Archive for the 'Gardens' Category
I thought about going for a bike ride today, but with rain in the forecast I decided to walk instead. As I started from home it wasn’t raining and was a bit warmer than yesterday. I headed east on North Street and picked up the Railroad Trail to Whatcom Falls Park. There were a lot of people out on the trail — walkers with dogs or kids in strollers, joggers, and a few cyclists. I took off my rain jacket before I’d gone too far and rolled it up in the hood for easy carrying. I was traveling light, with just a Clif bar in my pocket for a snack. I counted on water fountains working in the parks.
Whatcom Falls was running full, but not at flood stage. I headed toward Woburn Street on the Water Line Trail, which has been designated as an off-leash dog area. There were a few dogs and their owners out enjoying themselves, all well behaved. When I got to the back side of Bayview Cemetery I headed south toward the corner of Yew St. and Lakeway. From there it was a long climb up to the top of Yew Street hill. There were three cyclists ahead of me riding up the steep hill, but even riding slowly they were much faster than my walking pace.
Somewhere along the road I saw my first flowers in bloom. Nothing interesting, just the weedy Senecio vulgaris. It’s not too unusual to see it blooming during the winter. About the time I got to the top of the hill it started to rain and I put my raincoat back on. It also seemed to be quite a bit colder and a little windy. I passed the new elementary school under construction near the fire hall. I hadn’t realized the school was going to be right next to the road. There’s no shoulder at that point and some of the cars seemed to be going a bit faster than I thought they should. I had to watch out for them.
When I got down to Lake Padden I entered the park and followed the trail around the near side of the lake to Padden Creek gorge. I headed down the gorge trail, enjoying the sound of the creek cascading over rocks beside me and noting the trees that had come crashing down in one of our winter windstorms. I took the loop trail, which follows closer to the creek, for the first time. It’s not much farther, but more interesting than the main trail. The gorge trail ends at 36th Street, which I followed until I came to the street that descends the hill and passes under I-5 to become Old Fairhaven Parkway.
There’s a fairly new trail and bridge that crosses Connelly Creek and then passes by the newish Bellingham co-housing development on Donovan Ave. I hadn’t been down that way for a while and had never seen what the co-housing group had built. It’s attractive, with the houses clustered together and all the auto-oriented stuff around the edge of the site. I followed Donovan to 16th and headed up the hill. There’s a trail where the hill is too steep for a street, and then the street continues.
There are a lot of nice front yard gardens on 16th Street, as well as on Garden Street which I followed next as I worked my way back north. There was a hazelnut (Corylus sp.) just starting to bloom along the sidewalk, probably not our native species since it was in someone’s garden. I stopped briefly to examine the catkins. When I came to WWU there was a sign pointing to the trail down to the Boulevard, so I took it and then followed the South Bay Trail into downtown and then home on city streets.
Overall, the route was a bit over 15 miles and I walked it in 4 hours 20 minutes, averaging about 3.5 mph. An online calorie calculator said I burned about 1100 calories along the way. I mapped the route using my TOPO software, which reported about 1145 feet of elevation gain and loss, with the high point at the top of Yew Street hill. There was enough water available at Whatcom Falls and Lake Padden to satisfy me, and my Clif bar was enough of a snack to hold me until I got home for a modest lunch.
February 10 2008 | Gardens and Fitness | No Comments »
We’re in a period of what passes for miserably uncomfortable weather on the northwest coast. It’s about 38 degrees, windy, and periods of rain. It feels a lot colder than it really is, colder even than standing around in the snow in the mid-twenties. Days like this seem made for staying inside, which wrecks havoc with any outdoor exercise plan. I did get out three times today, once in the morning for a brisk walk around Cornwall Park while my scanner was busy digitizing slides, then to the post office and an evening meeting downtown.
The weather certainly hasn’t been conducive to photography this week. Not bad enough to look dramatic and not good enough to make beautiful images. Fortunately, the winter blooming shrubs last a rather long time in the cool and damp conditions so there isn’t much that’s pressing in the garden anyway.
While it’s been raining I’ve been busy selecting images for several magazine customers to choose from for future issues. I think my transition to all-digital submissions is nearly complete. Since if one editor is looking for a subject another is sure to seek the same thing in the future, I’m scanning everything that isn’t already digital that needs to go out. That seems easier for an editor than having to look through both slides and web previews for one story or one issue.
February 06 2008 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
This time of year, especially following several days of heavy snowfall, the color palette is essentially monochromatic. Bare branches exhibit varying shades of gray and muted brown. Snow is bluish-white under cloudy skies and in the shade, or hues of gold under low-angle sunshine. Even the foliage that peeks through the snow is muted in tone — deep green cold-curled Rhododendron leaves, soft brown dry grasses that haven’t yet been buried, and almost-black conifer needles.
I photographed in Coeur d’Alene today, again under gray skies and intermittent heavy snowfall. I revisited a handful of gardens that were riots of color last summer or autumn. Today, I concentrated on shapes and patterns in the structures and bare trees or shrubs. The photo is of a small Japanese Maple.
Tonight, the wind picked up so the trees may be mostly bare on Wednesday morning. A little sun is predicted, with more snow on the way for the Spokane area. I’m heading home if I can get across the pass, which was closed all day today due to high avalanche danger. It’s been a productive three days of snowy photography.
January 29 2008 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
The storm cell that brought deep snow to the area sat over Spokane for nearly 30 hours and dumped a couple of feet of snow. That’s more than people here can remember in many, many years. Schools, many government offices, and some businesses were closed today.
Fresh snow doesn’t look good for very long, so I headed out in the brilliant morning sunshine to visit three more gardens today. The greenhouse in the photo was just added to Sherrie & Ron Guiles’ garden last summer. The tree in the foreground is a cutleaf Japanese Maple, which maintains its characteristic shape even under the thick snow cover.
Walking around in the garden where Ron & Sherrie hadn’t used their snowblower to create paths was challenging because the snow came up to my knees. As before, I had to plan my route to keep my footprints out of future photos.
In one area of the garden the outline of a boxwood parterre was barely visible as a soft raised swirl of snow. Everywhere I looked, the contours and textures that had been so prominent and colorful during the growing season and into autumn were soft, flattened, and muted into shades of blue shadows and golden highlights.
The second garden I visited today is a wildlife garden, and in the winter it is a haven for nuthatches, chickadees, pine siskins, house finches, flickers, mourning doves, and dozens of California quail. Bird feeders hang from many trees, and a large covered ground feeder gives a sheltered place to feed near thick shrubs which offer protection.
I shared lunch with Eva & Del Lusk, enjoying the view out the large windows overlooking the garden and watching the birds. Unfortunately, the birds aren’t nearly as comfortable with a photographer wandering around with a long lens and a tripod. I set up several shots and stood very still and waited for the birds to return, but mostly came up empty-handed. My feet eventually got cold and I gave up.
January 28 2008 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
I’ve been waiting all winter for the conditions to be right to visit several eastern Washington gardens when there’s lots of fresh snow. Today (January 27) I hit the jackpot as Spokane received near-record snowfall of up to 12 inches while I was out photographing. It would have been better if the temperature had been a few degrees colder and snow a little drier, but it was still a fantastic day.
The garden shed shown here is in Cathi and Dave Lamoreux’s back yard on the far south edge of Spokane. The snow in their yard was over a foot deep and getting deeper seemingly by the minute.
Photographing in the snow presents some challenges that don’t exist in warmer conditions. First, I had to keep my camera covered to keep it dry. I used a cheap plastic rain cover that cinches down around the lens and allows me to see the LCD on the back through the plastic. There’s a little hole for the viewfinder, and I operate the controls through the plastic. It’s a bit awkward, but workable.
The biggest challenge is one of planning. With no snow on the ground it doesn’t matter much where the photographer walks, as no evidence remains. But when there is snow, every footstep has to be planned so they don’t show up in some future shot. I find myself spending extra time thinking ahead to what other angles I’m going to want to capture before I start walking around.
When the weather is as warm as it was in Spokane today — right around freezing, staying warm while working really wasn’t much of an issue. Long underwear, rain pants, and a waterproof parka did the trick to stay warm and dry. Basically it’s just like dressing for any other winter outdoor activity in snow country.
I plan to spend another couple of days photographing Spokane gardens before heading back across the mountains. It’s predicted to get colder and maybe a little more snow, so conditions should remain favorable. But the only way to know for sure is to look out the window in the morning.
January 28 2008 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
Some of us on the mild side of the Northwest joke that spring begins on New Year’s Day. That’s really only a slight stretch, as we have several winter-blooming plants. Our Viburnum bodnantense is in full fragrant bloom and I’ve seen a few blossoms on winter jasmine, Jasminum nudiflorum, in other gardens.
Today was mild, so after sitting at my computer and captioning photos much of the day I took time to do a bit of much-needed garden cleanup. I’d left last season’s lavender seedheads for a bit of winter interest, but they were getting ratty looking. With a fresh haircut they’re now ready for growth in two or three months. I also pulled off the remains of the hardy geranium foliage, clipped off the asters, pulled out the annual alyssum, and generally did a quick tidying of the two beds in front of the house. They look much better now.
There’s more work to be done, particularly getting a head start on the winter annual weeds like creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens. That’s a real nasty plant that grows and spreads all winter long. I’ll get to it on another day soon.
January 02 2008 | Gardens and Weeds | No Comments »
This afternoon I picked a basket full of fresh greens from the garden for dinner tonight and for Thanksgiving tomorrow. The lettuce had a little frost damage as we’ve had a couple of days with temperatures below freezing this week, but it should still be good in a salad.
For dinner tonight I’ll cook up a mess of kale and chard picked this afternoon. I may put a few radishes in the wok along with them for a little heat and a contrasting flavor. Carrots, broccoli, and lettuce will save for another day.
November 21 2007 | Gardens | No Comments »
It’s mid-November and we’re eating all the fresh lettuce from the garden that we can handle. So far, we haven’t had a hard frost (just a couple of very light frosts) and the rains have been moderate. We also have fresh sugar snap peas, and combined with the garden lettuce mix it makes a great salad. The last of the tomatoes, picked some weeks ago, are ripening up on the kitchen counter, so we may have them as part of Thanksgiving dinner later in the week.
We’re not eating the kale as fast as we should, and the slugs seem to have found the chard. Some of the carrots are getting big enough to pull, but the beets are still pretty small. The broccoli planted at the same time is still pretty small, but starting to form heads. Last spring’s broccoli is still producing side shoots that we can cut every two or three weeks.
Our fall veggie garden was planted in mid-August. That seems to be about right for the lettuce, chard, and kale but the other crops should have gone in earlier. Maybe next year.
November 18 2007 | Gardens | No Comments »
This is the dark and rainy season in the Northwest, so it’s a good time to get caught up on captioning. That’s a good thing since I have a backlog of around 5,000 images to edit and caption from mid-September to now. I didn’t have time after my Kelowna trip in September before going to Oklahoma and then immediately to Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.
Captioning is a somewhat tedious process that requires identifying as many of the plants in each photo as possible, checking proper names and spelling, and entering the data both in my master database and in the metadata fields associated with the digital image files themselves. My record for number of photos captioned in a day is around 600, but most days I don’t hit that figure.
One of the challenges is simply forcing myself to stay in my seat in front of the computer. Sitting for long periods is tiring and definitely isn’t good for my body. But there’s no way to get captions written without sitting and concentrating on the task.
November 16 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
Rainy days in the garden can yield intensely rich and saturated colors. Last Friday I went up to VanDusen Garden in Vancouver, BC, which is one of my favorite public gardens. After a lengthy strike which closed the garden (as well as libraries and halting garbage service) for 12 weeks, the garden was once again open. The weather forecast for the day was mixed and I hesitated about going out. But I checked the weather radar and it looked like the biggest part of the rainstorm had already moved through.
Soon after I arrived in the garden it started to rain, so I pulled out a plastic rain cover for my camera and continued working. Some of the fall foliage was past its prime, but there was enough lingering to make it worth my time to explore and photograph.
The photo above was made during a break in the rain, but under heavily overcast skies. It’s one of my favorite Japanese maples in a grove along the shore of one of the ponds in the park. I’ve photographed it many times, in most seasons, and under many weather conditions.
Working in the rain is certainly more challenging than photographing in “better” weather. Keeping the camera dry is the big issue. An umbrella works, but can be hard to hold while setting up the shot. I’ve used a cheap plastic grocery bag, but inevitably the camera still gets wet. Currently I use inexpensive rain covers from Optechs. My camera still gets a little damp, and changing lenses is slightly inconvenient, but overall this clear plastic cover works pretty well. I hang it up on a doorknob to dry when I get home.
Besides keeping the camera dry, another issue in the rain is low light levels and moving subjects. Raindrops make plants shake, and rain is often accompanied by wind. Like any windy situation, there’s often a brief pause between puffs of wind so I set up and wait. I think the results are worthwhile.
October 22 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
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