The numbers

           I'm at 82 trees out of 90 days.  I accepted a job with the Census, starting in mid-April, so I'll probably get more behind.  Need to grab every non-stormy minute.

March 31

          It's been a week since I planted.  Lots of rain, but mostly my reason is my very sore feet. I'm waiting for them to heal.  Today I took a western redcedar up to the other side of the fence around our spring.  It's very steep, and I had to cross the small creek and a barbed wire fence that's mostly down.  It's the sort of place you can't tell what it's like (for instance, the amount of tree cover) while you're up there - too many shrubs and downed trees to allow one to walk and look around at the same time.  It seems very full.  When you're down below or to the side, looking in, you can see that much of the tree cover is ancient alders, leaning way over, and that the area needs some new vigorous trees.  

         Many trails up there - deer?  people?  I caged this little cedar!!

March 24

         Today G and I drove Hwy. 22 out of Hebo, to Valley Junction, and then south to Salem.  It was a darkish day of pouring rain, the only color and beauty of note being offered by the Indian plum trees now dominating roadside hedgerows.  Myriad clusters of dainty white stars, flowers-like-stars draped amid bright green leaves.  Color from another plant might subdue the plum in contrast, but for this small window of time they are the color and the only blooms.  This stretch of Hwy. 22, the Sourgrass Pass, is the most concentrated abundance of Indian plum trees I've ever seen.  

         Their beauty and abundance make me want to sneak these trees into the fencerows of poplars and pines planted on Highway 22 nearer Salem, by the feedlot.  (If you drive this highway, you know this area by the smell of the feedlot, though the trees are pretty and one notices the regularity of their planting.)  The pines and poplars (that new timber-producer, fast-grower species) have sterile feet, need Indian plum and other low growers grouped around them.  And then the red osier dogwood would creep in when the birds came for the fruit and the cover, and some blackberry and perhaps the lovely native crabapple. Then would come Douglas spirea and snowberry. Little mammals and many birds would be happy to call the fencerows home then.  

          We need a crop of planting "taggers" who will plant trees and shrubs on the sly. (I remember now, there is at least one person who sometimes cuts a few of these trees - and then angry signs appear, and letters are written to newspaper editors.  This is NOT what we need.)  Night raiding Johnny Appleseeds.

         Are you saying, "This woman needs to get away from home more" - this being the furthest from home I've been since Christmas, except maybe to buy that tractor - and maybe you noticed that?   Salem is one and a half to two hours from Hebo.

         But I've been thinking about places far away, about areas that need tree planting desperately.   The Nature Conservancy has a program in Brazil, planting in the rain forest, and Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots kids came up with the idea of sponsoring the building of tree nurseries in Tanzania and encouraging the planting of trees there.  Great ideas.  I'll send money, but I'd like to get my hands - and "my" trees into those soils.  

The Tree Planters' Waltz

Goggle "The Tree Planters' Waltz", a Canadian You Tube film.  A music video.  It's like a night out on the town.  Maybe it has little to do with my tree planting, but I love it.  Today I may not get much done in the way of planting - have to clean house for guests.  If I do plant, I'll be back here to report in 'real time'.  Oh, I am so glad to be caught up with my blog.

March 21

Rain all morning, but it's not cold.  We went up the hill with 2 shrubs - a Twinberry (Lonicera involucrata) and an evergreen huckleberry, both grown from cuttings taken here on our land.  A Twinberry bush grows by the small creek which comes out of the tiny pond, where it runs on the flat along the bottom of the hill, beside our pasture.  (This channel was obviously ditched for it, years ago.)  Kruckberg says Twinberry likes moist, open sites, but ours is growing in shade.  Certainly a moist site.  Lonicera is the honeysuckle genus, but this is one of the shrubby ones, not a vine.  It gets to 10 feet tall;  ours is that or almost.

I planted the Twinberry on the east (far) side of the tiny pond - and within five feet of water, in a low, wet place.  Covered it with an old wire tree cage all falling apart, but adequate for this job.  
           The huckleberry I put on the other side of the pond.  Someone had dug or pulled out a formerly planted one (close to the one I planted March 10).  I found the plant and stuck it back in.  Was that some of Rose's digging?  She has been known to dig.  A lot.  I put the new one in where something else of that earlier vintage had died.  Maybe a rhododendron.  I fertilized all with compost.        And I covered them all, including the old, dug up one.  This meant a lot of work and jerry-rigging that I won't go into.  I used the animal cage I got at the dump, its cut-out side, and a gym basket, trading these around with older plants' covers.  Cutting one side off the animal cage was really physically hard, and I was embarrassingly stupid about how to do it.  G. helped me get started in a sensible manner.  Both of my parents were mechanically inclined/interested, my mother especially so, but that gene passed right over me.
          G said, "I wish I could help you more with this project."
          I said a big part of the project is me being independent, doing it myself.  That seems true more and more as I go on with it - and as it gets harder.  I don't want much of his help.  And he's been wiring our son and daughter-in-law's room for when he returns from Mongolia - and she immigrates.  A very important job that I don't want to take him away from.
          He did say to me at one point today, from deep under a kitchen counter where he was twisted in knots trying to find the right circuit and the break in a wire (or whatever it was that kept a light socket way away in the stairway to the basement not working), this job being a precursor to his being able to successfully wire that room, being facetious, "Good thing competence is a turn-on."  **  Because he wasn't feeling very competent right then, but I've said that to him - how attractive I find the fact that he's so good at so many things.  I think most women are attracted to competence;  it makes sense evolutionarily, right?  We won't go into what men find attractive in women, as I'm not feeling so competent today, wrestling with wire, sliding out of my shoes on mud-slick hills, being so slow and obtuse.
          ** To my friend J, from writing group (if she reads this):  I know that's a run-on sentence.  A too-long sentence is okay in a blog about planting trees, I hope. I'll never write another one. 
I promise.
          Now I'm caught up with transcribing what I've written each day I've planted in my journal, and I can just write on this blog each day from now on.  And I was at 81 plants out of 80 days on this date, March 21st.          

March 20

      Second day of G's Spring Break.  Beautiful warm day - like yesterday.  Yesterday I spent most of the day transplanting seedlings - Nigella, K&K's poppies, Pacific Beauty and Zeolights calendulas, zinnias (2 kinds from heat mats in Garden Room - other plants from flats in greenhouse).  Rats ate many of these last night.  Dratted beasts!!
       So today Rose and I took 2 Indian plums and 2 western redcedars (from WC) up the hill.  I planted them a little ways up the hill from the tiny pond and down the hillside towards the river.  A cedar and an Indian plum by smallish dead and dying spruces, close off the tractor path.  Further down the hillside, across the level spot (old road?  a spot for a second mink shed?), I found spaces for the second cedar and plum.  There's a huge ancient spruce there, close to the creek that empties the tiny pond.  I didn't want to plant close to it or too close to the other cedar or a young Douglas fir there, planted by G maybe 5 - 6 years ago, further east along the flat area.  
Next trees I'll take higher up the hill, but at about that distance from the house.  
          These trees will shade the tiny creek, keeping the water cold for the salmon.  That is, keeping the water cold so it will be cold when it empties into Three Rivers where the salmon are likely to be.  This tiny creek disappears into the ground in a wetland on our property - the area we call our "pasture", that we are turning into a wetland and planting trees in and around.
          I took up compost and fed my new plantings and some of the preiously-planted huckleberries by pond.
          Trip to Tillamook - no wire at dump, but 3 very long railroad ties in pretty good shape.  Rain began on our way home. 
          Indian Plum is a slight tree, nothing to get excited about maybe, until early spring (February, early March) when it blooms its drooping panicles of white flowers.  These are arrestingly lovely at the edges of the woods along highways and roads this time of year.  They hang down gracefully, are the only color around - except the stridently yellow daffodils. 
          70 trees out of 79 days!!!  Right on target, but I need to be AHEAD!

March 14

          Finally, I'm catching up!  At the end of planting today, I'm at 76 plants out of 73 days.  I need to be way ahead, however, to go into the dry weather months when I can't plant, when small plants just planted won't survive.  I'm not going to be able to take water to my plants, though I probably will try if we have drought.
          Today I planted six Cornus sericea along the entry roadway to C5.  I'm planning a "hedgerow" of red osier dogwood, yellow bark willow, nootka or rugosa rose, Douglas spirea - between the roadway and neighbors' house.  I have C. sericea Moyer's red, and its twigs and branches are STUNNING red in winter.  Maybe some snowberry, but I worry about poisonous berries - how poison are they?!
          So, scoped out the area, planted 5 on 5-foot centers, one close to C5 parking lot, mulched them with cardboard I got at outlet mall in Lincoln City, loaded two pickup bed's full of chips, drove them over, backed up close to my plants and covered the cardboard thoroughly.  Should be pretty, though it will take a few years.  Plants are small.
           I also looked over the native plants we (high-schoolers on do-good day, me and KB, and 2 other adult helpers) planted May 2009.  Most are fine.  The Escallonia (non-native, from Chile, easy to start from cuttings) I put in for evergreen privacy between neighbor and C5 (evergreen and dense, but not tall) have all died - in the early winter cold snap?  too young to live through it? My large ones here look hard hit, but are alive.  Hard to think of a native, short and evergreen.  Vaccinium ovatum needs shade, but might do well.
           The C5 property between the common roadway and B's house is 30' wide by 182.11'
long.  Electric service comes in underground along the edge of the roadway to C5 parking lot, from there to big "electrical" box on ground right by fence corner.  EMBARQ-TELCO wires come from pole on NWside of roadway, stay underground along that side of roadway - from there under our plantings between B's house and the C5 parking lot.  (This info to help me remember where services are for future plantings.)
           

March 13

This after two days of nasty, cold rain - so much of it that there are flood warnings!
          Today was Work Party at S's in Neskowin. Here in Hebo it was sunny;  there, they had clouds, but it was warm and dry enough to work outdoors with friends.  I had brought 2 evergreen huckleberry plants and a Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca, see photos to right) from YCSWCD.  J says P. crabapple is a favorite of her husband T's - and that is great to hear as he's the one who helped me get started on this Tree a Day, with the alders at our Work Party in January.
          I planted these above the path that goes to Mom's house.  R and I worked up there, pulling ivy and blackberry, cutting back gone-wild (not native?) rose, evergreen huckleberry, honeysuckle, etc.  R made big, swift changes, and I was slow.  It looks really nice - neater but still wild and prosperous.

March 10

Rose, Sassy and I headed out about 9 a.m., after I'd finished some writing.  I took an evergreen huckleberry and a red-flowering currant (Ribes sangineum - see above), the latter from YCSWCD.  We got to the wheelbarrow and maple I'd left up by the little pond, had all our equipment together, and it began to hail.  I was going to just work through it as the sky and sunlight and clouds had been doing amazing fast contortions all morning, but it continued.  So I headed to my Garden Room.  
          There I potted a total of eleven tiny spruce from the nurse log, some potted on March 6, and began potting the Delicata squash and Cool Breeze cucumber seedlings I've grown.
          The sun came out - the sky was almost totally clear - and we went back up.  I put the currant in between 2 trees in that small grove by the pond, right by the tractor road - should be highly visible.  They bloom with drooping panicles of red-pink flowers in spring and have pretty, rounded, crinkly leaves.  I planted the huckleberry on the other (west) side of the pond, within 3 feet of one planted earlier this year (see March 21st entry).  I covered it with a gym basket, and the currant with an old, tall birdcage I used for the pet rats in my classroom when I taught.  
           Then I examined the five cages already up there, surrounding maples put in many (I just asked G, and he says up to ten!) years ago.  I expected at least a few to be empty of live maples - filled with grass, blackberry vines, etc. - but all contained vigorous looking small maples among the weeds.  Slow-growing maples.  So, again I didn't plant this maple.  I did take it back down to the house, and feel strongly I need to bring compost to our older plantings.
          Came home from writing group to more e-mails about possible planting on county/C5 property;  both talking about the signs and cow statue, etc.  I'm going over on Sunday to plant (I told them so) unless they say not to - and I'm done with volunteering to do more there.  
I will plant along the river, as that seems to step on fewer toes.  
          S, of the Watershed Council, responded to an e-mail from me with offers of some trees to plant.  I plan to use these here and on county's Hebo property, and the vine maples will go to the High School.

Photo of Ninebark

This is a photo of Pacific ninebark - leaves a bit like maple leaves, flowers like spirea flowers.  

Physocarpus capitata.  It's in the Rose family, which makes sense, looking at the individual flowers within the corymb (group of small flowers).  It's known as ninebark because the bark peels in pretty layers.  

March 9

          By the end of March 7th, I was at 61 trees out of 66 days.  By the end of the 9th, I was at 65 out of 68 - getting caught up!
          Rose and I went towards the river with the wheelbarrow and two cascaras.  I put both in close to the corner of our property and neighbors to the west - and pretty close to the river - 10 to 15 feet (and lots of blackberries) back.  I clipped blackberry vines to make a room.  One cascara is close to a hemlock I put in earlier, the other is by large spruces (not so much blackberry there) that G planted 5 - 10 years ago.  The spruces are about 15 feet tall.
          Then we headed up the hill with 3 more plants:  2 ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus) and a big leaf maple.  The ninebarks we have are from cuttings I've made from the bush in my big island flower bed, and the maple is a strong second or third year seedling from the maple in front of our house.  
           I planted the ninebarks by the small pond, to the east of it and uphill slightly.  Two smallish - 20 feet? - spruces and 2 alders grow there in a small naturally planted grove.  I put the ninebark in beyond the spruce shade, guessing they prefer sun.  Kruckberg says, "Look for this tallish shrub in open woods, along water-courses and in moist hedgerows . . . "  (Arthur 
R. Kruckberg, Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest:  An Illustrated Guide.  Great book!)  Many sword ferns and some elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) grow in the spruce shade, an evergreen huckleberry to the western edge - one I planted.
          I ran out of steam, so didn't plant the maple - left it and wheelbarrow for another day.


          Back at the house, I got a call from L, who works for the county.  I had proposed to C5 (the child care center here in Hebo where I was on the board for 6+ years) that I'd do some planting on that (county) property last fall.  C5 drug their feet forever (Sept. to Dec.)  - well, they have a lot of other things going on! - but finally said okay for me to plant the strip beside the driveway into the center.  But then O said I should get Tillamook County approval.  More foot dragging, talk about needing County Commissioners to approve, etc.  E, from C5, then told me strip is C5, not county property.  
          I feel very much as if everyone is looking this gift horse in the mouth, far too seriously, far too long, for the nature of my simple request.  Marked contrast with W at the High School, who is happy to have me and S plant up there, very few questions asked.  He wants the landscaping native, and low maintenance.  No problem!  S and I are slow, but the two beds we've worked on so far - a 70 foot "rain garden" (drainage ditch for the asphalt parking lot) and a 15 x 10 foot area above the small patio in back of the school - we've weeded and kept maintained.  I only wish my available plants were larger, for more immediate impact. 
          Gordon's Environmental Science class had adopted the big, steep terrace in back of the main high school classroom area.  They've terraced it, straightened the new cyclone fencing (put in without adequate attention to the ground that's supposed to hold the fenceposts), and planted a few ferns.  They're working with wood to hold the terraces in place, that G has scrounged.  They'll plant (I hope I can help!) the plants from the Yamhill County SWCD and some Cascara, elderberry, redosier dogwood, and others that we've started here at home.  Weed control (cardboard mulch with PUD chips or straw to cover) will be paramount with the small size of most of the plants.  The salal, for instance, are sturdy but only 2 - 3 inches tall.  They could easily be smothered - or trampled by students as they work!
          Anyway, L of the county and I worked things out on the phone today.  I may plant, but I have to:
          1) Know where the property boundaries and any easements are, and stay within - or without - them.
          2)  Not plant in ways that stop people from seeing any signs or the cow statue that's to be erected.  Also not obscure drivers' vision.
          3)  Graduate my plantings, so short plants (his definition of short is 12-18" tall - it will be a little hard for NATIVE plant material - maybe Kinnikinnick?) are close to Hwy. 101, and anything taller is further back, by C5's parking lot.  Again, keeping in mind drivers' vision.  And not shading too much the house of the folks who live right close there.
           4)  No other planting except along the river - i.e. not on parts of the property that a farmer (if the county finds a willing farmer) will mow for hay or pasture cattle on - and generate money for the county to help pay for property upkeep.  


          I don't know how many times, and to how many people, I've expressed these concerns - brought them up, addressed them.  However, I appreciate L's hard job of protecting the taxpayers' money - his job being to do things right, do things that benefit the property, enhance the investment, and not make mistakes that will require money and time to fix.  And he has to document every step.
          I'll try to plant there this week-end, probably only red osier dogwood, and definitely far away from the highway.

March 7

          Please check out the other "Tree" blogspot:  http://kristinodonnell.blogspot.com.  Kristin is posting one of her tree photos every day.  Today's reminds me of landscapes in Mongolia.  Very beautiful photos, very skilled photographer.

          (March 7)  Yesterday I got plants together to plant, but got sidetracked to pulling wire/quackgrass roots from under the biggest (oldest) of our golden delicious apple trees.  I was doing this so I could put manure fiber compost around the tree, then cardboard, then chips on top of that (when I get chips).  Then I did some more planting by the big rhodie - two more small spireas - chartreuse and orange leaves respectively.  (I think - the leaves are still just coming out.)

          I also worked with potting and arranging potted plants.  Then I was tired.  I was DONE.  So no tree planting.

          Today, however, Rose and I (and Sassy! Rose's best friend) went up first thing.  I had a tiny blooming rhodie in a pot that I have no idea where it came from;  it's sat on our back stoop for 2 or more years.  It had a carpet of Corsican mint in its pot, and four tiny seedling cedars.  I took these all out carefully and potted them. 

          I had, also, another hazel.  In its pot were two seedling cedars, one to one and a half feet tall.  So, what I planted was one rhododendron, one hazel, and two cedars.  These cedars may be Port Orford cedars, if the hazel came from J&H in Portland.  They have P.O. cedars in their yard.  (Another challenge for me - how to tell the western red and the P.O. cedars apart.

How to remember the differences.  Incense cedar, too.  And there are definitely 2 cedar species in our plantings - huge trees G planted years ago.  Put identifying all these on my list of things to do.) 

          I put the rhodie in on the pond side of the tractor road, almost right on the corner between road and creek.  Should be a place of prominence.  A salal there from January planting, and I uncovered a small plant I can't identify - something of a small shrub.  It might be the escaped and invasive cotoneaster, but I can't tell yet - it's not big enough.  That cotoneaster, English laurel, holly, and the Himalayan and evergreen blackberries are our invasives here, in our woods.  I occasionally find ivy - it is much worse an invasive plant than any of these others as it climbs trees - and strangles them eventually.  We tolerate the blackberry vines that aren't competing with our trees - the fruit is so delicious!

          The hazel went in up by the other one, close to goat pens but across an area of open grass (under the power lines) from the goats.  There are two maples (vine? big leaf?) in cages up there, and my recent snowberries.  I put compost around my rhodie and hazel, and around one maple.

          I took the cedars further along east.  One I put almost on the bank of the creek out of our spring, the other one just a ways west of that.  Gently sloping hillside there.  Both of these I caged with cages Gordon had freed up in the yard by building new, prettier ones out of sections of old picket fence - from the dump.  The wooden cages are lovely - or will be as soon as plants are leafed out.  We keep new trees caged until they're five or more feet tall.  The deer will still eat the lower branches;  this leads to shaping that is interesting and sometimes beautiful.   

           

March 5

       

          First thing this morning, Gordon and I went recycling at the dump - no fencing wire but lots of wood that G can use.  From there to hardware store, where fencing is even more expensive than at farm store.  From their ACE catalog, I can order a hand (human powered) lawn mower - anywhere from $80 to $230.  I'll hold out for a used one.  G ordered concrete mix and some NEW lumber - unusual for him as he's found most of what he's used to build house attachments (like our deck), garage additions, and outbuildings (tractor shed, chicken house) used, many times for free.
          Then to Habitat for Humanity office to give them our deposit cans and bottles, and home.
           Rose and I went up the hill after lunch and planted two cascara trees.  I potted these the spring before last from numerous seedlings here - maybe it was a bad year for cascaras? it was a dry year - and they were desperate to reproduce?  Or maybe it was a good one for them?  The seedlings were all over!  We also planted a native hazel.  Gordon and I can't remember where we got the hazels - but as I write that I think probably from J, Gordon's brother in Portland.  We have 2 in pots - they are very cute little guys only 12 inches tall, with multiple trunks and strong leaf emergence.
          I planted the hazel up by the goat pens, near the snowberry bushes I planted last month.  I put it in an old cage where something (a big leaf maple?) has died.  No sign of old plant.
          I put one cascara close to that.  Many native plants enjoy growing on the edges of forests and woods.  The other cascara I put at the edge of the mink bench, at the cusp of the bank of the tiny creek (dry in summer) that empties the small pond.  I'm taking a chance not caging the cascaras, but maybe the deer will learn to steer clear of them after they get diarrhea a few times.
          The photo above is of cascara leaves.  It is Rhamnus purshiana.  Hitchcock considers its foliage its strong point, the leaves being more leathery and shiny than the alder leaves they somewhat resemble in size and shape - but cascara leaves have a smooth edge, not serrated.  Hitchcock says they are deciduous trees, up to 30 feet tall, but we find they are somewhat evergreen here.  The bark is used as a laxative.

Then I dug two deer ferns (Blechum spicant) out of the middle of the tractor road by the pond, and planted them in my east-of-the-huge-rhodie flower bed, in the yard.  I love the graceful symmetry of  deer ferns.  They are smaller and more delicate looking than sword fern.
          Then I drilled holes in bottoms of vitamin supplement (for dairy cows) plastic tubs (2 feet tall, 3 feet across? large!!) that our neighbors gave me, put a course of up-ended gallon pots in each, filled around those with old soil from potted plants killed in our freezes early in winter.  I lost all my geraniums, fuchsias, and houseplant succulents - and my Brugmansia - in the early December cold spell.  I topped that with nice fresh potting soil.  These 2 are for the couple who live on the corner of Hebo Lane and Highway 101 and make their yard so pretty with flowers each year.  
          I plan to put the 2 Coral Bark maples I got from a local grower out Highway 22 last spring in two of those tubs.  I want to plant these out front when we take down the huge (and ruined because 'topped' at one point) Oregon big leaf maple.  But we won't be taking out that tree for awhile.  It is, for one thing, a major landmark in the neighborhood.  And beautiful.  It causes damage to our roof, and could blow over into our house or lose a huge limb onto the house, in a wind storm (as the Redwood out back lost one of its three leaders a few years ago).  We have a 15-foot baby from it coming along further away from the house, and this we'll keep.
          I'm at 57 out of 64.         

March 4

          We went out at 9:00 a.m.  Beautiful sunny, warm day.  I cut and bent closed three new cages.  That's the last of my dump wire.  I need more soon!!  I took a cedar and 2 hemlocks - the last or our "large" AAUW trees, down to the riverside.  

          We came back to the house at 11:40.  This planting takes a long time!  Actually Rose was done before I was;  if I had to return to the wheelbarrow - left where the tractor road to the bottoms gets deep ruts and I could go no further - she was right beside me and heading up to the house.  When I finally headed up for real, I couldn't find her.  Of course.  Thinking she'd thrown in the trowel, I went ahead and took the wheelbarrow shovel, etc., on up.  But, no Rose up there, either.  I went back down, a little concerned because we'd been working close to the neighbors' property to the west of ours, and they have at least one very aggressive dog.  I think Rose is alpha enough and territorial enough (and the neighbors' dog respects that), and I hadn't heard any growling, barking . . . . . but I love my dog.  Then, there she came from further up river, and was glad to come eat a snack and pass out on the couch near me.

          I spent most of my planting time clipping blackberry vines, making 'rooms' for new trees.

The first tree, the cedar, I put in very close to the property corner and the river.  A hemlock a bit further east along the river - a rocky place, and that's unusual down there.  I think that small area may be an old channel of a small finger of the river.  Very slow digging.  I though about giving up, but it feels like a good day for a-little-bit-at-a-time.  For perseverance.  

           The second hemlock I planted yet again further east along the river.  An alder is down right there - a young one, still blooming and leafing out.  I went between its trunk and some willows - trying for a place the deer might not try to get to.  Even with caging the trees, I throw cut blackberry vines over them, etc., to deter deer.  Anything to deter deer.

          I'm at 54 plants out of 63 days - 6/7's!!

March 3

          After today, I was at 51 planted out of 62 days.  

          One cedar planted at the level of the lower edge (towards Three Rivers) of the fence around our spring, but 10 feet or so towards our house (west) or there.  Steep terrain again, small hill's side.

          Then I pulled four tiny spruce trees growing in a stump top - they came out very easily, with great long roots.  One more off a fallen log right there.  I planted these on county property by Three Rivers, just over the edge of the bank - the first bank - I see now that this bank goes down to a bench with tall alders right on the river.  How do those alders manage to stay there during all the flooding?  . . . .  The north side of the river is rip-rapped (lined with stacks of broken concrete pieces) in places across from our property.  I'm sure it's the fact that we allow the river to flood our property (probably current laws would not allow us to stop it?) that protects the north side of the river - it rarely floods.  Did in 1998.  Maybe that also takes the pressure off places like this one, close by but upriver from our flood area.

March 1 continued

          I stopped blogging yesterday so I could go substitute teach - middle school and high school geography/history.  Yesterday's photo is of evergreen huckleberry, a plant my friend GO says beats boxwood (which it resembles in having the very regular, green and shiny leathery evergreen leaves) because of its very tasty fruit, its being native, and its overall beauty.  

          To continue:  When I returned from Tillamook, I made 3 wire cages - maybe there's enough for 3 more.  I was jazzed - empowered:  I could get the wire, flatten out its bumps, find the wire snips, cut the wire, and bend fingers of it to fashion a wire circle cage!!!  I can do it!

           Rose and I took the yellow wheelbarrow up the hill (through the vegetable garden, past the tiny pond) with shovel, 3 dowels to anchor cages, 3 plants, and an old gym basket (where you put your clothes when you dressed down when I was a kid - trash from the High School remodel).  I started with 2 of my wire cages but one wouldn't stay on the wheelbarrow, and I could picture it scraped off and poking me in the eye.  So we left it by the house.  The other one was scraped off as I went under the top half of the veg. garden gate - gates and the fence are 8 feet tall to keep deer out.  I left it there.

          We planted a huckleberry on north side of tractor road by pond.  We covered it with the gym basket, and anchored that with a motley arrow I found nearby - from the days of archery fascination and bow building by son Sean and his dad.

          We put a cedar below the spring fence, close to the tiny creek.  A little west of it, we put in a hemlock.  The terrain is steep there - I found myself sliding out of my garden clogs, then digging with the shovel while kneeling.  Lots of roots to dig through or around.  And rocks.

          I threw one large rock down the hill and Rose went after it.  Down by the house, when we went to get the cages, I noticed she was carrying that rock.  Prized possession.  (No, she didn't chew on it.  Sean, Rose's true master, will want to make sure I never let her chew on rocks.)

          Yellow dog tooth violets (Viola glabella?) just beginning to bloom, and sourgrass (Oxalis oregana, I believe, with pink flowers) just opening its leafy rosettes.   The oxalis, called sourgrass around here, forms dense carpets of individually fragile plants.  It is a strong spreader, considered a weed by those who don't want its exuberance.  I love it and the false lily of the valley - Maianthemum dilatatum - which also forms carpets in the shade.  We have yet to get any of the Maianthemum well established.

          I came across lots and lots of English holly.  I remember in Fall I began my one-a-day trips as going in the woods each day with Rose, clipping blackberries and pulling holly trees.Only after the New Year did I revamp my "daily" into also planting a tree.  Much harder to do!  But I do still pull the hollies near my new plantings - and clip the blackberries.  I'm still planning to set the holly WAY back this year.
          I'm beginning to get really excited about 365 trees/shrubs, new ones, most on this property, our 5 1/2 acres.  I think of them growing big, the salal, huckleberries or snowberry forming dense clumps - or thickets!  Hedgerows!! (I love both those words.)  It takes years for the shrubs (trees, too, sometimes) to "take off", but I'm content to wait - though I will take compost up some days and side dress our new and former plantings.

March 1

First thing this morning (4:15 a.m.), I helped Gordon grade Biology tests.  I do the multiple choice questions, he does the short answer and essay questions - the ones that need his judgment.  Then I washed the dishes and went to Tillamook.  At the transfer station/recycling center ("dump") I recycled and then found about 25 feet of plastic coated fencing wire, 3 feet tall.  That and an animal cage ("Good protection for a rose," I tell the attendant - he's very nice and I don't want him to think I'm one of those odd dump collector people.  Which, of course, I am.)

          All that cost me all of $1.00.  From there to CENEX (farm supply store), where I find the same wire at $1.00+ per foot = $52 for a 50 foot roll.  My wire is smashed, but what a deal!  So I bought mom and dad plastic chickens to send to niece H, to go with the farm set we gave her at Christmas.  The CENEX clerk was so nice I had to buy something!

February 28

 

I planted 3 clumps of lignonberries, passed on to me from GO.  I potted eleven offshoots from these for Plant Exchange.  
          Lignonberries are in the Ericacea family - like blueberries, kinnikinick, rhododendrons, and many, many other plants, including many that humans use.  They are not native here in the Northwest, but are in the Mid West and New England, and famously, in Scandinavia.
          Then I weeded to the east of the huge rhododendron east of our house, and planted a small spirea there, one with yellow or chartreuse leaves there by the Lonicer nitida and white Rugosa rose.  Every plant mentioned in this paragraph is a non-native.  
          This all sounds simple, but I was out there seven hours!  I'll count these four shrubs as two, because they're small.  That puts me at 42 plants out of 59 days.  Gordon finished pruning the fruit trees in our yard.  It was a nice day.

February 27

          I subbed a lot last week, and hosted writing group AND Book Club on the 18th, and writing group again on the 25th.  Lots of housecleaning.  Lots of excuses.  I did write a new short story.

          Anyway, I got compost - "manure fiber" - at the methane generator located at the burned-down blimp hangar just south of Tillamook, 18 - 20 miles north of here.  It is $10 to fill the bed of my little Toyota.  I hope to take a shovelful to each of this year's and previous years' plants.  What I didn't get on my trip to town was wire fencing for tree cages - too busy getting books at the thrift shop, groceries, and seeds!!  40% off the seeds!! at Fred Meyer, and great fruits and vegetables at Valley Fresh Produce.  (Yes, that last mention is 'product placement'.  It's a sweet little market owned and run by a Mexican family.)

           But late this afternoon, after rain all day (for days . . . ), Rose and I planted two hemlocks.  We used ones from the AAUW, and I caged them with cages from a blueberry I'd transplanted to inside the fenced blueberry patch (our old vegetable garden space), and another extra cage that was hanging around.  I used temporary poles to stake the cages in place - a fiberglass pole and a bamboo one that have been around awhile.  G. says he has lots of T-posts, the usual metal fencepost around here.   But I will need him to find them and drive them in.  He's wiring our old guest room which we are remodeling for our older son and his wife.  We're hoping they'll stay with us quite awhile when they come from Mongolia, before they go off for him to go to college again.  Wiring involves wiring the basement, too - complicated stuff.  I won't interrupt him, unless absolutely necessary.

          I planted one hemlock among spruces - one or two are dead? - on the hill toward the river from the tractor road that comes from the mink bench past the little pond.  I planted north of the pond slightly, somewhat near earlier this year - and several older - huckleberries.  The other one we put in almost on the bank of the tiny creek that runs into Three Rivers from our spring.  It's maybe 30 feet from the river.  This area has very little along the river besides salmonberry - which I like, but trees are needed to hold the bank.

          I'm beginning to realize I'll need to learn some things in order to complete my project:

     1)  I'll have to get strong enough to push a wheelbarrow with trees etc., up steep hills,

     2)  know how to cut and weave closed wire fencing circles for tree cages, 

     3)  know how to pound in T-posts

     4)  find sources for wire, 

     5)  find sources of plant material:  Yamhill Co. SWCD, Nestucca Neskowin Watershed Council, trading my labor potting trees with BLM, Forest Service permits to dig 'forest resources' -- these are possibilities I need to look into.

          There are probably many, many more things I'll need to learn!  Not knowing how to do things or where to get plants/wire, etc., really stymies me.  I'm pretty shy, especially when I don't know exactly what to ask or who to ask.

           They've cut - beheaded, it seems to me - all the baby alders coming up, "weeds" in the large terraces at the High School.  I don't know how to ask them not to do that.  I have asked over and over that they not spray/use herbicides and pesticides.  I don't know if that got to the right folks, but the little trees looked cut, not sprayed.  Which is good, I guess.  I don't want to be a pain in the ass volunteer.

Embarrassment revisited

          I went to my planting journal (from which I'm typing for these blogs, trying to catch up to real time) and looked up where I'd planted the 6 nurse log spruces I've planted so far - four beyond what are in the blogs posted so far.  I checked them out.  All are definitely spruce, and everything growing on the nurse logs still probably is, too.  Two are too tiny to tell. 
          Back in my garden room I looked at the 5 little trees G had said were hemlocks.  They weren't the nurse log trees I'd potted - those were outdoors, with lots of moss & etc. potted up with them.  The little guys in the garden room are western yews from the YCSWCD sale that I'd put in larger pots.  They are choice little trees, far less common that the Sitka spruce, so I'm protecting them.
          So, just a misunderstanding.  Not me losing my botanical marbles - and not G looking very closely at what I've got where in pots.  I don't want to be too technical in my journal and blog, but I do want to be precise when I am technical - spell the scientific names correctly, give proper dates and locations.  And I want to keep good records. 

February 16

          Today I'm dealing with the bareroot plants from the YCSWCD.  Lots and lots of potting - I want them to be okay - not drying out, if bareroot - for awhile, until I can get wire to build cages to protect them from the deer.
           But it's a nice sunny day, and Rose and I planted five items.  We put two Oregon grape plants (Mahonia aquifolium) east of our house.  One is between two rhodies right beside the house, and one is in the bed just inside our fence and boxwoods by Hebo Lane.  There are two more Oregon grapes in that bed, and one or 2 in the bed below the redwood tree, also in our yard.
          Later we took 2 alders (from High School weeds) and an alder and hemlock (from the Association of University Women's tree sale two or three years ago) that were growing - thriving! - in one pot.  We planted these straight below the house and very close to the river.  This sounds easy, but isn't.  First I had to cut lots of blackberry vines, and while I was at it, cut ones around already-planted small trees. I made little "rooms" in amongst blackberries and willows and flood damage and fallen limbs partially covered in flood-brought sand.  Hard work.
          The soil IS sandy and easy to dig.  One "room" I was cutting blackberries on my way towards, turns out to already house a 10-foot tall (wild?) alder.  The tree's buds weren't as swollen as my container-grown trees, but I'm pretty sure it is an alder.  It's maybe cooler down there amongst the shade from willows and vines.  
          I flagged these plantings with red surveyors' tape;  some are very small and I don't want them mowed or weed-whacked.  Deer love hemlock, so I'll have to get a cage around that tree as soon as I can.  The above photo is Western hemlock, Tsuga heterophylla, the species we're planting.  Kruckberg says "heterophylla" means 'leaves of different shapes', but to me, it refers to the different sizes of the hemlock's needles, this seeming randomness giving the hemlock leaved branches their delicate, lacy look.  It is a beautiful, graceful tree, of a lighter green color, usually, than the spruce.  Both are very common around here.
          I am at 38 trees out of 47 days - starting to get seriously behind.  Sigh.

February 15

             Yesterday I started some veggie seeds - Delicata squash, Cool Breeze cucumbers, tomatoes, Territorial Seed's Mexican Strain tomatillos, etc.  I took cool season flowers seeds (calendula, nigella, etc.) and planted them in flats which I then put in the greenhouse.  (This greenhouse is a 8' x 4' affair, made of two panels of rigid wire fence paneling, bent and the ends anchored in the ground, then covered with plastic.  It's large enough to stand up in, and has wood framed ends and a real hinged door.  G made it, from an idea from our friend R of Seaberry Farm.)  I also started petunias, etc. - warm season flowers which I'll keep on heat mats - with the veggie seeds - for awhile.

            Today I took 20 evergreen huckleberry cuttings, and 8 Philadelphus lewisii, the native mock orange.  Except for the Mexican mock orange (which also starts easily from cuttings), this is the mock orange that is the starting point for the cultivated cultivars, the basis for all the hybridizing work that's been done.  It's a beautiful plant.  Kruckberg (Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest:  An Illustrated Guide, by Arthur R. Kruckberg, University of WA Press, 1982) says it was introduced into Britain by David Douglas in 1825.  I put these cuttings in the greenhouse for added humidity, some warmth.   

February 12 continued

          G still has pneumonia - is way under par, energy-wise, so we aren't getting lots done.  Even though this "tree a day" project is mine, I'm dependent on my time being free enough to keep up.  G is not a needy patient, it's not that.  It's only that I'm doing some of his usual work - and worrying about him.  We had anticipated many projects for last week-end (3 days) and this four-day one - Presidents' Day.
          I potted the two vine maples and 2 cottonwoods from YCSWCD to grow on that way.  Most others are in pots or stowed in sawdust, if bareroot.
          We stopped at Habitat for Humanitiy's ReStore in McMinnville, where they sell builders' left-overs, etc., to help fund building Habitat houses.  I got red, blue, and yellow tape there.  I had been thinking as we drove over that I needed spray paint or something to mark my different years of cuttings.  For instance, evergreen huckleberry new cuttings can look as large as year-old ones, but the root development will be quite different (we hope!).  I don't want to mix up my pots and cheat my 'customers' or plant out my little plants before they're ready.  I'm going to try to sell Vaccinium ovatum at $3.00 per gallon pot, to offset my seed/plant purchasing - mostly vegetable seeds, asparagus roots, etc.  So now my pots are color-coded by year.

February 12

               Gordon and I drove to McMinnville for the Yamhill Co. Soil and Water Conservation District's native plant sale.  We got for the High School:

1 Pacific yew

4 Indian plum

2 Pacific crabapple

10 evergreen huckleberry

1 Pacific rhododendron

5 red-flowering currant

30 salal

5 serviceberry

For here at home:

2 giant Sequoia

2 incense cedar

5 Pacific yew

5 Indian plum 

30 Oregon ash

10 Pacific crabapple

2 Nootka rose

2 Oregon grape - tall

2 Pacific rhododendron

2 red currant

4 salal

5 serviceberry

2 vine maple

2 cottonwood

1 kinnikinnick (Mine, which I've made so many cuttings from, is 'Massachusetts' - I'm not sure it's native here, and I want to compare the two plants, see if they're the same species - as close as I can tell.)

Posters of Rain Garden and Hedgerow.

 

February 10

          I took a red osier dogwood to M at writing group - to put by her pond.  But she has mega deer AND elk presence.  Not sure she'll be able to plant it.       +33 plants/40 days

February 9th

          Gordon had pneumonia, it poured, we went tractor shopping (yes, it was while he had pneumonia when we went, but it was before he knew he had it), etc. - lots of excuses why I haven't been planting.  But today Rose and I planted a chokecherry that G bought at a local nursery.  We put it below our old chicken house, on the bank above some yellow bark willows (we're unsure of the species - or even if these are native), west of the cascara G and I planted in December.

          We put two snowberries (layers or divisions I potted last summer from ours in the large island flower bed) in up by the little pond, high on the hill above the mink shed bench.  They are on the very cusp of the hill, in the sunny area near goat barns and pens.  (We don't have goats, but our neighbors have two, and we have allowed them to house and pasture them on our property for many years now.  They don't roam far afield.)  

          Snowberries were common where we lived when I was a child, in the oak and manzanita woods near Palo Alto, CA.  We picked the white berries and popped them in our fingers - a trick for a child to learn, like learning to snap her fingers.  They have delicate looking leaves and many twiggy branches.  They spread rapidly by sending out underground stems.

          I'm seven plants behind.  I need Gordon to identify some of our potted plants for me - I'm not sure what I'd be planting.  It's hard for me to positively identify ninebark, twinberry or Douglas spirea when they lack their leaves and/or flowers.  But we do have enough plants here for me to catch up.  And Friday we'll be going to the Yamhill County Soil and Water Conservation District (YCSWCD) native plant sale in McMinnville.  We'll get some plants (we've already pre-ordered) for here, and lots for the High School - G's Environmental Science class has cleared the hillside behind the new classrooms and will plant native.  Mostly it was cotoneaster, grass, weeds.)  

             
          

January 31

          I had a cold for a couple days and didn't feel like planting.  I still have that cold, but it's warm and almost sunny outdoors, so Rose and I did some garden mulching (newspaper and cardboard in the paths to keep down weeds), and then planted an alder.  I put it in on the river side of the tractor road that heads uphill form our "pasture" (the pasture is where we've put the majority of the alders so far).  
          At this point I was at 30 trees planted out of 31 days.  

January 28

          I took a red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea, aka Cornus stolonifera) and an alder to Neskowin Valley School, to plant with the 1st/2nd graders while I subbed.  But we made potato bread, too (imagine nine kids with dough to knead and lots of flour . . .  on us, the table, the floor -- fun!), and didn't have time to plant.  The kids will plant them later.  Great kids - I had them each sign my tree planting journal, and since they write in their journals each day in class, they took this seriously.
          The red osier dogwood has white flowers, but it's the redness of the stems in winter that are its claim to fame.  We have one in our front yard and it is traffic stoppingly red in winter.  When it leafs out in March, the red fades quite a bit.  It is very, very easy to start from cuttings.  I've had success just pushing clippings into soil outdoors in spring - and they grow!
This plant is native over much of northern North America.

Embarrassment

          My husband has a masters degree in botany - specifically Taxonomy.  And I have a few classes, and a love of plants and gardening.  So, when he said to me this morning, "Those aren't spruce trees you got off the nurse log, those are western hemlocks", I tended to believe him.  But, oh, I didn't want to.  I don't like to be wrong is one thing, but it's also that hemlocks are prime deer food, and I will have to find those I've planted and make correct identifications and cage them.  Darn!
         Why did I make the mistake?  I think I was going on color - spruces are a dark, sad green.  And these little trees were.  The prickliness of the needles that I said was so characteristic of spruces is, but the very tiny babies' leaves might not be so sharp.  The larger (potted up last year) trees I had certainly looked like spruces.  Back to the drawing board, specifically back to the nurse logs.  There are two nurse logs involved, about ten feet apart, and maybe just maybe, they have two separate species of tree on each?  Or some spruce and some hemlock on both?
         Oh, I am so embarrassed . . . .

january 27

Rose and I planted four kinnikinnicks (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi - bearberry) in the "patio bed" above the east patio at the high school.  (Count these four shrubs as one tree/shrub.)  These were from cuttings I took last spring.  (Bought plant with BB in Portland.)  Then we took two more spruce from the nurse log and planted them by Three Rivers, straight from the back of the house.  

          I must remember to flag my new plants to avoid G. mowing them.  The spruces don't need protection from deer as nothing eats them.  The needles are very prickly and this may be one reason why.  It is a very helpful characteristic in learning to identify Sitka spruce, although not much help with very tall trees (!).  I learned that in working with schoolchildren.  

          The above link is to the Manzanita Image Project - great photos of plants.  

January 26

Rose and I dug two alders from the tractor road that goes from our vegetable garden to the mink shed "bench". They were about 18 " tall - not a very often used road! I planted them on the bank where I put the spruce yesterday, a small distance upriver.

January 25

Rose and I planted two Sitka spruce trees (Picea sitchensis). These are ones I uprooted from a nurse log here on the property, and potted up last spring/summer. I put them in high on the bank east on Three Rivers where there's a wedge of property the county owns. The major tree there is a huge spruce further down the bank and leaning towards the river slightly. Maybe by the time the old spruce falls (into the river?), the young ones will take over and stop erosion there.

The county owns this property because the owners must have not paid their property taxes. That would have been years and years ago as there is no sign of habitation here now. There is a flat area where maybe a house stood, and a depression - a garbage or latrine (long ago!) pit - the boys mined for old bottles when those were their fascination. When I dug to plant the trees, I unearthed a chunk of thick white pottery - from a coffee mug?

The photo above is by Charles Weber @ California Academy of Science. It's used with permission form the Manzanita Image Project. These large spruce illustrate the somber green and brown coloration of Sitka spruce. I believe the trees in the photo are all growing in a row like this because they began their growth on a nurse log just as the baby trees I uprooted to pots did. Growing in rotting logs, the seedlings have extensive root systems, less extensive ones in less rotted wood. Lots of associated mosses and some "mold", all of which I try to keep in with the small trees when I pull them and plant them. There must be some benefit to the trees in starting growth on a nurse log, as they are growing there but nowhere around the log, i.e., not in the soil near the nurse log where seeds must have fallen!

January 22

One evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) and one alder (Alnus rubra - red alder). Again, the alder is from the high school "weeds". Red alder bark is white, reminiscent of birch or aspen bark, and quite striking. The whole tree would be prized except that it's so common around here! Later, in spring, the hills here take on a soft red glow - the alders are gearing up for growth.

Alder is short-lived, but fast-growing. We use the trees that fall as firewood, and plant new alders to keep us in firewood - and beauty. They are excellent furniture building wood, though I think that's a recent opinion - the wood was spurned for years.

The evergreen huckleberries are ones I grew from cuttings taken from our plants here in the yard. There were no evergreen huckleberries here when we moved in. I bought three plants in the early 1990's, at a produce store in Lincoln City. One turned out to be a red (deciduous) huckleberry, and it putters along while the evergreens thrive. I have the original two plants in full sun; this is one plant that is said to grow taller in the shade! Mine are about 4 feet tall.

I planted the huckleberry on the east side of the trail heading uphill beside the tiny pond beyond the mink bench. The alder went in by the flood meadow where I planted alders earlier in the month.

At this point, I was at 20 trees (and shrubs) planted, out of 22 days.

Taking evergreen huckleberry cuttings: This is very easily done. They "strike" readily. I cut a piece of vigorous end growth 4 - 6 inches long, trim off some of the leaves, score the twig by dragging my plant clippers along it for an inch or so (thereby removing some of the outer layer of tissue and encouraging rooting along the "wound"), and dip in rooting hormone (probably optional). Right now I have 20 new cuttings in the greenhouse Gordon built last spring, and about the same number from last year in pots outside, and the same in gallon size pots and ready to go in the ground. I don't understand why these root readily, and plants from the same family (Ericacea) - like salal, rhododendron,and blueberry - give me no luck.

January19

Rose (my black Labrador and constant companion) and I planted one salal (Gaulteria shallon) in a corner between the tractor road that leads up the hill east of our house and gardens, and a very small creek about ten feet from where the creek exits a small pond east of the mink shed "bench" there. This bench is a small flat area, carved out of the hillside there to hold sheds for mink. Like lots of local people, the folks who owned our property from the early 50's to 1990 when we bought it, tried several ways of making money from their land. They milked several cows, raised mink, and planted some Christmas trees. One of the reasons our land is devoid of some native plants - for instance, there was no salal until we planted some in our yard - is the grazing by the cows who were pastured here. Probably. I don't think they eat it, but they trample small growing things.

At this point in my planting, I was at 18 plants in 19 days of the new year, and not worried about keeping up. This was the honeymoon phase.

The photo is of Oregon big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), a common tree of open bottom land around here. They get huge, and in old age are covered with moss, ferns and lichen of many kinds. I'm just learning how to add images to my blogs.

I don't have an easy to find photo of salal, but it is a beautiful plant, a shrub up to 6+ feet tall, with oval leathery leaves. In sun, they bloom with pink/white bells in early summer. I think it's the plant David Douglas, the English plant explorer of the first part of the 19th century, had in mind when he wrote home that he'd discovered a plant that made the whole trip worthwhile. Douglas fir, Oregon's state tree, and Douglas spirea are named after DD.

January 17

Gordon and I planted nine alders (red alder, Alnus rubra) and one evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinum

ovatum. We put these in close to the ones Ted and I planted yesterday. I think Gordon is excited

about planting, about the idea of my planting 365 trees this year, and about the head start Ted and I

got yesterday. Maybe my doing some planting is a nice affirmation of all the planting he's done here

over the years. And maybe he's feeling good about all we got done at Work Party yesterday -

tearing out plywood walls in our guest room, first carrying all the furniture out of that room, including

the huge bookcase and all its books. And the trees we planted.

These alders are ones I got bareroot from the BLM last spring. I traded my time potting spruce

seedlings, working with Gale, Kevin and Katie, at the BLM nursery in Tillamook, near the youth

detention facility by the blimp hangars, to 'earn' these. The BLM folks are happy to get the help, and happy to

get trees, like these alders, that are a little damaged or pot-bound, into the riparian ground along

local rivers.

The huckleberry is one I grew from a cutting. I planted it near our small (very small) pond, up

the hill.

January 16

Friend Ted S. and I planted seven alders at Work Party. (Work Party is a group of 5 families who meet every month to work at one of the family's homes. We do lots of gardening, window washing, painting, hauling - anything the hosts need done. It's a great way to get boring jobs done - nothing's boring when you're doing it at Work Party with friends. And hard jobs. And it's a great way to get a lot of good eating done. We always do potluck, and we NEVER plan who brings what.) We planted the alders at the east end of our flood-prone meadow, towards our house from Gordon's (my husband) earlier plantings of Oregon big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), Western redcedar (Thuja occidentalis), and others. When we first moved here, there were no trees there by the river. AND there was more land. Big floods in 1996 and 1998, took about 1/4 acre of soil. The river moved onto our land and left a wide gravel bar on its other side. We're planting trees to anchor the soil and reduce the impact of flooding.

Our river is Three Rivers. It's hardly more than a small creek by late summer, but in winter it's a torrent. When it floods the river roils through this meadow with current strong enough and water deep enough to wash a person away. Easily. It deposits tree parts, lumber, light bulbs, No Trespassing signs - and sand. Lots and lots of sand. (The last two years Gordon has taken his tractor down and hauled some of this sand up to our vegetable garden. It grows the best carrots and beets!)

Three Rivers is named for the creeks that unite to form it: Cedar Creek, Alder Creek and one other (I'll check that) - or maybe the third river is Three Rivers itself.

The alders Ted and I planted are ones I dug at Nestucca High School where Gordon teaches. When the district built a new high school building three years ago, large terraces were created behind the building. Without money for landscaping, the terraces behind the Field House (wrestling and other sports) filled with tiny alder seedlings. I dug a few and put them in pots here at home. You never know when you'll need an alder tree.