Thank you Mom!! I love my ferns!!

This Mother's Day weekend we visited my mom up in Bellingham, WA. It's a great place with even less sunshine than Seattle, but somehow or another, she's managed to make an incredible garden that grows like...a weed.

She has everything in her garden and she's happy to share it. As we walked through, she was like "Ooh, do you want that? or this?" I'd be a fool to say no to free plants! I left with two great plants that I don't know what in the world they are and then three tufts of painted ferns. I can't tell you how excited I was for the ferns, but they were the trickiest bit.

Ferns typically grow in the shade, deep in the forest where it's cool and dim...not out in the open. True, living in Seattle is like living in the shade, but that's more of an emotional truth than a reality. To ferns, sitting out in the open in Seattle is feels like being planted in the desert. My solution: find the shadiest part of my garden and strategically plant taller vegetation around it to create a canopy.
To do this, I transplanted some of the millions of hostas from the abandoned neighbor-yard and an enormous columbine from behind the shed. Those, mixed with the tall mystery plant from my mom, made a great environment for my new ferns. Hopefully the nearby euphorbia and rhododendron will provide some shelter as well.

I started this new section of my garden in an unusual spot, right between my cottage stone wall and fence. I had to be careful when setting this up as I don't want my fence to rot. Lining the area with rocks and sticks, I created a great drainage system. The slats in the fence help too. On top of this, I added soil and formed small canals around the cottage stone to help standing water move. At the end of the bed a built a small rock wall to hold up the soil as well as allow the necessary drainage. I think it looks pretty amazing myself, but then I'm prone to enjoy my projects more than others.

I can't wait to see how my new ferns take off! I think they will do pretty well assuming that I have provided enough shade. Wish us luck!

A sustainable artist: Cindy Mangutz

This weekend is Mother's Day. We spent a great day with my mom and then came over to Port Townsend to visit Chris's mom. It was really fun to hang out with the fam, spend some time in the sun and the go mingle with the locals in downtown Port Townsend. Right off of the main drag, Water Street, there was an arts and crafts fair going on. All sorts of stuff going on from jewelery makers to oil painters working live in front of you.

One of the artisans we came across was Cindy Mangutz. As it turns out, she was Chris' neighbor growing up. I've got to say, she is the most welcoming and amazing person to talk to. You're thinking, "what in the world does this have to do with anything?" Well I'll tell ya: Cindy and her husband Steve create sustainable art. In her own right, Cindy is an incredible artist with a huge expanse of work. Today, I saw a different side. She and her husband take art, function, sustainability and horticulture and blend it all together to make some incredibly unusual pieces.

Using wood coming from their property, they've created some amazing things. What caught my eye the most were two chairs. One was a beautiful maple chair, meant for the indoors, that was perfectly crafted and begged to be sat in. The other was a chair with a flowering seat. Thin cedar branches woven through the structure, this piece of furniture was also home to a living bouquet. The chair was structurally sound and visually appealing, but meant for the garden. I was jealous that another visitor made the purchase before we could, but we'll see what the future holds...