Slippery Slope Farm Blog

By Tim Morrison

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Number 14 - Found Poem with Notes

Slippery Slope, Early Summer 2021

The blog has been hibernating these last few months; but the garden, definitely not. The before and after photographs above show how the garden made use of the 1,361 hours of daylight it received between the equinox and the solstice (and the 895 hours between sunsets and sunrises –plants work at night also).

The other day, I followed the farmer around the main flower area to learn the inventory. In the list of names, I found a poem. Reading a poem aloud is like a party for the mouth and throat – I recommend you try it with this one. Humans, according to a lullaby I like, “all want to kiss our names from someone else’s mouth”. Flowers are indifferent about this, but judging from the proliferation and sometimes beauty of the names we give them, we want to kiss the names of flowers from our mouths also.

Larkspur, [1]

Cleome, Stock, Queen Anne’s Lace, [2,3]

Love in a Mist, Clarkia. [4]

Straw Flower and Salpiglossis, [5]

Bell’s of Ireland, Lady of Shalott,

Nigella Transformer, Celosia, Saponaria, [6, 7]

Black-eyed Susan.

Common Corn Cockle.

Pinks, Astor, Sweet Pea,

Phlox,

Statice, Dara, Poppies, Dahlia. [8]

Frosted Explosion, Jewels of Opar,

Dianthus, Amaranth, [9]

Bee Balm, Bee’s Friend. [10]

Notes

1. Larkspur – the farmer is proud of this one. It’s a perennial she grew from seed

2. Cleome – like most flowers, Cleome goes by a multitude of names. Here are four of them, arranged in a traditional 5-7-5 haiku:

spider flower, pink queen

Cleome hassleriana

grandfather's whiskers

3. Queen Anne’s Lace – the only name on the list that overlaps with the plant identification list I made when I was the nature area counselor at Camp Brinkley. I learned at camp that the Queen Anne Lace's flower is actually hundreds of individual flowers, an inflorescence. A compound umbel inflorescence, to be more precise.

4. Clarkia - like most of the flower names in the garden/poem, Clarkia is actually an entire genus of flowers. This one is named after the famous explorer/cartographer/slave-owner.

5. Straw Flower and Salpiglossis - on opposite ends of the humble-to-exotic name spectrum (latter comes from Greek words for "trumpet" and "tongue"), the farmer picked both out during the tour to say she was especially excited about them.

6. Celosia – a.k.a. Cock’s Comb. Many of the garden denizens require lots of nurture; some, like Celosia, just show up - "volunteers" in the gardener's parlance.

7. Saponaria – a flower with many unbecoming names, including common soapwort, crow soap, and soapweed. On the poetic side, it also goes by Wild Sweet William.

8. Dahlia - just non-descript bushes at the moment, but soon they will be the garden's scene stealers. 26 varieties this year. They will have a poem to themselves.

9. Amaranth - some of this has grown beyond bouquet dimensions. This biggest one is over six feet and have leaves wider than six inches. When its grains are ripe I will cook them with my oatmeal. One can also pop them like corn.

10. Bee’s Friend – any friend of the bees is a friend of mine.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Number 13 - Spring, Phase Two

Late May 2021

The crocuses have faded back into the field.  Plants that made the first wave of flowering things – Indian plum, daffodil, salmon berry – have moved on to leaf growth and bulb building and seed production. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, it is trade, suddenly encroaching upon a sacrament.  The frogs occasionally pause their night time revelry to tend to their tadpoles. (I thought I was making this up and that tadpoles fend for themselves, but it turns out some frogs care for their young. Even more notable: when there is parental tending, more often than not it is from the paternal side.  I don’t know if Vashon frogs are those kinds of frogs.  At any rate, for some reason they are not singing as intensely around here as they were in March). 

The handful of signs of early spring I noticed are now replaced by mid-spring wonders too numerous to count.  We all have our favorites.  Some of mine: the blossom fall from the early cherries dappling a pathway; the drone of the bees swarming the 10-foot wide ceanothus outside our window (maybe the happiest plant on our property); the unfurling of fresh sword fern fronds; rhubarb; songs and calls of the returning birds; scent of lilac.  It would be a cruel thing to be forced to pick a top five.

On the farm it is the time of the great migration.  Dozens, maybe hundreds, of plants making their way to the garden beds from their birth or overwintering places.  From the milk jug greenhouses come larkspur, cosmos, and delphinium.  From a friend of the farmer’s comes a pineapple mint.  The dahlias are snowbirds: the bulbs overwintering in the crawl space and returning to the garden when the soil has warmed sufficiently.  Some plants – love-in-a-mist, snapdragon – are growing from seeds left by last year’s annuals.  This is a migration of sorts, I suppose, through the winter and across generations.  Some plants have moved twice.  Aster, phlox, zinnias, and amaranth were started in trays warmed by a heat mat in our basement.  They moved to the greenhouse for better light, where they were kept warm under a blanket of garden cloth and a string of Christmas lights. 

April has been dry, and the dryness has been exacerbated by occasional unseasonable heat.  “The rain just turned off like a faucet closing”, the farmer says.  Seedlings and small growing things require steady moisture, so she has hurried the irrigation system into operation.  If they won’t be brought from April showers, our flowers will have to come from the farmer’s system of tubes, tape and hoses.  Also, few pennies from heaven mean that we will be handing over our own pennies to pay the water bill.  I’m sorry to be an aguafiestas (“sorry – not sorry” as the farmer and I often describe our false apologies), but farm concerns aside a low-rain April makes this PNW boy uneasy.  I hold my tongue (except in my blog!) as everyone else celebrates the sun and heat.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Number 12 - First Anniversary! A Flower-Oriented Playlist

Late March 2021

About a year ago we hatched (germinated?) our plan to grow flowers for Cheryl’s hummingbird endeavor.  In honor of this approximate anniversary, I offer a collection of songs.  Years ago I made Cheryl a mixtape – actually I think it was burned onto a cd, not recorded on a tape, but I think one is allowed to call them mixtapes – and on a mischievous whim I challenged her to figure out the theme.  But there was no theme; they were just songs that I liked, most of them recent discoveries.  I felt bad when she told me weeks later that she had been wracking her brain searching for the common thread.  This time there really is a theme and I will state it up front: these are songs related to flowers in one way or another.  Some of the connections are obscure, however, so to remove any guesswork frustration and to indulge my DJ pretensions, I annotate the list below.  There are songs included because of a single line, which I typed out in the annotated list for the same reason that David Sedaris says he copies out passages from George Saunders: “so my fingers will know what greatness feels like”.  A warning: I like sad, sometimes dark, songs.  I don’t take it as far as Townes Van Zandt, who reportedly said “there are two kinds of songs: there’s the blues and there’s zip-a-dee-doo-dah”, but when I consider my favorites there are many in minor keys, with characters who are troubled, or beaten down, or unsavory but somehow sympathetic, etc.  So, the mix has happiness and light, but also (maybe mostly) wistfulness, loss, heartbreak, etc.  It’s no reflection on Cheryl or the bouquet enterprise, of course; all my mixes are like this, even the ones I made for my kids. 

A Bouquet of Flower Songs (March 2021)

La Feria de las Flores – Los Lobos.  As you will see, there are few rules for my mix-making, but if possible the first song should introduce the theme.  Here the introduction is in the title and not the lyrical content.  The singer is travelling to the eponymous festival of flowers, and he is packing his pistol.  For him, “flower” has two meanings: the petaled wonders featured at the fair, and also the girl he hopes to find there.

Acony Bell – Gillian Welch.  Taxonomically, the Acony Bell has no relatives in the Northwest, not even distant ones.  Functionally, it harbingers spring like our Snowdrop.

Swee’Pea’s Lullaby – Robin Williams.  If it is good, a song about a person named after a flower qualifies for a flower mix (according to my rules).  This one was written by Harry Nilsson for the quirky, criminally  under-appreciated Robert Altman movie Popeye.  If you are in the mood for more, check out Olive Oil’s song: “He Needs Me”.  It’s pure sweetness.  Better yet, watch the movie.

Violet – Thao & the Get Down Stay Down.  The person addressed in the song could be named after the color and not the flower, but the song still qualifies (by my rules) because of the possible flower connection.

Power Flower – Stevie Wonder.  Written for a documentary based on the book The Secret Life of Plants.  The dubious science in the book should not be held against the song (or Stevie Wonder).

Happiness is a Thing Called Joe – Ella Fitzgerald.  I’ll always remember this song as the one that was played on the radio (shout out to KEXP!) when the 2020 presidential election was finally called.  There’s a single (wonderful) flower-related line that is rhymed with the title line: “he’s got a smile that makes the lilac want to grow”.

Rare Thing – Francis Quinlan.  “All afternoon you inhale every bouquet you meet/ I have to stop myself and admit I am happy.”

Yekerma Sew – Mulatu Astatke.  This song qualifies because of its connection to the movie Broken Flowers.  Ragged bouquets in hand, Bill Murray visits a series of old girlfriends, trying to solve a mystery. His neighbor sets him up with a mix-tape of Ethiopian classics, including this one, to listen to while he is on the road. 

I Remember Everything – Brandi Carlile.  A hero of mine sings one of the last songs of another hero, John Prine. The line: “How I miss you in the morning light, like roses miss the dew”

Donald and Lydia – John Prine.  The man himself, singing one of his first songs, maybe one that he composed as he walked his mail route.  Carlile followed by JP recreates the experience Cheryl and I had hearing him follow Nanci Griffith at a 5th Avenue show.  As we got back to our seats after the break, it took me a second to realize that he had started.  After listening to Griffith’s clear, powerful voice for 45 minutes, I didn’t immediately recognize what Prine was doing as singing.  That was thousands of cigarettes after he recorded Donald and Lydia in a voice that already had its share of rasp and croak.  But there is so much tender humanity in that rasp and croak!   

“but dreamin’ just comes natural,

Like the first breath of a baby

Like sunshine feedin’ daisies

Like the love hidden deep in your heart”

You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go – Shawn Colvin.  Another clear-voiced diva sings a song by a gravelly voiced troubadour.  “Purple clover, Queen Anne’s Lace/ Crimson hair across your face/ You could make me cry but you don’t know …” 

Danza de Gardenias – Natalia Lafourcade.  The word repeated in the song – florecerá – means “will bloom”, e.g. “the ancient charm in your spirit will bloom again”.  

Lilacs – Waxahatchee.  Flowers and impermanence: “And the lilacs drank the water/ And the lilacs die/ … Marking in the slow, slow passing of time”. 

Lilacs in the Rain – The Ravens.  I discovered this song when I was looking up the one by Waxahatchee.  These guys remind me of the Ink Spots.  The Ravens are a group from the 40s that started a trend of bands named after birds.

Down in Bermuda – Jonathan Richman.  A break in the melancholy for some joy from Jonathan.  Spotify has a live version of the song that is only for the hard core JoJo fan so it’s not included.  You can find the Rockin’ and Romance version on the internet, however.

Dead Flowers – Townes Van Zandt.  A cover – and an improvement on – the Rolling Stones song.  All this flowers and death – I apologize if it is too much of a downer.  There is a long tradition of it, however.  Consider Buson (~1750):

Wind blows

they scatter and it dies

fallen petals

Give Me Flowers When I’m Living – the Knitters.  I imagine this as a reply to the previous song.  The Knitters are a side project of John Doe and Xcene Cervanka of the band X, singing in the venerable punk to country crossover tradition.

For the Roses – Joni Mitchell.  Joni Mitchell, a passion from our youth.

I get these notes

On butterflies and lilac sprays

From girls who just have to tell me

They saw you somewhere

How Many Times – Esther Rose. Not about a rose, but sung by a Rose.

Stoplight Roses – Nick Lowe.  More roses and ruefulness!  Nick Lowe is a master craftsman.  You won’t look at a roadside flower stand in the same way after hearing this.

All Green – Clem Snide.  I had to find a way to fit some Clem Snide into the mix because Cheryl loves them.  The flower connection: there’s a rose on the cover of the album.

Virgenes del Sol – Manzanita y su Conjunto.  Psychedelic cumbia from Peru.  Virgenes del Sol is a poetic reference to newly bloomed flowers (I made that up; if it is not true it should be). 

June Hymn – The Decembrists. One of the few songs in my knowledge that includes a celebration of bulbs.  The harmony on “Will I bring myself to write” (sung with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, I believe) chokes me up every time.

One Day Like This – Elbow.  Some uplift for the last song.  Only a personal connection here: it’s sometimes going through my mind when I start out to spend a day around the garden.

Drinking in the morning sun

…

Shaking off a heavy one

Heavy like a loaded gun

…

Oh, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Number 11 - Spring at a Gallop

March 2021

The foot-plus of snow from two weeks ago feels like a memory of a trip to a different place.  Some early-sprouting cosmos suffered from the winter storm – we’re waiting to see if they will bounce back – but everything else seems fine.  When the receding snow uncovered the daffodil shoots, they looked unfazed.  There was a small snow-free cylinder of space around each one – maybe the heat of the earth wicked up to the shoots and melted the snow, making a little daffodil snow cave?  The forecasted historically low temperatures turned out to be another weatherperson’s false promise.  If it did get into the twenties, it happened when everything was covered with snow, which provided an insulating blanket against the damaging cold.  Some of the daffodils were also under the grass and leaf mulch we spread last fall.  When uncovered, the shoots were yellow.  After a few days of light, they start to green from the bottom up (not sure why – chlorophyll doesn’t come from the roots, so it can’t be the same reason that the celery stalks change in the memorable elementary school experiment).  At the moment they look like rainbow popsicles, but with kale flavor at the bottom and banana at the top.  There are also naturalized daffodils coming up here and there on the lawn; one needs to be careful not to step or roll the cart over them.

Early spring signs abound.  Some examples:

-          Light.  In the morning, in the evening - three and a half more minutes each day; two and a half more hours on March 1 than on a day in dark December.  

-          The frog chorus rising from the wetlands.  The frog song sounds like a sheep’s bleat, but in a slightly lower register and mellower.  They sing in groups.  I don’t know the typical size, but it’s enough to create a constant thrum.  It is heard all over the island.  People like it.  It really gets going at night; we envision it as a kind of party.  Of a warm, late spring evening, we’ll need to raise our voices to be heard above it when walking by an active patch.

-          The weeds, the first being the ones I call ‘poppers’.  They seem to appear, flower, and form seed pods in a matter of days. The pods are spring loaded.  They wait for something to brush them, at which point they explode, sending seeds in all directions.  After years of dealing with them, I looked up the name.  It is appropriately unappealing: Hairy Bittercress.  (I searched for “popping weed” and made an inadvertent discovery: popping, crackling and sparking marijuana is a thing.)

-          T-shirt weather.  This depends on the weather, yes, but also on the type of work that’s to be done.  When it’s something vigorous like bed digging, then upper forties and barely a breeze (like today) is enough to support baring the elbows. There were hardly any goosebumps (I did keep my cap on).

Many changes, but I wish some things would change faster.  Early spring germination is a slow process.  I find myself anxiously watching over seed beds, wondering whether the sprouts will show.  I feel like Toad of the classic story, wanting to yell at them.  I was the same way with our kids when they were babies, waiting them to reach the milestones laid out in the child development book.  I still haven’t learned to trust the process, to learn what Toad learned (in the words of Elvis Perkins): 

    While you were sleeping your babies grew

    The stars shined and the shadows moved

    …

    They gave us picks said "go mine the sun

    And go gold and come back when you're done”.

Slippery Slope Blog Post Number 10

Hold on, They’re Comin’

Things are starting to shoot up.  Perhaps you have noticed it in walks around your gardens or neighborhoods.  I am not a close noticer, but for first things I know to look near rocks and walls, places that retain through the night some of the heat they collect during the day.  The daffodils in front of our cement entrance ramp are up to 6 inches and showing yellow at their tops.  Out in the garden, away from nurturing heat sources, shoots are poking through the winter mulch.  But for their locations, the spears of garlic and daffodils would be indistinguishable.  In my walkabouts, I’ve learned to look for the pussy willows in January.  This year they were out in the second week.  The first folded leaves of rhubarb were pushing up before month’s end, furrowed and bunched like small green cerebella.  

Are they early?  I think so, on account of the very mild winter.  If I understand the degree days measurements in the weather report correctly, the average of the average daily winter temperatures in December-January was three degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal.  Frosty mornings have been rare for us this winter, although not as rare for my friend farmer Rob who lives two miles to the east in what he refers to as “continental Vashon”.  The last frost date is of particular interest to farmers.  Like most all the climatological averages, the expected last date of frost has moved significantly in the last century.  The changes have been most dramatic in since 1990.

The farmer’s milk jug greenhouse project (mentioned in post #7) is proceeding promisingly.  Peek through the necks of the jugs lining the garden fence and you will see seedlings of various flowers and spring vegetables.  At this rate, some will be outgrowing their tiny houses soon, their shoots pushing against the jug tops and their roots starting to bind as they turn away from the jug walls.  Before this happens, some will be planted in an open bed, some under a cloche or Reemay (aka floating row cover, aka garden quilt), and the least cold tolerant moved to another temporary location in a greenhouse bed.  The farmer learned last spring which plants were not happy in the cold, and is teaching herself patience in planting. 

Now these early advances are threatened by a series of sub-freezing nights that have appeared at the far end of the 10-day forecast: mid-twenties, it says, even for maritime Vashon. There is some anxiety about this, but mostly curiosity. These plants are born of ancestors with millions of years’ experience dealing with fickle winter/spring weather. I hope to watch carefully enough to learn a bit about how they cope. Stay tuned.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Nine

Winter Light

Cheryl and Wayne joined us for a farm work party in early December.  Cheryl and the farmer dug dahlia bulbs and Cheryl showed the farmer her wreath-making technique.  Wayne and I walked to the neighboring woods to harvest holly for bouquet and wreath accents.  Before this expedition, we were walking around to the back of the house when Wayne broke a brief silence to say: “it’s beautiful here”.  I agreed and we moved on without discussion, but it has turned into one of those few memories that sticks clearly. 

A month later, I remember where we were on the pathway, how Wayne turned to face me, the tone of his voice and the feeling of the moment.  We’ve not discussed it, but I think the quality of the December light had something to do with Wayne’s sudden statement.  This time around the sun (my sixtieth), I’ve been appreciating the winter light.  It is often very clear, especially after the storms when the air has been washed by rain and swept by wind.  Somehow the outside sounds seem clearer also – maybe it’s the relative stillness. 

The other day I was struck by the beauty of the simple bird song coming from the Ocean Spray bush beside the house, a plaintive, delicate, two-note carol.  It was a chickadee (find the song in the lower right-hand corner of this page) – it turns out that the littlest birds really do sing the prettiest songs.  Getting back to the winter light: the sky-watching is good this time of year.  I’ve become a connoisseur of sky views foregrounded by the bare branches of various trees on or near the farm.  Sunrises through alders in the wetland across the road; the moon (or clouds, or the rare patch of blue) through the branches of the garden-side maple; sunsets over Quartermaster Harbor through the cottonwood branches down by the lagoon:  Wayne is right – it is beautiful. 

When I am outside and find myself stuck in some unhappy train of thought, a breath and a look in just about any direction is usually all that is needed to break the spell for at least a good moment.  It’s not just the farm: the moments can be found while cycling alongside Tramp Harbor, working in the Island Center Forest, walking in the Dockton woods. The nights are long, but they have this advantage: I can enjoy a sunset and the following sunrise without having to cut short a full term of sleep. 

Speaking of the crepuscular:  even when there is no color or beam associated with the sun’s coming or going (as is the case on the frequent grey days), just walking through the gradually increasing or decreasing light has a touch of the mystic.  The scenes lack the exuberance of spring or the extravagance of summer.  They are restrained and spare, but satisfyingly beautiful like the chickadee’s song

I understand the sentiments of sadness that the poets associate with winter light, the “seal Despair”, the “desolate … fervourlous … gloom”, etc.  I know some of the sentiments personally.  But winter and winter light are symbols in these poems, not the things in themselves.  Take a walk in the woods or by the water before the days get too much longer and I think you will agree.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Seven - Late November 2020

Autumn Beginnings                                                                                               

Fall is a time of leave-takings, it’s true.  They start right away in late September, with whiffs of the last blackberries fermenting on the vine, so strong sometimes when I ride by a thick, unpicked patch that I think there must be a winery nearby. Mid-October, we grieve the last apple from the tree and hope for one last goldfinch sighting.  The farmer cuts the last of the snapdragons down to the ground.  We watch the forecast and speculate which wind, rain or frost will take the last of dahlias.  A few flox and bee balm blooms persist, surprisingly.  Some may flower into December, but their days are a numbered few and they look like what you’d expect to see if you looked up “bedraggled” in the illustrated dictionary.  And of course there is the great unleaving itself,creating drifts on the roadside and covering the trails in the nearby forest that wend through groves of Maple trees.  We chop up the leaves from the Maple near the garden for mulch, using it to put the beds to bed for the winter.  

But the garden has taught me that in this season of loss there are also many things starting up or progressing or persevering.   A handful of garden volunteers have sprouted, including some sweet peas.  If the winter isn’t too harsh they will be ready to take off with the spring and be many weeks ahead of their February-sown brethren.  The October sown cover crop in the pumpkin pen is now a carpet of green, millimetering along. The narcissus bulbs we planted are not completely dormant – their root systems will develop through the winter.  It’s the same for the garlic that went in late last month, doing the groundwork for an early spring appearance.  The snapdragons are considered “tender perennials”.  The ones we cut are starting up again and stand a good chance of surviving the winter.  We may have lost the goldfinches until March, but the chickadees and sparrows will stay and will keep quarreling over the bird feeder.  The branches of the Maple and Indian Plum are not nearly the dour bare ruin’d choirs they appear to be.  The twigs sport plump, chili red buds, each a tightly furled leaf waiting for its spring cue.

The farmer is in a regenerative mode.  She pours over the bulb and seed catalogues, swapping ideas with Cheryl, both of them plotting and planning.  She recites the Dahlia varieties they are considering, long lists of exotic and enticing names.  She sets up cloches for the overwintering vegetables, divides and distributes the landscape grasses.  In their third year, the dahlias attain mega-bulb status.  She digs them up and stores them in the shed.  Come spring, she’ll divide them up, some going back to Slippery Slope’s flower beds and most given away.  Her recent discovery of the milk jug greenhouse concept has prompted a flurry of activity.   Now there are about 30 jugs – collected from local coffee stands – around the house being prepared for December and January garden deployment.  She says she is planning for 50.  Her fall refrain: “so many things to start, I have to quit my day job!”

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Seven - November 2020

Ballad of the Butt Pumpkin

This summer I grew a curiosity worthy of a roadside attraction.  Here’s the back story.

I have a (non-paying) side gig growing pumpkins.  I grew them for years at the pea patch in my former neighborhood.  When we moved down island three years ago, there were unclaimed plots at the old patch so I kept growing a mix of carvers and cookers there, sharing them with my former neighbors.  Slippery Slope’s fenced garden doesn’t have room for a sprawling pumpkin patch, but last spring I set up a pumpkin pen in an out of the way spot on our property, a ramshackle affair the farmer referred to as my Don Quixote project.

The farmer was speaking of the structure – built from left-over fencing and old metal posts – but to me the very endeavor of growing something also seems quixotic.  Against experience and common knowledge, I still feel at the beginning that the prospect of a small seed or start turning into an expansive, expanding, fruit-bearing life form is unlikely.  So there is this small background anxiety – “will it really work?” – but other than that every step process is pure pleasure.  It epitomizes the best kind of ritual, with every yearly action experienced three ways: joy in the moment of doing; fondness in remembering the last time, and anticipation of repeating next year.  If I get to a seventh age of infirmity and confinement, my pumpkin growing memories will provide escape: hands cradling the frail root ball as I place it in the soil; picking my way through the leaves and vines of a cool morning a month later to find the rooted spots so I can water them; the pumpkins starting to color and revealing themselves as the leaves recede after another month; sharing the bounty; preparing and eating the soup and the curry and the muffins …

This year’s process started differently because the dearly beloved Saturday market where I buy starts was closed on account of Covid.  So, on a misty day in May I peddled to the source, an island treasure called Pacific Potager, where I purchased five plants, stashed them in my pannier, took four to cohousing for the pea patch, and cycled home with the last one for the pumpkin pen.  Per usual, they were listless for about a week after the transplanting while they gained root-hold, and then they took off, sending out vines and growing extravagant leaves.  The male flowers appear first – I don’t know why – and the females follow a week or more later.  In the warm weather they find a higher gear: vines extending as much as ten feet from the center and the leaves forming a near-unbroken plane about a foot off the ground.  Bees wallow in the big flowers.  The chestnut-sized fruits seem to appear overnight.  Soon they are softballs, then basketballs and some go further than that.  It all happens as quickly as the summer itself.

For slippery slope’s pumpkin pen, I chose a variety called rouge vif, a.k.a. Cinderella pumpkin. The plant was happy in the pen.  It sent one vine north, one east, and three south. All but one of the vines grew a single pumpkin – the fifth was fruitless.  Each pumpkin grew close to the fence (this seems to be a habit of penned pumpkins, I have noticed).  The pumpkin on the northbound vine decided to grow directly under the fence.  When it encountered the fence wire, it adopted the same strategy as another famous Vashon plant and grew around the obstacle on both sides.  Soon there were globes on either side of the fence, with the fence wire almost completely obscured beneath a deep crack in the pumpkin.  The anatomical association was obvious.  

 Pumpkin in the fence                           Four-cheeked pumpkin

As it grew, the similarity was accentuated and the pumpkin gained some local notoriety.  Neighbors visited regularly.  It was a highlight of tours of the farm given to family and the occasional visitor, who would then ask after it when we talked later.  Wayne made a pilgrimage each time he and Cheryl came for flower harvesting.  It wasn’t until I extracted it with wire cutters, taking a piece of the fence with it, that we realized that the same thing happened on the other side.  So it does the man in the Monty Python sketch one better: it is a pumpkin with four buttocks.

 So then came the decision of how to present it to the wider world, to claim its place among the famous vegetable likenesses.  To get a sense for how extensive this pantheon is, start an internet search with the phrase “vegetables shaped like” and see where it takes you.  I considered a montage comparing it to well-known human-created likenesses (for example).  There was a suggestion to stage a misc en scene featuring the pumpkin under a sink, blue jeans covering half of it, and plumbing tools at its side (too complicated).  I finally settled on a photo with a (not too obscure – I hope) reference to a song by Queen.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Six

Fundamentals - Rain

This was a close to normal summer for rain here, which is to say it was dry, dry, dry.  There were a few lackluster rainfalls in late June and early July, and then a parched two months with maybe two showers bringing enough water to measure.  The farmer has worked many hours building and maintaining the life support system to get the plants through the yearly drought.  Placed end to end, the tubes and tapes of this watering set-up would just about stretch around the track at the high school.  The irrigation tape is deployed three lengths to a bed, with pinprick holes every inch or so to deliver water a drop at a time.  Because it goes directly to the soil and is mostly shaded by the plants, most of it reaches the thirsty roots instead of evaporating.   

A heavy summer rain is a joyous event around the garden.  The flowers seem to perk up.  There’s lots of bird activity.  The air is clearer afterwards.  It smells good. I run outside and feel it fall on my skin, thinking of Keats’ eremite, watching

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

(btw, if you are looking for a rain walking mantra, I recommend “pure ablution round earth’s human shores”.)  Many of the denizens of the garden and yard wear their raindrops beautifully, the best in my opinion being the lupine.  Always, but especially in summer, the rain feels like grace: undeserved and unlikely, but necessary.  

Pro-rain as I am, all the complaining about it bothers me.  I’ve spent many a March bus ride biting my tongue as my fellow passengers drone on about the discomfort and inconvenience of the most recent or upcoming storm.  More often than not, I note, it is not actually raining as they are complaining.  In fact, even during the wettest stretches of days it rains way less than half the time.  As William Stafford wrote:

    Look: no one ever promised for sure

    that we would sing.  We have decided

    to moan.

I try to displace the moaning sounds with the remembered sounds of trail runs – drops on leaves, drops in pools, splashes of shoes through the puddles.  I recall my heroes, the great rain poets like Tom Robbins, who writes of:

The skinny grey rain that toadstools love.  The moss-knitting rain.  The father of mud. 

The rain that falls from the realm of the invisibles, like a cascade of cheap Zen jewelry, whispering in a

secret language of the primordial essence of things.  

Mostly I imagine with gratitude the rain saturating the earth around the doug-fir seedlings I plant in February, hoping it will be enough to get them through the coming leonine summer, “putting first things first” as another hero of mine sang, “thousands have lived without love, but not one without water”.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Five

Auden writes that the gardeners say:

“Law … is the sun”:

Law is the one

All gardeners obey

Tomorrow, yesterday, today.

We obeyed the law when we placed our garden at the north end of the property, far from the tall, shade-casting conifers on the neighbor’s side of our southern property line.  Likewise when we placed the fruit trees north of the planting beds – so their canopies would not shade the flowers and vegetables –  and when we choose partially shady spots for sun sensitive or bolt-prone plants.  The plants themselves are law-abiding too, of course.  It’s a poetic exaggeration to say all flowers in time bend toward the sun, but it’s mostly true.  The mechanism is the opposite of what I would have thought, one of suppression instead of stimulation.  Many plants have a growth hormone in their stalks and stems that is inhibited by direct sunlight.  This hormone is more active on the shaded side of the stem, causing that side of the stem to grow more than the sunny side, so the plant grows sunward.

When there is not enough light and the hormone is not sufficiently controlled, plants get leggy.  This happened early last spring under the grow lights in the farmer’s plant nursery in our basement.  The lights were a poor replacement for the sun, and the plants suffered a bit for it.  It didn’t help that sometimes we forgot to turn on the lights and the poor seedlings experienced 36-hour nights.  The note we posted in the kitchen – “REMEMBER THE PLANTS” – got bigger each time such a lapse occurred.   

Sometimes, watching sunshine feeding daisies, I take the large view.  I think about the photons streaming into the leaves, having made the 93 million mile, eight minute trip from some unimaginably intense explosion on the sun.  I imagine the photons powering the leaf’s photosynthesis machines. I recall that the carbon that is the raw material fed into these machines was itself created in an explosion in a first generation star.  I reflect that I am myself made of star stuff.  And then, ennobled, I get called away to some new farm task.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Four

Farm Expansion Step 3 – Finishing

After the sod busting, the new beds were clumpy and – according to the analysis of the soil we sent to the lab – not sufficiently nutritive for the coming crop.  Lime was spread, along with a three inch covering of compost.  I am machine-averse and was ready to start breaking up the clumps and mixing everything up with our trusty garden fork.  The farmer had other ideas, however, and soon discovered that the neighbors owned an electric tiller.  Running a tiller appealed to the one-third part of the farmer that is teenage boy (the other parts: one-third Ma Kettle and one-third princess).  Maneuvering it through the beds, she looked like a musher guiding an unruly dog team over rough terrain.  But it was effective and efficient, and another instance of our jack sprat partnership.  Even so, there were still smallish clumps that exceeded the farmer’s tolerance level, so she went through the beds again crushing clumps by hand.

There were other finishing tasks.  The strips of grass between the beds had been covered with black plastic to keep them from growing.  We replaced the plastic with landscape cloth, tight-cornered and smooth like a well-made bed.  The resulting pathways support easy kneeling and smooth transport of the garden cart, which they are just wide enough to accommodate.  A section of one bed was set up for a cloche (aka hoop house): rebar driven in pairs on either side and connected with a bent pvc pipe – ready for the clear plastic to be clipped on.  My description might not be clear enough to paint the picture, but anyone unfamiliar with the concept can look it up.  The structure reminds me of a classic train station.  Due to the farmer’s eagerness, the first plants arrived at the station a little early.   They suffered through some cold nights as a result, but the starts were hardy little buggers and they made it through just a little worse for the wear.  When it warmed up, they recovered quickly and started growing in earnest.

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Number Three

In Appreciation of Sweet Peas and Bees 

I interrupt the farm building story to write a bit about two garden favorites.  Sweet Peas have been the stars of our first season of growing for Hummingbird.  We didn’t think they would keep well enough for bouquets, but Cheryl showed us that if you cut them far enough down the stalk, they have as much staying power as the other bouquet mainstays.  We knew from previous experience that the more you cut them, the more they grow; but this year’s sweet peas were resilient way beyond expectation.  They climb up the farm’s north fence, a combination of plants seeded by hand back in February and volunteers that came up from seeds left by last year’s crop.  They also grow along the ramp to our porch.  They create a fragrant corridor. When the bees are busy with the blooms, they stir up the fragrance and it intensifies. 

 

The sweet peas are not the most popular bee flower on the farm. I’ve witnessed plenty of bumblebee visits to the blossoms, however, so I was surprised to learn from the an OSU Extension Service web site that the domesticated varieties self-pollinate and don’t have much to offer animal visitors in the way of sustenance.  After learning this, I imagined hearing a hummingbird cursing as it flew away after probing a few of the blossoms outside my home office window.  That was the only hummingbird I’ve seen near the sweet peas, but the bumblebees keep coming back.  I have to think that they are getting something out of it.

 

I’m fond of the bumblebees, so purposeful and diligent, and so easy in the air.  These days they are all over the farm, our landscaping, and the field beyond it. There are so many on the blooming Ceanothus they create a droning symphony.  Clinging to and working on dandelions as they sway in the wind, the bees remind me of Frost’s swinger of birches, although the dandelion ride is no play for them, and no climb either.  My brother-in-law, a polymath naturalist, sends information about the bumblebees he identifies to bumblebeewatch.org, a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees.  He notes with pleasure that one of his frequent sightings, Bombus Voznesenskii, shares most of a name with one of his favorite poets, Andres Voznesensky.  Here are some lines from the latter, likening life to a flight:

Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,

Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow,

…

In finding their truths lives vary in daring:

Worms come through holes and bold men on parabolas.

Sometimes, watching a bee, I think about the equation that describes its flight.  The “bee line” is not a line from our geometry (and also not a parabola).

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number Two

Farm Expansion Step 2 – Fence Building

People find deer attractive, the scientists say, partly because of the facial traits they share with human babies, their doe eyes mostly.  Also, they’re admirably sleek and super nimble.  And there’s that nonchalant, bounding, bouncing run they have.  They stand in the morning meadow with perfect equanimity, and then break character briefly to do a whacky-looking ear waggle designed to move the bugs out of their face.  So I understand the attraction.  Wake up one morning and discover that they’ve eaten all the leaves off your young plum and apple trees, however, and you’ll find your affection strained.  A few more deer incursions into carefully tended plants and you’ll start considering them a menace.  The cuteness and grace wear real thin.  The enchantment that comes with a deer sighting for some folks is replaced by a strong resentment.  That’s my location on the deer feelings spectrum.  Building a deer-proof fence, therefore, provides a kind of spiteful satisfaction.  There are other deterrents – dogs, armed guards, spray-on repellant (one of these has my all-time favorite product name: “Not Tonight, Deer”) – but only a tall, strong fence will guarantee protection from the marauders.  A five foot fence won’t do: I’ve seen deer cross them with a standing jump.

As with the sod removal, my fence building approach is low-tech and inefficient.  I dig the 2.5’ (or so) hole with a shovel and a manual post-hole digger.  I make the 10’ foot cedar pole as vertical as I can while I tamp in the rocks and dirt.  The soil in some parts of the new garden had a lot of clay, so I added some of that to the dirt.  I wrestle the fencing up against the poles and attach it with u-shaped nail/staples.  The gardener praises my work and, bless her, doesn’t remark on the way the poles deviate from linearity/verticality or the fencing bows in and out in places.  Aesthetic considerations aside, it is a solid construction.  There will be no deer-caused plant tragedies at Slippery Slope. 

August 2020

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Post Number One

Farm Expansion Step 1 – Sod Busting

I thought about my paternal grandfather’s family while digging the new flower beds.  The work involved carving out a sod rectangle with my spade, shearing off and carrying away the grassy part and the first few inches on top, and breaking up the clods left behind in the proto-bed.  I did this many times, maybe 600.  The brick-like extractions were stacked in a sod wall.  The blog’s title picture was taken near the beginning of the project.  By mid-march when the last brick was added the wall was about as long as a school bus, but half as wide and a third as tall.  It is composting now and will feed the daffodil beds we are planning for this fall.

Grandpa Morrison came to mind during all this sod busting because he was born on the Nebraska prairie, in a sod house.  That’s him with his hand on the (I presume) family dog.  And that’s his birth-house behind them.  

The younger of my two great aunts is being held by my great grandmother.  I know nothing about her or their life in those days.  My sod-busting ruminations were pure speculation.

I did not tire of the work.  In fact I’m looking for more bed-making.  Maybe it’s in my blood.

July 2020

Slippery Slope Farm Blog Introduction by Tim Morrison

When the last of great continental glaciers finished its excavation of Puget Sound, it left behind an 81 square mile moraine that would later be called Vashon Island.  A moraine is the ridge to a glacier’s furrow.  The Vashon moraine is a slag pile of tilled quaternary silt, clay and sand deposits, river-rounded basalt and other rocks, crumbling granite, and assorted other elements of the earth’s crust. 

Things began to grow there.  Mosses and lichens and grasses.  Ferns.  Evergreen Huckleberry and Indian Plum and Salmonberry.  Douglas-fir and Western Red-cedar.  Madrona.

Things began to die there, their remains processed by earth’s vast microbial-fungal recycling machine, increasing and enriching the island’s topsoil for the plants to come.

About 10,000 years later, Slippery Slope Farm was born.  ‘Farm’ may be a bit grand – it is really a large mixed-use garden.  Vegetables, fruits, and flowers grow there.  It helps feed the farmer and her friends.  It provides escape and solace, wonder and enchantment.  It inspires passions and energies.  Some of its flowers find their way into your monthly bouquets.