Garden Sprawl Friday

About three weeks ago the boss and I went to a forested area, owned by someone he knows, to collect ferns. Sitting across from a gas station the forest has some parts cleared, for it will probably be developed.

We came across a decaying Douglas Fir stump with - my heart always leaps to behold - red huckleberry bushes growing out of it. The boss knows my obsession for this vaccinium, and so we set to deft swings with the pick-axe and digging out the red humus onto the tarp, carefully taking out the bushes with their roots and trimming off some of their tops.

He said this stump was probably 100 years old; not the tree-growth age itself but that together with the time it takes to rot. It takes a long time for Douglas Fir to reach this beautiful state:

Even then, the outer parts of the stump were still solid and rooted immovably in the ground.

Now I must find solid or half-decayed logs of fir as well as some severed stumps, either with rotted material at the core or hollowed out (as they can simply be filled with humus).

The logs go on the bottom that has been sufficiently dug down, so that the logs are about half to three quarters submerged below the ground. On top of the logs go the stumps. Into the stumps goes the humus (if not already present). On top of that goes a good layer of more humus, with pine needles, sand, and other forest duff. Into that top layer go the red huckleberry bushes.