Just Looking

The rain stopped while the snow laden wrap around gathers strength and heads my way. After a full day of unfinished house cleaning it was good to get out. I should never wear glasses when I clean house. It takes so much longer.

After these storms that are often accompanied by very strong winds at these elevations, I like to check and make sure the cozy cabin is still there and that a tree didn't fall on it.

It's still there.



The blank slate of winter is a great time for thinking about the garden to be.



Now I think mostly about flow and form. How will I move through this space? Where will the paths be? Where do I want screening? Where do I want to maintain the view?

The cozy cabin is perched right on the edge of the utility easement so trees through the long corridor of the lines coming up the mountain are out unless I am willing to have them beheaded or poisoned by the utility company. I'm not and besides sunlight in the forest is a valuable commodity.

I envision the hillside below the cabin as a low mounding, year round tapestry of texture and color. Now I can think about what plants will accomplish that vision. Actually I have planted plenty on this slope already. A big task this year is going to be removing most of the grass that was seeded to hold the slope until I really had time to turn it into a garden and making real paths across it.



Burning the rubbish piles will give me even more of a blank slate. I need to get to that soon. They are in the way of the garden to be.

What about the new creation? Should I gravel around it or mow around it to keep it visible all year or just be content to let it reveal its full complexity in the bare bones of winter? Right now I am leaning towards letting it be swallowed in the summer lush, designed lush for sure, and taking more of a center stage in the winter.

A lot of editing has been done. More editing remains to help make way for the addition of new plants.



Sometimes garden design is easy. All you have to do is walk a path by a point of interest.



In the not so distant future I will be able to stroll the grounds of Ku'ulei 'Aina and find as much of botanical interest as there is now in the wild cultivated garden.



From the first snowdrops of late winter to the last blue asters during the glorious colors of fall, the wild cultivated garden is a lush and changing garden panorama.



It's child next door may be a little less wild and a little more structured with good bones for winter, but lessons learned in the wild will flow seamlessly from one garden to the other.



The evening stroll just gets a little longer, that's all.



And the resident gardeners will get a big new addition to the garden without all the work.