Tag: chaos gardening

Summer in the Maritime Pacific Northwest

It’s 8 a.m. on July 5th, 2025. There is a myth/tradition that this is our first day of summer, lagging behind the rest of the world because…well…it often just turns out that way. Junes can be cloudy, cool, and wet oftentimes.

I don’t like to dwell on the negative. But…this morning my thermometer reads 50 degrees and it is cloudy. As of late, afternoons have been sunny and pleasant…up to the low 60s. Fine. I can hear all you heat wavers to the east rolling your eyes. Yes, I can hear that.

But bear with me just a little. If the rain and clouds and cool can sometimes return as soon as October…can I have just a little heat…please? I’m only asking for 70 degrees because I’m a heat wimp. More than that and I’ll start whining again.

Ok, I’ll probably start losing readers now that they realize how much of my whining they’ll have to listen to in the course of a year. (Do I even have any readers?). I’ll leave you alone now while I go find a sweater. And my fingerless gloves because my hands are cold.

In other news, I’m in the middle of a 6-day vacation. My other half went on vacation, not me, but I am still looking over my shoulder constantly to see if he is watching me be a bad girl…leaving dirty dishes in the sink until I feel like washing them or putting them in the dishwasher…leaving unfolded laundry on the guest bed for days…watering his flowers (and the lawn) with a sprinkler that I leave on for 4 hours at a time (this way it won’t need water again until he’s gone for 4 hours (maybe once a month). If the sprinkler hits the side of the house, the windows get washed a little too.

He insists on watering with a watering can or by walking around dragging a hose and, you know, holding the sprinkler attachment down. I check after he waters and usually the soil is wet to about 1/4″. He does it almost every day; still only 1/4″. I drag the hose, set the sprinkler, and go watch a baseball game on tv. Or my favorite binge-worthy show. Maybe while eating popcorn.

Every time I see the cat coming down the stairs out of the corner of my eye, I jump a little, thinking it’s The Man coming to judge me. Sigh…6 days isn’t long enough to stop being edgy. I’ll have to work on that. Meanwhile, I feel like a teenager home alone…basking in staying in my pajamas all day and doing whatever I want…

Meanwhile, everything outside is enjoying the cool weather and my sprinkler. The birds are bathing, the grass is greening back up, my tiny garden is thankful for the surprise deep watering. As it is mostly Mediterranean herbs, and potatoes, this year, normally they go through the summer drought just fine. One last soak will keep them smiling.

Garden mayhem in all its beauty

Here in Twisted Weeds chaotic garden, we aim to work less and enjoy more. This doesn’t mean that we haven’t worked hard in the past, but as we age we aim to hardly work at all. The mighty husband built fences, then we planted hazelnuts and dwarf apples, disturbing the existing plants as little as possible (such as ferns), with the exception of stinging nettles. I harvested them and steeped them in buckets of water, using the tea as fertilizer.

My husband planted roses. I knocked down a ridiculously steep mound (left after the area was originally logged) and turned it into an herb bed after adding some unfinished compost. I planted rosemary (king of the hill), lavender, comfrey, oregano, sage and thyme (they eventually disappeared under the rosemary, lavender, and oregano), and an unknown flowering plant that I bought in a 4-inch pot because it seemed like it would grow anywhere.

I planted this mystery under a tree in the middle of our driveway but quickly realized it needed more sun so I transplanted it at the edge of the herb bed. Oh my…it has become a woody shrub. As soon as it flowers, I’ll try to identify it. Meanwhile I chop and drop around the edges, trying to keep it from devouring the narrow path and everything else it encounters…

There are also a few berry bushes in this chaos, as well as an elderberry and a couple of attempts at raised beds. So far only potatoes have withstood the rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and birds. I shall continue to try…but not too hard.

It is definitely the survival of the fittest in this messy but beautiful place.

Don’t even ask what is all there…oregano everywhere, weeds too. Volunteer potatoes. I love it all and it returns the favor.

We belong to the earth

That simple sentence has had me thinking for days about my place on this planet, about humanity’s place as a whole, and about how to change that. Different species co-exist in my yard, while eating and digging up much of what I try to grow. While the rest of the population eats and drinks together, taking turns when necessary, I enter the scene and they all flee.

I am trying to gradually change that, by sitting in my yard and minding my own business. But this situation is bigger than just me. I firmly believe that humanity may be ensuring its own demise by mishandling this beautiful planet that normally sustains us. Tornados, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heat waves, extinctions and rising ocean temperatures all seem to be signaling that we are an infectious disease the planet is trying to fight off with everything it has.

Still we insist on clearcutting forests, throwing our garbage into the oceans, destroying topsoil, polluting the air, and paving paradise. We have separated ourselves from nature and declared that we have dominion over it.

This has changed my perspective as a sometimes gardener. I am older, slower, weaker, and have less stamina than in the past. I am on a fixed income/tight budget. Meanwhile the critters are multiplying; more bunnies, squirrels, deer, and birds – all destructive to a garden, to some degree. This affects me in relation to them, and to my garden.

I nurture what survives the onslaught of diggers, eaters, and those who like to nap on seedlings. Potatoes do well. I like to nap in the sun; so I pull my chair close to a bird feeder and to seed scattered on the ground. Slowly some of the critters adapt to my presence and aren’t scared away so easily. I enjoy watching the birds mating, the fawns kicking up their heels, the squirrels chasing each other up and down the tall fir trees, spiraling; and the bunnies munching oh so fast.

In my garden, I chop and drop weeds, mulching as I go. I scatter seeds everywhere, trusting that some will germinate. I spend time just watching the bees and other pollinators. I water deeply. I harvest herbs. I spend more time watching and learning, breathing in synch with it all.

I want so much to belong to this world.

Companion planting

This spring, I’m chaos companion planting in a new raised bed. I planted peas, sweet peas, and wildflower seeds in a bed that was ready, hügelkultur-style, with small branches, unfinished compost, and…no watering system except a small watering can and …no protection from rabbits and squirrels. Yes, the area is fenced, but the ground is somewhat uneven and there are gaps…like, under the gate. Even the squirrels don’t need to climb, they scamper easily right under the gate.

Now I am able to keep the soil surface watered, but still I occasionally see signs of digging. Today I go scavenging around and in sheds to see if I can find some way of protecting the bed. A small piece of chicken wire would do the trick, laid on top of the bed. A larger piece, I could make a semblance of a fence…

I’m gardening on no budget and with all the strength a 75-year old woman can muster…

So even if only a few plants survive I will count it as a success.

I’ve already done a “second planting”…mixing all the veggie and flower seeds left over from years of seed purchasing and scattering them over the surface. More chaos!

What if nothing much grows? Well, the volunteer potato plant will thrive…and the four pea plants seem to be surviving! …so that’s something! I will cover the bare spots with grass clippings. In the fall I will add more compost, maybe some bagged soil, purchase a NW wildflower seed mix and scatter that…

I’ll just keep making the soil better and trying again.

Meanwhile, I’ve written another book about a more deliberate, scientific method of companion planting and am offering it as a free ebook through this Sunday, May 11th. Help yourself to a free copy!

Hügelkultur in nature

I like to think of this as hügelkultur but if I’m wrong, well, it won’t be the first time. I will never claim perfection, since I lean into chaos. Then again, maybe that is perfection? After all, nature leans into entropy, the definition of which is the natural tendency of things to lose order…a loose definition, not the scientific one…

And my mind wanders back to nature’s way of regenerating, even when we humans have tried our best to kill something. This is where hügelkultur and regenerative gardening melt into each other. Let’s start with cutting down a tree. In my own yard, this art of killing living things perfected by humans since they were created/evolved has not stopped the tree stump from nurturing new life. Perhaps a bird ate some berries and then stood on this stump while defecating, depositing some undigested seeds along with its poop.

Elsewhere, a tree fell in the forest – or maybe was cut – and this happened, eventually…

This picture, also in my yard, shows the ultimate regeneration: a fir tree growing on a very old tree trunk. It’s hard to see, because the fallen tree has almost become soil over many years, but this is a fir tree, a fruit bush, ferns, and other plants growing out of what was once a fir tree.

What I marked is actually the decayed tree trunk that now is a low mound of what I call almost-soil.

My yard looks messy; weedy; “lumpy” because it was never “landscaped” after being logged back in the 90’s and before, leading up to this house being built, and then added on to about 5 years ago. Heavy machinery takes a wicked toll on the earth.

So we mow less and less each year. It’s a compromise between my husband and I. He likes a mowed lawn, I would rather toss out native seeds each fall and see what grows. The compromise is that he mows less and less each year, making sure the street view is mowed so that the HOA stays happy. He leaves plants around the singular trees in the yard. And he has fenced 3 areas that were meant to be gardens but now two are left to nature (keeping the deer out so a few things we planted can grow tall enough to not be impacted so heavily by the deer.)

I planted some herbs and flowers in the third area, which is the only area that gets at least 6 hours of sun a day, and that is where I have one raised bed and a few apple and filbert trees. The raised bed is still accessible to squirrels so I’m not expecting much to grow there. Fingers crossed. So far, one potato plant volunteer from the “compost” I added and a few peas are surviving. Since I can now water it sufficiently with ease (a sprinkler), I’m hoping something will grow.

There’s always another season, another chance. Meanwhile, I’m basking in sporadically warm sunshine and the intensity of spring green. Green blessings to you all.

This year’s gardening mashup

I’m all over the place this spring, but my madness makes sense to me.

I’m a mashup of chaos, raised bed, hügelkulture, and regenerative gardening. I started my raised bed with a base of small branches and unfinished compost, then topped it off with planting soil. I put all the seed I had (leftovers from past growing seasons) in a small bowl, mixed it up, and scattered it across the bed. Before I turned on my rainforest mist sprinkler, I walked over the bed so as to compress the seeds into the soil a bit. Then I added water.

Regenerative agriculture is my current fascination. The idea is to never leave the soil uncovered, never tilling, and never using fertilizers or chemical pesticides, herbicides, etc. I think you get the picture – organic no-till gardening.

But I highly recommend two documentaries: “Kiss the Ground” on Netflix and “Common Ground” on Prime. I watched the first many months ago, but just recently watched Common Ground. What most impressed me was the story of turning a part of the Chihuahuan Desert (which stretches from northern Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico) into a verdant grassland simply with carefully managed cattle herding.

This just blows my mind. You have to see it to believe it. I guess I’ve been prejudiced against cows, but grassfed and with enough pasture to rotate them out frequently, they are an incredible asset. And I can attest to the amazing flavor of grassfed beef.

The cows are mimicking the role of the buffalo before the colonizers all but wiped them out.

If enough of my seeds germinate despite the omnipresent squirrels, I’ll post some pictures in coming weeks.

In the beginning, I am…

Twisting gardening rules daily

We’re Not Gonna Rake It! No! We’re Not Gonna Rake It!

I mean really…with the number of squirrels we have, you’d think their garden would be top of the line! Instead, I blame most of some of the mayhem and chaos around here to their improper gardening skills. Welcome to my chaotic gardening world where squirrels do most of the planting while I carry on about how it should be in a perfect world. Humor being the greatest coping mechanism known to mankind.