Plant Exchange

          This Saturday I hope to plant trees at Reed College, but NEXT Saturday, April 17, I'm hosting a Plant Exchange here in Hebo, at the Cedar Creek Child Care Center.  10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m.  Rain or shine.  Please come if you can.

About Paying Attention

          Thomas Friedman writes (pp. 314 - 316) that we humans need to see Nature in order to want to save it.  He quotes Gandhi:  "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves".  He quotes Amory Lovins on what's the most important thing an environmentalist can do today:  "Pay attention".  He describes an indigenous guide who took his family through Peruvian rainforest:  "He was always and only paying attention to what was happening around him."  
         And I think: I may not be planting enough trees and shrubs, or putting them into the Earth in places that will really matter, but I am certainly paying attention.  I'm seeing more when I'm out there than I saw before, I'm seeing our woods on days of the year - whole weeks of a year - I would have missed before because of the rain.  The rain that I now plant right through (though I don't always head out into it!!).  I'm seeing little changes in bud growth, flowers' emergence, leaves unfolding.  
         Today I was down by the river for a long time, and saw the water turn and tumble, reflect light, accept the rain.  I saw an osprey return to its nest (atop an old utility pole, relocated to river's edge just for this mated pair)  with something long and thin in its talons - a snake?  a fish of some sort?  part of something?  

Today on County Property

   

           Today I loaded up the yellow wheelbarrow for a day of planting at home, but then realized it might be my only chance to plant on the County's property here in Hebo, for quite awhile.  I had 2 snowberry bushes, 2 Cascara trees (all 4 of these from plants I've started here), 
one Indian plum, and 3 western redcedars.  
          Rose was game for a ride in the truck, and I really appreciated her company once we were there for it looks as if someone may be living outdoors there, and I didn't want to run into any surprises.  But the only people we saw were a couple who had been fishing and had a beautifully shiny salmon in hand.  
          So Rose hunted for little ground dwelling somethings, and I cut blackberries from around plants, some of which I'd put in with my class back when we did projects like planting the riversides (with a lot of help from the Nestucca Neskowin Watershed Council!).  Lots of the plants from before look great, and I planted snowberries and cascaras cozied up to a very robust and tall ninebark just about to bloom.  I put the Indian plum in on what looked like someone's path down to the river.  
           I put 2 cedars into old planting holes where spruces or cedars (nothing left but a central trunk with branches, definitely conifers) had died.  I was doing this to take advantage of the T-posts that were already there, and one cage, but the area in which these dead trees had been planted is obviously rock fill or an old bed of the river, for it's impossible to dig very deep.  I tried, and then I dug soft soil from another spot and tried to cover the little trees' roots - the parts that I couldn't get the hole deep enough to accept.  Sigh.  This is probably one of those planting ploys that never works out, but I'm hoping.  I was pretty thorough, weighting the soil down with rock, etc.  There was plenty of rock . . . .  This area, about 1/3 to a 1/2 way down the path along the river, has no shade and really needs trees.  I'll try there again.
           The other cedar went in on the outskirts of a grove of willows.  Softer soil.  There's a similar area on the other end of the rocky place, and I'll plant there next time.  

           So, at the end of my three hour planting today - even Rose is tired, and it rained on us! but then the sun came out - I was at 93 plants out of 96 days.   

Easter 2010

            I planted an Indian plum by the tiny pond up the hill.  It's right out front, attention-grabbing site.  Then I took the four new blueberry plants G bought from a fellow in Tillamook and planted them in the old vegetable garden - our new-since-last-year blueberry patch.  Very small root balls on these, so I put lots of compost in the planting holes.  G says they are Blue Jay variety - or something like that.
            I'm at 85 trees out of 94 days.  Day 100 will be April 10th.  It would be good to be caught up by then - or ahead of myself!