Starting over

There's a line from the indie pop band Ivy that says, "at the edge of the ocean we can start over again." It's been that way for me, returning to the surrogate natal landscape of the Oregon coast. Of all the wild and amazing places I've gone in my life, I've come back again and again to my aunt's house in Lincoln City. It's a landscape where the ocean is relentless, the cold intensity of the water, the tension of sand underfoot, the roll of fog and clouds as they run into the headlands. It's been a long journey over these last months and I'm here standing and staring, toeing the starting line on the rest of my life. I've come to the edge of the ocean to start over.

 The curvature, down the 500 foot drop from Cape Foulweather

 The ocean crush at Devil's Punchbowl

North to Otter Crest

The Transition Garden

There is a journey in every garden. It starts with a blank sad waste of dry bermuda grass, a tiller, and voila you have a garden. But over the years you actually get to know it, to pay attention to not only how the sun falls on the space, but the shift of light through the day after many days of watching and paying attention. Watching cycles of artichoke rise and fall and live to see another season, and another, and another. The cycles of a land trapped within a city, but filled with the city's life. The cooper's hawk that would perch on the fence beside the hens, their nervous clucks. Watching the cooper's hawk chow down in the tree next door, poor dove. There are the coveys of quail that know the cover of the Atriplex bush out front of the house. The whiptail lizards, the scorpion that bit Mona on the paw the first month in the house. This was life. This was home.

We are so lucky to live on the planet for even a short time, so lucky to share in all the relationships, all the beauty, all the wonder. This garden was a journey in and of itself. It was me planting the posts and the fences and the grasses and the tomatoes. It is a journey into the simple question of how do I live here? This was how I interpreted my answer.

The Blank Slate.

February 17, 2010          

1.

May 7, 2010                 

2.

May 15, 2010                 

3.

May 19, 2010                 

4.

June 17, 2010                  

5.

July 8, 2010                  

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August 5, 2010                  

7.

November 12, 2010                  

8.

May 11, 2011                 

9.

November 3, 2012                 

10.

December 9, 2012                 

11.

February 14, 2013                 

12.

 May 16, 2013                 

The end of Buckleyfarmlandia I is nigh. The house went into escrow yesterday. I stand on the fulfilled side of owning a home, knowing full well all the love and effort that resides now within these walls. It is all good work. All of it. Even the hard stuff. This is my final love letter to the Rita Garden House.