Little Free Library #12129

Little Free Library #12129 is in action!  This has been on my project list for over a year, and I am glad to get it crossed off.

I love the idea of the Little Free Library, and I wanted to participate and spread the word, but I have no idea how or of it will get used.  But really, I like building things.

The Little Free Library organization has a wonderful mission:

• "To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide.  To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations."

I also I really like that they encourage reuse in building libraries and initially all the libraries were built with recycled materials.

Like most of my garden projects, I made this from materials that were reused or re-purposed and all form Home ReSource.  Mostly these are leftovers from the chicken coop construction, and it shares a lot of similar style and materials.

A unique feature to this little library is the green roof.  On it I planted spearleaf sedum (Sedum lanceolatum), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), and pussytoes (Antennaria rosea).

The library is surrounded by flowers now, but will be a nice bit of structure and a focal point in the garden yearlong.  It is perched on a fence post, just across the sidewalk from a bench we installed years ago.  This also reminds me that I really need to complete building the fence!

I love that the Little Free Library package comes with labels reminding people that these books are "always a gift, never for sale"

I want this library to have a garden and landscaping theme, and these are the books I started with.  Books ranging from chicken keeping to western landscaping and butterfly identification (of course).

Last night, the first night the library was in use, I heard some neighbors checking it out.  I was glad for that, but also (I have to admit) a little concerned!
However, I was so excited and delighted to look in the library this morning and see new books!  Not only did a neighbor leave new books, but they also fit the theme.
This was so gratifying and it really emphasized to me how a Little Free Library can build a sense of community, just like their mission.  I didn't expect to be so excited and surprised that someone would leave books (even though the motto is "Take a book, return a book").  

Without much of an explanation of a Little Free Library, people get it.  It is exciting to be part of this and to see that it's working. 

If you are in the neighborhood, please come by to take a book or leave a book!

Garden project progress- Home ReSource fencing

Although it is getting late in the gardening year, I am making some progress now on some garden projects- primarily fencing related.

This fencing project started about 11 years ago.  When we first bought our house, the house was surrounded by a dilapidated 4' staggered board fence that provided little privacy.  Over the course of a couple of summers, we replaced 2 of the 3 side of the fence as time and money allowed.
The third side (the east), I frankly never thought I would ever complete, though periodically over the years i threatened to finish it.

Then it happened, while shopping at Home ReSource one day someone dropped off about 130 lineal feet of 6' privacy fence panels- more than enough to complete our last side.

I was there on my bike and I didn't want to deal with buying, loading, unloading and storing all those fence panels so I just tried to ignore that it was there.  Later that day I returned to get it, because I couldn't stop thinking about how I should get it.  When I got back, about half had been sold.

I bought the rest and for the last few months I have been moving those panels around- each place I put them turns out to be a place where I need something else.

Over the last two weeks, panel by panel I have been replacing the old fence with the new.  I actually just set out to pull out the old fence posts and dig new holes before the ground froze- bargaining.

One thing lead to another, and I now have two new gates, and 90% of the east fence complete (I ran out of materials!).

As for the old fence, Marilyn neatly de-nailed, sorted and stacked all the old cedar fence pickets and cedar 2x4 rails.

I'll eventually reuse all these boards into trellises, garden furniture and other things.

Replacing the east side fence was just the beginning.  Having all these fencing materials on hand helped me address some other problems that have developed over the years.

Over the years, our use of the backyard and our needs have changed.  We no longer need a 10' double door to the garage (my shop), and it is saggy and hard to use.  Now that we don't even have an overhead door in the garage, we don't need a double gate int he fence to access it.

So, I replaced that double gate with a single 40" wide gate that opens both into the alley and bakyard.  It is much easier to use, takes up less "floor" space,

And, the feature I like most is that I installed a deadbolt lock (from Home ReSource) as a latch that I can open from the alley (I had it keyed to our house key).

All the hardware was from Home ReSource, too.

Plus, this gate incorporates not only parts of our old fence, but our old hammock stand, too, like the curved top and bottom rails.

Though we don't need a big gate to the garage, we do need a big gate to get the camper in the back yard.  You can follow the renovation of our camper on my wife's blog http://toastercamper.blogspot.com/.

I considered a lot of different options for opening and closing this 11' gate from two doors on hinges to an 11' rolling or sliding gate.  I eventually settled on the low tech (and cheap) option of just making a removable panel on hangers I got at Home ReSource.

So, as our use changed, so did the fence, and gates.
It is very gratifying to reuse everything you can.  The western red cedar lasts a long time and has a lot of life left in it (both the new fencing and the old), but I reused everything I could from the fence panels and supplies I purchased, including 2x4's, pickets, and screws.    The only thing I bought new for this project is pressure treated 4x4's and concrete.
My old gate hardware is going to a friend for his gate project, and anything I don't plan on using is going back to Home ReSource, where it can be used again.

Don't be afraid to change; change is a constant in the garden

The hammock stand is dead.  Long live the hammock.

A garden is not permanent.  Plants grow, they die, and your interests and needs change.  Fortunately change can come easily in the garden- your landscaping does not have to be forever. The notion of permanence often paralyzes people into never beginning. But in a garden, if you make a mistake or things don’t work out like you expected them, you can change it!  I know this from experience.  You can move plants, compost them, give them away, etc… It is much easier to remove your landscaping than remove a room inside your house!

This new change in the garden is an example of a few things my wife and I often tell our garden coaching clients:

Write down what you need in your garden, and you will incorporate it appropriately. Whether it is canoe storage, bike storage, a raft, chickens, no matter what use, acknowledge that it has a place (and it deserves a place) and you can integrate it into the garden to aesthetically fit in and functionally become part of the garden. We see this all too often that there are hobbies or items that people want to have in their garden, but for whatever reason they don’t want to think about so they don’t get incorporated, and just get pushed into a corner. There, they don’t get used and it doesn't look intentional. It is like a well organized house, but with a pile of clutter in the corner (Like, between a dresser and a wall. Marilyn.).

Furthermore, it is all these components that will help personalize your garden and make it a reflection of what you like and the things you do- it will be a reflection of your lifestyle. I wrote a post a while back describing our garden as a “lifestyle” garden- a name given to our garden by a local nurseryman, and a name I have come to really like.

Plan for how you will use your garden, and you will use it more. When we began landscaping our yard we didn’t have a camper, now we do, and this will add a lot on interest to the garden while providing, if nothing else, functional storage for the camper in the off season. Again, uses and interests change over time; change is the only constant in a garden.

Have fun, try new things, and if they don’t work, re-do it!
The hammock stand was a fun project to build and beautiful to look at, but frankly, it did not get much use. I built it for my wife-  I don’t really like to lounge in the garden (this may come as a shock you many of you). Our first hammock was made of cotton so I got it for her for our 2nd anniversary (cotton is the traditional 2nd anniversary gift). The hammock pergola took up a lot of room in the garden, and room we could use for other things and other things that would get more use. 

We have a small yard, so using space efficiently is important (and a fun challenge). I have always maintained we could live in a smaller house and a have a smaller garden and we’d be fine. There are still many places in our small garden that I view as just filler- plants acting as place holders until I figure out a need or use for the space. These are what I call opportunities.

A new new gardening opportunity

This past weekend I dismantled the hammock pergola, stacked the wood, sorted and organized all the hardware (screws, lag bolts, and washers), and began planning to new pergola, which will reuse most of the wood. This Wednesday evening, friends will come over to dig up native plants for their own gardens and hopefully take away some of the hills, too. And come to think of it, I should have them dig post holes for the new pergola!

I am excited to re- landscape this and incorporate our 1966 Security Traveler into the garden.

No blog posts recently, but change is coming in the garden

Goodbye hammock room!

So, I haven’t written a blog post for some time. I have heard from some of you to get back on the ball (Amber- you should talk, you haven't updated your blog in almost a year). For whatever reason I haven’t been that inspired to write, but I think that will change soon; change is coming to the garden.

There are a few reasons I guess I haven’t written any blog posts in a while and here are a couple and one is the reason I will start writing again…

Some background:

1. This spring I trained for my first marathon in over three years- injury and illness have kept me from running, but this year I was able to train and complete a marathon again, and I hope to resume running regularly.
2. My wife and I bought a vintage travel trailer (a 1966 Security Traveler) to restore- my wife has wanted one for a long time. It has been a big and time consuming project.  It has kept me really busy, and I have loved it.
3. The garden takes care of itself. I have really learned that now that we have no lawn, don’t water anything, and the garden is really dense, there is very little maintenance; mainly cutting things back. So I haven’t written much.

It may seem like restoring a camper has nothing to do with the garden, but in our case it will. In the off season, we will store the camper in the backyard. Actually a better descriptor is that we will incorporate the camper into the landscape. A guest house or a little studio is what we are envisioning complete with a pergola covering it. To accommodate this, I have a lot of work to do.

Although my wife started her own blog to chronicle her camper (check it out at http://toastercamper.blogspot.com/), here are a few before and after pictures:

Curbside before

Curbside after

Although I don't show it here, I re-framed nearly the entire camper, re-re-plumbed and re-just about everything.  My wife re-upholstered the cushions, sewed the curtains and made the awning (among other things in the camper).
Here are some inside pictures...

Dinette before

Dinette after

 We kept the original stove, sink, oven, icebox (though I super-insulted it) and furnace.

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Bedroom before

Bedroom after

 And a couple of more exterior pictures for good measure.

Streetside before

Streetside after

In order to get it in to the back yard, we had to remove the raised beds in the alley,, including all the soil (thank you Craigslist!), which is done(!), remove fence panels and build a big gate, then I have to clear the area for the camper. This will involve relocating a lot of plants, and it will require me to remove the hammock room (see photo at the top of the post)! 

This is a favorite spot in the garden for many, but I don’t mind the change. I like change in the garden.

I built the hammock for my wife a long time ago, and it has served us well, but I think the camper will serve us even better!

So, if you are interested in the hammock pergola, I am going to be getting rid of it, but I haven’t figured out exactly how.

There are still a lot of projects I need to finish, too. For example last fall I started building a fence for our front yard. Started, that is, not finished! To follow my garden and blogging friend Susan's (of the Bicycle Garden) lead, I am posting my garden projects on a frame on the right, rather than burying them in a post. I am hoping this will hold me more accountable (to myself, I guess).

Scenes from the Garden: mid-July

My blog is simply a garden journal, and though I write a lot of how to articles or post information on ecology and wildlife int he garden, at its most basic, it is a place to simply depict what is happening in the garden.  This post is just about capturing what's going on in the garden now.  

It is a showy time in the garden, but I do look forward to when the grasses cure, and things die back quite a bit, and reflect the dry hot summers.

 This is the time of the year when we have an abundance of flowers, and have to prune our showy fleabane (Erigeron speciousus), goldenrod species (Solidago spp.), bee balm (Monarda fisulosa), and others on a near daily basis, just to maintain our walking paths- especially after our summer thunderstorms.

Even though our garden does not get any irrigation, it provides a wealth of flowers for wildlife, and cut flowers for the house.

 Inside the vegetable garden, structures like raised beds, arbors, and benches are prominent.  The vegetables are a focal point, too!

  My next garden project is to make another grape arbor to cover and shade the garden bench (below).

Milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) and monarchs butterflies are in the news a lot these days, especially encouraging people to plant milkweed species in their garden for monarch conservation.  In the right location this is great and effective, and I think every garden deserves a native milkweed or 20.  Here, in western Montana, we are too far east and too far west for monarch butterflies (except the rare stray).  I love our native milkweed (A. speciosa), and the benefits of this plant and its beauty, are not limited to monarchs.

Our hammock finally succumbed to weather this year after eight years of being exposed to too much weather. It was a cotton hammock- I gave it to my wife as a present for our second anniversary (cotton is the traditional gift).  This year (our ninth anniversary) pottery is the traditional gift.  I have to think about that one.

I have a new hammock on its way- a more weather resistant one, made from recycled pop bottles.

Native Plant Gardening Events June 25 & 26

Next weekend my wife and I are organizing two native plant and wildlife gardening workshops/ events.  The first would help us complete a portion of the landscaping at Home ReSource (my favorite Missoula store), and the second is some maintenance work at the Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant (pictured above).

My wife and I have a native plant, wildlife, and sustainable garden coaching and consultation business, Butterfly Properties, and each year we select a community project to work on as volunteers.  We enjoy spreading the beauty of native plants throughout town, and promoting an appreciation of Montana's flora.  The Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant and Home ReSource's landscaping are two of our on-going projects.


We also support non-profits in other ways: offering discounted services to the Green Blocks participants, donating services to charity auctions, even giving actual money when we have it (we are even in the process of devleoping a grant program for community groups and non-profits).


We're planning some work at both these sites next weekend and we hope you will join us for a few hours and learn about landscaping installation, site preparation, design, and of course, weeding.

Saturday June 25, 10 am- 1 pm at Home ReSource, 1515 Wyoming Street We are finishing the Home ReSource project by adding a "landscape pocket" on the Russell Street side. This new bed is an opportunity to learn about site preparation, native plant species, and garden maintenance. We love Home ReSource (their mission, their staff, and all the cool stuff they have for sale), and we have been donating our time and materials to this site since last year. (Here's a blog post from several months ago about spring maintenance in the HR gardens). Topics/ activities: Site preparation (when do you need to add topsoil? Why? Where do you get it? Soil grading (What is it? How?) How to plant plants Mulch (Why? How? Where do you get it?) Tour established native plant landscape at Home ReSource (completed in 2010). Weed identification and removal (minimal) Bring work gloves, sturdy shoes and questions! Sunday June 26, 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm at the Native Plant Garden at 8th and Grant Stop by and check out how beautiful this little park has become, and see what's flowering this week! Help clean up the park and learn about native plants and wildlife gardening. We will be weeding, pruning and maybe even planting a few plants. Bring gloves, and tools for weeding (if you have them). You can learn more about the park here. Maybe we'll throw a few horseshoes in the horseshoe court, if there's time and energy. It's a wonderful community spot and we'd love to show it to you. Sunday June 26th, 6:30 pm- 8 pm. You can view and even RSVP for both of these events on our Facebook site