Archive for the 'Gardens' Category
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 »
I’m not sure why I never thought about it before, but I realized the other day that autumn is our shortest season. Not according to the calendar, but in the way we perceive it. When we think of fall, the thing that comes to mind is brilliantly colored foliage, like the burning bush in the photograph above. However, the time span when any individual tree or shrub is in its colorful glory is disgustingly short — often measured in mere days and almost never more than a couple of weeks.
For the serious leaf-peepers who make the pilgrimage to catch the best color in New England, the Appalachian hardwood forests, or the aspens in the Sierras there are websites that track the color change. The timing of the season depends on several factors, including recent rains and whether there’s been a frost. It’s hard to predict far in advance.
I am in Spokane and vicinity for a few days to catch what I hope will be the peak of color in gardens on the east side of the Cascades. This afternoon I stopped at Finch Arboretum on my way into town and photographed a handful of specimen trees in the low sunlight. Golden rain tree, catalpa, honey locust, crab apples, and some of the maples were all putting on a fine show.
Tomorrow is predicted to be cloudy and possibly rainy, which will give a very different feel to the gardens I plan to visit and photograph. I actually hope there is a little light rain, but no wind, to accentuate the colors.
October 09 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
What a difference a couple of days and half a continent distance makes! I left Oklahoma City Friday afternoon, where it was a humid 88°F, and returned to Bellingham where it had been 37°F that morning. My body still hasn’t completely adjusted, but I’m back to wearing a wool sweater.
Yesterday I tackled a long-delayed gardening task — digging up a crowded clump of Crocosmia and the mass of large yellow daffodils that were mixed in. I ended up with a large pile of Crocosmia corms and a big bucket of daffodil bulbs. Today I dug out a clump of Miscanthus that was too close to a big variegated Ceanothus. I divided the grass and Natalie replanted the bed. We put half of the Miscanthus back in, but with better spacing. Then she planted lots of daffodils where they’ll once again make a brilliant show in the spring. We decided there wasn’t really room for the Crocosmia so we put it in the back of the car to take to her mother’s garden.
After lunch we headed up the street to do more planting. By then it had started raining lightly, so we donned raingear. In addition to the plants we divided from our garden, I also had several pots of plants I hauled home from Garden Writers. These are mostly new introductions that we’ll test to see how they do in our climate and whether the deer like them.
I planted a ‘Pinky Winky’ Hydrangea in the back bed, a couple of clumps of Miscanthus toward the back of the garden, a ‘Rozeanne’ Geranium near the front of the wide border, and a couple of new cultivars of Baptisia on top of the berm. I put a clump of little bluestem grass nearby. Natalie planted two big clumps of Crocosmia near the back near a big rhododendron and I put in a couple of clumps of Amorphophallus that I’d dug from our garden a couple of weeks ago.
By this time the rain had really started coming down, no longer a mere drizzle but a real soaking rain. We were getting rather damp so we decided the daffodil bulbs could wait for another day. Gardening in the rain is OK, but keeping at it until completely soaked just seemed foolish.
October 07 2007 | Gardens | No Comments »
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