The Garden

A couple of weeks ago we were invited to a salon-style dinner party where one person from each couple was asked to make a ten-minute presentation about anything at all. Neither of us being practiced public speakers, a simple slideshow seemed like the best choice, and this one gave me an opportunity to showcase and appreciate 20+ years of hard work:

What you don’t see in these images is the work party I came to in the spring of 1999, before Morgan and I were dating. He had invited my friends and I to a “garden party” that turned out to be a lot of people doing big projects- setting up a spot for a greenhouse (long gone), digging up garden beds, putting up privacy screens around the old hot tub, and laying brick pathways down. There is an image of me doing that last task somewhere, but I didn’t go that deep in the photo archives. This is all before he even owned the house, which he bought later that year. That’s a whole other story.

There are no photos of the big work party our friends gave me for my birthday in probably 2006? 2007? I must have been too busy working! King County had given us our land back in 2005, but we needed a plan and we needed some help to get that plan in action, and we got it. Very, very grateful for that. I did manage to include star-player Mark Tomkiewicz (buphalo) in the set, as he helped out with some of the more ridiculous projects over the years, like moving boulders.

Also not pictured: truckloads of horse manure and many many bags of leaves we used to create soil on top of the fill dirt and two inches of topsoil the county gave us. I did have at least one photo of compost being delivered and the wood-chip pile we have our arborist friend Andy deliver every couple of years. Add to that the piles of weeds the chickens composted for us and now we have maybe 12″ of soil in most places? Soil building is an ongoing process.

Tending a garden is an ongoing process, for that matter. We have reached the stage where we have begun to pull things out- we took out two diseased pear trees a couple of years ago, for instance, and this winter removed two alders we had once planted for quick shade. I used to take it personally when something didn’t make it through the winter, but now I am more ready to see it as an opportunity to plant something new, or enjoy a bit of space and wait to see what happens.

The garden gives me lessons about time, about patience, about the cycles of death and renewal, about trying and failing and tweaking and trying again, every year an experiment, every season an opportunity. This garden, an ongoing creative collaboration with my beloved, supported and influenced by friends, keeps me connected to LIFE.

For a lot more photos of flowers at the #hammershackgarden, check out my Instagram.

Stepping it up

The big house project of the summer finally got underway last month. You know how it goes. At any rate, Morgan is building a sort of shop addition, a covered deck with a shed/closet on the east side where we can put our sports and camping gear, big tools, off-season gear, and gardening equipment.

Hot tub move thanks to friends! Thank you so much, friends!

Right now that stuff is either in the old kitchen (which will someday be a bathroom and laundry room), in a cramped attic space above the shop, taking up precious floor space in the shop, or tucked into a corner of the yard. This is what happens when you turn your old basement into a living space.

Throughout this project there have been many glorious moments when things find their forever homes, as with our craft and office cabinets. This structure will likely potentiate several of those moments, and I will do my best to share them with you as they arrive.

❤️ Morgan’s notes in the landing pad. ❤️

In the meantime, one concrete piece of the structure has been completed, and we can now run up and down stairs on the east side of the house instead of slipping and sliding on the muddy slope we had there. Check out the step lights in the side of the house, finally united with their true purpose.

Morgan showing off the alternative to a slippery slope.

Cosmos and the chicken food hut.

We hit a milestone today, and our permits are officially IN PROCESS at the Department of Planning and Development. This might actually happen!!!

Welcome to the Hammershack!

These are some images from May 2012. They show the garden in its full springy splendor (raining, appropriately), and the South side of the house as it is. We hope to change the house this year, very dramatically. I’ll be posting about those changes as they occur, or the impediments to change, as the case may be.