What's in a Name?

When I moved into Fred's place, sight-unseen, mind you, I was tickled and astounded to discover the back yard, which extends into a natural park area hosting Stephen's Creek. The place screamed, “Work with me! I have SO much potential for infinite beauty!” I felt I had moved into a place not unlike “The Secret Garden,” which I am 2/3rds into watching with my sweetheart, actually. We're watching the vintage (original?) English version and Aeython finds it to be incredibly dry, slow and predictable, but it's the principle of the thing. A classic worth revisiting in my own personal opinion.

Sproutling baby choys rising their wee, green heads from the mushroom  compost!

But back to the garden! The house is perched up near the top of the hill and out back, there are tiered garden beds of various sizes and lengths, created a bit haphazardly with some rocky chunks of broken up concrete. It's clear to me now that the previous owner's M.O. was based on economy, practicality and little to no maintenance required, whatsoever. As we begin to clear spaces for growing food, this becomes more and more readily apparent with our succession of discoveries. There have been a few pleasant surprises, however. Aeython has revealed many of these special finds, which include:

a “throne” seat made from some large, smooth concrete slabs, tucked into a nook on the lower-most tier, which faces out toward the rest of the garden and park, a set of small, gradual steps leading to a tier that was previously not very accessible by comfortable means, which had been shrouded in a flowering ground-cover, a bumblebee's nest tucked into the concrete chunks on a tier equally engulfed in ivy, as well as a garter snake's den in a similar fashion on an opposite tier.

A view of our house from below. Aeython chopped an invasive tree that  grew up beneath the shed.
Now that it's all exposed, I'm planning to make some Mason Bee houses using cut bamboo tubes and
mount them onto the beams below, offering them a nice sheltered spot. :D

                                                       

The name for this blog came to me while trying to rip out a nasty, black, plastic weed-block cloth, which has long since failed to serve its purpose. It was a typical, overcast and drizzly day in Portland and my attempts were centered around clearing an area to create the bee yard. Knowing that the weeds will only grow taller with every passing day, I couldn't very well just leave it as is, blocking the entrances to my future hives. As well, we're trying to utilize every possible space for growing food or bee forage and the weed-block absolutely, HAD TO GO!

The cleared tier from above. The throne is situated just to the left of the bamboo in the corner.
The dark, mulched blueberry, tea and flower tier leads to the beehive against the Doug Fir.

This was no easy task, as plenty of soil had spilled into that lower-most tier, providing a growing medium for the abundance of weeds. Their root systems were developed, growing down and gripping onto the weed-block with ferocity. Worst of all, was that the previous owners had embedded the cloth beneath the concrete slab walls of the tiers. I employed scissors, I ripped, I tore, I pulled and pulled with all my might, hoping I wouldn't tear myself in the process and created a weed sod sculpture or abominable "weed man" by stacking the stuff higher and higher along one corner of the tier.

Beneath all this, was free and clear, very compacted, nutrient and moisture deficient soil. The only aeration being offered was by tunnels bored into it (somehow) by moles or shrews. But the dirt had finally been liberated! After Gawd only knows how many years!!! Success!

This process did not take me a day, however, it spanned the length of several days, with days in between to heal my general aches and overly worked hands. It was an annoying task, but one with near immediate gratification and immense eventual payoff. Aeython has helped clear other areas and suggested we use the weed-block to drape over our weed sod piles to cook it down into a rich compost.

Some of it is also covering areas of grass, which we hope to stamp out for more crops.

Repurposing the weed-block to kill itchy, weed-infested grass for more growing space.
We plan to utilize the large tree stump there for a mushroom cultivation project by drilling
holes into it and impregnating it with some spores in a sterilized substrate such as alfalfa straw.
I'm growing my own culinary oyster mushrooms now from a large ziplock baggie on a plate up on the balcony.
We've gotten two full fruitings from it since I took the class at People's Food Co-op in March,
adding a lovely taste and texture to our delicious sautées.

The next step for this large tier in question, was to till it somehow, so he had Fred help him with the use of a certain hand-held rototilling machine, powered by an unknown gas mixture, which apparently is very loud, difficult to use and probably only loosened up the top few inches of soil. But it's a start, nonetheless, and will help us incorporate nutrients back into the top layer, and allow us to plant some covercrops, namely Buckwheat, Barley and Fenugreek.

Since the task is going to be a process that takes time and care, and because I learned that bees prefer high locations for their hives, I went with placing the first hive on the next tier up. It is appropriately protected on at least 3 sides, by a large Doug Fir tree, the neighbors' fence and the next tier up, hosting a large yucca plant, one of 3 that we decided to leave in place at the far end of the tier, even though it isn't native. Fred built me a good, sturdy stand for the hive to be lifted at least a foot off the ground, another bee-requisite.

A pic of the large, tilled tier from below.
The little paths will be our walkways between garden beds.

I assembled the hive supers (boxes) and frames from purchased wood parts and painted the outside of it a beautiful sage green with an exterior latex paint. This entailed gluing the dove-tail joints on the corners of the boxes with a wood glue and hammering in galvanized, exterior-worthy nails. Fred helped me with drilling the pilot holes using his drill press. I think he enjoyed it and I was grateful for the help.

The frames were similarly glued and nailed with smaller nails and once dry and complete, I snapped in the foundation, a plastic sheet embossed with the hexagonal comb pattern and coated with a thin layer of beeswax, indicating to the bees, draw this comb out, please. The roof was a fun project as well, though already pre-constructed.

I went with an eved, copper roof, not only because it looks amazing and is a welcome addition to the garden, resembling a quaint, little house rather than a flat-topped box, but because in the Pacific Northwest, it rains, A LOT, and if there's one thing that bees have trouble regulating it's moisture within the hive. They have special tricks for cooling the hive if it gets too hot by fanning their wings rapidly at the entrance, facing in, butts high and drawing the warm air out. This process is also employed as a way of reducing the water-content in the honey to make it the perfect 17% water, allowing it to keep indefinitely and not ferment. This takes a great deal of work on their parts, so the higher, sloped roof adds more space at the top for air flow and ventilation.

Fred was understandably worried about copper being exposed to vagrants wandering through the park, who may get the hair-brained idea of lifting it for some quick cash. I also saw the problem this posed and did my best to reassure him that I would take precautionary measures to deter theft, whether it be signage indicating, “Bees at Work,” or heavy chains and locks all the way around the hive. Another threat of the roof lifting off the hive is posed by heavy winds, so rather than go crazy with more metal, and necessity to use what I have, I opted for rachet-strapping the whole thing to the hive stand. I have yet to install my other precautionary measure of sledging two T-stakes into the ground on either side, eliminating the risk of it toppling over.

The fun part of the endeavor was painting the copper roof with Liver of Sulphur, a metal oxidizing solution which I've used for years in jewelry making. I painted it with some organic, abstract and not so abstract designs using a potent batch of the stuff and it seems to disquise the copper a bit, blending in a bit better with the surroundings. It also already appears to be turning slightly greenish in places, a patina I have always admired on copper.

I cleared the entire tier of weeds leading to the hive, which is also home to two Blueberry bushes of Fred's, two new Tea plants of Aeythons, our second, smaller Fuchsia bush, which lives on an adorable “mini-tier” of its own, and hopefully an abundance of various bee-loving flowers, which I planted seeds for all over the place after spreading a layer of mushroom mulch to revive the soil.

Now, I await my bees. But more on the details of this exciting, swarm-collecting adventure soon!!!

Fledgling Quinoa sprouts we hope to grow from 6 cm to 6 ft!