Fourth of July Falderal

Most anyone on Orcas Island during the first weekend of July will agree that one of the best events is the annual Historical Day Parade. With the fourth falling on Saturday this year, the parade seemed even more festive and patriotic. Record crowds had arrived on the island for the holiday weekend, lining the streets during the parade and filling the Farmers Market in the village green before and after.

Enjoy the parade.

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The only musical group in this parade, their local Odd Fellows Club, had a theme of hats made from colanders this year and provided the grand finale with their many drums as they marched along.

Everyone loves a parade!

Watering Made Easier

If you already know that I have two gardens in two different community gardens spots and each in a different neighborhood, it probably doesn't surprise you that I've been looking for easier, more efficient ways to water.
Several different, yet similar methods for making self-watering drip systems using recycled plastic bottles were found by searching the Internet, so I tested three different ways. First, I punched several tiny holes in the bottom of a bottle, filled it with water and set it in the garden. Second, I punched a hole in the cap of a bottle, filled the bottle with water and placed it cap side down in the garden. And third, I punched one hole on each side near the top of a bottle, filled it with water and placed it top down in the garden. Unfortunately, the water in all the bottles drained out within ten minutes of my placing them on the soil. Recycled plastic bottles would NOT make watering my garden any easier.

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Then I remembered how one of the other gardeners at the Happy Valley Community Gardens had told me how she used old wine bottles to help water her garden. Not only did the bottles look pretty scattered throughout her garden, she said they actually worked.

There were no wine bottles in my recycle bin, so thank goodness I have friends with empty wine bottles. One gave me a bottle to try. I filled it with water and turned it upside down in my garden one evening. Then I went back 24 hours later and discovered that only half of the water had drained out. Sure enough, this method would work! So, it was back to my friends for more old wine bottles - thanks Ken and Gwen and David. Now I have two dozen recycled wine bottles in my garden slowly releasing moisture near the roots of some of the most tender plants.

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Watering the Happy Valley garden made easier with recycled bottles.

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Meanwhile, back at the Cordata Community Gardens, they seem to have developed a system to help people keep their gardens watered even when on vacation. They placed a supply of bright pink flags in the garden shed and instructions on the bulletin board. Seems if you are planning to be gone or will be unable to make it to the gardens to water your spot daily, you can sign up to let someone else know that you will be away and place one of those pink flags in your garden spot and volunteers will help you out with your watering. A most clever idea, thank you very much. You, too, have made watering easier.

And how are the Cordata gardens growing? Pretty good actually. The plants in most of the middle square-foot sections seem to be suffering a bit from some kind of dwarfism (perhaps in part due to the beds being somewhat shallow and so full of cardboard underneath the topsoil). The plants in the square-foot section nearest to the boards seem to be more normal in size (yet somehow I find that just a tiny bit scary due to the fact that the entire garden was built using treated lumber). All in all, it's been a good experience, and we are beginning to harvest sugar snap peas and have been eating plenty of tender salad greens from our garden for several weeks now.

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Green grape tomatoes on the vine in my Cordata garden.

More pics from the Cordata gardens.

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Recycled Fishing Tote Turned Iris Bed

Smiling, a friend recently asked me if I was their new recycling company. No, definitately not a recycling company, just someone interested in practical ways to re-use some of our no-longer needed, soon to be discarded excess stuff so that it doesn't end up filling a landfill somewhere. That's how I ended up with a new iris garden!

At Bellingham's waterfront recently to get more discarded fishing net in order to finish off the deer-proof fencing around my Happy Valley Community Garden, a couple of old totes were mixed in with the discarded heaps of old netting and rope. One of those totes had a huge crack in it and was pretty much trash, but this one still looked to have plenty of life left, so into the truck with the netting it went.

Turns out, it really is just a little too big for me to carry around and use as a garden tote, especially if filled. I'm just not that big - or strong. Since it came already drilled with holes around the sides and on the bottom, I decided that it would make a great container garden instead. And I had a pot full of hardy iris starts ready to plant.Filled with soil and irises, it once again has purpose and looks quite at home placed next to that recycled olive barrel turned water storage barrel. Now I look forward to early next summer when this discarded fishing tote is filled with beautiful bearded iris blooms. Even from outside the garden looking in, I like its new look.

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Ten-Year Plan in Two Weeks

During that first workday pulling weeds at my new Happy Valley Community Garden spot, a neighboring gardener confided to me how depressed she was after reading somewhere that it takes ten years to get a garden looking good. Ten years! Wow, that sounded like a long time to me, yet I knew I could never consider such a statistic depressing. As I looked out at all the weeds I had left to pull, my immediate thought was that if after my first year of working in this garden it still didn't look good, I would at least feel some relief in knowing that I still had nine years left.Now, fast forward a couple of weeks, and my garden is done. It's finished, and it looks great! All that's left is to keep those weeds at bay (that does promise to be a big job!), and to watch those flowers and veggies grow while I enjoy the garden space.

More fence posts have been added and more recycled fish net fencing put in place. Those deer seen grazing on the grasses just outside my garden spot will not get in to munch on my tender little plants. Wood chips were added with a ground barrier below to help keep the weeds out of the walkway. Structures are in place to help support the beans once their sprouts poke through the soil. The compost bin is starting to fill with my compostable household waste and generous amounts of yard waste donations from friends.

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More pics from the final garden makeover.

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So lovely now, it's kind of hard to believe how it looked just a couple of weeks ago. Remember that picture of how it looked "before"?

Take a look at it again - "after"!

It really might have taken me ten years to get it looking good - had I worked on it by myself. But I had help (thanks John!), and now it is finished. A so called ten-year plan completed in two weeks! I like how it turned out. It has a style and flair of its own, and I think it's lovely. Thank you so very, very much for all that help!

Beach Monitoring at Semiahmoo

Some might wonder why we get up at 5:00 a.m. on a potentially rainy Saturday morning in order to meet up and drive forty-five minutes to a deserted beach at Semiahmoo to collect data at the precise time when the tide reaches the 1', 0' and minus 1' levels. Why? Because we care about the health of our local beaches.

By following the established WSU Beacher Watcher and beach monitoring guidelines and procedures, we take measurements and record data once a year at exact locations on specific beaches in order to document any changes in the beach slope, substrate and biodiversity. Jane looks on as Gene and John take the profile poles and begin to survey the elevation as Margo gets ready to record their measurements and check off on a field data sheet the substrates, seaweeds and seashore creatures found within each of their survey sections.Meanwhile, Corinne, Richard and I ready ourselves with our beach monitoring tools - quadrats and a bucket filled with flags, tape measure and species identification cards - so we can assess the species abundance along the predefined beach profile lines. Carefully we take measurements along this established profile line to determine the exact positioning for each of our quadrat frames.During each quadrat analysis, we identify and determine the percent of coverage of seaweeds and sea grasses and identify and count the number of invertebrates we find in each quadrat. Recording our findings on a field data sheet for later entry into the Beach Watcher monitoring database, we move on and do the same at the next set quadrat.
Along each transect where we placed the quadrats for our survey, we also monitor for burrowing bivalves and related infauna by digging a section the size of one of our transects one shovel depth deep. Working together, our team carefully examines the removed beach material and identified the burrowing critters we found before returning that removed beach material to the hole we made.
With GPS in hand, Richard and I work together to collect the coordinates for each of our quadrat placements for later mapping by Gene. With the species identification cards in hand, we identify this piece of brown seaweed found in a nearby tide pool.

Follow us during our beach monitoring at Semiahmoo.

Another successful beach monitoring at Semiahmoo thanks to Beach Watchers Gene, Jane, John, Margo, Corinne, Richard and Rose. What a team!