🌿 Daffodil 'Van Sion' 🌿

"You search for beauty near & far
While winter holds you with its chills,
But soon spring's gates will stand ajar,
And in will march the daffodils!"
Grant E. Mitsch
Unenhanced photo anno nineteen February 2016
Shaw Island pioneer homestead.

A few purchased Narcissus 'Van Sion' bulbs were planted last fall on the south side of the Gatehouse garden area. Watch for them blooming this spring.
      There is one more post about this Narcissus growing on Shaw Island HERE

Blue drops for February

Little blue droplets escorting us to Tulip time.
 Iris reticulata bulbs from the wonderful
Christianson's Nursery, Skagit Flats, WA.
Planted on Shaw Island, autumn 2015.

Hiding on the back side,
Cyclamen coum
this day of fifteen February 2016.
Coum bulbs from Hansen Nursery,
North Bend, OR. 

Happy Saint Valentine's

Vintage postcard
Gatehouse collection.

Helleborus orientalis

Longtime islander, Helleborus orientalis,
New handblown Glassybaby 'Frog Hunting,'
Ella Higginson, the first poet laureate of WA.
A trio blooming where they were planted,
Shaw Island, WA.
anno twenty-nine January 2016.

🌿 IF YOU HAVE A GARDEN 🌿

"If you have a garden and a library,
you have everything you need."
Cicero 106-43 BCE

STARTING OUT FROZEN

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The gardens in the Pacific Northwest are frozen solid. Let's enjoy an essay from Rosemary Verey (1918-2001,) one of the all-time classic garden writers. From A Countrywoman's Year. England. (1989)
January:
      " Foxes get hungry just now and given half a chance will take precious young pullets and tough old hens. Wonderful words of country wisdom come easily from Mrs. Hart as she and I do the washing up together. Her hens, kept in a large wire-enclosed run, lay well, and neither she nor they have a sleepless night when foxes are visiting the neighboring poultry. The small door into the hen-house is never closed but the doorway has a couple of iron chains hanging down over the entrance. When the ground has been snow-covered, a fox's footmarks have reached the chains, then turned away. Could it be an instinctive fear that the chains are a trap? I like to hear from Mrs. Hart about the postman who used to bicycle four miles to our village each morning, made his delivery, then brewed tea and waited in a tiny cottage (just one up and one down) until afternoon to allow the villagers time to answer their mail. He sold them stamps and bicycled back into town punctually for the letters to be sorted and arrive at their destinations the next morning; and this for the price of 1d. But that was before my day. When I came here we had our own post office where Mrs. Messenger sold stamps and sweets in the front room and second-hand clothes in the back. She was well patronised as those were the days of clothes coupons. Later Mrs. Turner had the post office and it was the hub of village life. You could buy all sorts of things, from Reckitt's blue and hairnets to chocolate bars and tinned dog food; with time to spare you could pick up the village gossip too. Incidentally the Reckitt's blue was not, as you would expect, for the wash tubs, but was kept specially for the owner of the Shire stallion to rinse his great horse's white feathers in before going to a show. Now we just have a letter box with no means of acquiring stamps, local news or anything else."

Rosemary Verey, OBE, VMH, the latter being the highest accolade from the Royal Horticulture Society. She lectured, designed and still had time to garden at her beautiful Barnsley House in the Cotswolds.

IT'S A WRAP AT THE ROADSIDE

We wrap up the great year of 2015.
Thank you for the support at the seed shed
and best wishes for happy growing in the year 
ahead. I look forward to stuffing Shaw Island 
seeds into packets for you next spring.

🌿 Green for the Holidays 🌿

SALAL (Gaultheria shallon)
Pressed on the scanner bed,
Shaw Island, this day of ten December twenty fifteen.
For Margaret Cameron (1906-1994)

Resident sculptor, Margaret Cameron, gardened in pots on her terrace; pots whose summer flowers were protected from salt spray by a masonry wall along with chicken wire to discourage the deer. If she was home for the holidays, it was to the forest she went to cut fresh, evergreen sprigs of salal. These she used to dress the artistically crafted wood and stone home she designed with her husband, Malcolm. She knew the lush specimen growing outside her studio door was just perfect for celebrating the season. 
       This ubiquitous shrub (Gaultheria shallon) of the western forest, including Shaw Island,  common name of salal, with a name given by the native Indians, according to Scott Atkinson. It is distinguished by thick, leathery, oval leaves that are noticeably waxy and end in a point. The spring flowers spread a sweet scent throughout the forest understory, looking like little white bells, sticky and slightly hairy. The common shrub bears fruit between August and October, depending on elevation and weather conditions. The berries, resembling huckleberries, form in dense groups to weigh down the branches, blue-black when ripe, ranging from delicious to bland and boring, depending on their soil, and amount of sun exposure. 
      Salal berries were much prized by Indians, who dried them in cakes for winter use. Ethnologist Erna Gunther reported that the Quilcene would pick an entire branch of the berries, dip it in whale oil, then pull it through their teeth to eat the fruit. The Klallam and Quileute chewed the leaves as medicine, and the Makah mixed it with kinnikinnik to smoke.
      Salal seeds aren't featured on the Gatehouse inventory but there will be young plant starts potted up for next spring.
City of Dreams. A Guide to Port Townsend. Simpson, Peter. Bay Press (1986) 
Wild Plants of the San Juan Islands.  Atkinson, Scott. The Mountaineers. (1985)
Wild Roses and Western Red Cedar by Krohn, Elise.(2007)