Camas in December

Camas actually blooms in May, but I just installed this window I designed almost a year ago.  The prairie is put to rest for the winter and though music is going on as always, there is nothing to write about in that vein at the moment, but the prairie still blooms in our front door.

Here is what camas looks like, and I tried to create an abstract suggestion of it in stained glass.  The window was made by Darcy Lodge at The Stained Glass Co. in Lewiston, ID. and I think she did a great job.  I started with a drawing last February...

Then it look far longer than anyone anticipated to get this made because there was an odd bit of glass Darcy was trying to use for the camas leaves, and she'd get it all together and then it would crack and she'd have to take the window apart and replace the cracked piece.  Finally, though, late last month she had it done, and we had it laminated with glass.  I am so accustomed to having things not quite fit in this old house remodeling project I've been working on for more than 20 years that I was shocked to find that not only did this slip perfectly into the window opening, but somehow the sandwich of glass, stained glass, and glass was exactly the same thickness as the window opening.  Every once in awhile Murphy's Law doesn't apply, which is a good thing in this weather--no one wants a wide-open hole in their door in winter this far north!

In the studio and the prairie...

I went back to work on the CD of my gourd banjo music last week, and this time got a good recording of my arrangement of Isaac Albéniz's (1860-1909) famous piano piece, "Asturias (Leyenda)," played in stroke/clawhammer style.  You can listen to it on the "Music" page of my website.  Of course, it is more famous as a guitar piece; I think the most famous classical guitar transcription is by Andrés Segovia, and it is one of the standards of classical guitar repertoire.  I had worked it out c. 1985, but when I stopped playing the banjo in the late 80s, I let it slide with the rest of that repertoire.  I never recorded it.

I don't think the banjo needs to play classical European music; really it is built for an entirely different expression, and a lot of the pieces I worked out in the old days were easy to let go, but a few of them stuck with me, haunting me a little bit--I loved playing some of that music.  When I started playing this new gourd banjo, everything sounded different, and when I played through the bits of "Leyenda" and "Les Barricades Mystérieuses" I remembered, they sounded so gorgeous that I wanted to resurrect them, so I did.  I love playing them, and that's good enough for me.  I have also recorded the Vivaldi Lute Concerto in D that's on my first LP, but I'm playing a different part now.  I worked out the orchestral/continuo part on the gourd banjo, and Richard Kriehn plays the solo part on mandolin.  Again, it sounds so cool--how I could I not record this?!  So, in addition to the Gottschalk pieces (yeah, I've recorded two of them), I will be putting Vivaldi, Couperin, and Albéniz on this upcoming CD.  But I really am not a classical banjo player, whatever that would mean.  I just love playing those pieces.

In other news, it is planting season in the prairie.  After a demoralizing couple of hours yesterday, I have had to revise the plan somewhat.  I am not able to rake the entire 1.5 acres I had planned on raking.  There are areas where evil grass and storksbill, etc, are dying and dead, but the fibers of the plants are still in the soil and raking them out will kill me.  I have resolved to continue watching those areas and let the old grass and weeds decompose this winter and next year, and I will have a much easier time in those areas next fall.

There are, however, several areas--about six or seven--that were like that last year, and now this year it really is possible to rake out that dead stuff (it's still hard work, but...) and reveal lovely soil, clear of weeds.  I've decided to take them on, one at a time, rake them out (Dona helped me today--thanks, darlin'), plant them (native plant seeds generally just get sprinkled on the soil), and rake the dead stuff back over as a mulch.  This is different than the divot method I have used in the past, but divots seem to work only with a few species, and I want to try this method of raking out whole areas.  It was what the Palouse Conservation District people and Jacie Jensen of Thorn Creek Native Seeds recommend, so that's what I'm doing this year.  Here is the first area after Dona and I had raked it out today.

Then I planted...Blue-eyed Mary, Clarkia, Sticky geranium, Lomatium ambiguum, Silky lupine, Indian paintbrush with Idaho fescue seeds, Upland larkspur, and Fritillaria pudica.  A few handfuls of my BFI custom native grass seed mix lightly scattered around too--I don't want too much grass added to this area.  I just sprinkled them on the dirt, and then raked back the dead grass, making sure I put a light cover on everything.  We shall see...

The work begins...

I've gone back to work on my gourd banjo recording, just having finished a nice version of my "back-engineered" arrangement of Gottschalk's "Bamboula."  Of course, I've also dived headlong into the grant-supported phase of my prairie restoration.

I've planted all of the plants I purchased thus far, marking each one with a little green flag to keep track of each thing I've added to the project.  The seeds will come later, after I've done a little spraying of weeds and raked the areas where I'm adding seeds.  I took several photos yesterday, showing different views of the southeastern part of the prairie, where most of the intense planting is concentrated, hoping to create a photographic record of the transformation.

 

In the foreground of the image above is a little green flag marking one of the twenty spots where I planted an Indian paintbrush plant with an Idaho fescue plug and drizzled with a pinch of Idaho fescue seeds.  It sounds like a recipe!  However, Indian paintbrush requires a host plant to survive, and apparently Idaho fescue is a common host around here.  Pat Mason at Pleasant Hill Farm gave me the fescue plugs for the companion planting, and we thought that the drizzled fescue seeds were a good bet too. 

This last image shows the patch of camas bulbs I planted in a wet spot near the southeast corner of the property.  There I put 3-4 bulbs spread out in each hole and marked each hole with a flag.  As you can see, there is some native grass already established, as well as a few other plants and the 23-year-old Ponderosa pines.

I had one interesting problem with five of the plants I purchased from Plants of the Wild in Tekoa, WA., a problem I have run into before...Sometimes people sell a plant as a native, but the variety they are selling is actually more of a cultivated version of the plant.  This often happens around here with Gaillardia aristata, which in addition to being native here is also a popular garden plant.  The version you find in most nurseries has the red of the center of the flower running out to the petals, while the native (at least in this particular area) has the deep rust red center and rich orange-yellow petals.  Fortunately I have gotten that one going from seed I've collected down the road.

In the last few years there have been several businesses started locally that specialize in only plants/seeds collected from this particular area, and I got most of my items from Pleasant Hill Farm in Deary, ID and Thorn Creek Native Seeds in Genesee, ID--both businesses have this philosophy of focusing on local Palouse natives, but Pleasant Hill only had five Roundleaf alumroot (Heuchera cylindrica) plants, so I got five more from Plants of the Wild.  They are an older business, started back in 1979, and sometimes their plants are not the local native varieties.  Here is one of the alumroots I purchased from Pleasant Hill Farm, which look exactly like the ones growing up on Kamiak Butte nearby.

Next is an image of one of the five alumroots I purchased from Plants of the Wild.  This is obviously an entirely different variety!  Fortunately I only purchased five of these, which I put in the northwest part of the prairie where not everything is native. 

 I hope the other plants (native strawberry, camas bulbs, creeping Oregon grape) I purchased from Plants of the Wild are OK--they look fine.  It's frustrating to run into this problem though, making me feel fortunate that businesses like BFI Native Seeds in Moses Lake, WA (where I purchased my native grass seeds), Pleasant Hill Farm, and Thorn Creek Native Seeds exist.  Their products are fabulous.  But doing this sort of thing, one must be vigilant, I guess.

Big News on the Prairie!

Today's purchase from Pleasant Hill Farm, near Deary, ID:  Indian paintbrush (check out that bloom!), Idaho fescue starts (for companion planting with the paintbrush), Arrowleaf balsamroot, Tapertip penstemon, Missouri goldenrod, Western hawkweed, Prairie smoke, Purple sticky geranium, and Roundleaf alumroot.  

I have never gotten a grant for my work as a musician.  People have gotten grants for me to compose/record/perform music for them, or for their work including my music, but I have never gotten anywhere writing a grant.  So, it was a surprise when I got a call a month ago from Jennifer Boie at the Palouse Conservation District, asking me if I would like to apply for a grant for my work restoring my 2.5 acres of Palouse prairie.  Back in June a team from the PCD had come out here to see what I was doing with my prairie, so they were aware of this project, but I certainly never expected that anyone would actually help me with it.

I figured--what the heck--they knew what I was doing and thought it was worthy of an application, so I followed through.  And...I actually got the grant!  This is $2K worth of support!  I am required to work for 50 hours (I will probably put in many times that amount), but I can go out and buy some plants!  Besides the haul above, I ordered a bunch of seeds from Thorn Creek Native Seeds (in Genessee, ID), a bunch of plants from Plants of the Wild in Tekoa, WA, and BFI Native Seeds in Moses Lake, WA (who I never would have known about if folks at the PCD hadn't informed me about them) put together 15 pounds of a mix of four native grass species, not just those species, but the particular subtypes from this region of the Palouse.  I still have my big box of native plant seeds I've collected over the last year to plant as well.

I'm a little overwhelmed, but between planting all of this stuff in the next month or so, and whatever I purchase and plant next Spring, I will have mostly finished planting this prairie.  I will choose a new "standard view" for this project so I can show how things change in the southern part of the prairie as a result of this massive planting.  Stay tuned!   

Asters!

I've got a LOT of Western asters (Aster occidentalis) blooming in the prairie.  They are very happy here, and they were the one of the first native plant successes I had, the result being that the middle of the property has formidable mounds of them, and they have spread throughout the northern part of the property.  

In other news, it sounds like I can relax about Agoseris; it won't take over.  In fact, I am feeling bad that I may have sprayed a few of them over the last few years; it turns out that they aren't that easy to get established and that I'm pretty lucky that two have just shown up on their own.  How to pronounce it is still a mystery, however--is it "a-joe-SER-is" or "a-JAW-ser-is"?  "a-go-SER-is?" 

I have pulled about a dozen five-gallon-buckets of "China lettuce," medusahead grass, and a few other things, and after I had completely cleaned out everything, after a week there are still a few to find, including a few that have gone to seed (dang!).  Eradication of these things isn't easy. 

Agoseris: friendly or evil?

 Agoseris grandiflora, blooming in the prairie this morning

I've watched this plant growing all spring.  I wasn't sure if it was something I planted but it looked promising, so I left it alone.  Once it started blooming I was a little uncomfortable.  I identified it as Agoseris grandiflora, which is indeed a native perennial, but I have trouble getting past its similarity to a dandelion.  A huge dandelion, complete with the puffball seed heads.  So, right after I took this photo, I cut off all the blooms and gathered the seed heads (a few seeds had taken flight already).  I put off any decisions on how to handle this plant until next year.   

Scarlet gillia

Scarlet gillia in the prairie, summer evening drizzle.

This is not the best photo I shot from the porch after dinner, but it did the best job showing the substantial drift of Scarlet gillia (Ipomopsis aggregata) that is in full bloom in the prairie.  I apparently sewed this seed in just the right spot, since this biennial has reseeded itself for three 2-year cycles so far.  Many native plants are pretty subtle, but this one attracts questions, "What are those spiky red flowers out there?"  The hummingbirds and bees are insane for it.