pendragon orchard and vine

He didn’t ask how many trees I needed. Or which ones I wanted. He chose his favorites instead—the ones with a story. As we dug, he told those stories quietly, while roots loosened and trees were lifted and set into sawdust. Nothing rushed. Nothing wasted. Some stories were short. Some took longer than the digging itself.

Most small orchards fail not from neglect, but from excess. Too many trees, ripening at the same moment, planted by familiarity instead of intent. Coherence—timing, purpose, and use aligned—is what turns abundance from waste into return.

My grandparents’ garden was a closed system. Nothing essential came in from the outside. Seed stayed. Crowns stayed. Fertility cycled locally. What left the garden left as food. That kind of garden doesn’t need to be rebuilt every spring—and it doesn’t panic when supply chains fail. This is a case for perennial food systems, not as nostalgia, but as quiet defiance and long-term stewardship.

Children live in a present that feels endless. Adults live in one that feels thin, about to snap. When we return to the same ground—the same creek beds, roads, bluffs, orchards, neighborhoods—we are quietly offering evidence. Not an argument. Evidence. That time didn’t erase everything. That change didn’t sever us. That a life can move forward without cutting itself loose from where it began.

Everything urges us forward—optimize, scale, accelerate—yet very little helps us answer the first necessary question: where am I right now? When that question goes unanswered, motion becomes noise. Progress continues, but direction thins.

She did not think of it as resistance. She thought of it as work. And work, I learned later, was the best thing the garden ever gave us.

Heritage trees don’t respond to correction. They respond to restraint. Their energy is no longer spent on expansion but on maintenance—holding together what time and weather have already negotiated. When you prune them as if they were young, you don’t restore vigor. You trigger panic growth, burn reserves, and shorten what life remains. The work shifts here. It stops being about improvement and becomes about mercy: removing what has already failed, easing loads that are alrea

I love this apple for its defiance. It’s the ultimate winter keeper apple. It is also one of the most balanced apples I’ve had—sweet, acidic, and without the penalty that plagues so many late hangers. The skin isn’t that tough, battlefield-leather armor you get with other winter apples. It’s firm, yes, but fair. The history, its endurance, though, makes it worth having.

It’s the classic social-media reflex: someone posts a leaf with a wrinkle, and five seconds later a stranger hollers leaf curl! as if pronouncing a curse.

They understood that certain transformations only happen slowly, in the cold. That winter isn’t an obstacle but a collaborator. That time itself is a tool, if you know how to wield it. Most modern people try to fight winter. Japan fermented it.

Before sunrise, I walk the wind-cut rows of my winter garden on Orcas, gathering lettuce, kale, and collards for breakfast. As frost clings to the leaves, I’m reminded of my grandfather’s wartime garden—how his acre kept neighbors alive when winter meant scarcity, not inconvenience. That memory becomes a doorway into older worlds where people survived the cold without refrigerators, grocery stores, or modern rescue.

And so, wine grape establishment in the Seattle climate becomes less about planting and more about designing a dialogue—between root and rainfall, between leaf and wind, between earth, wind, and wire.

The first act of cultivation is not planting — it’s inquiry. Test the soil. Read its chemistry and its silence. Some soils are burdened — with metals, residues, or exhaustion from years of extraction. Others are simply asleep, waiting to be woken. You must know which you have before asking it to feed you.

Long after apples are gone and pears are stored away, the medlar still hangs—brown, frost-touched, and waiting. It’s a fruit that sweetens only after the cold, a reminder that not everything worth tasting comes in season.

I found the tree four years ago, growing out of a ditch outside Eastsound. A wild apple, balanced and bright, that led me into older work—of grafting, inheritance, and the quiet restoration that real design requires.

For millennia, fragrance guided the design of gardens — from Persian courtyards to monastic cloisters. Today it’s often missing. In the Pacific Northwest, restoring scent means designing with intimacy, ecology, and time.

The strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) is an ancient evergreen too often overlooked in the Pacific Northwest. While other trees retreat into winter, it carries blossoms and ripening fruit side by side, offering color, nectar, and sustenance when little else remains. Once woven into Roman myth and Mediterranean culture, today it survives mostly as an ornamental—yet its resilience, drought tolerance, and quiet gifts make it a tree worth reclaiming for our landscapes.

Growing grapes west of the Cascades isn’t about chasing the biggest names—it’s about matching what you plant to the heat, soil, and season you actually have. Varieties that ripen in 1400–2300 GDD and rootstocks that can handle pests, low pH, and wet soils are the difference between fruit worth crushing and years of disappointment. Like raising kids, success comes from giving them the right foundation and the right place to grow.

The Native Workhorse Hiding in Plain Sight Across the Pacific Northwest is, Arguably, the Ultimate Species for Edible Landscapes.

Every olive carries history in its roots — Athens crowned with Athena’s gift, Noah reading the branch as landfall, empires rising and falling while the trees still bore fruit. To plant one here is to graft that long memory into Northwest soil, a wager that what endured for millennia might endure again.