Think You're Old??? This is an old dog!

Today is the day we celebrate Sam's birthday, March 16th. Every day we count ourselves as incredibly blessed and lucky this wise soul is still with us and happy to be with us. Enjoying his life to the fullest! Each year we recognize that he has come another year and is still healthy, enthusiastic, curioius ... we can hardly believe it. Sam was supposed to be euthanized with a tumor growing around his esophagus and windpipe over 8 years ago, yet here he is, wolfing down his food and breathing/snoring/woofing as if he had never had a tumor at all.

This year we didn't make a sam-cake with candles as we did last year --Sam was afraid of the lit candles. Today he got the super-dooper-senior-dog treatment: lots of treats and a great walk in the sun. Tim made buckwheat-spelt waffles for all of us this morning. Sam had a plate of waffles with chicken, cherries, cherry-juice along, and a whole piece of sausage. Baggins also shared his food (a half can of tuna) with Sam but says, "only on his birthday."

I shot these photos this morning after a late breakfast. Satisfied dog and happy humans. Happy Birthday to you, dear old friend. I wish for you many more days of life and love and joyful-dog-dreams.

He's giving out Free Hugs today

Garden Lighting: Pre-Hailstorm-Sky-Color

We are closing in on completing the Contemplative Garden. I am helping with the installation myself, which is different for me: getting muddy, wet, dirty, sweaty and so sore! But it's more fulfilling than ever because I have put my heart and soul into creating this tiny jewel-like garden. I almost don't want to finish! ;-)

Saturday I was watering and cleaning up over there, and thought I would shoot a few quick photos. I could tell we were in for a storm and the light -- the color of the sky -- was so beautiful! I was clicking away when a huge hail stone hit my camera body (fortunately not the lens) and before I could blink I was being pelted by hundreds of hard stones. Got in the car in a hurry!

Made me think of garden lighting. Here was a storm adding a whole new dimension of landscape lighting to this garden.

I always love the way the air seems to take on a thickness right before a big storm -- an actual color, rather than just a clearness. Hailstorms bring their own pre-storm color, the air tinged with a visceral yellow against dark blue-black clouds. Usually hailstorms hit us on early summer afternoons: sun close to the horizon slices through a hole in the clouds. That sunlight mixes with a palpable turbulence, an electric charge on the back of my neck, a yellowish caste in the air - it's enough of a warning for any soft-bodied creature to get under cover. And yet ...

And yet when hail stones threaten, that's when I most want to be out in the garden, taking it all in - it's as if the storm brings super-saturated colors to the ordinary landscape. It's exciting. A little dangerous. Sensual. Every color full of every possibility.

Right before a big storm I can clearly see -- and feel -- that color is made of light.

www.flickr.com

Above, more pix from this garden installation. Click on any of the photos to see a larger version, and from there, you can see the entire album. Enjoy!

Building a Dry Stream Bed

Building a Dry Stream Bed, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

This garden has a pond that appears to extend under a low deck. There will also be an overflowing urn fountain about 25 feet from the pond. The water will flow over the rim of the urn and disappear into a hidden reservoir under the container. We wanted to visually connect the urn fountain with the small garden pond as well as solve a drainage problem.

The solution was to build a dry stream bed using the same stones we used in the pond and around the urn. The dry stream gives an illusion of flowing water and in the imagination and mind of the garden visitors, the urn is a perpetually flowing source of clear fresh water for the pond.

In order to fool the eye and create as natural-looking a stream bed as possible, I took my inspiration from the way bedrock, boulders and cobbles come to rest in a mountain stream. Too many times when folks attempt to create a dry stream bed in their landscaping it results in something that looks really unnatural -- or worse. The tendency people have is to dig a swale or channel; line the edges with large rocks and fill the center with smaller river rock. That isn't the way river dynamics form streams in nature!

In the center of the above poster, you can see the rough sketch I started with before this garden was started. Fortunately I was able to stay involved in the construction process to make sure the final results matched what was in my head.

another view of the garden a little further along in construction:

Links that might help:

• Looking to Nature for Inspiration
  
• Lawrence Halprin, master of seeing garden/landscape forms in nature
• Reflecting Nature: Garden Designs from Wild Landscapes
• Through Nature's Eyes: the look of a low-maintenance landscape
• Using Plants to Soften Rocks, from the Journal of Japanese Gardening

www.flickr.com

Above, more pix from this garden installation. Click on any of the photos to see a larger version, and from there, you can see the entire album. Enjoy!

Design by Nature: generate color schemes from your photos

Web designer, John (fd on flickr) at Big Huge Labs, recently introduced a fun, fast and easy way to generate a harmonious color scheme from a photograph. Imagine using this tool to quickly generate color combinations for graphics, painting, design, interior design ... whatever you can come up with. They new tool is called Palette Generator -- it works with any photograph on your computer, on the web, or in your Flickr account.

I used this series of stormy weather photos:
to generate this palette, complete with color specific numbers:
#595f56; #9ca99f; #333126 #484f49; #3f483b; #4d4a3d; #5f6653 #423926; #8a8a79; #827e78; #304150; #6a655b; #716f67; #344451; #716c61



Of course, this color combo includes lots of grays and browns because there are some sepias and black&white photos in the group. It's a slightly brighter palette if I analyze just one of the storm photos:





Below is a another color scheme generated from this photo of Dune Juniper I shot at Coral Pink Sand Dunes.










In the past, when I've had the urge to create a palette based on a photo (for instance, when I'm laying out a print ad and want some harmonious solid color areas surrounding a photo) I have used Photoshop's color sampling (eyedropper) tool to do that. It takes time to generate more than just a few colors this way.

Have fun with this new tool/toy from fd. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

Earth Day 2007: Festival of Strategic Consumption? A Feel-Good Celebration? Or a call to Personal Transformation?

I recently posted about a blog I like -- World Changing -- and their newly published book by the same name. On Friday, World Changing authors Alex Steffen and Sarah Rich wrote an article unlike many other articles focused on Earth Day -- they used strong words to contrast their worries about Earth Day becoming a meaningless exercise in congratulating ourselves on all the progress we've made to protect the earth ... with the usual love-dovey-everything's-rosey language of most other Earth Day missives. They do make a well reasoned point, though in some ways it's just way too depressing for me today.

My perspective on Earth Day is one of cautious optimism. I think there is still a place for celebration along with encouragement to maker bigger, stronger, more difficult changes in our lives.

Alex and Sarah's article makes a well reasoned point that Earth Day 2007 should be the last Earth Day. But I can't help wish and hope they are wrong. Not wrong about what is going on now with the mega-corporations making mega-profits from 'green' products and technology ... but wrong about what the future holds for society and for individuals. I want Earth Day to continue.

I want there to be a day every year in April, when people all over this planet join their consciousness with every part of Creation to strive to heal and be part of the healing, to strive to connect with animals, plants, wind, water, bacteria, molds and fungi ... mountains, deserts and oceans.

I want this day we call Earth Day to spill over into Every Day.

I want Earth Day Every Day to be something we have in our consciousness every morning upon waking, and every hour we spend pushing our grocery carts down aisles loaded with overpackaged products ... and every time we allow mass media to wash over us with its messages of consumption and complacency and every minute we breathe the air our planet so graciously provides us. . . and every evening we are lucky enough to sleep on a comfortable bed in a comfortable warm, dry shelter.

I get frustrated and sometimes feel hopeless about ever being able to make strong enough personal changes (aka sacrifices) to really make a difference. I know Tim and I have to reduce our ecological footprint even more than we already do. To get it down to the minimum we can live healthy, fulfilled lives with. Recycling everything we can is not enough. Buying in bulk, riding our bikes, using only energy-efficient lightbulbs and keeping the thermostat no higher than 65F is not going to be enough.

As Alex and Sarah point out, one-planet lives, conceived properly, can be much better lives.

Many products that are more sustainable are also better made and beautifully durable. Green homes -- with natural light and fresh air and good insulation -- are more comfortable than gigantic McMansions. Vibrant neighborhoods with nice streets and parks and a strong community offer a better quality of every day life. Fewer toxic chemicals in the air means less asthma and cancer; better food and more walking means less heart disease and diabetes; less driving means fewer people killed and injured in accidents. Waste is expensive, bad design is expensive, and the money we save eliminating both can leave us better off than we were. We can build lives which are bright green and prosperous.

Gaylord Nelson, visionary and founder of the first Earth Day wrote,

If we human beings learn to see the intricacies that bind one part of a natural system to another and then to us, we will no longer argue about the importance of wilderness protection, or over the question of saving endangered species, or how human communities must base their economic futures – not on short-term exploitation – but on long-term, sustainable development.

And long before anyone had the idea of celebrating protecting our planet and greening our lives, Chief Sealth (Chief Seattle) told all of us:

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

My prayer today is that we each take the message of Chief Sealth and the founders of Earth Day into our hearts -- not only today, April 22, 2007 -- but everyday:

May we resolve to walk softly on our paths. May we start the journey right now and keep to our individual intentions and goals to change how we live, to make a softer, more tender mark on our beautiful and fragile home planet. May we try to do what must be done not because it feels good, but because it is the right thing to do. May we start right now to respect and love and connect with (on a deep soul level) every single part of our environment, whether we live in cities and decide to go outside to appreciate the tenacity of a dandelion sprouting in a crack of concrete ... or whether we live in rural areas and spend our day building compost bins for our gardens .... or live in small towns and spend today or tomorrow or the next day working to build a community food garden or bike path or a Habitat for Humanity energy-efficient home ....

May we always feel the presence of our Mother the Earth, beneath our feet, may we feel her heartbeat in concert with ours, may we know the love of the earth deep in our hearts and bodies and minds. Not just today, Earth Day. May we know these things with our whole selves every day of our lives.

Happy Earth Day Everyday, Everyone!

Garden Journal: Now's a Great Time to Start One

I've kept a separate notebook or journal for my garden for years. Off and on. I'm not as disciplined as I'd like to be about keeping track of what is planted where; which plants are blooming when; what I've spent on the garden ... or where I bought my materials, pots, and other stuff.

Sometimes my garden journal is just a few pages in my regular sketchbook or journal. For the last few years, I've used a smallish 3-ring binder pages I have customized and punched to fit. I use different kinds of paper depending on what I'm recording on it: graph paper for recording my veggie plots and for sketching ideas for construction projects. Heavy sketch paper for botanical and nature sketches and for just doodling ideas. Vellum envelopes with holes punched in them, for keeping plant labels and other odds and ends (receipts, etc)... plastic sleeves with 3-holes, these are handy for seed packets, photos, loose seeds, etc.

I have my journal divided into sections with pocketed dividers - the pockets come in handy for keeping loose stuff. If you make your own journal, you can make sections to fit the kind of information you want to keep about your garden. Here are some ideas for record-keeping and inspiration:

• a plan view of the garden, drawn on plain or graph paper: this is not only to remember the layout of your plant beds and locations of special plants -- but also to help you imagine improvements you might want to make
• weather records for our city and growing zone: first and last frost dates, rainfall, snowfall, and extreme events such as hail storms (which always seem to hit us hardest the week after we have set out our basil and tomato seedlings!)
  

• seed packets and plant labels: if you have a sheet for each plant, you can keep the packets in envelopes taped to the back of the sheets. Otherwise, a separate section for seed packets and plant labels is a good idea. I like to keep track of the nurseries where I bought potted plants

• photos and/or sketches to document what's growing throughout the year. I pair the photos with sheets on the individual plants. I also have a section for just beautiful photos of my garden

• garden tasks: wish I were organized enough to write down the dates I did (or should have done) certain tasks like weeding, planting and pruning. It would help with planning

• wish list: this is a fat section for me -- there is always something I'd like to buy or make myself: wind chimes, plants, compost, a teak recliner, porch swing ... or hardscape improvements I want: a deck, french doors, a little patio ... dream on. Writing these things down or keeping clippings and photos helps me remember and prioritize. I had a garden pond on the wish list for years. A couple of years ago, my son, Mickey helped me make it a reality. So it works!
  
• clipped or photocopied articles, reference stuff from books and gardening handouts. This is a good place to keep reference materials from garden lectures or how-to courses, or instructions for making things for your garden
• use the journal to keep pressed leaves and flowers from your garden.
  

• Or instead of pressing the plant parts, if you're feeling creative, make sunprints using light-sensitive print paper.
  

• I keep a running list of wildlife I've seen in our garden, which is a certified wildlife habitat garden now

• quotes about gardening and my thoughts inspired by connecting with my garden

• ideas for cooking from the garden and recipes for salsa, pesto, quiche...

• I try to keep track of how much I spend in the garden. It's always more than I thought! Sometimes I don't keep the receipts, I just write the costs down kind of haphazardly
  

some links:

• How to make your own Garden Journal lots more information about materials you'll need and how to get started --they even have some templates you can download for plant record-sheets

• Keeping a Garden Journal: what to use for a garden journal and what to keep in it

• Bitter Betty: I love her sense of humor and highly recommend this blog post. Will her garden ever sit up and pay attention?

• Journaling Life has some good links to resources, along with ideas for what to keep in your garden journal

Thank you to Denise, Leslie, Gayla, Lisa and BitterBetty
for allowing the use of their garden notebooks in this post.
Please click on the photos to find links to their photo pages.

Wandering: a Meditation on Life, Art, Trees, Creativity

Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness. -- from Wandering

Wandering, Hermann Hesse's collection of succinct prose, poetry and sketches, was on my bookshelf as a young college student. I don't know where it is now -- it's the kind of book you want to keep around to read over and over again, yet at the same time, a book that begs to be passed around from friend to friend ... Hesse's writing is simple, profound, mystical (in a Earth-mystic sense) poetic, inspiring. This is one of my favorite books ever.

I originally put together this post for Tim's woodworking site, ShopTalk. Inspired by the Festival of Trees, I decided to illustrate my favorite passage from Hesse (on listening to trees) with some of my photos and share it with my readers on Raven's Nest.

Sit down anywhere you like, on a wall, a stone, a tree stump, on the grass or the earth: everywhere they surround you, a painting and a poem, everywhere the world resonates beautifully and happily around you. -- from Wandering

... For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.

... Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end ... I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! ... Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the Mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the Mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is Mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives that ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them ...

Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

-- excerpt from Hermann Hesse: Wandering translated by James Wright, © 1974

Hummingbird with Exquisite Decorating Taste

A hummingbird with a taste for festive home decor, this little bird built her nest right on a string of Christmas lights. You can see the scale of the nest and eggs by comparing their size to the size of the wire. They're tiny!

These two photos were taken by my sister, Kathy Allen, who lives with her family on Vancouver Island. The photos are copyrighted by her. Please do not reproduce these photos in any way. Thank you.