Maureen – Page 19 – Water :: Earth :: Wind

04.10.201309.20.2022

Get into the head of an artist at work

I collect images, mostly with my own camera, but also from old manuscripts, ephemera, found objects, cultural flotsam and jetsam. Sometimes I do digital collage, other times I work with paper, paint, drawing tools and glue in 2 dimensions or I make 3D mixed media sculptures. I work in layers, often more than twenty or thirty layers, as I am trying to create something with visual, symbolic and spiritual depth. The stories of the objects I use are glued into the collage layers. Emotions, connections, poetry, unspoken words, events, songs, dreams and spiritual meaning are embedded in there too. Often the layering will only be apparent on a subtle level. What’s important to me is that I know the layers are underneath somewhere, giving the piece personal depth and intimacy.

When I am looking at one of my own art pieces or someone else’s, I tend to judge it based on first my emotional response, then on the craftsmanship of the execution and finally based on some intellectual understanding of the piece. Sometimes I want my work to be wild and spontaneous and passionate. Other times I’m aiming for an almost cool control, which in itself can convey an experience or an emotion as effectively as a more passionate piece. It’s hard to say what makes a piece of art “work” for me. It’s intuitive. Can I connect with something the artist was trying to say? Or does it leave me cold? Really, it’s such a personal thing … one viewer may respond positively to a piece that another person thinks is boring.

Digital painting with roots — Ghost Roots Tapestry

Here’s a little about my altered photograph (above.) The main image I used was of the lower trunk of a tree. When I first saw the tree, the roots looked like they were twining together in a Celtic knot shape. I have some background in fiberarts and weaving, and I thought of trying to bring out this aspect of the roots — that they were threaded and knotted together, not only around each other, but around the rocks and pebbles on the lake shore and down into the earth, around the leaves and soil and micro-organisms that live down there. I wanted to make something that looked like a tapestry, like threads and cords and knots, textural and subtle and fine.

I used Photoshop to alter the tree roots photo by blending it with a photo of the frozen lake surface and another, of branches against sky. When I am doing this work, I choose photos based on their dominant shapes, lines and textures. For example, to create the look of a tapestry, I needed lots of texture, so I chose photos with lots of different line weights and shapes going on. The different textures of these three photos contribute to the feeling of woven cloth. Likewise, if I had been going for a minimalist feeling, I might have chosen only photos with simple shapes and few lines.After I played around with the colours and blended the three main photos, I rotated multiple copies of the image and blended many layers to make something like a tapestry with the appearance of depth and criss-crossing threads. I like that it’s not perfectly symmetrical … very much like my actual woven tapestries used to turn out.

I put together an album of images I used in the two pieces, Ghost Roots Tapestry and Woodland and Icon with Cross. You can see it here. I call this group of images, Dead of Winter. Sometimes I come up with a title for a series that almost contradicts how I really feel about the subject of the series. Yet to me, it fits. I hope the title makes people stop and read it twice, to puzzle out why I might have chosen those words.

In this case, dead is the opposite of what I think winter is. Winter is very much alive — it is just sleeping; it is the Earth dreaming, growing secretly underground, holding the light of short winter days in her heart, in her belly, holding it in until everything is ready to leap out again, be born, and come back to the warmth and the air and the green. It is a time for meditation, concentration, inner-focus, silence and dreams and spiritual contemplation. With that in mind, I tried to bring out the subtle, quiet spirit of leafless trees, frozen water, and strong, connected roots.

Not all of the photos in this group are altered. In fact, some are just as they came out of my camera. But they all belong together because of the thread of winter-quiet.

03.30.201303.24.2023

Healthy Spring Bean Salad — Eat to Live Style

03.30.201303.24.2023

Eat to Live Nutritarian Adventure

Tim and I have embarked on a new food adventure. We are becoming “Nutritarians.” We have changed our diet mainly to deal with some health issues, to become stronger and healthier, and to live a better quality of life in our older years. Tim and I have eaten what we always thought was a very healthy diet: very little processed food; at least half of what we ate was organic; lots of veggies, fruits, whole grains and nuts; and 95% of what we ate was homemade from scratch. Well, we learned that our tendency to eat bread and other baked goods, cheese, oils (even though they were healthy oils) some meat, and lots of grains (even though they were whole grains) wasn’t so good for our bodies. Neither was the real maple syrup, honey, agave nectar or molasses we used to sweeten some of our food. Oooo boy — this is going to be different: I love cheese. I love baking. Baking goodies and giving them away to people I care about is one of my “languages of love.”

And I adore a good cup of strong coffee. Coffee isn’t so good. Neither is that glass of red wine we liked having with our dinners. Bummer.

Okay, I heard about this Eat to Live program on PBS during their pledge drive on March 15th. It made sense to me, so I ordered the books, Eat to Live and Eat for Health by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. They came several days ago, but I didn’t wait for the books to get started. I took notes during the PBS program and we started transitioning to Dr. Fuhrman’s way of eating right away. I guess I’m just at a point in my life when it’s time. It’s time to do something about the things that have been bugging me more and more as I get older. Tim is the best husband ever, too. He agreed to change his eating habits with me, so we can support each other to make this life-long change.

So far, I feel much better and I’m sleeping better. In two weeks I have lost some weight, my heartburn isn’t nearly as bad as it was, and I have more energy. I will spare you the other details. The change to a nutritarian diet with a huge emphasis on colorful vegetables and fruits (the micronutrient-dense foods (Greens, Berrries, Onions, Mushrooms, Beans and Seeds) hasn’t been as hard as I imagined it would be. The most difficult thing for me is seeing pictures of delicious looking baked goods, or walking by the cheese counter at the deli. Also the lack of salt. I always thought we were pretty good about not using much salt, but I guess we did. This food tastes bland. Beans without salt? Come on! Well, I am getting used to it.

When Dr. Fuhrman’s books came, I read Eat to Live cover to cover on the first night. The next day I cleared out our kitchen from 90% of the foods we are not supposed to eat. (The things I left are things Tim can eat because he’s not doing the strict 6-week plan like I am and some we use to make Charlie’s raw dog food) I gave away several boxes of really good food to friends and some to our local food bank. It felt great to do that. Having cleared the kitchen makes it so much easier for me to decide what to eat. I can eat almost anything in our fridge, freezer or cupboards.

Here’s what our fridge looks like now. We buy 95% of our groceries at Costco. I’m glad we have a Costco in our town.

It’s stuffed! Most of what you see in the fridge is from Costco: 2 boxes of spinach and a box of mixed lettuce; a big bag of baby kale, green beans, sugar snap peas, brussel sprouts, cabbage, baby bell peppers, giant bag of carrots, some yams, celery, onions, baby portabello mushrooms, Italian parsley, cilantro, asparagus, grape tomatoes, big bag of lemons, satsumas, avocados, tangelos, granny smith apples, pink lady apples, limes, blueberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, mangoes and pineapple. From our locally owned Thriftway, we have organic local eggs (left from before I started this thing) almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk, tofu, mustards, greek olives and some assorted condiments.

On the top shelf next to the spinach boxes, you can see two green-lidded containers stacked on top of each other. This is one day’s food for Charlie. His raw food “salad” on top and his meat on the bottom. I take it out a couple of hours before we feed him so it comes to room temperature.

Here is our food cupboard, mostly cleared of the forbidden stuff (I’m embarrassed of the old shelves but hey, we are remodeling our kitchen this summer!)

That’s pretty much it for the food in our house except for the freezer (below the fridge;) a smaller cupboard with teas; an open shelf with large glass jars full of beans, quinoa, oats and brown rice; and our spice shelf. The freezer is half-full of Charlie’s food while the other half has frozen berries, bananas, cranberries, edamame beans and other frozen veggies, some tilapia filets and last summer’s pesto (I couldn’t bear to get rid of that)

So now you have an inside view of our newly-even-healthier kitchen. Stay tuned for a recipe I made up today for scrumptious spring salad. Yummm.

03.22.201309.20.2022

Earth Day, Earth Sculptures to Remind Us

living mud sculpture Mud Maid — Mud Maid, a sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill at the Lost Gardens of Heligan

Gaia: the divine goddess, the Earth Mother … she sleeps so peacefully, waiting to wake up, dreaming her dreams of the seasons, of growth and transformation, of life and light. She rests in the dark cool shadows of winter and early spring, rejuvenating internally and she will awaken with the sunlight, bird song and the gradual warming of her body.

As I researched Earth Mother/ Gaia for my Earth Day post, I came across many living earth sculptures made of mud over an armature with plants growing all over them. I loved the original Mud Maid at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, commissioned by Sue and Pete Hill a brother/sister artist duo. This sculpture along with the Giant’s Head at the same gardens, seems to have inspired a host of other mud sculptures in both public and private gardens.

We are her children:

Mud Maid earth sculpture — Mud Maid and Child

The Mud Maid was built as a hollow framework of timber and windbreak netting, then completely covered with sticky mud. Her hands and face are a mixture of mud, sand, and cement which were first coated with yogurt so lichens would grow. On her head, Woodsedge and Montbretia were planted while Ivy was trained to grow as her clothing. — Angel (Environmental Graffiti)

Here is a goddess sculpture at the 2006 Chelsea Garden show, “Dreaming Girl,” also by Sue and Pete Hill.

the Dreaming Girl by Sue and Pete Hill — The Dreaming Girl, a living mud-sculpture by Sue and Pete Hill in Cornwall, UK

living mud sculpture Dreaming Girl — Detail of The Dreaming Girl

PHOTO CREDITS AND LINKS:

Quote about the Mud Maid
Mud Maid and Child © Copyright Chris Allen and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Mud Maid in Summer
The Dreaming Girl at Chelsea Gardens Show
The Dreaming Girl detail
Eve

03.21.201309.20.2022

Water Conservation in the Garden: Principles of Xeriscaping

Pergola and Patio in WaterWise Garden by Native Design, Helena, Montana

World Water Day is tomorrow, March 22, 2013 and Earth Day on April 22 this year. Mother’s Day is on May 12th, a good day to honor our human mothers as well as our Earth Mother.

To celebrate World Water Day, I thought I’d write about water conservation, and include a number of photographs of gardens I have designed around Helena, Montana, using the 7 main priciples of Xeriscaping, or, as I like to say, WaterWise garden design. I hope you find some inspiration in these photos. If you have any questions about the gardens in this post, please email me or comment below. Thanks!

A colorful drought-tolerant vine that also smells delicious and attracts hummingbirds and butterflies, this hardy Honeysuckle vine also create shade and privacy on the back patio.

Front yards do not have to be just a few shrubs and trees surrounded by expanses of thirsty lawn. If you have a small property, make use of the front yard to create usable outdoor rooms. This waterwise garden provides plenty of privacy and several different activity zones in a little over 900 square feet. What was originally an open, dry lawn now has a 6 ft privacy fence, arbor and gate, two patios, a shade pergola and a colorful xeriscaped garden. (see concept sketch below)

More often than not, suburban back yards are just a weekend mowing and watering chore. Why not replace a huge lawn with a series of decks that are not only more attractive and easier to maintain — but add to the square footage of your liveable space? This deck in a WaterWise landscaped back yard provides at least four different “rooms,” one specifically designed for watching sunsets.

A privacy fence creates a whole different feeling in the backyard, making it perfect for quiet visits, reading or shaded dining on hot summer evenings. Birds are attracted to the running water in the pond, and butterflies feed on flowering perennials and vines.

Xeriscapes can include water features. Here, an overflowing urn appears to flow into a dry stream bed. The bright blue color and sound of bubbling water create a focal point in this garden.

Pondside plantings include native irises, corkscrew rush and tufted hair grass which will mature to a graceful arching clump grass

Rain chain near front door of courtyard garden, Native Design, Montana

Xeriscaped front yards do not have to be all gravel, juniper, yucca and potentilla. In fact, a well-designed xeriscape can look much more attractive and welcoming than a mostly-lawn entry garden. Here, sumac, hosta and native ferns share a plant bed next to the front porch, where a Japanese “rain chain” directs roof runoff into a drainage pipe disguised by a dry stream bed of black rocks. Spilling onto the stone paved front patio are drought-tolerant groundcovers such as creeping thyme, artemisia and snow-in-summer.

A xeriscaped entry garden with just the smallest circular lawn for a cool green sitting spot. The rest of this front yard is slate walkways and patio, a Mediterranean-style gravel garden, and planted terraces with aspens for shade and privacy

Slate paving provides a comfortable spot for guests to approach the front garden of this home. Steps leading down into the entry garden are flanked by aspen trees, daylilies, ornamental grasses and colorful flowering perennials.

A grand entry experience greets guest to this home built on a steep slope above the road. There is no lawn at all in this xeriscaped garden. Instead the slope is tamed by a series of stone terraces and slate steps that create lots of liveable space on an otherwise unusable slope. The dramatic focal point of this planting is Karl Foerster Feathered Reed Grass.

Enter this driveway through a small grove of native aspens mulched with smooth river rock. The aspens frame visitor’s view of this grand brick home in the Helena Valley.

A drainage problem prompted design of this dry stream bed to handle roof runoff during storms. Boulders and pebbles meander through drought-tolerant shrubs and perennials with a clump of aspens. Daylilies, Siberian Iris, Coreopsis, Potentilla, Russian Sage and Arctic Willow make a striking accent planting near the front door of this home.

Xeriscapes can include vines such as this Hops vine to cover unsightly fences and block walls, or to create shade and privacy as in this photo. Here, the hops grows on a trellis on the west side of a porch, creating a cool spot to sit outside on hot summer evenings.

In our hot, dry Helena summers, shade is an important landscape element and fits well with any xeriscape design. Here, a pergola attached to the south side of this home provides shade not only for the stone patio, but also for some of the plants in the beds around it. Honeysuckle and Clematis vines are planted at the base of each post to eventually grow up and over the pergola. Aspens planted in clumps augment the pergola’s shade as they mature.

A cedar pergola planted with vines shades this stone patio and bench-height retaining wall. Xeriscape principles followed in this design include thoughtful planning, low-volume irrigation, drought tolerant plants located in groups according to their water requirements, low-maintenance, improved soil, shredded bark mulch to retain soil moisture, extremely small lawn area and a native grass meadow.

A xeriscaped back yard has two circular stamped-concrete patios shaded by a small aspen grove, stone terraces planted with native drought-tolerant plants and a very small lawn area.

This could be a front garden or back yard dining area. There is no lawn at all in this xeriscape. Instead the homeowners chose to install a paved patio surrounded by this stone retaining wall. Paved area tend to retain heat and can get uncomfortable in our hot summers. This patio has lots of cool shade provided by aspens and other trees, vines climing the walls and a cooling water feature that splashes down the stone wall, crisscrosses the patio and spills into a small reflecting pool. Plants are grouped according to the sun and water requirements, making watering and maintenance easier.

An alternative to lawn grass: these pavers are spaced a few inches apart with grass planted between them. This allows rainwater to permeate as well as gives visual interest and breaks up the expanse of hard material.

A native grass meadow was planted on this slope after construction of the home had disturbed the soils. The designer used all xeriscape techniques and mostly native plants to connect this contemporary home to it’s natural surroundings in the hills south of Helena.

An alternative to the big front lawn: a native grass meadow with boulder terracing punctuated with drought-tolerant mostly-native shrubs, trees and perennials.

To reduce the amount of bluegrass lawn in this front yard, the owners of this Helena Valley home put in large, bermed plant beds with many native plants such as aspen, potentilla, juniper, dwarf pine and artemisia. The soil was improved before planting and under the river rock mulch is a low-volume drip irrigation system

To reduce the amount of bluegrass lawn in this front yard, the owners of this Reeders Village home installed several large, mulched plant beds with drought-tolerant plants such as amur maple, flowering crab, potentilla, blue fescue, blue oat grass, rocky mountain juniper, dwarf spruce, snow in summer and artemisia. The soil was improved before planting and under the mulch is a low-volume drip irrigation system.

This Lakeside home replaced half of it’s thirsty bluegrass front lawn with a meandering gravel path, stone steps and a perennial garden under the mature trees. This is how visitors approach the front entry: much more welcoming than it was before these changes.

One principle of Xeriscaping is to group plants into zones according to their growing requirements, especially water requirements. Here, an isolated bed of shade-loving plants separates a lower patio from the upper one. Hosta, Maiden Pinks, Lady Fern and Coralbells thrive in the same bed.

To be continued … check back for more photos, more details and more inspiration!

03.16.201309.20.2022

Looking to nature for inspiration

Study for Lovejoy Fountain by Lawrence Halprin

HalprinWaterFeature1 — Lovejoy Fountain in Portland, Oregon design by Lawrence Halprin

Note: this is a 2005 post I have resurrected. I tried to update links, but if you find a broken link please let me know. Thank you!

A discussion on Garden Web about water feature trends got me thinking what exactly is it that makes a well designed water feature?

I first learned of Lawrence Halprin in landscape architecture school a very long time ago … I was impressed by the 100’s of sketchbooks he had filled over the years. Of particular interest to me were his sketch studies of waterfalls, creeks, plunge pools, eddies and other water shapes in mountain creeks and rivers … he spent countless hours studying the way water acts naturally so he could design the urban concrete fountains for which he is known. And his sketchbooks inspired me to do some of my own studies as I backpacked around the Washington Cascades, Olympic Mountains and places in Montana.

Some of my favorite Halprin fountains are Lovejoy Plaza and the Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Oregon along with Freeway Park in Seattle. In Washington DC, the FDR Memorial waterfalls are well used. You pretty much have to have studied the natural flow of water to make convincing monumental artificial falls like these, also at the FDR Memorial.

Halprin is by no means the only architect/landscape architect or designer noted for beautiful, appropriate and celebrated water features. But he is one who influenced me, influenced the way I design and the way I look to nature for guidance, for ideas, for inspiration.

03.15.201309.20.2022

Seen :: Hitchhiker Tricks

like lines of a poem, tendrils, stems
and seeds of a hitchhiker weed
twist, turn and stick in my memory

03.13.201309.20.2022

Water Features in the Garden: How to Visually Connect Them

Garden features such as urns, ponds and small flowing streams can add to your enjoyment of the garden as well as connect the different parts of your garden together.

Here is an example of an outdoor room with two water features. The water features — a flowing urn and a pond — are separated by a distance of about 25 feet in this garden. We needed a design solution to visually connect them. The garden’s pond is located next to a low deck and appears to extend under the deck. The second water feature is an overflowing urn fountain on the other side of the small garden (in the photo above, look for the blue urn, barely visible behind the ornamental grasses.) The water flows over the rim of the urn and disappears into a hidden reservoir under the container. We wanted to visually and psychologically connect the urn fountain with the small garden pond as well as solve a drainage problem.

Our 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 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 very 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 montage, you can see the rough sketch I made before we started construction. It’s almost impossible to design the exact layout of water features, when working with boulders and other natural materials. Fortunately I was able to stay involved in the construction process to make sure the final results matched what was in my head. I also owe much of the credit to the contractor who installed the water feature — he was sensitive to the same forces of nature I observe, and we worked well together.

If you want to design water features in a “natural” style, consider water’s natural behavior — particularly the way water affects the environment through which it flows. Take a hike in the mountains and observe the way gravel and cobbles fill the nooks and crannies between boulders lin a tumbling mountain stream. Gravel is lighter than boulders, so it is picked up and carried by water more readily than the larger stones. Spring runoff and high flows are strong enough to move boulders so these are shifted until they get stuck in a tumbly looking pattern. If you live in a valley — there may be natural water features you can imitate. A stream or river can give you design clues in the shape of the meanders, the oxbows, the inner and outer curves and how the banks are sculpted by the flow. Where are the large rocks, if any? Where is the gravel deposited and is it all the same size?

What other garden features might benefit from an observation of nature in the design process? Ponds, boulder benches, stepping stones and other pathways, terraces, stone walls, even steps leading from one garden level to another. These will be topics in at least one future post so check back for more design inspiration.

Links that might help with designing garden features in a “Nature Inspired” style:

Here are some more photos from this garden installation and it’s first year. There are several nature-inspired garden features in this small private landscape project including dry-laid stone walls, shade structures, a wandering stepping stone pathway, boulder benches and a total absence of lawn. Click on any of the photos to see a larger version. Enjoy! And please comment if you have any questions about your own water feature. Thank you for reading!