Gardening for nature, walks with my dogs and the books I’m reading.

[MarkD]

Think I'll round up some videos of my dog Ember. Here is one of the earliest ones on the first day I let her walk on the beach. She met a young Australian Shepherd cross named Ollie. In the video you can see my last dog Smokey standing near the Olle's human mom. But the voice is her daughter and I think she is easily as cute with her comments as the puppies playing together. Her voice stands out because it is the video she took with her phone. Ember is a McNab dog which is a popular herding breed around here. She weighs close to 40 pounds now.

She was probably around 3 years old when I took this slow motions video of her springing up to catch a ball at a park near Mount Diablo.

I need to load other of her videos to Youtube and will share more when I do.

 

[PeppermintPatty]

Wow. Can Ember ever jump high! Great videos Mark!

 

[MarkD]

On another thread I recently shared my upcoming project which is to get my favorite rose, Royal Sunset, back in the ground. I had to remove it to demo the old rotting deck and to reenforce the part of the deck under the gazebo which Lia wouldn't let me toss. Here is as much as I will do with it until I get the better tool from the library. Digging the hole for the rose with a digging bar and shovel would be awkward, strenuous and harder to control. Here is how it stands today.

I've created a 2x6 frame of old Trex phony wood which will raise the bed up a little and hopefully keep water from getting to the decks supports, which you can just see on either side of the frame. I'll attach the frame to those supports too before I'm done. As you can see the rose had been pretty big at the time I took it out to allow construction to proceed this past summer. Once I have a deep bed of premium soil ready I'll lower into the frame and down into the soil. I hope it will eventually take over that side of the gazebo as it used to do.

These photos show the view from within the gazebo out through the rose and gazebo taken in different seasons and years.

Here is a more recent one from pandemic times with a local artist friend who is even older and more famous than Lia.

And here she is on that same visit accompanied by her biggest supporter and collector. I'm the other guy.

More photos from that visit May, 2021, starting with Lia but getting to our dog Smokey too.

I get so nostalgic looking at old photos I lose track of what I was looking to show, my favorite rose.

Here is a video which unfortunately is hosted at Flickr rather than Youtube. So you may not be able to view it? This was from March of 2023 and Lia had a group of curators visiting and I had spruced up a little. Hard to tell just how rotten the deck was.

Unfortunately I couldn't post the video, probably because it takes too much site bandwidth. If I ever transfer it to YouTube maybe I'll try again.

 

[MarkD]

For anyone interested to know more about our friend Kay here is a nice little video about her life, work and teaching. I've met or heard of most of the other artists that speak but the second one, Carole Beadle is the one we're closest too as she is in the women's walking group who have met for so many years and now have an event monthly. We'll host tea again this May. Lia doesn't speak in Kay's video because she wasn't one of her students.

Lia took over for Trude Gaermonprez who was the teacher of loom weaving at the Collerge of Arts and Crafts before Lia took over. Interestingly Carole was a teacher of Lia's somewhere before that. Kay was married to Bob Stocksdale, a famous furniture maker. When Lia decided to retire after 42 years there Carole decided to join her and the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco gave them a show to gether called Lines That Tie in which each could choose work from their teachers and from their more interesting students to exhibit.

Lines That Tie: Carole Beadle & Lia Cook – Lia Cook

I'm not sure who would be interested in textile arts in particular but I suspect @RadishRose might be.

 

[MountainRa]

I looked at some of Lia’s work. Awesome! I love the ones that look like tree barks and plants.

 

[MarkD]

I looked at some of Lia’s work. Awesome! I love the ones that look like tree barks and plants.

I do too. I've been calling it her "botanical series" but she hasn't exactly run with it. Nonetheless I'm happy with subject matter.

 

[MarkD]

Progress report on the garden one week into February, a month I think of as marking early spring for us. Temperatures had been colder than usual though not often freezing but most afternoons are mid to high 60's now.

In the side garden the stars are the Giant Fennel, Cattail Aloe and Solandra maxima:

Just inside the back garden the South African bulbs Lachanelia are blooming and species tulips are gathering sunlight. Beyond that the Cleistocactus strausii are budding up and approaching too great a height for their own good.