Land of Dalí

After a few months in cool Copenhagen, I was homesick for heat, chaos, and that latin rumba. And so, as fall break arrived, we took off for Spain. Arriving in Madrid felt like an old friend wrapping me up in her arms. The honking traffic, warm air, and busy streetlife distracted me from months of Nordic silence and carried me into the city. Even if much of the madrileño slang was incomprehensible, the language on the street was punctuated with speakers from different corners of the latino universe whose speech and exclamations were crystal clear.

We spent a few days wandering Madrid and delighting in the cheap food and drink before catching a train to Málaga, Picasso's hometown....

Streets that radiate out of the main plaza..

 

Ambling around the Plaza Mayor

A miniature of a Spanish kitchen 

These birds made me think of Grandma... 

A bird of paradise (strelitzia) in Málaga

Panoramic view of Málaga from the old Phoenician ruins 

Soaking up the sun..

Eden Valley by Max

Thuja plicata or Western Red Cedar is a common specimen in the Pacific Northwest. Growing readily amongst the damp moss and ferns it stretches high above the undergrowth alongside Douglas Fir and Hemlock. 

Cedar has long been a valuable natural resource in this area. Native American communities have utilized cedar wood for houses, canoes, totem poles, and ceremonial objects as well as weaving the bark into baskets, bowls, ropes, clothing, and blankets. In modern construction, cedar is used primarily as outdoor timber because of its high resistance to rot with common applications for decking, fencing, siding, and roofing. 

A Big Leaf Maple sporting a thick coat of moss

In pursuit of this extraordinary timber, the Skotheim clan has embarked on a mission of selective logging. Beginning three years ago with Ben and my dad, a plan was put into action to harvest trees from our grandpa's 52 acre property outside of Port Angeles (known as Eden Valley). For decades the property has provided access to a pristine slice of the Olympic forest habitat and an unending supply of firewood for our stoves. 

A bit of fall color on the property

Our goal now is to log the woods of a small fraction of their abundant cedar supply and profit from the land without the harsh effects of clear cutting. This entails selecting cedars based on size, health, and proximity to other cedars. 

Once a tree is dropped and limbed, it is skidded to the road for pickup

Pizza break! Working close to grandparents has its benefits

This process of small scale logging has been an exciting learning experience. There is nothing like working outside in such a beautiful place. Until the winter rains fully saturate the ground and we are forced to leave the trees, logging on the peninsula will be our home away from home. 

Breeding Roses

Growing roses from seed is a fun project I've been working on for almost a year now. It's an interesting process, unless you don't find this type of thing interesting.

The first step is to gather mature rose hips, which contain the seeds. Roses are very diverse - there is no way to know for sure if a hip is ripe or how many seeds, if any, it holds. Generally the bigger and more colorful, the better.

These hips were pretty ugly. Best to worst from L to R based on ripeness and assumed seed content.

Once you have some hips cut them open and remove the seeds. Then put the seeds in a small jar of sterile dirt and leave them in the refrigerator for a couple months. This step is called stratification. It mimics winter. This period of cold temperature is essential for roses, along with many other flowers. Although some seeds will sprout without this step, it greatly improves the odds.

Smart and/or lazy people would ask, "why not just use the actual winter?" It's a good point. I think that if you live in an area with cold winters you could just leave the hips on the plant. Maybe you should bring them inside to hide them from people like me.

This is the mother plant that provided the hips I used. Pink and fragrant.

Once winter (real or artificial) is over, plant the seeds in some rich, well drained soil and start waiting. Sprouts will come up anytime in the next few weeks. Or months. Or years. Or never. Roses are very finicky and have been bred for years with a focus on form, color, and scent, not germination and healthy growth. Unlike vegetable seeds, they do not behave well. It is best to be patient or distract yourself with other projects.

A bad photo of the young rose's first flower:
pale pink, lightly fragrant, and only 5 petals.

From my first batch of semi-ripe hips I gathered about 20 seeds, one of which sprouted. I hope for better odds next time.

The good news is that most roses will flower about a month after they sprout. The first flowers have less color, less fragrance, and fewer petals than they will when they are adults. This makes the first bloom pretty disappointing, but also means that every flower produced will be better than the last.

But wow, look at that! Yellow anthers with black
borders on red stamens. Now we're getting somewhere.

The second flower shows more petals, but is messy
and misshapen. Still only a hint of fragrance.

Well, that was year one of the project. Just one rose to show for it, but maybe it will really hit its stride in its second year. Next year I'll be growing more roses from hips I find, and well as some that I specifically bred by taking pollen from one rose and fertilizing a different rose variety. 

If you want to give it a try, I would start eyeing some rose hips in your neighborhood. They should be ripe soon. Happy gardening.

-Ben

Getting this thing rolling

Dear ones, The first page is always the hardest. Oh the pressures of a blank slate ... the choice between so many different ways to start the telling. And how to begin the telling of our tribe? That's too big a task for words mustered late at night in a post-homework haze. So we'll keep it simple ... and start at the heart of it, which is the fact that love - the falling in, the falling out, the passing on - seems to be what has gotten us to here. To being this big, beautiful, wild clan of Kane's (although we started off as some other name and will, likely, evolve into others along the way). So we will start with love, as written by our brilliant Bear, and with some photos from the archive (check out the dropbox folder the elders are compiling to gift us all with our history). A note: this blog is a space for collective storytelling. With all the platforms and mediums out there it is hard to stay connected and thus keep a pulse on what's happening in the lives and minds of our far-flung clan members. Ever the guy with impeccable follow through, Maxwell made this blog happen. And, of course, our matriarch - mom, gma, Mago - made the suggestion. We have a password so that only those of us "in the know" can see what is posted here. Our security is fool proof - all you need to remember is: kane. Should be easy enough. Now, on with it, post away! LOVE the thing that saves us catches us, the  thing that gives us  its hand when we're falling off the cliff the emotion that saves us over and over again the  thing that binds us grieves us and chooses who we spend our lives with who we  are devoted  to and who we  never want to let go,chooses who we are in love with by Bear Oshri Kane