We know that the stone will darken with age, so matching color to the old stone was not essential.  Of more importance is match texture, type of stone (granite, limestone, or something more exotic), or, in this case, function of the stone.

The original stone was very rough.  Although the old walls were sound, aesthetics and fine craftmans-ship were not taken into account during construction.  Gnome went in a different direction.  Drawing on the tradition of New England barn architecture, the new retaining walls were constructed of old quarried granite, most of it from the cast-off piles littering old extraction sites.  Any drill marks were left and stone of various sizes were used.

The result is a wall that is well fitted to its site on an old Maine farm, and is tough enough to withstand car bumpers, children, and soccer balls.

This is what I meant by function.  It is not enough that the wall stand up for many years to come.  That is the requirement of a well crafted wall.  But the wall needs to function within its space appropriately (not fall over when a child jumps off it or a car backs into it) AND look like it belongs where it is.  From a design standpoint, the wall can work (stand up, etc.), but if it looks out of place, it will be an eyesore.  And, the old wall that was being replaced was not original to the building but added on at some time in the more recent past than the barn’s birth date of 1860.

As a designer, I can come up with ideas, but the success of the concept is attained by the craftsmen who has insight to interpret drawings.  Here they are:  Orlando, the man who can realize any vision in stone, and Nick his right-hand-man who delivers the stone, mortar when and where needed.

Orlando, supervisor and craftsman with an interest in geology

Nick, right-hand-man

Perhaps, what I really mean by “taste” is fashion.  Avacado kitchen appliances, refrigerators the color of rotten lettuce are just not all that popular these days.  Pink bathroom sinks, shag rugs, women’s coats with padded shoulders, eyeglass lenses the sizes of television screens, and sofas upholstered in plastic, all no longer objects of envy.

Deeply raked joints for a veneer to look "dry laid" (Little Diamond Island project")

Architectural styles are less fleeting.  The “out with the old, in with the new” attitude does not saturate the building trades.  House styles develop at a sedate rate, evolving slowly from one to the next.  Sometimes select details from the past find their ways back to the future which makes design both an exercise in creativity and test of memory.

Interior wall, dry laid look (Little John Island project)

At present, taste leans towards “natural”.  To that end, Gnome is building a lot of walls and houses of “natural stone” with either deeply raked mortar joints or dry laid, a style that looks as though the stone is held in place with gravity.

Small fireplace under construction

The rocks themselves are collected from old walls and fields with a patina of dust and lichens, or are the abandoned remains of quarrying operations, stained from years lying in the weather.  Clients select stone to match their taste: elegant, casual, or rustic.

Old quarried stone, exterior wall, Cape Elizabeth project

Historically, the rocks of stone houses were covered up with a layer of cement or plaster to protect the mortar joints.  Mortar in the past was softer and easily eroded by rainwater and porous so it leaked.  With new technology, we have new opportunities and new techniques.  It is interesting how design follows both form and function.

I see this fashion, this taste in laying rocks as not just a passing fad, which it probably is at present, but as a wonderful acceptance of the basic, elemental and powerful, beauty of the stones themselves.  Even though we may drift away from this “look” in a few years, I hope I never see anyone so brash as to paint over the faces of these lovely stones.

Thatched stone cottage in southern Maine

Little John Island mud

Masons can work all winter if they are willing to put up with heating tents, stone, sand, bricks, block, and mortar.  Like the alchemy that masonry is, temperature is important.  Mortar cannot freeze while it is setting up.  40 Deg. F is the magic number.  By alchemy I mean, that we just add water to some powdery stuff that comes out of a bag, make a sloppy mess the consistency of runny peanut butter, spread the concoction onto a couple of rocks (let’s say), and voila, a few hours later the rocks are glued hard together.  Mortar lasts a long time; those rocks had better get along because they are stuck with each other for many, many years.

Feeding flashing in through the tent "door"

In winter Gnomes become adept tent builders.  They construct elaborate plastic cocoons that on a January sunny day are warm and airy.  On a cloudy days and at night propane salamander heaters maintain an even temperature.  Since work sites are not mean for comfort, the masons have it cushy.  While all the carpenters are toiling away in long underwear and layers of sweaters, flannel lined pants, heavy jackets, hats, and fingerless gloves, the masons flounce around their tents in tee shirts and summer jeans.

Dennis Sarofeen, Mansonry Supervisor, looking for the perfect stone

For the casual visitor, it is difficult to see the actual work because the space is cluttered with rocks, clothes, radios, lunches, buckets, toolboxes…I stand in the doorway and make my “ooos” and “ahs”, but like any package, it is when the wrapping comes off that the full effect is evident.

Little John Island house, stone veneer untented for the first time

Assuming that you know the rudiments of pruning cuts and know what a branch collar is, a light hand is important.  Make each cut with thought.  The point is not to make a pom-pom out of your plant, but to expose the unique character of each shrub’s branching pattern.  I think of it as mega-bonsai.  This type of pruning is meditative and serene.  Each cut is considered before being executed.  You will work from stem of the plant outward.

First, remove crossed, broken, twisted branches, or branches that are growing towards the inner core of the plant.  Stand back, look at the skeletal shape of the plant, not its profile, this is what you are trying to expose.  Like the finest sculptor, with a gentle hand, remove any branches that conflict with overall the framework of the plant.

Badly pruned shrub

Try to envision the plant in the summer with the sun falling on each leaf.  When you can’t decide which branch to remove look above it to see, between the candidates, which will get the least sun.  Remove that one.

To shorten your shrub and encourage it to fill out, remove any stems that are long and spindly from the base.  You can thin out about a third of the long stems every year.  In the long run, this works better than cutting the tip of the stem to shorten it.

Rule of thumb:  spring flowering plants are cut back after they finish blooming in the summer, summer flowering plants are cut back in the early spring.   Prune your Lilacs, Rhododendrons, and Azaleas right after they bloom in May or June.

Healthy forest floor

I admit it.  I am prejudiced against aliens.  Actually it is a selective prejudice.  I don’t like the ones that keep having babies all over the place.  The well-behaved ones are okay.

If I could, I would call the gendarmes to have the sex orgies stopped on my neighbor’s property.

Alas, it is not so easy to have the police march off a barberry or burning bush or buckthorn in handcuffs for disturbing the public.  This public, for one, is disturbed.

Not all the plants in my neighbor’s yard were airmailed via the digestive tract of a bird; some were brought there in the back seat of the family sedan direct from a reputable nursery.

Bird-planted Buckthorn saplings under Pine

Barberry, Burning Bush, Buckthorn, and Norway Maples have been planted in yard after yard after yard in the village.  Now their offspring leap and cavort in my woods.  On a nearby island, there are tracts of shoulder-to-shoulder barberries so thick not even a deer can penetrate.  In the local park there are groves of buckthorn thick under pines shading out all the native seedlings.  Norway Maples create grotesque hedgerows between village house lots, blotting out the sun and making a thick felt of roots too dense for grass to grow in.

I am on the bandwagon for rounding up these aliens, every male, female, and zygote of them.  They are proven thugs and trespassers.

Why, oh why, are nurseries still selling these things?

Luckily the storm blew out to sea just as the sun rose.  No snow, sleet or rain, but, the barge left twenty two minutes early.

The barge already on her way

With island work, always have a Plan B.  Go by ferry.  It is warmer, there are benches, and heat.  It is slower and the winter schedule is limited, so bring a book or find a friend to chat with.

On the ferry

Island jobs are very challenging.  All the materials need to be transported either by barges that depend on tides and weather to set schedules or by non-vehicle ferries.  Weather can erase a schedule easily.  Ferries will take some tools and materials out to island docks, but nothing that can’t be walked on-board by a workman.  If you forget something on the mainland; too bad, find something else to do, or jury-rig an alternative tool.

At the same time, there is something about an island job that is charming.  Falling back on ingenuity and depending on the lunar cycle is comforting somehow.  It makes us feel as though we are strong and resilient, handsome and heroic.  And we are, we just forget it when we are working on the mainland with hardware stores within a quick drive, coffee shops for that matter, too.

This week we are trying to button up a site on a Maine island.  We land on a sand beach and hope that all the trucks make it off the barge, un-load, and re-board  before the tide goes out too far.  That is, at most, an hour turn-around and non-stop stress.

On the last trip, we had multiple pallets of stone steps on a crane truck, two trucks of wall stone, a bobcat, and a load of crushed rock to be delivered.  One truck’s hitch got caught on a piece of bent metal on the gangplank.  The truck was firmly latched onto the boat, half on and half off.  The truck swiveled around on the metal deck while the driver tried different wheel positions and a lot of useless tire spinning.  The crew chief finally commandeered the bobcat and rode to the rescue, lifting the truck just enough for it to clear the barb and slide down onto the beach.  We had lost a quarter of our allotted time trying just to get on truck off the barge.   The barge captain was shouting promises to leave us on the island “no matter what”.

Island jobs take teamwork.  Everyone together.  One crew helps another.  All shovels down until the trucks are off-loaded and back on board.

Hasty step delivery

Steps in place, first wall up

Once on the island with the site stocked, the crews are on “island time”.  Their day revolves around tides, ferries, water taxis, barge deliveries, and weather.  Judging by the weather this year, it is a possibility that we can work until Christmas.  Even the roses are still in bloom.

It doesn’t take much persuasion to throw caution to the wind, and pull an apple away from its branch.  I think that the serpent in the Garden of Eden had it easy.  Anyone of us would have bitten into that apple.

With the first cultivators, came the capture of wild fruit trees.  Despite centuries of domestication efforts, apple orchards retain an unruley, cragginess that appeals to my sense of the American spirit.  Indeed, each tree appears to have danced and spun into a unique shape that reflects an inner wish to escape and return to the forest.

Willow Pond Orchard in Sabattus, Maine

I love the huge backyard tree, planted conveniently to the kitchen door, and the small collection of trees in a back field, enough to provide the household with cider, apple butter, pies, and handheld snacks.

Like any endeavor, once we start on the path of husbanding, it becomes an unending process of tinkering, improvement, and maintenance.  So it is with fruit trees.

Winter is season when the tree is readied for spring, summer, and then harvest. Each tree is individually addressed in the effort, not to improve its looks, but to improve its productivity.  It is a pretty cut and dried process with the end result always in mind.  Each cut, each tip removed, each branch trained is done to allow the sun to filter through the plant as much as possible.

The pruners come into the orchard after Christmas and remain until thaw.  Armed with saws, clippers, and neat little ladders with tapered tops, clad in layers that can be shed, heavy mittens, wool caps, and sometimes with snowshoes, they come.  They leave behind a wind-row of clipped branches between rows of trees.

Ricker Hill Orchards in Auburn, Maine

I arrived one February morning in the orchard.  The early morning temperature lingered, the sky was very blue, the air very dry and just starting to flow down the slope.  I could hear, in the distance, a faint sound of a handsaw and the rattle of a branch being tossed onto a pile.  I could not see the pruners, they were quietly going about their business in the middle of hundreds of acres of trees.

 Cell phones are very useful in an orchard.  The pruners kindly gave me directions to their location.

Mike Fox cutting sprouts

Orchard pruning takes deliberation.  Each act of removal, be it a limb-otomy or tip-n–tuck, essentially creates a living sculpture that will be most likely be here for another generation if not longer.  The better the job, not necessarily the prettier the tree, but the tastier and more abundant the fruit.

Adam Rose with extended loppers

They took a moment to show me their work and explained what they were doing.

Jim Schram and Justin Drake with extended cahinsaws

Tools of the trade include short curved saws, secateurs, long armed loppers, and tiny chainsaws on the ends of long poles.  Most charming are the orchard ladders that some insightful fuddy-duddy of yore designed to be just the right height and with a top that couldn’t become entangled by high branches.

Orchard ladders

Most important is the consideration of each tree, taking a step back, and planning the approach to these venerable old grandfather trees one at a time.

Ben Grover and George Goodspeed making a plan of action

Among the pruners is one young man who brings his little daughter apple picking in the orchards he prunes.  These are the same trees that he picked from as child with his father.  Unless a landowner decides to change out the crop from apples to tract houses, it is fair to say, that she will bring her children to these same trees.

Ben Grover with a curved pruning saw

What to do.  What to do.  The ground is still frozen, but I want to DO something.

Break out the whackers!

Some shrubs can take a good whacking.  When they wake up out of dormancy in a few weeks, they will just start growing.  You can cut without knowing a thing about pruning: Potentilla, Spirea bumalda and japonica (Not the white Bridal Wreath types), Clethra (Sweet Pepper Bush), Rosa rugosa, Hypericum (St. Johnswort).  With heavy annual pruning many of these plants will sucker from the roots and form dense thickets.  Since all bloom on new wood, the more new growth you encourage, the more blooms.

Clethra alnifolia, normally 3' high, cut back annually to 12"

Just go out there with your grandfather’s old hedge clippers and have at it.  You can use loppers, clippers, machete, or weed whacker; whatever tool comes to hand.

Let’s face it.  All the plants on the list grow into messy teenagers over a summer.  Left unpruned they become leggy adults for a few seasons until finally collapsing into aged, muddled heaps (as we all do).  Cutting them back, even shaping them, in the spring invigorates.

Rule of thumb:  spring flowering plants are cut back after they finish blooming in the summer, summer flowering plants are cut back in the early spring.

Rosa rugosa hedge ready for spring

It is also a time of subtle color.

Let’s consider which plants that are colorful before the Crocuses are out.

These plants are so lovely in winter; I place them where I know they will be seen in the dash from the car to the front door.  Pieris japonica, for example, with almost neon loud flower buds.

Pieris japonica

As I develop a plant list for a project, in the early stages, I mentally wash the area with textures, volumes, and habitat tolerances.  In my mind’s eye, I am looking at the space that is being considered and trying out different appearances.  Only towards the end of the process do I settle on actual plant varieties.  That is when I make the choice between a plant that might have every qualification except winter attractiveness, and another that does have something special in March.

I expect every designer does this.

Lavender and Box

One of my favorite plants, and the one that I have planted right next to where I habitually park my car, is a Magnolia.  Sure she’s nice when she blooms in early spring.  But there is a lot going on when the Magnolia is in bloom:  the bulbs are up, the bees are out, and the grass is coming in.  But in March, the silver buds of the magnolia, like little Christmas tree lights, adorning the tips of the quirky branches, are more than just beautiful.

Magnolia buds

But, if to you, a garden means flowers.  Then March has a flower for you.  You have to look for it, and because it is so shy, you really need to put it up so you aren’t lying prone to see it: the Christmas Rose, Helleborus niger.  It’s thick, leathery leaves hold up under the weight of grainy snow and its flowers hide under the leaves.

Heleborus squashed flat by snow

But for a little relief from the smoky mauves, the silvery blues, and the deep magentas of springtime plants, take a gander at a Hamamalis, through the woods.  If you need a little sparkle in your life in March, the native Witchhazel is your plant.

Hamamelis x intermedia

Finally, for the person willing to try something a little different/  I have one word for you, “Bamboo”.  I am thinking of the short. ground covering Sasa veitchii.  It does cover territory so be prepared to use your lawn mower to keep it in bounds.  Dead shade is a good way to slow it down.  But the color in the winter!

Zone 4 hardy Sasa veitchii bamboo