Daniel J. Hinkley

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A Tree, Farewell

July 11, 2009 By Daniel J. Hinkley

I am not one to get all mushy over a dying tree. Troubled, irritated, inconvenienced? Yes. Overwrought and saccharine? Nope.

For three years after we took guardianship of this land called Windcliff in 2000, we spent our weekends descrying the play of light and patterns of wind on this property. Over time, we agreed upon the orientation of the expanded house as well as the invitation into the house- the front door- the one decision that never seems to receive sufficient contemplation in our culture.

In an attempt to keep intact the pneuma of its original gardeners, Peg West and Mary Stech, we knew we would keep signatures from the original landscape to embrace our new home. Due to the logistics of construction, exactly which ones would or could remain was undetermined.

During late October of 2001, upon my arrival home from an extended stay in Asia, we packed our dogs and assorted foodstuffs for another weekend respite to our once and future home. During that weekend, we witnessed an entire family of pileated woodpeckers ravishing the succulent red fruit of a multi-stemmed specimen of the Pacific Dogwood, Cornus nuttallii, rising to nearly 45′, slightly west of the existing home. The entire framework of this tree was lavished by lime-green lichen while its lingering foliage still held tints of orange/red. It was, however, its height, balance and foist upon the land that dictated a consideration of this tree as a point of convergence into our yet undesigned home. If not the decision itself, at least the seeds of one were harvested that weekend.

Our dog Emerson with mountains in the background

Soon enough realizing its significance as ‘point of departure’, I moved the memorial stone of our still-mourned canine companion, Emerson, to the shade of its branches. Using the tree as signal and sentinel, we signed off on the exact placement of the front door of our new home. The dogwood would assuredly welcome our guests for as long as we would live here. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays, Windcliff Tagged With: Cornus nuttallii

Genetic Coning

June 8, 2009 By Daniel J. Hinkley

Picea likiangenis var. purpureaIn September of 1996, I visited the Yulong Shan in NE Yunnan Province in China. It was my debut in botanizing within that remarkable country, accompanied by a talented contingent of like-minded plantspeople, and there is hardly a better place to sample its fantastic flora than in the dramatic mountains northwest of Lichiang. It was there that I collected the seed of Picea likiangensis var purpurea, the Lichiang Spruce, after having previously read titillating tributes to its ornamental appeal.

For the past decade plus, before its inaugural fruiting, I have held this Picea in high esteem. Spruces are, as a whole, a hard sell in the Pacific Northwest. Prone to mites and assorted foliar diseases, the truly blue spruces (Picea pungens) are a miserable landscape choice for our cool, maritime climate. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Plants, Windcliff Tagged With: China, Picea

My Exotic Epiphany

December 28, 2008 By Daniel J. Hinkley

Davidia involucrata, Black BambooToday, as I was carting loads of firewood from the woodshed to the house through the yellow-stained gum of half-melted snow, I was reminded how good and profoundly circular life can be.

While bemoaning the recent climatic assaults on our garden, and belligerently filling my wheelbarrow, I heard a most curious noise. Fearing I had disturbed a winter home of our native Douglas’s Squirrel or even a mouse attempting to survive our lead-weighted temperatures, I paused to find its source. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays, Plants

Yet Again, SaPa

October 27, 2008 By Daniel J. Hinkley

Looking to the peak of Fan Xi Phan from the hill station of SaPa, Vietnam.
Looking to the peak of Fan Xi Phan from the hill station of SaPa, Vietnam.

My fingers are purple and sore. They are purple from a species of Lindera I have just cleaned that smells like a rip off of Joy dishwashing detergent, yet born from a lovely rounded evergreen shrub with glossy linear leaves that reeks of elegance, growing in the hardiness zone of 7,000′. My thumbs are sore, and will be for several days, from two hours of inducing the birth of seed of Illicium (star anise) from its premature fruit. I am carrying about town, with said sore and stained hands, rather stylishly I am told, and from my room to the hovel where I clean my collections, a three dollar pirated rendition Louis Vitton, (more pathetically, it appears by Viet news outlets, any recent donations to the RNC has proffered the rogue hockey huntress the real McCoy which certainly will be donated to charity). In this I am carrying my computer, Ziplocs, strainers, sieves and a novel (Knowing Frank) that I have not opened for over two weeks. I am in northern Vietnam in a once small hill station transformed to Kathmandu sans high quality weed, a profoundly proud minority and a refined French cuisine. My sixth time. Tomorrow I leave for a trek into new territory called Five Fingers and I feel much like Frodo might have felt before his departure from Middle Earth to Lothlorien. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays, Expeditions

Autumn on Puget Sound

October 12, 2008 By Daniel J. Hinkley

Is it a simple release, the culmination of another year in the garden, that makes these days so satisfying and certain? I think not. Long before I became tyrannized by a garden and its chores, I had acquired a certain indulgence in the waning season. It is a satiating and sublime melancholy to witness the downward slide of the landscape, natural or otherwise. I thought this to myself this morning, as I wove on my road bike through shards of teen-beer glass on the back lanes of North Kitsap on the western shores of Puget Sound.

Cortaderia

I am grateful to leave our home on Sundays to ride. I rise early and drink coffee with heavy cream and peruse the pages of the New York Times. I leave highly caffeinated and assuredly annoyed by the latest buffoonery deep inside the Beltline. But it is coffee crack and headlines that become the fuel for my ride, providing gas as I angrily confront another hill. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays, Windcliff

Readying for Chengdu

October 2, 2008 By Daniel J. Hinkley

IMG_3704.JPGYeh, ok, I realize that. I said ok, ok? I know I do not write often enough and I know that when I do write, I write too much. There are always other more important things to do than to sit to write; put suet out for the birds, the birds that somehow disjointedly figure into what I was going to write about, weed the part of the garden that has the plant that I was going to write about, take a picture of the plant I was going to write about, collect its seed, remove a dead branch, clean the refrigerator because it had absolutely nothing to do with the subject I was about to write about. You know the drill. And then, when the dogs are walked and asleep on the banquette and the most up-to-date election polls are examined, I begin to write about what I was meant to write about, at last confronting that bridge to nowhere while attempting to create a reality that someone will be sufficiently naïve to believe. And then I write too much because there generally is too much too say, especially so when I am saying it, and you end up on a long bridge that leads to nowhere. And sadder still, I know precisely what all of you must be shrieking when you attempt to decipher my infinite, yet I must say ever so thoughtful and witty musings; thanks but no thanks. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays, Expeditions

Again, Mt. Townsend

August 9, 2008 By Daniel J. Hinkley

A view to the Puget Sound from the floral-studded peak of Mt. Townsend in the Olympic Mountains.
A view to the Puget Sound from the floral-studded peak of Mt. Townsend in the Olympic Mountains.

So this is what August is like for normal people. The anointed that leave the office and life’s tetchy demands for a summer respite in the Hamptons. The chosen who, for six weeks or longer, remain away until the kids must return to soccer practice. It seems that except for Lutherans born in northern Michigan, the entire universe has always had the chance to savor this month (I have actually been to the Hamptons in August, albeit briefly, where I confirmed that the entire Universe actually goes there during this month. And they all drive). However Lutherans from Michigan have always worked in August. We are that way. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essays

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Daniel J. Hinkley

Teacher, writer, lecturer, consultant, nurseryman, naturalist, gardener.
Above all, he is committed to solid and sustainable horticultural practices, above average garden plants, landscapes of distinction and raising the collective awareness of the diversity of plant life on Earth as well as the magic and mysteries of our natural world. Learn more…

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