Bringing Norway Spruce to Wasilla

We've been looking for trees to use as a wind break, and to help cover some of the hilly parts of our yard that I'd rather not have to mow in future years. We have some beautiful Norway Spruce on base where I work in Anchorage, so we decided to get some Norway Spruce for the yard.

Not easy to find in Alaska, though, and any big ones are either in high demand or hard to get, so we found a company that would ship some live seedlings to us.

Two sizes, 10 of the larger seedlings, and 21 of the smaller size. More than we needed, but we decided to plant them closer together than normal, and thin them out in future years once they get bigger.

Gives you some idea how small the seedlings are...30 trees in one bucket, and each of these can grow to over 100 feet tall (but that will take a long, long time).

Placed along the front side of the property, these trees will eventually grow together.

And down the side towards our little orchard, these we planted closer and will thin them out earlier than the front yard.

A happy little tree.

This section of our yard stays a little dry, and is fairly rocky underneath. Norway Spruce are supposed to be hardy in all types of soil, and resistant to spruce beetle attacks, so we're hoping they thrive here.

Planted one on the steep hill near our front porch....hopefully it will get big enough to cover over this portion of the lawn since it is very difficult to mow.

I've now planted 50 trees on the property this year, including these 31 Norway Spruce, 4 fruit trees, 10 Black Spruce from a good friend, and 5 spruce transplanted from one side of the property to the other.  We also planted 6 blueberry bushes, and a raspberry bush given to us by our great neighbors. Of all those plantings, so far we've only lost 1 little spruce transplant, and have another larger spruce transplant that is fighting but not looking too good. If we lose it, I'll transplant one more to replace it, and then I'm done digging holes!

A dahlia, which Jolene set at the door to the greenhouse, to entice some pollinators in.

Thinning out the carrots, lettuce and onions.

And some beets also needed thinning out.

Salsa pepper. 

Pumpkin bloom. This is one of the male blooms. We are pollinating the greenhouse plants by hand, and take care to get the pumpkins, squash and cucumbers pollinated anytime we have a male and female bloom open at the same time.  The tomatoes and peppers are easier, as they only have one type of bloom.

We had a small mishap with some of our tomatoes.  A trellis fell during a recent aftershock, and the stems of a few plants broke, but we still have other plants to take their place.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf - Grayson's Summer Play

Our Valley Performing Arts Theater put on a scaled-down version of their summer play series, with shorter performances.  Grayson participated in The Boy Who Cried Wolf. 


His role was Joe, the gruff older brother of the wolf-crying boy.


After-performance pictures with his friend, Giovanni, who played the grandfather.


He enjoyed the performance.  The practices were shortened, just like the play, due to the coronavirus.




Rainbow on the Hay Flats.




If you saw her post on Facebook with the rainbow...here she is taking it.


We don't have much water runoff through our culvert, but I had neglected it for a little too long.  There really is a culvert there underneath our driveway, but I had to dig to find it and clear it out. This is the before picture.


And here's the after picture.  That should hold it for another ten years or so.

Final Farewell to 'Spot' the Eagle

It's been a strange year in so many different ways.  But one sad but inevitable change was the loss of one of our old friends, Spot the eagle (she had a small spot barely visible above one of her eyes, but was even easier to 'spot' in flight since she was permanently missing a wing feather on her left wing).  Spot was the female eagle of our resident pair, who nested in the lot next to us. She was already looking like a well-aged eagle when we moved here in 2008, but she continued to nest with us until this year.  She showed back up this Spring, and began building her nest, and then suddenly disappeared.  Her nest has gone unused this year.  Another smaller eagle pair (shown in this picture above), quickly arrived and took over her territory, but have built a new nest a little bit farther from our house than Spot's was. We can't be sure, but we suspect that one of this pair is a previous offspring of Spot's. Of course, it is possible that this younger pair ran Spot and her mate off, but Spot was a very large and aggressive eagle (she chased us on occasion - even swooped down on Jolene's head one time), so it would seem unlikely that any other eagle could have ran her off, and it is more plausible that Spot may have reached the end of her life (bald eagles in the wild live for ~20-30 years).  But two more eagles have already replaced her, and time marches on. Some of the pics we took of Spot over the years, posted below:

She was easy to 'spot' with a missing wing feather.

With her last set of chicks. She likely raised ~40 or 50 chicks during her lifetime.

Drying her wings on the tree in our backyard after a rain.

Clearly, she knew how to keep her chicks well-fed.

Watching as her chick practices flying along the bluff, not too long after it had left the nest (they get huge really fast, but don't get the typical white head or tail until they are a couple of years old).

Little Orchard

We added two cherry trees and two more apple trees to the two apple trees we already had, and created a tiny orchard.  About 10 years ago, Landon brought some apple seeds home from an apple he ate at daycare, and asked Pappy to plant them. From those seeds, we grew two apple trees.  (There were originally three, but a lawnmower took out one, and damaged another.  The moose also damaged both remaining trees heavily each year, and the largest tree just started blooming last year.)

We learned that apple trees need a second variety to pollinate with, so we needed at least one other apple tree planted nearby.  At the nursery we found several varieties to choose from, and decided on a Norland (planted closest to the bluff), and a Goodland (planted farthest from the bluff).  Both are hardy in our zone.  Since we were already getting apple trees, we decided to add two cherry and two plum trees to fill out our tiny orchard.  We found two Evans Sour cherry trees, and planted them in between the four apple trees.  We couldn't find any plum trees left this year at the nurseries, so we'll have to add them later. The only other fruit tree that does well in Alaska is pear trees, but none of us are fond of pears, so we decided to leave it out of the orchard.  Our six-tree orchard is on the new yard we filled in two years ago, and will hopefully start bearing some fruit next year.

A black bear visited our compost bin. He didn't stick around long, and didn't damage the bin. There was a dead rabbit left in the trail at the center of the camera field of view (hard to see in the video).  We're not sure if the bear dropped the rabbit to check out the compost bin, and left it behind once he smelled human scent, or if something else left the dead rabbit, and the bear was brought in by the scent of the decaying carcass. Unfortunately, the video didn't catch the act of the rabbit being dropped, so we'll never know.  We have several fox dens nearby, so I carried the rabbit carcass to their den a few hours later, so if it was dropped by a fox, then I guess they got their rabbit back.  If it was dropped by the bear, then he lost out.  It was a skinny bear, not too old.  In our 12 years here, this is the first bear we've seen around the house, but it is also the first year I've had a camera set up this far away from the house, so they may have been around before.

This bull moose strolled through our middle potato plot, prompting me to build some new barriers (picture later).

Not sure why the thumbnail won't load on this video, but it shows a moose walking around our greenhouse.  I think it hears the camera click on, so you can see it jump a little as the video starts, though it looks away from the camera not towards it.

The raised beds are really taking off.  We haven't done much thinning, so the plants are pretty thick.


We've been eating the onions, lettuce, broccoli and herbs.  Our broccoli is growing more than producing, so we're trying to figure out how to get more broccoli and less leaves, but the rest of the raised beds are doing well with beats, carrots, onions, cabbage, celery, Brussels sprouts, peas and beans.  Next year some of these types will only go in the in-ground beds, and the raised beds might just be carrots, onions and some others, since we eat more of them.


I stained the wine barrel to match the beds.  Looks a little nicer, and hopefully it won't hurt its water-tight integrity.


The pumpkin patch is starting to produce. We'll bring out our other pumpkins from the greenhouse to sit here as well, since we need to make room in the greenhouse, which is rapidly filling beyond capacity.


Our upper potato plot.  I've hilled the potatoes twice already, and at this point I'm just going to let them grow. I can hill again with straw after they bloom if I need to cover up any potatoes exposed above ground.  It will be a while, though, before I expect them to bloom.


The middle potato plot.  This is the beefed-up barrier to keep the moose out. Since moose don't eat potatoes, all the barrier needs to do is to persuade the moose to walk around the plot.


The strawberry transplants we got from Jolene's friend.  They are starting to bloom.


One of the no-dig beds, sprouting beats, onions, kale, lettuce and spinach.  This is the one Jolene planted.  The one I planted isn't pictured, because none of the cantaloupes and cucumbers I planted in the bed came up, only a few dill and carrots sprouted, so we'll transplant some cucumbers from the greenhouse into that bed.  The asparagus also hasn't sprouted yet, but I just planted them last week.


The greenhouse - on this side is the pumpkin (will be moved outside), peppers, squash, watermelon, corn, cucumbers, okra and herbs.


On the opposite side sits the tomatoes.


A female pumpkin flower, with pumpkin at its base.  Plants like pumpkin, cucumber and squash have separate male and female blooms, and need to be hand-pollinated when in the greenhouse due to the lack of bees.


Tiny tomato.  The tomatoes and peppers self pollinate within one bloom, so we just have to tap them every now and then to mimic a bee buzzing nearby, and that gets the job done.


Habenero peppers.


Bell Peppers.


Squash - thanks to the Finley's for pollinating this one for us - it is our first squash to set so far.


Cucumbers.


Female cucumber flower, hopefully already pollinated.


Our State Fair was canceled due to COVID, so they sold off all the flowers being grown to decorate the fair grounds.  Jolene bought two flats, and planted them around the garden.


Update on the compost bin, it is working well so far. I keep one bay empty and turn the pile from one side to the next every week or two.


Just a few hours after turning the pile, it has already risen to 145 deg F. That's right in the sweet spot for hot compost.  Anything over ~125 will break down nicely, and once it gets over 140 deg F all the weed seeds should be sterilized.  So far, so good.