Paul Klee window

In our Oregon subdivision, we are required by covenants to keep our trees trimmed for the neighbors’ views. Since the lot had been neglected for a few decades when we bought it, we were required to top or remove 50 sizable trees – shore pine, Douglas fir, and Sitka spruce. I hired two experienced lumberjacks to come in and work their magic for one day. It was exciting to watch those guys swinging through the trees: modern-day Tarzans with chainsaws hanging from their harnesses. To save money, I had them cut and drop, leaving the trees and limbs for me. I bought a chain saw, learned how to use it, and spent about a hundred hours, removing limbs and dragging trunks up and down the hillside, filling two 40-yard dumpsters in the process.

July 2015 – rear window soon after we moved in. It was a newly developed lot without landscaping.
What the lumberjacks left for me to finish.
After much progress.
In order to prevent erosion, I placed big logs horizontally, anchored with tree trunks, and infilled with good topsoil. I planted the rhododendrons in the background in 2018. The two in the foreground went in two years earlier.
June 2019. Lupines were a good addition … but only temporarily due to rodent appetites.
December 2019
May 2019. This perspective evoked the work of Swiss artist Paul Klee, a favorite since my college days. The rhododendrons on the hillside are one variety – Honorable Jean Marie de Montague, which have bright red petals. Here on the Oregon Coast rhododendrons do very well, and these will grow to be six feet tall and about as wide. Over four years I planted twenty-four Hon. Jean Maries along the 220-foot-wide hillside. In a few more years it will make quite a sight.
May 2019
Red-Green and Violet-Yellow Rhythms – Paul Klee, 1920
May 17, 2020

2020 with our amazing friend, Muggles.

We’ve now had this house for seven years. The hillside red rhododendron assemblage drifted down and out from the hill. We now have 80 in many amazing colors and forms, and they are still on the move. They are addictive.

Here are the 2022 images. Unfortunately for the Paul Klee window view, a dip to 19 degrees this winter damaged quite a few buds, and as a consequence about a third of my jean maries either didn’t bloom at all or had just a few puny blossoms. Oddly however, some jean maries did better than ever. It seems to come down to the amount of sunshine they received. Even though I added a sizeable number of new, colorful, specimens, the window view is severely lacking in red. Next year will be amazing. A year off from blooming will help the plants’ vitality.