Before A Wintry Mix

The snow and wind storm we had a couple weeks back left a big giant mess. The ridge top garden was carpeted with a layer branches, sticks and twigs. It was the most deadfall I have ever seen from one storm. I spent about three hours in the garden doing nothing but picking up sticks. I might be about 90% finished and winter isn't over.

This is to be expected in a forested garden. The picture shows about a third of the entire two acres under wild cultivation. That is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of sticks to pick up. I like to tell myself that as the trees grow taller and the lower limbs fall, the garden is getting sunnier. We can call it a lofty shade garden. I just know it needs to be tidy when the 10,000 daffodils and equal number of minor bulbs arrive. A warmish, pseudo sunny, 50 degree day presented itself before the arrival of the next wintry mix.

Next door at the garden becoming there were not near as many sticks. A big part of the garden is in the electric utility easement and I thinned my trees for more sun. There was still plenty of deadfall in the forested section. Maybe I'll pick all that up tomorrow when the wintry mix is done, depending on what is delivered. The diagnosis is horribly indecisive.

This is a good time of year to contemplate the growing bones of the garden becoming. Evergreen trees will one day dramatically alter the experience of this garden. I will have to be patient.

I can't say the strong emerging lines were part of my vision for this part of the garden. They were born as a necessity of topography and the penchant to plant large groups of a single plant. I have decided to embrace them, to amplify the effect and continue it into the forested half. This is what Ku'ulei A'ina is telling me to do. I like it and am happy to see years of effort coalescing into boldness.

I see the terraced rice fields of Bali. I see the foot paths of cattle on a steep pasture. I see an abstract quilt. I see the petroglyphs of ancient people. I see hints of Roberto Burle Marx. A world history of influence has come before.

Yet, what the garden will eventually become is still not entirely known.