Quadra Days

All is well here on Quadra,  pictures hung making the house look less raw, the flower garden created and we are feeling settled. See next blog for the garden story.

Interesting to see Hawaii pictures in their new settings..some work well,  others are only so so.

The birdhouse from Eugene is up and ready for occupancy. It is a chickadee house so we probably won't get any takers until Spring. One of our hummingbird feeders is hanging from the tree to the left. The red attracts them.

Captain, with all of his toys, on his way to mow the  lower forty. See the driftwood duck on the top of the gate.

A wonderful evening at Gowlland Harbour Resort on Quadra with friends and neighbors Wally and Linda Biegler.

Sunset light over Gowlland Haorbour

Girls Only party at our house on a lovely summer evening.

Lunch at our beach with our dear friend Joy.

One of the baby robins (he's after a fly) that we watched grow up.  They are gone now and our nest is empty.

Mama getting ready to feed her babies and keeping a robin-eye on me.

One evening as we enjoyed a sip of wine on Buck's bench this elegant heron landed in the top of a nearby fir tree.

The hummingbirds have discovered our flowers and our feeders. They are such fun to watch.

That's it from Quadra for now...

The Bowl And Garden

Sounds like the name of a pub but actually this is the story of our garden's creation and the setting of the mochi  bowl in its place of honor. A special thank you to Val Barr, a professional gardener and friend, from Quadra, who calmed my fears, guided my decisions, gave me wise advice, and supported me every step of the way. I never would have been able to create this garden without her.
And a toast to Marnie, who made this garden and the deer fence possible. Her memory has been a guiding light in this process, I feel her spirit smiling down on me and my garden and know she is tickled the mochi bowl is here in this place she too loved. Along with her approval I hear her admonishing me to pull the weeds out all the way down to their roots.

This is what the area looked like before.

Strings mark the edges of the beds to be and stakes either mark sprinkler heads or the distance the water sprays from the sprinkler heads.

Yellow paint marks the sprinkler lines and orange paint is for the borders of the beds. Both for the excavator. Buck and I used a couple of wire coat hangars to divine the lines. We found some pretty crazy waterlines that we think were for old pipes. We must have done something right because nothing was severed in the digging up of the turf.

Here comes Rob on his excavator, ready to get to work.

First order of business was to remove a large unruly plant from the front of the house. It is amazing how dainty the jaws of the excavator are.

Carrying the plant to its new home...

...outside the fence. Deer don't like it so it is fine outside.

Taking the first bite out of the sod.

Carving the first bed.

Bed is dug and now the dirt is piled on it to create a berm.

Rock is poured in the spot where the mochi bowl will go.

And now to move the bowl. A strap was tied around it and it was very carefully lifted (We think it weights around 600 - 800 pounds.) and slowly taken to its new home. Rob was nervous and sweating despite it being a cool day. The rest of us held our breaths.

Val  guides the bowl on the final journey few yards of its over 3,000 mile journey. We think the bowl may have begun its life in Japan and was brought to Hawaii by ship. In the 1960's Marnie recalled, from her youth, where there was a rice factory in a small valley on Kauai. One day she hiked into the valley and found the ruins of the factory. She explored the ruins and found two mochi bowls. With the promise of one of the bowls for himself, she convinced a man who worked on the plantation where we lived and had a truck with a winch on it, to drag the bowls out of the valley. He nearly lost his truck down the valley sides in the process. The bowl has lived on Kauai, on Maui, in three places on the Big Island, on Oahu and now it is on Quadra. Hooray!!

Softly, delicately placing the bowl on its base stone. Rob's expertise and skill were amazing. He also has a very gentle touch with his excavator and the disturbance to our driveway and grass were minimal.

The bowl is in place and Buck gives the job his seal of approval. We all sighed with relief.

Now we have piles of dirt. Behind the bowl to the left will be a bed of hosta, to the right of the bowl an herb garden, the left pile is for taller plants such as fuschia, roses and lavatera, bed to the right is for lower plants such as daisies, zinnias, alstromeria lilies and others whose names I don't even know yet. My plan is to have lots of summer bloomers. But I have learned I have to be patient since some things need to be planted in the fall and some in the spring. However, there are some we can buy now and that will be the start of the garden.

After some fun shopping for plants Val and I planted. Piles of dirt became a garden.

Succulents and my fish god rock.

The bowl in its place of honor is the focal point of the garden. Next fall we will plant a miniature Japanese maple with lacy leaves, or perhaps an interesting fir or pine, slightly to the left and in back of the bowl.

The herb bed with a center area so I can sit on my stool and weed. There will be fine gravel and dirt between the bricks and then we will plant Corsican mint which grows very flat and low and will smell divine when stepped upon.

A pink lavatera, the first of the tall plants. The other plants have just been transplanted and are there just so the bed doesn't look too bare. I don't know their name, in fact I don't know the names of many plants in my garden. I have the plastic tags that were in their pots and am matching names to photos. It is quite a learning experience for me, so much is new, it is all very exciting and loads of fun. The garden will change daily, I imagine, and with luck the change include everything growing and thriving. Standby for future posts.