arts Festival, the Festival of the Rolling Arts (which seems to be about cars), the Festival of the Written Arts, the Fibre Arts Festival, the Chamber Music Festival, the Salmon Festival, another Jazz Festival and the New Moon Festival. And then there’s B.C. Day, which is not in and of itself a festival, but does usually have fireworks, making it pretty festive. Also, now that I think of it, there’s the Okanagon Fruit Stand Man who comes to town every Wednesday in the summer and brings such wonderful fruits that he himself constitutes a one-person festival spread out over time. And then summer is over and the tourists go away.

Having a very good time? Certainly a festive time. At the Salmon Festival, you can decorate a plywood salmon. Unfortunately, the real salmon are rapidly disappearing from these coastal waters so this festival may soon turn into a Salmon Memorial Festival. At the Written Arts Festival, people who are talented writers come and talk. How about a festival where the talented writers come and write? At the New Moon Festival, you get to eat samosas. I don’t know about the connection between samosas and the new moon. But I do believe that the best thing about a Festive Occasion ought to be its food, so I’ll be going to check them out.

Investors

I ran into some conversation about a ferry from Point Roberts to Bellingham the other day. Seems the B.C. Ferries Corporation (which is a private corporation, much to the chagrin of many residents of the Sunshine Coast) is selling off some older ferries as a result of closing down the Albion ferry in Maple Ridge and of the new very large ferries soon to appear on the coastal ferry routes. Maybe Point Roberts could buy one of those ferries and run a little route back and forth to Bellingham was the idea.

Of course, Bellingham has no particular known interest in running a ferry across that route. And none of the ferries that was advertised could dock at the P.R. marina, but the idea of a ferry is perennial in Point Roberts. All you have to do is bring it up as a topic and people start talking about what a good idea it would be to get somebody to do this project. The somebody might be the state or the county, but the somebody isn’t usually Point Roberts, I have noticed.

So here’s a thought experiment, as the philosophers say: if the people who think it would be a good idea to have say a water-taxi (that could transport perhaps as many as ten foot-passengers/crossing) can raise $1,000 each from five hundred Point Roberts’ residents as investors, then there would be a half-million dollars of investment capital to get something the size of a water taxi going. A half-million would mean, I’m guessing, that it was fairly well capitalized, and the investors could all count on a nice little yearly profit if such a profit chanced to materialize, or some of their money back if it weren’t all needed over a several year period. And the real thought experiment here is whether 500 Point Roberts residents, who stand to benefit by this innovation both practically and financially, would be willing to ante up the investment funds? And if not, how good an idea is it really?

Incidentally, the digitalis/foxglove is blooming all over the place--in our yard, it's over 5 1/2 feet tall. There's a plant that knows how to do its thing.

Dry Days

After four weeks of no rain, we had about ten minutes worth this morning around 6 a.m. I heard it and didn’t realize, at first, what it was. But it didn’t matter that it was rain because it didn’t rain either long enough or hard enough to offer much to any plant in need. Usually, we can rely on at least one day of rain any time we are away from either garden for two weeks, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect when we got back to the Canadian garden.

When we left, the dozen or so peony bushes were just starting to bloom. When we returned, they were mostly still in bloom, with a few buds just barely opening. It turns out that not having been rained on was a favor because, although I had tied them up, that’s usually not enough to keep them from breaking off if they get a lot of water from above. But here I was without a single broken down peony bloom. All the other expected bloomers were coming along fine, although the blueberry bushes looked a little puny in their berryness. But it was pleasing to see that they can take care of themselves more than I might think (this may be like children?).

On the other hand, the deer apparently didn’t have enough water around to please them so they ate all the leaves (but none of the flowerette buds—too dry?) from the hydrangea bushes in the front yard, but entirely left alone the larger hydrangeas in the driveway which they walk by on their normal pathway after they leave the front yard. I’ve never had them eat hydrangeas before now, but I never had them eat English ivy before this winter (although they could eat that stuff day and night and not get a peep out of me). In any case, it is the flowers that I find most appealing in the hydrangea, so perhaps this is simply an example of the deer finding a way to live cooperatively with me.

Poking around on the net, I found an interesting list of plants that deer may not eat, or may not eat too often, or too much of, or too thoroughly, and various other categories. The author warns, however, that ‘deer don’t read lists.’ She does advise that they occasionally eat hydrangeas and often eat English ivy. (The photo is last year's hydrangea with the recommended leaves AND flowers. We'll see what it looks like this year with flowers but no leaves.)