Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

Apifera Farm is a registered 501 [c][3]. #EIN# 82-2236486

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©Katherine Dunn.





Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Garden of the Gods







While that might be dramatic, I often feel that way in our front garden. Coming from Minnesota, I still feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland when I look at these plants.

We spend most of our evenings in our two chairs looking upwards to our upper fields.By sundown, the bats come out, and you can hear coyotes by the river 1000 feet down. These pictures just don't do it justice, but it gives you a teeny sensation of the garden I talk to everyday. It's where my father's ashes are scattered, and roosters, cats and sheep I've known and nurtured are buried here.

Our draught tolerant garden is a survival of the fittest model. If it survives on a tiny bit of water the first year, it stays. Unlike Portland, our area is much drier, and water /wells are an issue in this area. We've struggled to get some trees going, and vines, but on our 5th year here, mature root systems are making it and nothing gets much water. We still have to do better with a grey water collecting system, but for now we are focusing on our river water collection system and irrigation to the 40 cedar trees and animals, and the newly plants 400 native trees by the river. The veggie garden is doing well, even though I still hand water it from the well, but that will change this season, or in the fall when we can add drip from the river water tank.