Will Work For Wine!

Thanks Oregon Winery Daily for featuring my blog on Sunday, June 26th. Russell Gladhart at Winter's Hill Winery had posted on their Facebook page how we are using the Pinot Noir barrels as raised beds for Peregion beans.  It's very weird to see my blog featured somewhere else online, but nicely gratifying.

I worked at Winter's Hill over the weekend, pouring wine for visitors from all over the country. 

Winter's Hill Winery with Emily's Native Plants

The wine is wonderful, but that's not the only reason to visit Winter's Hill.  There's a great view of the Willamette Valley and the Coastal Range.  There are bluebirds with new babies in the nesting box as you come in.  How cool is that? A pair of coyotes often wander in sight of the tasting room as they hunt for voles and mice.  Eagles and hawks light in the trees just beyond the field, and there is a birding trail in back of the tasting room.  Rumor has it that there are acorn woodpeckers back there.  The Gladharts have also been restoring an oak savannah in cooperation with Yamhill County Soil and Water Conservation District. 

So, yes they make great wine, but more importantly, they are thoughtful and deliberate stewards of the land and have not prostituted their values for the almighty dollar.

Wine Barrel and Nest Update.....

The madrone "nest" is going to be a box of kindling.

The twigs and branches have no flexibility.  So after a lot of effort,  I have decided that no self-respecting bird would use madrone as nest making material.  However, that doesn't mean that I have given up on the idea of building a great big messy nest.  I will just head down to the creek and get some willow that has a lot more give to it.

Wine barrels with beans

Maybe the nest didn't turn out, but the vegetable beds are doing well.  We have planted regular green beans, black beans, Romanos, red kidney beans and Peregions.  Peregions are an heirloom bean from here in Oregon. This is our second year of  planting them. The Holstein cow of the bean world, I love their black and white markings.

Heirloom Peregion Beans

It is our fourth year to plant red kidney beans.  Every year they do better.  We plant the seeds from the previous year's crop.  They have acclimated well to our cold short growing seasons.  The kidney beans started as a bush bean, but are reverting back to pole beans.  It will be interesting to see if the Peregions and the black beans do the same.

Red beets with a couple of sunflowers.

We planted a lot of beets, both here and in the regular garden.  We tried the golden beets a few years ago.  Really, really like them, but they don't germinate as well as the red beets, and of course, they don't make your pee turn red.  Our garden looks great........................if today were May 15. 
May all your beets, red or gold, germinate!

Rebirth of Madrone

Our madrone trees had a bad case of blight this year.  Most of them came through, but one bit the dust. Very sad, because Madrones are not easy to grow and they are a beautiful tree. The birds love them.

 The leaves look like they are burned.  Pretty ugly..

  Mr. Shoulder to the Grindstone took the chainsaw to the dead one a few days ago.

Madrone Leaf Blight

I really like the burnt red color of the bark, and couldn't stand the thought of this ending up in the burn pile. Must recycle.  Must recycle.  So I meticulously stripped the dead leaves off the branches, carted the leaves to the burn pile so they cannot pass their blight to others.  And.......this is where you will all say, "this woman needs a life".....have decided to make a nest out of the branches.  A great big artistic mess of a nest.

"Madrone: Reborn", Pile-o-Sticks, or Nest?

At this point, if anyone should ask, I am calling it a sculpture.  "Madrone: Reborn"  Jackson believes that this is a great gift to him, a big pile of sticks.....a little bit of dog heaven. Mr. Shoulder-to-the-Grindstone just shakes his head.  In the end it might all be an artistic pile of kindling.  Only time will tell.


It's not like I have nothing to do.  Like everyone else I have a list of things that are all about working:  finish mowing the yard, clean up my office, dust, vacuum, weed, weed, weed, clean out the garage, take the recycling to town, poison English Hawthorne, etc., etc.  The list never ends and the list will never be finished.  So, if I do everything else before I make a nest, the nest will never be made, and I will never have achieved any sense of artistic fulfillment. I need a nest!  My inspiration is Yamhill County artist, Susan Day.  She made a couple of fabulous nests that were in Currents Gallery in McMinnville.  I can't get them out of my head, so here I am with a pile of Madrone sticks, some inspiration, and not a clue how to get started.  Any ideas?

A piece of trivia:  In Washington and north, Madrone is pronounced with an uh on the end.  Madronuh.  In Oregon and south, Madrone is pronounce without the uh.

Why do dogs roll in poop?

So Libby Dog came down the hill today with a big smile on her face.  She was so happy because she had found a big pile of poop to roll in.  Little white dog was half black.  Usually I am sympathetic to her bathing needs and warm up her bath water for her.  Not today.  Today she got the old cold hose and a ton of soap.

Dogs!  Why do they have to be so doggy?  They roll in poop.  They eat poop.  They sniff each others butts, and they love dead things.  And after all that, they want to lick your face.  Acchhhh!

Walsterway Iris

Just want to share some of the iris that are in bloom.  They all came from Uncle Ralph and Fran at Walsterway Farms in Maltby, Washington.   Such a treat to walk around with my morning coffee to see the colors.  (For greater detail and color, click on the picture.)

Today....I smell like dirt

My raised beds are slowly taking shape.  The wine barrels made it home.

After taking them off the truck, I had to drill five holes in each of the bottoms and put extra nails in to hold the metal bands on.  Mr. Shoulder-to- the-Grindstone has been Mr. Busy-in-Front-of -The Computer on this project.  However, he was gracious enough to loan me a power tool, as he headed out the door to go have a beer in McMinnville.  You know a man loves you when he will loan you his power drill.  Hmmmm, is that true even when the tool in question is  held together with electrical and masking tape and you wonder if it is safe to plug the thing in?

That truly is masking tape above the blue button.

 After the holes and the nails, the barrels had to go back on to the truck to be moved over by the barn.  Then today I took the farm truck and went into town to get 3 and a half cubic yards of sandy loam top soil and compost mix.  Shoveling damp dirt from the back of a pick-up into wine barrels sounds like easy work.  Yeah right, maybe the first 6, but the last 11 were killers.  And then to top it off, I backed into one of the already filled barrels and now it is really off kilter.  (Mr. Busy-in-Front-of....I mean Mr.-Shoulder-to- the-Grindstone said he would help me fix it tomorrow with the tractor.)  It is very difficult to know where you are going when you are backing up and the only thing you can see is a big pile of dirt in your rear view mirror.

So tomorrow the fun begins!  I am going to town to get plants and seeds (and a pedicure). 

Still bitchin' bout the rain.

"In spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."  If only that were possible. It is unreal to think that summer is around the corner and we have had no spring, no sun, only cold and rain. Little, if any, opportunity to work outside and smell like dirt.  Since I got the wine barrels to make the raised beds for the garden, it has rained so much that I haven't been able to even take the barrels out of the back of the truck. 

This is today, right now.  June 1. 

I am surprised at how much a vegetable garden means to me, how determined I am to plant one in spite of the weather doing everything possible to deter me.  I am beginning to take the rain personally. As if to mock me, rain has just begun to pour down....again. 

This is our garden area.  We need weeks of no rain before we can even begin to think about getting the tractor in here to till this wet clay soil.

Well, will you look at that?  Until I just posted this I didn't realize that turkhead (also known as Lazuli Bunting) was sitting on the fence when I took this picture.  I was concentrating on the mud and water.  Hmmmm, is there some kind of life lesson here?  Regardless, I would like some sunshine and warmth, a little spring before summer arrives full force.