The age of the Yarrow

Our front meadow has been such a delight for me.  It has really been doing exactly what I hoped it would and for a while- it really looked spectacular with the flowers.  The Tidy Tips, in particular, were nothing short of epic.  We had a lot of compliments on how pretty they were and it was definitely an unusual look... the Poppies, Five Spots and Purple Owl clover all had their time in the sun too.  Showing off their colors and delighting anyone who took the time to look.

Kids trampling Tidy Tips when they were still in bloom.
This is after I had taken out huge masses of them too!

Some Poppies and Tidy Tips back in May- the tree is
my Valley Oak that we have probably lost.  BOO!

Very fancy, but outshined some of the
more wild elements of the garden.

But, as we expected... this is a dynamic garden and the time of the spectacular flowers wanned some time last month and I began to pull them out.  Although I wanted the annuals to reseed, I didn't want them to go nuts and the Tidy Tips were really producing an abundance of seed.  I had a good time pulling them out as they made wonderful cut flowers- I would go out and pull out a huge mass, hardly making a dent, and then producing a gorgeous bouquet for our mantle.  The thing that was nice is that the seeds continued to mature as the flowers were cut so I harvested TONS of seeds to reseed the meadow and share.

LOVED having the big Tidy Tip bouquets!

With the Poppies, they can be grown as annuals but are actually perennials and bloom better on old growth.  So for them, instead of ripping them out but the root, I just used the sheers to cut them at the base to keep them from over-seeding the yard.  I saved their seeds too.

One of the unexpected delights of taking out the show-stoppers is that it has given some of the more subtle flowers and grasses a chance to shine and show how the meadow changes with the seasons.  Not long after the last of the yellows and oranges, the understated White Yarrow came up and the Purple Needle Grass began to bloom.  They are signaling the changing of the season and dancing in the summer breezes as butterflies, native bees and grasshoppers join into our front yard community.

I had never been all that much of a fan of Yarrow- except in that it was one of the few wildflowers I could reliably identify and got a boost out of being able to say... "Oh that?  That is some Yarrow".  No latin spoken, but smug superiority felt none the less.  I didn't, however, particularly delight in this understated cluster of white flowers on a stalk- just in the fact that I knew what it was.

Yarrow is a big part of our local communities and it is a perennial that I could not miss having in our yard.  So, despite it not being the showiest, it was one that I had to plant.

Boy am I glad I did!

Now that the yard is changing to the more muted colors of summer- the Yarrow is really finding a new place in my heart.  It is hard to describe the effect this unflashy flower is having on me... but mostly, it is that it is making our yard really FEEL like a meadow.  The stalks attract insects and move in the wind.  The whiteness of the flowers breaks up the greens and browns of the meadow.  In short- it is our wild meadow... it is the precise un-garden-like-ness of it that I am falling in love with.  The blooming flowers were spectacular, but these feel so much more real to me.

The Purple Needlegrass is another that I am really loving more than I anticipated too.  When I created the meadow, I planted mostly the Red Fescue as my "canvas" that I planted the other species on.  The Red Fescue is low mounding and really is pretty.  It does not look out of place in any garden- formal or otherwise.  The Purple Needlegrass, however, is wild and looks wild.

I had not really know what to expect of it but planted it to add height and texture to our meadow- not just wanting the green lumpy "pretty" of the Red Fescue.  I wanted another dimension and seeded the Needlegrass along select areas of the yard.  I had worried that it might look like a weed and was not sure if it would be the right choice.  So many Needlegrasses are problematic in that they catch on clothing and pet fur... I don't know how this will always be, but right now, I love it and it is not presenting with those kind of problems.

The Needlegrass is far more delicate than I expected.  I had thought that it might form larger mounds like so many of the ornamental grasses that are very popular today. It doesn't.  The flowering stalks rise delicately above the leaves and simply dance in the wind.  They are doing exactly what I hoped they would- they are giving a depth and texture to the yard and making it stay true to the concept of a wild meadow.  I absolutely love it.

The transitioning to summer- Needlegrass &
White Yarrow.  The brown patches are
where the Tidy Tips and Poppies were growing.

The other big news in our front yard project is that we expanded the plantings to the rest of the front- we still have the Ginkgo (which will be removed, I am sorry to say) but now added a Valley Oak, Buckeye and a Madrone to the mix.

I have had some great successes with my native garden project and a few failures... Here are some tree stories.

Madrones are one of my favorite tree and they are found all along the Santa Cruz Mountains where I use to ride my bike when I raced for so many years.  I always thrilled to see them with their beautiful red peeling bark and curvy trunks.  They were laughing, dancing naked wood nymphs to me!  Ladies full of delight and joy traipsing through the woods.  They always make me happy and are a truly beautiful tree.  They are a difficult tree too!  There is a reason you rarely see them in a garden... as the guy at the Native Plant Nursery told me... they are a ten out of ten for difficulty in establishing!  I had read that it is not worth it to buy and plant bigger than a one gallon since they simply do not transplant well.  I fell in love with this beautiful and healthy specimen in a 5 gallon and for $35, figured it was worth the risk.

The Madrones are very very fragile and before I got a chance to put it in the ground, it yelled at me a couple times.  I accidentally put the pot in the sun for a couple hours and WOW!  I thought she was going to die!  Her leaves wilted and she looked like a sad puppy.  Although they can grow in full sun, when potted, they HAVE to be kept in the shade at all times.  ALL TIMES.  Lesson learned.  I whisked her into the shade, gave her a drink and she recovered.

When I planted her, I carefully cut the bottom off the pot and put a paper plate under her.  I then used the sheers to cut the side of the pot carefully up to the top.  I put the pot and plate into the hole and filled in the dirt.  After it was packed and in place, I slid the cut pot up and out of the ground and then watered her with an anti-shock B vitamin mix.  My goal was to keep her from knowing that she had been moved.  I didn't even touch her leaves!

My timing was bad.  Living in Redwood City where the slogan is (not kidding) "Climate Best by Government Test"...  you get spoiled with nearly flawless weather and can plant any time you make an impulse by at the local nursery.  Whereas most places need to wait until Fall or Spring... here, you can really plant in the middle of summer and things are just happy when you give them enough water to establish.  But sometimes....

I happened to pick the first day of a heat wave to plant.  I started in the morning and within and hour, the sun had started beating down on my little madrone and baking her.  Immediately, her leaves began to droop and she started to look pathetic and traumatized.  I immediately put up a sun shade and a golf umbrella and she bounced back.  The heat wave lasted a week and I doted on her- watering her with the B vitamin and worrying over her.  She survived and has been absolutely thriving so far.

That same weekend that I planted the Madrone, I planted the Buckeye and the Valley Oak.  They are much easier and not so stressful to put in the ground.  I got the Oak in and put in supports to protect it against the wind that came up along with the searing heat... the Buckeye was lower profile and in less of an exposed area.  I watered deeply and didn't think much about either of them except how much I love them and how beautiful it will be when they grow and start providing better habitat in the yard.

Unlike the Madrone, the Buckeye and the Oak did not show any signs of stress with the planting along with the heat wave.  They looked happy, despite the scorching and wind.  I thought they were tough cookies and were fine.  I never thought to put a sun shade out for them.  They were not fragile.  They were fighters and probably just happy to be in the ground.

Nope.  Ironically- a month after the planting and the Mardone is thriving... the Valley Oak looks like it is lost.  All the leaves have died and we have emotionally prepared to replace it this fall.  I know that there is a chance that it will make it- the twigs have not lost their sap.  It might be that with the thermal stress and the stress of the planting, that it dropped it leaves and is just in a dormancy... but I am skeptical.  I have emotionally prepared to replace it.  The Buckeye is dropping its leaves too- but that is what they do this time of year so it is hard to know if I stressed it too, or if it is just doing what a Buckeye does.  We planted it for it's winter skeleton as much as for it's spring green anyway.

So... lesson learned... don't plant in the heat.  And if you do... shade them and treat them all as if they were fragile and special.  Sigh... they were not expensive because they were small... but still.  Sucks to kill a tree.  I also lost a Dutchman's Pipe Vine too.  DOH!

Quick Update- New Sign!

I am woefully behind in chronicling our garden as the kids have taken all my resources lately.  As spring blooms- things are really starting to pop here and then there are a few flops that we are working on fixing.

FLOP- our back hillside project was just not filling in the way that it should have.  We had some great germination and our flowers were a delight- five spots, baby blue eyes... then the tansy leaf phacilia, birds eye gilia, lupines, clarkias, chinese houses, rancheria clover- they were all beautiful in the clumps where they did well but the plants were stunted and didn't fill in well.  I finally got around to testing my soil and looks like we are nitrogen deficient.  I had hoped to not amend the soil and get the plants established to start building the hill- but I think that we will have to do some amending.  I have sprayed a bunch of fish emulsion on the hill (stinky and messy business) and we will see if it has any effect.  It might be that we have to revise what we plant back there but fingers are crossed that they just need a little bit more food.  I am still revising how we plan the long term strategy- definitely some challenges back there.

POPS- the front yard (meadow) is really thriving and starting to draw a lot of attention from the neighbors.  The smothering approach to getting rid of the lawn has worked great and it is pretty enough that we finally put in our permanent sign to brag about how cool natives are.  The red fescue has filled in almost completely and the purple needlegrass is starting to stand out.  Purple owl clover dots the meadow and swaths of tidy tips, poppies and five spots really stand out.  The front planter is starting to establish with the big shocker being that the foothill penstemons who normally like full sun are doing well with the afternoon shade (so far).

Just a few pics- kids are in the background demanding attention.  Sigh- twin toddlers make blogging hard!

These are pics from a couple weeks back- but gives a better idea of what the yard looks like now.

Tidy Tips just beginning- the kids LOVE to hide in them
so they have gotten some trampling. 

Need an * since we still are converting!

NOW you know why we painted the front
door orange!

Purple owl clover was planted as a larval
butterfly food- turns out to be one of
my favorites in the garden!  Yarrow coming soon.

Five spots planted to cascade over the low wall.  Never mind
the slight toddler trampling.

A Sledge Hammer, Crowbar and 1.6 Tons of Rocks

It was my birthday right around the Equinox.  I don't get a whole lot of time to write, so this is my birthday post!

Birthday season is mid March.  My brother, Cas, his mom and I all have birthdays between March 19th and the 24th.  It makes for a fun time of bingeing on birthday cake... but this year brought something far better for me... the beginning of phase II of our front yard project!

For my birthday, I got boulders and money to buy more native plants.  This time, however, I bought plants and not just seed.

Our front yard had a planter box right under the stairs and the backdrop was a big, ugly stucco wall that lead up the stairs to the house.  I have been jonesing to get rid of those bricks ever since I painted our front door bright orange and decided it clashed terribly with the brick.  Birthday present to me was 1.6 tons of Napa field stone, covered with lichens, mosses and what I am going to guess are liverworts or hornworts.  They are beautiful and I had a vision of making a dry stack wall.

Dry stacking means making a wall that does not have morter.  It really is just a pile of rocks that are stacked at an angle to hold the dirt in place and hold each other up.  After watching a couple of YouTube videos, I deemed myself a sufficient expert to build such a wall as a replacement for our brick planter.

What more could anyone want for their birthday than to use a sledge hammer and a crowbar to take out bricks and then spend the day moving 25-50# rocks into a pile?  Clearly we all know the answer is NOTHING!!!!  I had a blast and only smashed my finger into a bloody pulp once!

The dry stacking wall is not just to look good, but it is also to provide better habitat for the lizards who frequent our yard.  We have Western Fence lizards (Sceloperous occidentalis) as well as Alligator lizards (Elgaria sp).  (I am not sure the species of Alligator... Northern or Southern... I have been too afraid to catch one after I got a chunk of knuckle taken out by a big one.  Next time I see one, I will catch and ID it though.)

Brick planter as I took it out.

My Napa Field Stone- ready for placement.

As part of our goal for our yard, we want to provide the best habitat possible and that includes making physical structures for the herps (reptiles and amphibians).  It seems to be working since I had a Fence lizard running around it as I was building it!

Once I got the planter rebuilt, I built a trellis along the wall and then I had a shopping spree on native plants.  I highly recommend the Berkeley Horticultural Nursery in Bezerkeley... they have a fantastic natives section.  It is a very very expensive nursery, but they have so many cool and unusual plants there that it is well worth the trip.  Just plan on bringing cash only so that you can limit how much you will spend before getting there!  It is dangerous!  I also went to Bay Natives on the way home which only sells natives and is a great resource but not nearly as much fun as BHN.

New dry stacked wall and trellis

Cas and I just took out the railing.  Didn't need it and
now it looks much better.

Close up of the beautiful rocks!

Thankfully I went with a preplanned list of plants that I was looking for so that I didn't impulse buy.  The plants for this planting strip are not limited to locally found species as the meadow is.  Instead, it is our place to showcase beauty, fragrance and edibles!  The plants that we selected for here are all low water to drought tolerant.  I did put in drip irrigation for some of them so that we can supplement water to specific plants.

THE PLANT LIST- & why they were selected.

Large Shrubs and Vine to cover the stucco wall, provide fall color, food for birds, give spring flowers and provide fragrance.

Native Grape (Vitis californica)- I went with Rodgers Red as a variety and so it is not strictly a native. Although we have a true native grape, this one happens to be a hybrid of our native and an European grape.  It was originally collected along a creek in Sonoma Co and stood out for it's particularly brilliant red fall foliage.  Genetic tests have revealed that it is actually a hyrbid, but it is still often sold as a "native".  I picked it because I wanted to have truly brilliant fall color, food for birds and a visual screen for our stucco wall.  I forgive it for being a hybrid. Takes full sun to part shade.  This exposure only gets morning sun so hopefully the grape will like it and will make short work of my ugly wall in no time.

Native grape- Rodger's Red

California Bush Anemone (Carpenteria californica)- This is one that I am particularly excited about.  This is an evergreen shrub that will help to be a visual screen for our ugly wall.  It also has lovely large white flowers that are super fragrant and smell like orange blossoms.  It is in the "mock orange" family because of the fragrance.  It is a plant that does well in shade and takes little water.  Like the grape, I have it hooked up to drip irrigation.

CA Bush Anemone

Spicebush (Calycanthus occidentalis)- This is a deciduous big shrub that I picked as another part of our visual screen and it also produces beautiful and fragrant flowers, but these flowers are red and have a spicy red-wine fragrance.  It can take some shade and little water.  Again, like the others, it is on drip.

Spicebush Flowers

Pink Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum glutinosum)- I fell in love with these after seeing them bloom around this time of year in Palo Alto.  It has spectacular pink flowering clusters in early spring and beautiful fall colors.  It is a plant that does great in shade and can take little water.  After it is done flowering, it sets fruit that will provide food for the birds.

Pink Flowering Currant

Low growing perennials and ground cover- to provide food for birds (& people), give spring flowers and protect soil.

Beach Strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis)- YES, we have a native strawberry!  This is actually often planted as an ornamental strawberry for ground cover and that is what I am using it for.  It can take traffic, shade and very little water.  What more could you ask for in a ground cover?!  Oh, pretty white flowers and tiny little red berries (bird food).  This ground cover can even be mowed... you really can use this as a lawn substitute in the right settings.  This is a fast growing and aggressive ground cover that I expect to beat back into submission as the years wear on, meanwhile it is protecting the soil underneath without wood chips.  I do not have this irrigated and do not plant on supplementing water-Bonus!

Beach Strawberry

Red-Flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande)- Buckwheats are a great drought tolerant flower, but they are not always my favorite.  I was able to find the Red-Flowered, which is a bit harder to source, because it is one that I am more drawn to.  I am planting this for spring flowers, but also as a filler to bring in some height to the lower part of the planter.  Buckwheats can usually take some part shade, but I am not sure how well it will do in this spot with only morning sun (eastern facing), so it is a gamble.  No irrigation needed for this guy.

Red-flowered Buckwheat

Foothill Penstemon (Penstemon heterophyllus)- Penstemons are great plants for neglecting... they take full sun, dry soil and are a favorite of hummingbirds.  They are wonderful and should be a staple in any native garden.  I adore Penstemons and this is a particularly exciting one.  HOWEVER this is probably not the best spot for it since it doesn't get a whole lot of sun.  I know that it would do great planted in the meadow... but I have committed myself (for now) with trying to keep those plants local and this one is not found at Edgewood preserve.  I don't really have many full sun spots in our yard that are not part of our "local" meadow so I am trying the Penstemon in the front planter.  It is a gamble but one I hope pays off since it is great for beautiful flowers, hummingbirds, and bees.  Fingers are crossed that it will like it there... ya never know until you try!  No irrigation needed.

Foothill Penstemon

Island Alum Root (Heuchera maxima)- I love the Heuchera and this is a particularly fun one because it is HUGE (for a Heuchera)!  I planted this one to provide some height to the lower part of the planter and to bring some fun spring flowers.  The flowers are not showy, but a sweet little white dainty flower.  It likes to have a little water, so I did put it on a drip.

Island Alum Root

Chaparral Clematis (Clematis lasiantha)- I planted this to help cover the front of our garage and for it's unusual flowers and seed pods.  It is a dynamic plant that will change throughout the season.

Chaparral Clematis

Huckleberry (Vaccinum ovatum) (Native blueberry)- I was super excited to find this at Bay Natives.  It is not always an easy one to find, nor, apparently, an easy one to grow.  We love eating wild Huckleberries when we go hiking in the Redwoods, so I was excited to try one in our front planter.  Not only are the berries tasty, but the flowers are really pretty as well.  I have it on drip and it takes partial shade.  It will be getting morning sun and afternoon shade.  I plan on also feeding it coffee since it likes acidic soils.  I typically dump my dregs on my blueberries but now will give Huckleberry some too!

Huckleberries

Transplanting- Egg crates looking good.

I am not sure where I got the idea to start seedlings in paper egg cartons, but I know that I did it a few years ago when I had my first veggie garden and I started most plants from seed.  It worked great and so I decided to do it with some of my natives- mostly I did it to start my Silver Bush Lupine (Lupinus albifrons).

Last week, it seemed like a few of my L. albifrons were getting big enough for me to go ahead and transplant and so I wanted to share with you about how it all went.  First, I have to say that I am a rookie at this whole gardening thing and growing from seed and I didn't do things the way I should have.  I should have used seed starting mixture (there are all kinds and mostly mixes of sand, moss etc) instead of just nursery blend.  I also don't think that I did a good job of my scarification of my seeds for the Lupines and had a few germinate and then die.  I think that had I used a seed starter blend, I would have had fewer seedlings die.  That being said- the basic concept of planting in the egg cartons works great- they germinate and have no problem sending roots down through the carton.  I then just cut out the individual egg unit with a plant and put the whole thing in the ground.  No disturbing the roots and an easy transplant by just scooping out a little dirt with a spoon.  So, although I would do some things differently- I am whole heartedly advocating starting seeds in egg cartons and transplanting directly into the ground.  So far, so good.  It has been about a week now and my babies are thriving.

Seedling cut out from carton and ready
to transplant.

You can see the roots have started to grow
through the carton wall.

Used a spoon to scoop a small hole to
transplant the entire carton.  Peeled back
paper rim and just planted directly.

Little seedling is all nestled in and ready
to grow.

I have also started transplanting some of the other plants that I have grown in the flats but it has not been going quite as smoothly.  Mostly, I think that some of the problem rests from me disturbing the roots as I dig them up to transplant them.  I transplanted a few CA Bottlebrush Grass and it is just not happy. I also realize that, typical of me, I planted too many seeds in the flats and many have crowded each other out.  For those that did germinate well- I have too many plants in the flats.  For those that didn't, I blame my nursery mix and I should have too many crowding each other out.  Either way- I do think that I vastly prefer to plant in the egg cartons so that I can just transplant the whole gizmo without damaging the roots- I am not very patient OR very gentle...

The fireworks begin!

Caspar and I were out of town last weekend and came home to the beginnings of a firework display on our back hillside.  The Baby Blue-Eyes and Five Spots are starting to come up in mass.  They are already starting to look beautiful, but the exciting thing is realizing that every little flower that we see pretty much represents an entire plant that can grow to a mass of flowers about 2' across!  Although it is beautiful now, it is fun to know that this is just the beginning of things to come!

Hard to see in the photo, but the hill is starting to come
alive.  Each little dot represents one plant that will
eventually produce dozens of flowers in a big mass.

Five Spots and Baby Blue-Eyes dotting
our back hillside

 It was fun to be away for only three days and see such dramatic changes.  I am out inspecting our yard every day so it often makes it hard to see the buildup of all the gradual changes that are taking place.

One of my favorite aspects of wildflower gardens is how they sleep and then seem to come alive overnight.  The flowers time their blooming so that they seem to come out of nowhere.  One day the hill is green, the next it is a profusion of color.  The seasonal firework display comes on like that... right now, we are just watching the sparklers of twilight, what is only the anticipation of the big show.  The show has started, but my lone blooming buttercup and the Clarkia, lupines and Phacelia are all waiting to join in the party and really get things going!  I can already see buds and I know that in one, two month's time... things will be really exciting!

Can you see the buttercup?  I saw it and came RUNNING out to get
a better look.  I ADORE buttercups!

My first Ranunculus- Buttercup.

I look out over my back hill and our front yard every day- looking for new emergence and to get angry at the weeds that have the audacity to show their weedly little heads... The other day I was thrilled when I spotted a tiny little yellow dot amidst the green, blue and white.  A BUTTERCUP!  I simply adore them- partly because of their name... I can freely admit that it brings back memories of "The Princess Bride", but mostly because they are a sweetly cheery little yellow flower with a glossy (some might say "buttery") sheen to its flowers.  The glossiness of these flowers is what gives them their name and also makes them easy to identify.

What I did not know before embarking on this gardening adventure, is that this sweet little flower is not actually an annual, as I would have expected, but it is a perennial.  The reason they seem like annuals is that their foliage is not very eye catching and they die back in summer.  Having perennials on our hillside is great not just because once it gets established, I can name it and have it return year after year, but also because the living roots will persist and help to stabilize the hill.  I have already planted many perennial grasses on the hill for that reason, so my lone Buttercup will not have urgent work to prop up the back yard... but it is still nice to think of it that way.

Unrelated to Gardening: Building a "Floating" Slab Shelf

This is completely un-garden related since I don't have much going on right now.  Save for my daughter trying to eat my emerging Shooting Stars in the egg carton and my son trampling my seedlings in the front yard- we are just playing the waiting game.  Five Spots are starting to show up on the back hill (not surprising since they are in the same genus as the Baby Blue Eyes), but they are flowers that are spectacular when in a mass and easy to overlook as singletons, so it is still only minimally exciting.

This is a topic that is very different- I am sharing because I am proud of what I built, but more importantly, I am sharing because I could not find ANY other instructions on the web on how to do this and it really is quite simple when you do it this way.

I am talking about making a floating slab shelf- i.e. a thick piece of wood that does not have brackets to hold it up but is a solid shelf that you can put books on and other tschotskes.

I had a china cabinet that Cas and I used to put our various tschotskes from traveling etc that had sentimental appeal to us (READ: useless crap to which we are still too emotionally attached to dispense with).  We have a small house and work hard to reduce clutter (i.e. useless crap to which we are still too emotionally attached to dispense with) but it still remains.  The china cabinet was a huge, useless piece of furniture that only seemed to underline the fact that it housed useless crap to which we are still too emotionally attached to dispense with.   My solution was to dispense with the china cabinet and get some wood slabs to make some shelves that would be pretty to look at.

I knew that it was possible to embed rods into the wall and then epoxy the shelves onto them.  That knowledge was my starting point- but everything that I read online was for new construction where people had the walls open and were able to put on specially fabricated rods directly onto the studs, drywall around and then drill the shelves... blah blah it wasn't going to work for us.

Our house is pretty old and I was not about to open up the wall.  Further challenging us was the fact that our electrical box was behind the wall so it was hard to find the studs- everywhere you hit was wood since there is so much blocking.  This is how I came up with a solution.

First- get the slabs.  I got our Black Oak slab as a 13' long slab from Evan Shively (Arborica in Marshall CA).  It was a raw slab that I had them rip to 13" wide and planned it down at a friend's shop.  I then just sanded it down (using a sanding "cup" bristle attachment on a drill bit to finish the "live edge").  I finished it with a mix of Tung oil, mineral spirits and polyurethane.  Wanted a finish that looked natural and not polished but that would protect.

Next- mount the slabs.

Step ONE: find the EXACT center of your studs.  In our case, with all the blocking, I found the studs at the top and bottom of the wall and then worked down.  To find the exact center, I used a dry wall saw to cut into the dry wall near the stud until I found an edge.  I patched and painted the holes later.

This is how I found the EXACT center of the
stud.  You do NOT want to mis-drill.

Step TWO: Cut a strip of 3/4" thick board to the length of your desired shelf and rip it to the thickness of your shelf.  Mount it on the wall in the exact place where you will place your shelf and mark the center of the stud over this strip.  It first serves as a mockup of where your final placement of the shelf will be.

The board serves as a mock up of where you want to put the
shelf and then as a guide for your dowling jig and
then as a template for drilling the back of your shelf.

We wanted our shelves to be offset from each
other to give it a more wabi sabi look and allow
for taller objects.  

Step THREE: Use a dowling jig to mount onto the 3/4" strip and drill with a 7/16" bit into the stud.  The jig makes you drill exactly perpendicular to the wall without mistakes.  I think that I drilled 3" into the stud (plus room for the drywall), but I can't remember exactly now.  I had made a mockup wall and practiced on the fake wall first since I didn't want to do structural damage to our house.

Close up of the Dowling Jig

Step FOUR: Remove the 3/4" guide and drill it onto the back of your shelf and use that as a template for drilling the holes in the shelf.  Again, using the dowling jig makes you line things up exactly perfectly and drill exactly perpendicular to the wall.  This time, use a 1/2" bit (12" long).  I used 12" long rods, so I drilled about 1" longer than the rods would extend into the shelf to allow for the buildup of dust and debris as I installed the shelf.

Step FIVE: Take 12" 1/2" threaded rod and place two 1/2" nuts as a jam on the end to help you screw it in.  The 7/16" hole is the exact right size to screw the rod into the stud- use the jammed nuts as a head to screw with.

Use two nuts to jam into a head to get a wrench
on in order to screw it into the wall.

Use the nuts to screw the rod into the stud.

Step SIX: Once the rods are in place, you can just "slide" the shelf into place.  By drilling the 1/2" hole, the rod will slip into it, BUT because the rods have flex, you will need to hammer it into place with a rubber mallet as it will not actually "slip" very easily.  There is no need for epoxy, the tension on the threaded rods will be enough to hold it into place.

LOOK MA!  NO brackets!

Black Oak with a "live edge"- not a milled face.

We have since further purged some of our
tschotskes, a perpetual process.

Done.  Easy peasy.

An unwelcome native- Poison Oak

Behind our house is a 40 acre park that is all Oak/Bay woodland and has more than just a little Poison Oak.  Our property backs up against the park so although it is not our land- we do kind of have Oak Woodland in our "backyard" and with it, comes the Poison Oak.

I have never had it.  That is kind of amazing.  It might be that I am one of the 15% of the population who does not develop a reaction.  This would be rather incredible since I have highly sensitive skin and am alway breaking out in hives for one strange reason or another.  But, given just how much time I have spent out in the woods either hiking, doing field work or mountain biking, it seems nearly impossible that I have not been exposed.  Yet... I have never had a reaction.

Unlike most people who I know who have no had it- I have no arrogance in thinking that I am immune- instead I am arrogant enough to think that I am just that good at not touching it.  The funny thing is that despite never having it, I am terrified of it.  I treat it like jumping cholla- I think that even the lightest touch will cause me to be covered in hives that will never go away and land me in the ER with a corticosterone mainline drip.  Deathly afraid of the stuff and really good at seeing it from far away.

Thicker leaves- but both the red and green
are Poison Oak.

Given my deep (and largely irrational) fear, I did the most remarkable thing today... I went up onto the hill and started cutting down Poison Oak.  Me.  Pulling, cutting and tearing at vines and thickets of Poison Oak directly.  Turns out I don't like all native plants.

This will be a good test of my immunity to PO (or lack thereof) as I was cutting down trees of the stuff and my gloves ended up slick and shiny from the oils.  I had so much oil on them that it started to get hard to grab some of the vines that I was pulling onto my head.  I had no idea that the trucks could get that thick!  I cut down two vines that had wended up into the canopy that were easily 3-4" across at the base.  They were just starting to leaf out and the poisoned oil was seeping out.  I did wear long pants, boots, gloves and a sweatshirt.  I then hopped into the shower and did a VERY good scrubbing with Tecnu.

Not sure what fool took this picture... but this is what I was
terrified of doing!  It is a great shot to show some of the
diversity of the leaf forms.  They were clearly growing together
probably on the same plant.

And yes... this is also Poison Oak.  Damn.

I am including this mention only because so many people do not know what it looks like in all of its various forms.  It really is a beautiful plant and remarkable in its versatility.  In fact, I just learned this, the scientific name is Toxicodendron diversilobum (scientific name literally means "toxic plant with many shaped leaves").  In some places, it is a low and delicate ground cover.  Others, it forms thick shrubs and sometimes even vines like I cut today.  Sometimes the leaves are small- nearly as small as a dime.  Other times, they are quite big- as large as an oak from which it gets it name or larger.  They are sometimes bright green, other times, an olive shade- in the fall, they turn red and orange and are perhaps the most lovely.  The thing to look for is that they are shiny with the oils that cause the rash.  Three leaves (actually, leaflets) on a single stem- they often look a little like blackberry- with slightly lobate leaves that look like oak.

Newly emerging leaves are often red.  Notice the shine.

The only way to learn Poison Oak is to just look for it in all the different forms.  If you have been exposed, Tecnu is the tried and true best thing to use for it (as I have witnessed so many of my suffering friends and family use).  Hopefully, I will arise tomorrow and the next day not have the tell tale seeping red blisters.

Fall Colors on a vining form

The bright green delicate form, notice the
three leaves on a single stem, shiny bright green. 

It starts to get tricky- look for the three leaflets and the oily
shine.

Beautiful, right? Who would think that this
large thick shrub would be the same nasty beast as the
bright green woodland vine?