Home Decoration: Back Porch Picnic Table

The view from our back porch is pretty freaking spectacular. Facing north, the panorama encompasses rolling Washington countryside as far as the eye can see - and no more than seven or eight homes in all that space - as well as a striking view of Mt. Adams, approximately 50 miles ever-so-slightly northwest. You can see the hills imitating the ocean when the wind ripples the tall grass, you can see rain approaching from miles away accompanied by clouds that move across the terrain like a shadow-colored tablecloth spreading, you can see the fog creeping out of the river valley like something alive. Deer and cattle graze in the distance. Osprey, Turkey Vultures, Hawks, and the occasional Bald Eagle soar overhead. Ten-thousand trees spot the landscape, twenty-, who knows? Like I said, pretty freaking spectacular.

And if there's anything a spectacular view needs, it's a spectacular place from which to view it. The builders of our log home - it was erected in 1989 by the family that lived in it for 25 years right up to the day they sold it to us - accomplished this with aplomb. Our back porch runs approximately 22 feet long and 8 feet deep and sits on four posts off the main level, and is covered by the top level's overhang. It's always shaded and open on two sides - north and east - to allow a cross-breeze. It is, quite simply, one of the best spots, if not the best spot, in the whole house, and we hang out there every opportunity we get. Three or four nights a week at least we'll grill supper out there, some evenings we'll just have a libation or two in the cheap-o plastic Adirondack chairs we got til something better comes along, and it's a great spot to relax and read. Even Harrison, the older of our two indoor cats, howls like a sick banshee if he doesn't get his daily excursion. So to further maximize our enjoyment of the back porch we thought we'd get a picnic table so we could eat out there when the weather permits.



A quick trip to Home Depot in The Dalles and we were the proud possessors of a good-sized picnic table kit that didn't set us back too much and seemed easy enough to put together. A screwdriver and the included hardware were all that were required for assembly, and aside from an injury to Perry's back incurred when loading the kit into the car at Home Depot (an injury that kept him on the couch with a heating pad for two solid days, which he didn't mind as his copy of The Familiar had just come in the mail, and the Mariners played afternoon games), it was a relatively painless process. A few of the logs were a little rough, but with some sanding - which happened a week later once Perry could stand under his own power again - and some expertise weatherproof staining by Cory (one coat, let dry, then sand, then throw on a second coat) it was all done, no more than two or three combined person-hours. Pretty lax commitment for the outcome, if you ask us. A couple decorative Citronella candles in Ball jars, a doily thing Cory had, and the table was set. We celebrated by grilling up a few brats, cracking a cold Rainier and pouring a glass of white from Lyle's own Syncline Wine Cellars.

A good outdoor space is like another room of the house; a great outdoor space is like the best room of the house. And it doesn't take a lot of furniture or frills to get that great space, sometimes a single, simple piece can do the trick. Just remember to lift with your knees.

Garden Update: It's Alive!

It's been two weeks since Planting Day 2015 here on our hill in Lyle, Washington, and in our garden the seeds have taken root and sprouted our first leaves of the season. Every box is showing signs of life, some stronger than others, but all in all it seems we're off to a solid start.

The corn is on the rise, standing a couple inches above the topsoil already. We planted the corn in the box at the northwest corner of the garden. Because of the direction our yard faces - ever-so-slightly northeast - and the slope of our hill, this was the best spot to sew it to ensure it wouldn't spend too much of the day casting shadows over the other crops in its box. There were eight kernels planted, and all eight have sprouted. Provided they survive the summer and the wind up here, and if last year's crop in Portland is any indicator, we can expect 2 or 3 good ears per stalk, roughly a couple dozen all told.

One of those crops we're careful not to overshadow with the corn is the zucchini planted right next to it. We only planted a few seeds this year - last year things got, well, let's just say "out of hand" - and all three are above earth and thriving. Cory loves zucchini, and I, Perry, love Cory so tolerate zucchini. She makes it easy on me by sauteing it in olive oil and butter and dusting it with grated Parmesan. Cheese solves everything. 






In the southeast-most bed where the lettuce-Mesclun mix dominates, it's the green beans that have jumped out to an early lead, with all 12 plants sprouted. We'll thin them down in another couple weeks, trellis them soon after that. The lettuce and Mesclun are showing signs of life, and the jalapenos that sit in the other available quadrant are slow starters but it's still early. The heat hits Lyle at the end of this week - three 90+ days are projected - so we expect that to kick the reticent peppers into overdrive.

Heck, things are growing so good out there, even the three grape vines we planted at the beginning of the season and had all but given up for dead have sprung to life and are each displaying leaves. We're going to give these guys the season to see how they do, but our suspicion is the clay quality of our native soil here on the hill might not be the best for them. Next year's micro-vineyard might have to be in a long and slender raised bed.

But the real star of the garden thus far is without a doubt our potato box. Now granted, the potatoes went in the dirt about a week before the rest of the garden, but despite that they're still leaps and bounds ahead of the other crops. Each of the nine plants is already standing between 3 and 6 inches high, and the idea of all those ripe little white, yellow, and purple potatoes waiting in the dirt has us salivating. Conventional wisdom says potatoes need about 10 weeks before they're ready to harvest, depending on the date of your last frost. Ours was mid-April, so the potatoes went in the first of May, meaning our spuds should be ready around mid-July. Another method some folks use to determine when to harvest is to wait until you see flowers, because it means the plant has shifted its priorities from developing the tuber to developing seeds. We're going with whichever happens first, because that's the shortest path between us and taters.

The cherry trees shorn bald by the wind are still pretty much leafless, but there are fresh chutes all over them, so the roots are at least finding purchase and giving it a go. In another couple of weeks, once the 3 remaining garden boxes are built and the gravel has gone down and the fence has gone up, we'll plant another pair of trees - peach perhaps this time - and see how they fair. Until then we're in a waiting game, waiting and watering and weeding, and hoping the wind doesn't blow it all away.

So that's our garden as of Memorial Day. But that's not all we got up to over the holiday weekend. Check back over the next few days for posts about our most recent Saturday Morning Hike, and the picnic table that nearly broke Perry's back.

Good gardening!

Saturday Morning Hike: Labyrinth/Li'l Maui Loop Base

Some weeks are tougher than others, and some weekends are busier than others, but no matter how much we have going on or whatever's in the background of our lives, Cory and I like to take time together, even if it's only half an hour, to get out and hike one of the area's many, many, many trails. Seriously, there are an impressive 100+ trail heads in the Columbia Gorge - according to the wonderfully-useful and forgivably-punned guide Curious Gorge - leaving us in no short supply of dusty trails to escape down. Saturday mornings are usually our best shot, and so far we've been out on a different trail every weekend the weather has allowed, which has been most. That said, I don't want to give the wrong impression of we Hortons as surefooted mountain goats; we're as used to hiking as we are to waking up to turkey calls, so it's not like we're scaling rock faces or even spending hours at a time on the trail. Mostly we're taking spirited strolls, pushing ourselves a little more each weekend, working towards the bigger, more skilled excursions.

This weekend, with only a little time to spare, we went out to a trail that's been on our list from the beginning, as we drive by it most everyday. Officially it's known as the Labyrinth/Li'l Maui Loop. There are two access points to the trail, both off Washington State Highway 14 east of Bingen, and we went with the first one we came across driving west out of Lyle, right around mile marker 70 beside the rich cobalt waters of Rowland Lake, a popular fishing spot freshly stocked for the season with rainbow trout big as your arm, or so folks say.

Rowland Lake as seen from the trail head

The first stretch of the trail - from either access point - is an abandoned paved road, its asphalt cracked by patches of weeds and its shoulders lined with piles of fallen rock, clutches of bright orange wildflowers, and more dill than you can shake a bushel of cucumbers at. On one side there's a sheer wall of craggy stone twenty, thirty feet high, while on the other side there's the narrow gray stripe of highway and the much wider, much more vibrant Columbia River, and Oregon beyond.

The road climbs unimpeded for a few hundred yards then narrows to a slender path through larger collections of discarded rock - or "ripe rattlesnake grounds" as I refer to them in a voice trying but failing to mask a fearful vibrato, to which Cory typically rolls her eyes and pushes me onward - that winds a short way and deposits you beside a small if unexpected waterfall maybe fifteen, twenty feet high. The water it deposited in the small pool below was crystal clear and inviting, even on a moderately warm day, and the mist it sprayed caught the light just so, painting the air with a trembling rainbow. It was freaking beautiful, and worth the flouncy description I gave it, plus some.

From there the road crosses another patch of open terrain before running through a cut in the rocks directly beyond which is the trail head that splits into either branch of the Labyrinth/ Li'l Maui Loop. The Labyrinth, which is the split to the right, runs a more wooded if direct course to the top of the vista, while the Li'l Maui branch on the left is more of a switchback through grassy fields and slopes of wildflowers. All told the loop goes for five miles, more than we had time for on this outing, but gauging the climb as we continued down the road, definite plans for a longer excursion were forged.








All in all, it was a brief but pulse-spurring hike, not too hot and not too breezy, and most important, it provided us with the change of perspective that's central to any reinvigoration. Sometimes it's the smallest things that make the biggest difference, I guess. Til next time.

Windshorn

We get a fair amount of wind here in the Columbia River Gorge. It's part of the reason we're one of the premiere windsurfing, kite surfing, hang gliding et cetera spots in the country. Here in Lyle we have Doug's Beach, which every summer is taken over by extreme athletes cruising the plentiful and robust gusts.

Up at our property where the elevation tops 2,000 feet, we regularly get sustained gusts above 20 MPH, which can make for some howling and house-rattling conditions. Consequences are inevitable: tossed trash cans, relocated lawn gnomes, felled limbs on occasion, and loss of leaf.

Not three days after we put them in the ground, our two new cherry trees are all but bald thanks to high winds over the last couple of nights. There was even the start of a fruit or two, but alas now all are gone and our poor cherry trees are back at square one.

There's not much we can do to protect the trees from the wind - at least that we can think of - so can only hope for fairer conditions as spring tempers into summer. Until then, we roll with the punches and focus on the leaves we have left. That's gotta be a metaphor for something.

Country-ish on Social Media

There's more than one way to keep up with all the transpirings on our hill in Lyle. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for additional photos and tidbits, insights and outtakes, and whatever else we deem fit to post, which could really be anything. Case in point:

Plenty more where these guys came from. See you on social media.

Planting Day 2015

Saturday was Planting Day 2015 here on the hill, our first on the property and something we've been planning since before we even knew where we were going to be living. When we were in Portland we had a pretty decent backyard garden the last couple of years - roughly 72 square feet plus potted herbs, peppers, and a pumpkin patch in the back corner - but we knew when we had more space we wanted to expand the variety of what we were growing and add some flowers and other things, so a lot of thought and many sheets of graph paper had gone into plotting this new space.

The rear of the property faces north and gets unimpeded sunshine from rise to set, and constitutes the most open and spacious part of our land. The half closest to the house we intend to keep open for recreational purposes, but that back half is ripe for development, and we've got plans for all of it, the first stage of which is the garden. Because the soil on that part of the property is a touch clayish, and also because of a gopher or two roaming beneath the topsoil like chubby vegetarian sharks, and a touch for cosmetic/management reasons, we opted to go with raised beds filled with a mixture of native soil and potting mix, in our case Kellogg's, not to be confused with the cereal people, although hopefully our veggies will find it as delicious as we do Frosted Flakes.



Most raised beds these days are built of wood, as were a couple of ours back in Portland, but after a couple of years with them - especially in all that rain - we noticed deterioration that while it wasn't an immediate problem would be in another couple years. Even now that we're in a dryer, milder climate, we're not trying to rebuild the garden every seven or eight years. We're here til they roll us out, possibly longer if we end up haunting the next folks, so we wanted a garden that could stand the tests of time and weather and grow old with us. Which meant we needed a do-it-once material to match our do-it-once mentality. Which is why we went with cinder blocks.

Cinder blocks are awesome. They last forever, they can be rearranged, they don't require tools to assemble, and they're cheap compared to planks of cedar, especially if you're getting them in bulk. We use the 16"x8"x6" blocks Home Depot sells for 99-cents a pop. Our (ultimate) plan is for 8 beds, 4'x4', each of which requires two rows of 12 blocks for a combined height of 16", 12 of which is filled with the soil mix. This will expand our total garden space to 128 square feet, almost twice what we had in Portland. "Ultimate" was a parenthetical above because that's the end goal. We got five beds built in time for Planting Day 2015 and will add the others over the course of the summer. Two of the beds had already been filled with soil and sewn, one with ginger - a new addition this year and a whim crop we're mostly just curious to see if we can grow - and another with a mixture of potatoes, golds, reds and purples that have already started to thrive. Of the three remaining beds, we sewed one with a mixture of Green Leaf lettuce and Mesclun in half the bed, then a quadrant each of green beans and jalapenos, we dedicated one bed to herbs - parsley, rosemary, dill, basil and cilantro - and the final bed is divided between a quadrant of zucchini, a quadrant of carrots, and two quadrants of sweet corn. In the three beds still to be built we'll plant two with flowers, varieties TBD, and the last one with pickling cucumbers, peas, and possibly a tomato plant or two. We're still scouting the property for a suitable spot for our pumpkin patch. It's got to be somewhere out of the way but still comfortable enough to sleep in on Halloween night. We'll keep you posted.

Once the soil was in, the quadrants marked and the seeds sewn, it was onto phase two of Planting Day 2015, as well as the initiation of stage two of our overall backyard development plan: the orchard. Our idea as it stands is to start with a pair of four varieties - cherry, peach, apple, and pear - and line the far edge of the property with two rows 15 feet apart. We started with a pair of cherry trees because they were short enough to fit in the back of our truck without hanging out - it's a twenty-minute, leaf-shearing drive down a state highway to the closet tree purveyor - and because they offered us the shortest time between the present and homegrown fresh fruit.

One of us did the digging (each tree required a 2'x2' hole) while one of us did the supervising and selfie-taking. Planting Day 2016 will feature two shovels. Regardless, forty-five minutes, two blisters and four expletives later - mostly when the wheelbarrow of dirt tipped INTO THE HOLE - the job was done and we were the owners of two finely-dug holes, if I do say so myself. The trees were positioned, the dirt reshoveled, everybody took a good long drink of water and Planting Day 2015 came to a happy and surprisingly snag-free end.

We capped it all off by slow-grilling ears of fresh corn in their husks and four drool-inducing pork ribs procured from a local farmer as a part of a half-pig purchase Perry refers to, frequently, as "The Other Mrs. Horton."

While we sat on the back porch enjoying a couple or few cold Rainiers, we surveyed the work we'd done. Sewing the garden was a familiar experience, but neither of us had ever planted a tree before, and we were a little surprised at the strong sense of satisfaction it gave us. Looking out on the yard that evening, fresh in its first changes, we could see the trees we'd planted and the trees they'd become, the trees we'd plant next to them, and next to them down the line, how their trunks would stretch and their branches spread, and how what was new now would become as much a part of this place as we would in the years to come, more so, even, because unless we can figure out how to pull off the aforementioned Haunting of Rowland Road, the things we plant here could very well remain once we're gone. It was a heady moment, possibly influenced by the fatigue of honest work and diligent attention to our Rainiers. Either way it was a nice moment.

Next up, we build the rest of those beds and fence in the plot, then lay down some red lava gravel so we're not weeding between rows all summer. But those are jobs for another weekend. Til then, thanks for reading, and cheers.

Sewing Seeds

The long and the short of it is this: after six years together and 10+ in Portland, my wife Cory and I were ready for a change. We were entering that phase in our lives where we were wanting to put down permanent roots and start a family, and though we were uncertain about where exactly we wanted to be in terms of locale, we were both on the same page in knowing that we didn’t want to be in the city anymore. I come from a small town in North Carolina, and Cory from the smaller city of Salem, Oregon, and we were both looking to transition into a simpler, less hectic and more harmonic lifestyle, which we were convinced the sirens, strip clubs, and skinny-jeaned hordes of Portland just weren’t going to provide.

So we made a list of what we wanted: smaller town, bigger house we could eventually toss a couple rugrats into, on a workable-sized plot of land that we could develop towards a more sustainable existence. We weren’t trying to eschew society or go off the grid – anyone who knows either one of us knows that we could live without cable television and Netflix about as well as we could without oxygen and clean water – we just wanted to be able to trim the excesses in our lives, hone what it meant to provide for ourselves, and get to look at something besides our neighbor’s front porch when we stepped outside. And sure, there was a dash of curmudgeonly hermit in our motivation, but only a dash and exclusively on my part, another thing which shouldn’t surprise anyone even remotely acquainted with me.

List in hand, we started exploring. For a while we were sure we were going to move to Astoria, Oregon, home of The Goonies (which was, for my part at least, a good 90% of the motivation). Then it was going to be McMinnville in the fertile crescent of Oregon wine country. Or somewhere on Washington’s Olympic Penninsula, Gig Harbor maybe, or Port Townsend. For a good bit we entertained the idea of Anacortes, Washington on Fidalgo Island in the picturesque Puget Sound. And then, only 10 months ago, Cory took a daytrip with her friend Ellen to Hood River, Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge. I can still remember the look in those bottomless blue eyes and the excitement in her voice when she returned that night and asked if I had ever been. I hadn’t, not really. I’d driven through the Gorge ten years ago when I moved to Oregon but hadn’t been back since. I barely left my neighborhood in Portland, let alone the city. That’s the dash of hermit to which I referred. Anyway, Cory was smitten and thought we should check it out as soon as possible. I agreed, but secretly I wasn’t feeling it. I was looking for that big change, that drastic leap. The Gorge was too close to Portland, I thought, it was inside the same cultural bubble and wouldn’t be like moving away as much as it would be moving to the suburbs, but I’m smart enough to know that when my wife makes a suggestion, it’s not really a suggestion, so the very next weekend we went out to Hood River.

Any reservation I had, any hesitancy I was feeling, any resistance I was ready to offer, I forgot all about it the second we got outside city limits. 

On the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, facing west.

The Columbia River carves between Oregon and Washington leaving in its wake some of the most breathtaking scenery the U.S. has to offer. The deep blue water, the stoic and formidable mountains of the Cascade Range, the carpeted foothills and farmland and sweeping panoramas that stretch for dozens of miles in every beautifully bucolic direction – you wouldn’t believe there was a major metropolitan area just out of sight, but sure enough there it was not a quarter-hour out of town. We didn’t even do much that first day. We grabbed a couple Kolsches over lunch at Double Mountain Brewery and then we sat by the river watching the swimmers and stand-up paddleboarders, the windsurfers and sunbathers, the dogs drifting by on boogie boards and the gaggle of children splashing happily in the gently undulating river current. We didn’t talk much, we just sat there soaking in the environment, seeing if there was a place for us here. I think we would have set up camp right then and there if it had been an option. We didn’t know much about the area, but we knew how it made us feel – contented, appreciative, inspired, to name just a few lofty and vague sentiments – and that trumped any logistics we’d need to learn. What was for certain, by the time we got home that night, our collective mind was made. Next stop, Hood River.

But of course, it didn’t work like that.

We kept visiting weekend after weekend, each trip only further reinforcing our decision, and we started making actual plans. We’d have to put our house in Portland on the market, and there were a handful of things – repairs and whatnot – that would have to be done before that, so casually we started taking small steps towards the bigger goal. We gave ourselves 10 months to move, figuring we’d put the house up in May 2015 and be in the Gorge for the start of summer.

Now, Cory and I as a couple are many things, the least among them patient. We moved in together six weeks after we started dating, got married about a year after that, and bought the first house we looked at in Portland, which we loved for five wonderful years. We’re impulsive, to put it politely, ‘rash,’ if you’re feeling cynical, but our impulses have always served us well, so we tend not to question them. Rather, when they say ‘jump,’ we don’t even ask ‘how high,’ we just go. So around December, we started looking into jobs. Not looking to apply, just sort of gauging the field, seeing what we were up against. I’m a writer by night – formerly of horrible shark movies and currently of little-read novels – and a retail clerk by day, so work for me wouldn’t be too hard to come by, but Cory is a highly-skilled administrative professional who used to work in finance, so we wanted to make sure she could find something commensurate with her Swiss-Army-like skillset. And that’s when the anvil fell on the fast forward button.

Second week of December, Cory found a job listing in Bingen, Washington – a 90-second bridge crossing from Hood River – that was right up her alley, a real once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity. It was months ahead of schedule, but considering it had taken multiple interviews over a good period of time to land her last job, she nor I saw any harm in submitting her application, if only to get her readjusted to interviewing after six years. The third week of December, Cory interviewed for the job. Two days after that, on December 19^th of last year, Cory was offered the job. I wasn’t just blowing smoke about her Swiss-Army-like skillset.

So there we were. Cory had a job. That started in a month. We didn’t hit the ground running, we hit it rolling and not entirely in control. That period is a blur, at least to me, of repairmen and realtors and inspectors and more realtors, and oh yeah the holidays, and boxes pilling up in corners little by little until the piles weren’t so little anymore, and wondering where exactly we were going to move them. Our house in Portland sold – I kid you not – about 10 hours after it went on the market, which was awesome, but which also set a very real and very near deadline. In searching for new homes, we really wanted to stretch our dollar as far as we possibly could. Just a little bit of research revealed Hood River was not the place to do that, especially if we wanted an acre or two as well. So we shifted our thoughts to the Washington side of the Gorge, that while not as Main-Street cute and tourist-attractive as Hood River, still satisfied, if not further satisfied, everything we were hoping to gain by moving. For much, much less (and no income tax). A few frantic weekends of searching the small communities up and down the Washington side of the River, and we stumbled across a log home in Lyle, a census-designated place of about 500 souls 15 minutes from Cory’s job in Bingen and the community of White Salmon to the west, and the same distance from The Dalles in Oregon to the east. The place was really too good to be true, and the entire time we were waiting to close I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it never did. Our luck was compounding, we were on a roll. Another check in the pro category for impulsivity. 

Lyle sits just past The Twin Bridges where the Klickitat River joins the Columbia

Two months to the day after Cory’s initial job interview, we closed on our house in Portland and closed on the log home in Lyle, a full three months ahead of our original schedule. And so far it’s been everything we’d hoped. We’re on two acres overlooking the Klickitat River Valley and Mt. Adams in the distance. Our water comes from a well and our heating comes from a wood stove aptly named the Blaze King. Give us time, and the rest of the electricity will come from roof-mounted solar panels.

Our commutes – I found work in an antiques store right next door to Cory’s office – are the same length they were in Portland, but instead of sitting in stop-and-go traffic taking in the smoggy sights of city life, we’re now zipping along the Columbia River past cliffside waterfalls and picture-perfect lakes beneath sculptures of stone and grassy hills rolling beneath the bright and wide blue sky. There are stars at night and birdsong at dawn, wild turkey and deer in the yard and locally-raised pork in the freezer. We haven’t even seen a fast food restaurant in two months, but we see osprey chicks and bald eagles on a regular basis. We’re going out less and staying in more, enjoying each other and taking care of our lovely new home. The change is more than enormous, it’s all-encompassing and ongoing.

So...much...mowing...

Current plans have us in the midst of setting up a massive garden and prepping for a small orchard of apples, pears and cherries, with additional plans – months away or years, depending on which one of us you ask – to add a greenhouse for year-round gardening, chickens for eggs, a goat or two, and even a couple of beehives if both of us can get over our massive dislike of being stung.

Which brings us to this blog. This is where we aim to document the experience of our shifting lifestyle, complete with posts about gardening, food canning and preserving, cooking, hiking, wildlife, local culture and this gorgeous area (pun absolutely intended) into which we’ve blindly cast ourselves.

To be clear, we’re not positing ourselves as experts of anything – hence in part the blog title, Country-ish – we’re not offering advice or instruction, and we’re not preaching a lifestyle or seeking to convert anyone to anything. We’re the same people we’ve always been, just wanting to live a little simpler, a little more responsibly, and a little less dependently. Our only aim in these virtual pages is to document this exciting time in our lives and maybe show the kids we hope to have how we made their home. You will not be asked to buy our homemade soap. You will not be solicited to donate to our goat de-budding Kickstarter. You will not be forced to listen to tracks from our inevitable washboard/jug duo. You might get hit with an ad for my novel. Just being honest.

So check in every now and again and see how things are going, what worked and what was a massive failure, and watch us learn from our no doubt copious mistakes. Next post comes this weekend: Saturday is Planting Day!

Cory & Perry