Farm Notes (July 4, 2022)

Anne’s Celebration of Life

Friends and family from around the world celebrated the life of Anne Rae (Boys) Belovich on Saturday, June 18th, 2022. Other than being cold, it went exactly the way she would have wanted it. We found connection in sharing our special moments of her under her favorite maple tree.

Rick welcomed everyone to the celebration and told of Anne’s early, very difficult years that shaped the independent, self-sufficient, goal oriented, inspirational woman that people came to know later on. She grew up in the depression, ran away with and married the very handsome adventurous photographer Lloyd Dean Hollibaugh, and became a widow at age 19 after Lloyd’s plane crashed behind enemy lines in WWII. Rick was only two weeks old when his father died and Anne, “had to figure it out” for both of them. He shared how “they grew up together,” adventures of camping, sailing, going to school, and building houses.

We were honored to have so many of Anne’s friends join us to share stories of her amazing life and how she inspired them. Jeff Panciera, read messages from friends and family who couldn’t make it. It helped us understand the many facets of Anne. There was so much love and Rick and I are appreciative to all of those who joined us in remembering her.

Following Anne’s Celebration, Rick and I buried her ashes at the base of her maple tree so she could become part of it.

Anne’s Celebration of Life was recorded on Facebook Live on Anne’s account and can be viewed there. Because of technical difficulty it is in two parts. It was also uploaded to YouTube. These are not high quality recordings. The links are: (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmZ4Y8vrxzI (Part 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayF-WTwVR-U

A much better professional recording was taken by Blue Chalk who is working with Floret Flower Farm on their Season Two of Growing Floret. Sections will be available in the future.

Today in the rose gardens

The sun broke out for a brief 15 minutes earlier today and should reappear around 6 PM this evening. And then, according to the weather forecast, we should have 9 days of sunshine. Of course, the weather forecast changes hourly. In Michigan we had lake effect. Here we have ocean and mountain effect. You can see the clouds coming in from the Pacific Ocean only to pile up at the Cascade Mountain line and sometimes ricochet back west toward us with the sun shining on some portion of the landscape.

It’s easy to complain about, but these weather changes bring many rainbows and rain for the unirrigated roses. When we hit our dry stretch, I’ll be scurrying around trying to water the roses until I have time to fix the system. For now, I’ll be grateful for the rain but perhaps a little less and only every three to four days.

Nature’s pressure on the roses…

If you are on Facebook and have rose friends in the Pacific Northwest, you know that the weather has contributed to frost dieback, blackspot, rusts, and loss of favorite newer, unestablished roses. I believe that I might have pushed things to be a little more problematic here as I removed all of the blackberry vines that offered shelter to some of the ramblers. It was heartbreaking to cut so many dead canes earlier this spring and while I knew the weeds were outcompeting the roses, I had a lot of guilt. Thank goodness for the rosarians in the area. Their help and assurances gave me confidence to continue what I was doing. All of the ramblers that I was concerned about are sending multitudes of new canes into the air searching for something to climb on.

Now, the task of repairing the deer fence around the perimeter is high priority. They love the tinder shoots and are inviting all of their friends to our restaurant. A couple of weeks ago, a fawn slowly stumbled its way up the hill in the front yard. Earlier, I had shoed away a herd from the west fence. He was probably born here and his mother left with the herd. I wrapped him in a blanket and we carried him out the gate and laid him in the corner of the fence next to a deer path. I went back to check on him an hour later and he was still there so I gave him some peanut butter. When I went back two hours later that peanut butter was gone and so was he. Yesterday I saw him trailing behind his mother as she looked for a break in the fence to jump. He is much stronger now. I like looking at them on the other side of the fences.

The Old Garden Roses

The Old Garden Roses were in full bloom yesterday morning, before the rain. What a sight! The gallicas have grown back with a vengeance, developing a thicket of blooms from about 25 different plants.

An “experienced” lawn maintenance person weed wacked part of Anne’s Old Rose Garden five years ago. This is what happens after being weed-whacked. Anne was surprised and pleased to see that the Gallicas were putting out a few blooms last year. She would love to see that they are doing so well this year.

The roots of established plants will run through the soil and put up canes wherever they can. Rosarians have different perspectives on this. Some enjoy the tangle and some decide to pull it all out and start again. Since some of these roses are rare and I don’t mind the wild look, I will slowly work to pull starts out after I’ve identified them and repot them for others who might want to give them a home. The roses (mosses, albas, and damasks) in the south section of the garden are large enough to weed around, so I finished that task last week.

This is my favorite of all of the gardens.

Inflorescence

We have decided to explore a farmers market stand. My nieces, Emily and Lindsey, have been staying with us for the past month. Emily has worked at a floral shop and is interested in having her own business, called Inflorescence. She has been making bouquets, learning about the individual roses and their habits, and testing each for durability as a cut flower. We went to some local farmers markets to observe and felt she could offer something a little different. There are a few spots at the Snohomish Farmers Market with good traffic so we will begin there.

I love farmers markets and support local food systems wherever I am. It’s a must do/see when traveling. Right up there with libraries, botanical gardens, and hiking trails. I look forward to learning about the process on the other side.

Len Heller’s Spinosissima Collection Preservation

We continue to move Len Heller’s favorite and rare spinossimas to the formal garden area. It is taking longer than we expected both because of the weather and the work in digging out and protecting the roots of these magnificent roses. These are tough and hardy as we have found in our transport. The name spinossisima means “the most spiny” which is apt. All roses we have transferred to the formal garden have made it. These propagate best by suckering so we want to give them plenty of room to do this. However, we limited in space in the formal garden and these are large plants.

We chose the formal garden because it used to contain more modern hybrid teas, beautiful but not Anne’s interest. Max thought it was what a rose garden should look like which is why Anne put in all of the extra work necessary to keep the roses looking good. They did a lot of entertaining there and it still is a nice place to have coffee or lunch. We didn’t realize just how hardy some of the roses actually were and are uncovering more as we prepare for the spinossisimas. At first we were just going to transfer the roses to other parts of the garden. But we can’t do it in the heat of the summer and we are running low on space inside. We only have until September before the rest of Len’s roses will be plowed under. The most important ones to him were moved first and we’ll do what we can to get as many of the rest in time.