Fire Drill

Two and a half more boards was all I managed to add today on the front porch in a fierce cold wind before the drill I was using caught on fire. Isn't that special! The treated lumber is still quite moist and the old drill had trouble in spots getting the deck screws through the wet wood.

It was COLD this morning. Not so much from the temperature of 36 degrees, but from the wind blowing 25 to 30 mph. I saw leaves falling up. I went down to my cabin to work anyway. I must adjust. My cabin sits in a nice sunny spot and was mostly protected from this particular angle of wind and it wasn't long before I took off my jacket and felt just fine.

Then there was the fire.














There is always something else to do and fortunately before my most recent job rejection I had gone to a new nursery looking for a Camellia or a small columnar golden colored conifer for a tiny little bed next to a parking space and right up against the carport at my new client's garden. I didn't find what I wanted for them, but I did not leave empty handed.

It feels odd planting something in frigid weather, the night before another colder freeze and a day before predicted rain that just might be, could be snow, since the high for the following day is predicted to be 47. Maybe my new Kniphofia has just been left out to die. Some sites say it is hardy to zone six others to zone five.

I planted it on the lower section of the grassy slope in the sunny utility valley that I want to turn into a low mounding collage of texture and color. It will be just to the right of a path that will one day lead off of the basement patio.














Further down in the sunny utility valley I planted my other acquisition, Lobelia cardinalis 'Queen Victoria', a red leaved cultivar with the same fire engine red flowers of regular Cardinal Flower. It is sited in the lowest spot where intermittent water flows through from the road culverts in a hard rain.

In a way it feels like I am doing a garden design drill by buying plants I see and like and looking for a place to plant them. That is not what I would let a client do. Still I have an overall layout of where all the major elements of the property will be and more than enough space to plant things now where there is little chance of disruption. And I can always move them later after they have grown bigger and multiplied. I can already see I am going to need a small cold frame/greenhouse for propagating cuttings. Now where will I put that?
















A few more boards, a few more plants, a few less degrees, things are moving right along. Once I get all the deck boards on the front porch (a new drill) then I can cut off the overhang on the left side. There was a slight discrepancy in perfect rectangularness and it was decided the best way to adjust for that was to square every thing up on three sides while maintaining the board spacing on the deck and cut off the excess instead of trying to measure each board to a slightly different length. Made sense to me.














After I made sure the drill fire was out I wandered off into the woods like I have a tendency to do. There are more and more of the Putty Root Orchids showing up all the time. It is beginning to look like a carpet of Orchid leaves in places.














There is also a lot more sun on the forest floor. That feels just a bit odd to me as well. Winter is blowing into Fall and the lowering sun now reaches the ground in many places for the first time since I have been here.