Sundial Garden

When we purchased this home, some blueprints were left for the original construction of the home in 1965 – so cool! Also, the design plans some years later, for a professional landscaper to create the whole back yard. That is also very cool, even though it must have been 30 years ago. There was a waterfall feature, a Japanese garden bench, fruit trees and a huge variety of shrubs and perennials and ornamental trees. Though a decade of garden neglect preceded our move here, this original thoughtful setup is certainly the reason our property is still so gorgeous.

Half of those things in the landscaper’s plans survive. The waterfall is long gone, but the rock wall is still there, and still pretty. The hanging swing was removed to hold the current greenhouse. There was apparently a series of raised garden beds in a semi-circle around a sundial. The circular paved bricks are still there, covered in moss. Only two of the raised beds remain. There is obviously no sundial. This is the best spot in the entire yard for sun exposure, which in this rainy grey climate is as good as gold. So we chose this spot for our most sun-hungry vegetables. I’ll call it the Sundial Garden.

Our plan is to rebuild all of this using Pedro’s new workshop. But for the time being, we just wanted to begin a garden and start learning our new home.

In the photo above, you can see the original curved brick pattern that surrounded the sundial. I didn’t think to get a photo of what’s to the right, out of sight in this photo. There is not even a pedestal for the sundial there now, just a rotten, sloping Japanese-style bench entwined by a monstrously large wisteria that hosts a family of mice. Our intent is to get rid of all of that.

I haven’t had a chance to grow a serious garden in forever, since my planting while I lived in Rainier was purely within the context of war between me and the deer. Deer eat absolutely everything. Even if they don’t like a plant, they will eat it periodically just to make sure they still don’t like it. Anyway – this year I can really truly plant. But any gardener will know that a person needs to learn the soils, the pests, the exposure. This year we are learning a lot of that, and learning that our biggest challenge is soil!!

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it, with 30-year-old landscaping plans. The soil here is absolutely spent. I’m adding nutrients and our little composter produces a little bit of compost, but it is not enough. We suspect we’re dealing with even more than used up soil, but maybe poisoned soil too.

After a month in the ground, our plants in the second bed were not doing much. We had fertilized and composted and watered, but they were barely clinging to life. Then we realized that things were struggling worse on one side of the bed than the other. The side where nothing grows is the side adjacent to the former hot tub. We suspect hot tub water may have splashed into the garden. OK. Another lesson learned for next year. I took two of the peppers out of there and replanted them into the Greenhouse Garden.

Without a hot tub, there is a big empty space that used to hold another one of those raised garden beds. We had a bunch of building material in the back of the property, so I used it to build a new bed. It doesn’t match, but like I said, we plan to rebuild all of this for next year. My new cinder block garden bed will be easy to take apart this winter.

Another month later, and things look better. The tomatillos and the tomatoes are too scrawny and leggy, but they are producing and it will be fine. The peppers are still growing slowly, but I think they’ll be ok by August. The cucumbers and pumpkin are going gangbusters.

The apple tree got huge. I wasn’t watching, so I don’t know what happened there, but the branches loaded with apples have reached out to the tomatillos and made a garden that’s in constant shade now, between the bed and the fence. The zucchinis have terrible soil and constant shade so I don’t expect much out of them this year.

I have set my expectations reasonably: this year, I just wanted to learn. So if the vegetables don’t turn out to be massively productive, it’s ok. We have harvested a lot of peas and lettuce from the beds behind the shop. We have plucked a total of 3 green beans in a lone plant barely surviving in more of the clay soil. We will be able to pick a couple of cucumbers any minute now. The corn has thrived since day one – corn must like bad soil – and I expect it to produce multiple ears for us. We’ve got volunteer squash of unknown varieties all over the place, and volunteer potatoes that may give us food. The kale seems very healthy and I’ve been making smoothies out of it.

I expect to continue to have fun with this, and next year, NEXT year, I will get serious about making this garden feed us proportionately to the amount of work we are putting in to it.