Camano Winds

We felt great about our ten planting beds. We were way ahead of the game by building them in the fall and letting them steep until spring. We'd be weed-free, since all the beds were covered with sturdy landscape fabric. Rain could get in, but weed seeds would bounce along to another destination, and any stray seedlings would languish under the black fabric.

So neat. So tidy.

Time for a cup of tea and a comfy chair.

Ha!

Fall winds wound up, the warm-up act for winter winds. Almost every morning a glance out the windows showed us that the tea and comfy chair weren't quite within reach.

We tried everything. We placed large rocks along the edges of the landscape cloth. The wind snuck under the cloths between the rocks and shuddered the cloth from under the rocks. Ten beds at 45 feet each adds up to 900 feet of fabric edge. We moved so many rocks so many times it got the better of us.

We tried thick branches, left over from uplimbing the perimeter trees. Each branch could secure 10-15 feet of fabric edge, enormously reducing the number of rocks we had to move. The fabric escaped, flew in circles, and tangled itself around the limbs.

We added burlap bags under the rocks and limbs. The burlap would stay wet and heavy from the rain and weigh down the entire edge, reinforced by the weight of the rocks and limbs. We hunted down a lot of burlap amongst the trees edging our beds, relaid them, rerocked and relimbed them, and thought fleetingly of tea and comfy chairs.

The fabric would. not. stay. put.

We zigzaged lengths of twine across the beds, relaid the burlap, rerocked and relimbed the burlap. Nope. The cloth still shuddered and jittered as the Camano winds sped merrily overhead. The fabric snuck out from all of its assorted restraints and wrapped itself untidily around nearby bushes and trunks.

The trick that finally worked was bird netting. We straightened all the lengths of fabric . . . again. . . stretched bird netting from end to end, stapled the netting down and threaded the twine zigzaggedly, end to end, AND put a rock on top of each staple to keep it in place. We added the limbs, because, why not? Our sandy sand doesn't provide firm anchoring for landscape staples, so they needed help staying in the ground.

The wind could no longer quite get the fabric-dance going. It zipped along the beds, causing barely a ripple. We peered out windows each morning, let out our breaths, and grinned. The planting beds could finally start their winter steeping, and we could brush the cobwebs off the comfy chairs, the steam drifting from our steeping cups. The quiet season had begun.

The quiet season.