The weather has settled into the typical Pacific Northwest winter pattern - rain, with temperature in the 40's fahrenheit (5-10 Celsius). Yesterday the sun came out, though, which gave a chance to finish moving raspberries.
My activities were closely supervised, as usual..
I also decided to harvest the bamboo.
This bamboo, a variety of Phyllostachys, was purchased at Portland Nursery about 10 years ago. It had 3 stalks. The plant is a beautiful screen, makes excellent plant stakes, and does well even in our occasional ice and snow. It does spread, though (the fenced area is where the main clump of bamboo was; however, there are a number of runners outside the circle which need a new home!).
This year I decided I wanted to use the area for squash plants, which grow well in that spot (it is close to the compost pile!). Well, it would have been more picturesque to take the grove down with a machete, but loppers to a better job, and also I didn't think of it until afterwards.
The bamboo is stacked roughly by diameter, and will become several hundred plant stakes. Once cut and trimmed, they will go into the garden shed to season, and will be ready for use by summer.
a38d1903-c6f6-42b5-b7b0-5258d2bd8f40|0|.0