Tony Soprano's Ducks

Any of you Sopranos fans will certainly remember Tony's attachment to the wild ducks that took up residence in his pool. And the depression plus anxiety attack he suffered when they left ("those goddamn ducks").

Well, I get it now. I've become so invested in the hummingbird saga outside my window that I began suffering a certain self-indulgent melancholy this weekend when I realized they'd soon be gone ... and I'd be left behind.

Though I don't have anything nearly this good to bring to my own therapist today:

Tony describes a dream where a bird steals his penis — Dr. Melfi extrapolates from this to reveal that Tony projected his love for his family onto the family of ducks living in his back pool and this brings him to tears, to his consternation. She tells him that their flight from the pool sparked his panic attack through the overwhelming fear of somehow losing his own family.

Yeah, yeah ... meanwhile here in the real world, the three amigos in the nest outside my window are increasingly invisible to my camera's eye because new spring foliage on the tree they're in is filling in fast. That tree, incidentally, is Azara dentata from Chile, and in a few weeks it'll be giddy with slightly fragrant yellow pom-poms. Food for the kids? Not sure it'll suit their tastes. Anyone know?

First fuzz, then beak, then wings and now eyes open, awaiting mama and the next feed. How long before this little creature leaves the nest? Sooner than this mama's going to be ready, of that I'm sure.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I shot a short video this weekend while the little hummers rode out a rainstorm. Soon as I download the appropriate 60s hit (can you guess), I'll post the clip ...

1:30 PM ET | 03-31-2008 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

First Wing and a Prayer

Much to my delight, the three little hummers continue their journey on the planet. One is particularly good at pushing up out of the crowd at feeding time, so much so that I frequently can't even see the other two and wonder if there's enough to go around (what, me, the third of three?). But this morning there are three distinct tooth picks popping out from all the fuzz.

This is from a few moments ago, my first glimpse of a wing to the far right of the nest. I'm also seeing the beginnings of heads attached to the beaks. Mama tends to take most of the day off, and doesn't even bother with my increased putzing around. After all, a girl's gotta garden.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Still no wiser about hummingbirds -- except the advice I've gotten from you folks -- I am growing accustomed to the rhythms of their day and can generally grab a few shots at dinner time @5pm.

The wind was blowing madly during feeding time but the family coasted as if riding the waves. Last night was the first time I saw this much baby beak. In between sightings, I do try and have a life.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

12:46 PM ET | 03-27-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Landscape Under Glass Glows

Some breaking news from that blogger's best friend, NPR's Andy Carvin...

Conde Nast has just published its list of the seven wonders of the architectural world, and the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery is on it.

If you were around in February, you might have taken refuge with me there, DC's most-see glassed-in garden.

12:30 PM ET | 03-26-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Make That Three

All hummingbird babies present and accounted for; to watch the feeding is just astonishing. Does anyone know if I should put out a sugar water feeder so Mom doesn't have to work so hard? Both my grevillea and acacia are blooming -- as is the manzanita -- but I don't think they're exactly feast material. Suggestions most welcome; as I've said, I ain't no birder.

I'm not sure how long the pix police are going to let me keep this posted, it absolutely does not conform to standard, but I thought it would do in a pinch until I have better light. This pix was taken from inside my house and on top of the light challenge, my windows are a bit, um, besmushed.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

9:18 PM ET | 03-24-2008 | permalink | comments (10) | e-mail post

Hummer of a Baby!

Just spotted the baby that hatched a few wks ago outside my living room window. Actually I can't see much but a fast-beating fuzzy lump, and a picture is impossible without pruning the obscuring foliage. So forget that...

Mother hummer has been increasingly absent; I now suspect she's on a shrub or tree nearby keeping watch. She was quite dutiful the other day during a particularly wet downpour; I'm happy to report that today's looking sunny (if chilly), altogether a good day to be a newborn in a snug nest.

Mama Hummer was valiantly unmoved during a horrific downpour the other day. I took this wing-wet pix with my friend Mar's lovely camera but alas, she's taken it back.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

11:56 AM ET | 03-24-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

Tips from an Amazon Gardener

As heard on radio, as seen in the Amazon, and now, on the TP blog, here are Dona Raimunda's chives protected against jealousy and evil by sentinel eggs.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

Dona Raimunda is a rock star. A meteor shower. A force of nature. It's amazing to me how that much personality can be contained in such a diminutive body.

She is the mother of farmer Rosario Costa Cabral, the Amazon farmer featured in these pages a few months back. Rosario has made a name for herself growing crops never before tried in her region of the Amazon flood plain, where she's encouraged other farmers to branch out.

However...
Whereas Rosario relies on observation and experimentation, her mother channels ancestral know-how.

Dona Raimunda regularly wanders past her seedlings in the course of the day and blows a bit of her tobacco smoke from her pipe to keep away the crickets and discourage butterflies from depositing their eggs.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Dona Raimunda is who-knows-what-generation caboclo, the Brazilian word for the ethnically mixed people who live in the Amazon. In my Weekend Edition Sunda radio piece about Dona Raimunda, I listed six tongue-in-cheek gardening tips I'd observed watching this caboclo gardener at work. My hunch is they'll make a whole lot more sense if you care to join me in her Amazon garden but in any case, here they are:

#1 Mind how you talk to your plants
#2 Cucumbers and cabbage are sworn enemies and cannot be grown together
#3 Chili peppers are stubbornly reluctantly to let go of their fruit
#4 Plants are no co-dependent; they don't care if you garden in a bad mood
#5 Ugly chives save lives (a reference to putting anti-evil eggs in the vegetable garden)
#6 Smokers are welcome in the garden

She is a rare beauty, the dona, but this isn't a very typical pose. She's usually up to something: telling stories, making acai, and of course, talking to her plants.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

3:31 PM ET | 03-22-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Hummer Scare

So you know about the Anna's hummingbird nesting right outside my window, right? When I went out an hour ago, she was gone. What a scare I had, knowing absolutely nothing about bird behavior and what she might be off doing. I thought I'd irrevocably aggravated her with all the picture-taking.

Anyway, Anna's back and here's a shot I from a little while ago with friend and neighbor Mar's camera. (Still haven't replaced my ruin.)

This time you can see some of her green markings, both on her feathers and on her fabulous nest.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

So I'm now thinking, webcam. Does anyone know anything about them? Would it be nuts?

9:35 PM ET | 03-18-2008 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

Hummer Outside My Home

While pruning over the wkend, I was continually dive-bombed by a gorgeous hummingbird. Couldn't figure it out. It took an eagle-eyed guest who stopped by to immediately see what I'd been missing -- a hummingbird sitting on her nest on a limb right outside my living room window!

Unfortunately, I left my little digital outside overnight and it's now dead in the water. But I'll replace it tomorrow so I can chronicle the life gracing my (oh, so) unworthy garden.

Here she is, unflinching through the cold, wet and hail of a typical March day in Portland. Not being much of a birder, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it's more than likely she's Calypte anna, Anna's hummingbird.

photo credit: Michelle Dodgson

 

11:03 PM ET | 03-16-2008 | permalink | comments (18) | e-mail post

Bloom and Bust

First, the bust. Progress of the side yard project, What Would Eve Do?, would thus far indicate that Eve wouldn't do a damn thing, at least not this week. Except perhaps obsess over the budget, or and whether or not her home was worth putting more money into, in which case I'm definitely channeling her energy.

Now the bloom. I only noticed this first one yesterday when I took out the short-tine rubber rake (my favorite tool) and started scraping off winter's brick-thick layer of leaves. Many of you will recognize this flower immediately, but let's give the more easily amused among us a chance to guess.

The plant in question have dozens of such wonderful dangling double flowers on long fleshy stems. One thing it ain't (hint hint): a bore.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

This lovely plant's complete invisibility in my garden, hiding as it does behind a variegated yellow phormium, is proof enough that it's time to get out the drainage spade and rearrange the perennials. Remind me, somebody, when I replace that beloved, misplaced spade...

And for delicacy #2, I've been watching this upright flower cluster burst open over the last few days. If you love the straight species in this genus as I do, you could i.d. this big-leaved girl from across the block. But that doesn't mean she isn't still a revelation when it comes to flowering shrubs.

I wish I could say I stood outside and waited for just the right raindrops and just the right overcast light, but today everyone's a winner -- particularly if you're a frog or a plant.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

4:32 PM ET | 03-13-2008 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

We Have a Winner

The spanking new series chronicling the re-design of my side yard is named:

WHAT WOULD EVE DO? Reviving A Neglected Garden

Thank you, thank you for the 150 suggestions you folks came up with in the past few days. So many great ones, and I intend to use quite a number of them, as I organize and record what I hope will be a primer for making imaginative use of boring, barren, and neglected garden spaces.

Runner-ups I look forward to working into the series include:

Order in the Courtyard!
The Plot Awakens
Till Tomorrow
The Lonely Fountain
My Other Yard is Fabulous
The Grateful Bed
Not In My Backyard!

And last, most certainly least: Ketzel Levine has a Bad Garden. Amen.

Starting Monday, EVE gets a seemingly generous budget which will likely turn out to be completely inadequate. And in case you missed it, find out why necessity really is the mother of invention: the backstory on the fountain.

2:13 PM ET | 03- 7-2008 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

Procrastination

I'm avoiding every conceivable commitment today.

From picking up the damn watering can (as you have strongly suggested), to deciding on the Garden Re-Do series name, to writing up the details of yesterday's first design consult with Nani (aka The Nani Diaries, as you so cleverly put it).

Instead, as the living room darkens around me, I'm sitting here like a lump eating peanut butter out of a jar and wondering where I'm going to find the energy and the money to get going on this garden project.

Which is exactly why the garden looks the way it does, duh!

Maybe this is part of the design process? Stucc-Oh'd? (That's from you, too). I've been envisioning this space for so many years, have solicited advice from so many smart people, and have planted it already in so many actual and imaginery ways, I can't see anything out there but my own lethargy.

I can't even commit to a budget. In yesterday's meeting I said "5 K". It seems a lot of money for a mere 360 sq ft (particularly after what the fountain alone cost me last year) but a beautiful courtyard will offset the downside of remaining in this house, and I really don't want to move.

You mean we haven't talked about that downside? About why I built that massive fountain to begin with? About my desperate need to mask the noise generated by the diners, drinkers and cigarette smokers who sit at outdoor tables on the other side of my fence? Like INCHES away from my life?

Yes, gentle readers, necessity really IS the mother of invention. And that's why my tiny side yard has a huge 7' high x 12' wide concrete fountain. Its recirculating water (driven by a monster pump through three wide scuppers which spill from on high) makes a VERY LOUD SOUND.

And yet, through it all, I can still hear the peanut butter calling....

7:54 PM ET | 03- 6-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

The Unnamed Series, Day Two

I've received quite a few clever title ideas for my TP garden redux series as I tackle 360 square feet of precious outdoor living space. Thanks, guys.

My favorite thus far is "What Would Eve Do?", which we could also just call "Eve", as in how's Eve coming, what's Eve's budget, when does Eve break ground?

Although after my experience today with my friend and design consultant Nani Waddoups, I'm thinking it'd be better named Garden Jewel on a Gravel Budget.

9:34 PM ET | 03- 4-2008 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

Name That Series!

What series, you ask? The series beginning today, right now, here it comes...as I reveal just how wretched my side garden looks, take you step-by-step through my re-design process, and emerge at the other end with an urban courtyard that suits all my criteria.

Criteria #1: A Life Without Shame.

So consider me "out", a plantswoman with a barren garden, which isn't just in its winter doldrums, oh no. It's looked this way since the fountain went in last summer. Alright, it's looked this way for a while. Two years, ya' happy now? I have nothing left to hide -- at least nothing left I'm crazy enough to reveal -- and so we begin to take stock of what we're working with and get started with our design process. But first, we need a design series name!

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

The garden seems the classic courtyard, only 12' wide and 30' long. Its centerpiece is clearly the three-spouted stucco fountain. That's a story unto itself, which I look forward to going into later in this series -- the design team, process, pix, price, the whole shebang. Today, though, I'm meeting with my design collaborator Nani Waddoups -- the woman who helped me choose my house colors, and who I must reveal as a very close friend -- as we get a few ideas and considerations down on paper.

Nani is excrutiatingly organized and detail-oriented, so I'm going to our meeting with nothing more in my head than a few years' worth of fantasies and a strong desire for change, trusting her to scribble it down and turn it into the beginning of an action plan.

As for Criteria #1, consider it addressed by the launch of this series. No more shame! But now I need your help. What is this design series' name? Your options do NOT include:

A Garden Makeover
Designing A New Garden

or any such boring invitation to what promises to be a lively process for all of us (and a savings account buster for me). My first thought is The Druthers of Invention, but no way will my cheery/cheeky web producer (have you met Wright?) use it.

But he might use yours...

1:29 PM ET | 03- 4-2008 | permalink | comments (152) | e-mail post

F-E-C-U-N-D!

I admit the word doesn't have quite the energy of R-E-S-P-E-C-T — a la Aretha — but I could spell it out and shout it out all the same. After a month in D.C. (and I loved every minute of it), I am back in the Pacific Northwest. This place is moist, lush, dense with smells and is excessively, embarrassingly, unrelentingly fecund!

Having spent a good deal of time in Dumbarton Oaks, I was doggone delirious to walk my own Penninsula Park and discover so many of the same fundamental design strengths: exquisite proportions, elegant paving patterns, bold lines (primarily boxwood), and a strong sense of identity.

On top of that, all the beautifully pruned specimens in the sunken rose garden were breaking bud (leaf bud, that is), and the huge formal fountain was throwing off fireworks of water and light.

Yes, and the sky was dark blue (the cusp of evening), the old-fashioned street lamps were aglow, and the air was swooning with the fragrance daphne. Shrubs of the stuff are tucked throughout the park and as with all daphne, I could smell them without knowing where they were.

Plus, not a soul was in the park but me and the beasts. I still have to pinch myself that I live a few blocks away.

HOWEVER ... as I write from the isolation of an office where my only colleagues are canine, I am now keenly aware of the trade-off ...

AND SO ... given that the great joy of living here is the green of this Northwest world, I am recommitting myself to my long-neglected garden (I had back surgery a year ago and just never made it back into swing).

INTRODUCING: The Great Garden Makeover. Photos, interviews, step-by-step instructions, all here in the weeks to come on TALKING PLANTS! I'm collaborating with a few people and my first meeting is tomorrow, so I'll post notes shortly after.

11:22 AM ET | 03- 3-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post