DZONOQUA'S WHISTLE

Wild Columbine(or "Bengay-of-the-Woods")

2010-06-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

Another favorite of mine, these little star-balls of fire are blooming now. The native americans used to chew up the roots and/or leaves to rub on achy joints or keep sore weary runners running into tomorrow. I just like how it shoots up through everything else and dangles there in mid-air.

I've been transplanting some into my garden. Wild Columbine grows alongside wild strawberry, dove foot geranium, nettles, etc, so here it is peeping out at the top of the photo, among strawberries, dead nettle, a mum, along with native veronica and dovefoot geranium in a pear tree guild,which also includes bronze fennel, forget-me-not, violet, and a few bush beans(once this weather warms up!).

Technically the columbine is a full to partial shade dweller, but I've observed that as long as its feet are well shaded by at least 12" of vegetation, it can take the full sun. Perfect example of pushing a plant's comfort zone by having a lot of friends! I transplant them in the early spring when things are still very wet and will be for at least another month--they DON'T like a thirsty new home!

Using the Native Indian Plum in My Forest Garden

2010-05-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Indian Plum(or Osoberry, an older name)has been an old friend to me along my life here in the Pacific Northwest. When it pushes out its tassels of white flowers in February, that means Spring is FINALLY unleashed. Its sprawling form with upright shoots of new leaves glow like candleflames in candelabras, lighting up the end of grey Winter.

The Indian Plum(Oemleria cerasiformis) is a shrub or small tree that grows under the taller firs and maples of the forest, and is usually most happy towards the edges where there is a bit more sun. Male and female flowers are on separate trees, so only the female trees bear fruit--which are hard to catch because the birds are right on the ripe little 1/2" plums and gobble them up.

I thought the upright "whippy" form would be a great small fruiting tree in my forest garden structure. It would provide a filtered shade, as well as support for pole beans or peas. In the photo above is an Indian Plum I transplanted from the woods when it was about 12" tall. It's been in that spot for 5 years, so you can see it grows fairly fast. It really took off in the 3rd year, after establishing roots underground after transplanting. The deer have trimmed the bottom half of the tree, keeping it leaf free and "airy".

I've transplanted some small Indian Plums into my vegetable garden beds as well. They are still small, making roots. I'll do what the deer did and prune them a little to keep them airy. Although the trees don't get that bushy anyways--it would take intentional pruning to make them bushy and dense.

If you are digging up saplings from the forest it's the luck of the draw whether you get male or female trees. Again, go for 12" or shorter saplings. Above are the plums from the tree in the first photo--which you can also see a smaller Indian Plum tree to the right, which is a male. They do indeed taste plummy. I LOVE the glowing orange of the ripening plums, which turn the deep plum purple when ripe. There are several baby trees sprouting under this one, so it self seeds/germinates fairly easily. This particular tree(the female) gets full morning sun, and full afternoon shade. It does not need extra water in the summer(though of course new transplants will, keep them well watered the first year).

If you want to harvest the plums, you will HAVE TO net the tree(thinking about crocheting a net...). The birds are voracious on the plums(good for the birds though!). They snatch these at the cusp of ripe perfection, so you'd better be paying better attention than the birds!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed I have females in my forest garden. But males are welcome too--for their cooling canopy and structure for beans.

Springtime Harvest

2010-05-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

I found this piece of purple cabbage stem that I had thrown in the weeds last fall. It has made a little cabbage head and is sprouting on the leaf scars. I potted it up and will see what happens?

This area was a place I had been throwing weed slash for the past few years. I was looking at it and realized my raspberries had sent runners into it and sent up 21 new canes. I tied them to some fennel stalks with some pieces of old t-shirt. I added rocks to make a border and a few sword ferns and snowberry, which grows as companions to the wild black raspberry in the woods. I will add in some fringecup and violet(also woodland companions).

This area shows a few different things going on. The tarp which is pulled back, was put over the Sacred Corn Patch last year after I had chopped weeds off with a hoe to prep it for planting. The Sacred Corn Patch is My Husband's Sacred Piece of Ground for Corn, I'm not allowed to do anything with it, ha--except keep it weed free of course! But he didn't plant the corn so I covered it with the tarp to keep it clear for this year. You can see it's nice clean dirt under there, and the weed clumps have composted. It used to be very weedy with that tall clumpy grass you can see, as well as thistles.

I'm cutting down the weeds and throwing the slash on a new bed I'm making. The brown patch of dirt is where I pulled up an old small door that I used to cover last year's slash pile, which is now nice compost and ready to plant. The slashed weeds will be mulch, and eventually more compost. Again, the cover of the door killed that nasty thick clumpy huge grass, which is very hard to dig up. Easier just to smother it. I plan to plant cabbages there, and eventually a small apple tree. A green table grape is growing on the fence above.

Before I plant in this bed I'll pull back the mulch and add a layer of duffy dirt from the woods to bring in more good bugs and seeds and fungus to make happy whole soil.

I'm experimenting with potatoes this year, since my bag of potatoes forgotten on the counter sprouted so vigorously. There is a potato in each cat food bag, and I'll add dirt as they grow and unroll the cat food bag. The bottom of the bag is still sewn shut with a paper strip, which will rot off pretty soon, so...to the left of the potatoes is a row of peas coming up. I figure the potato bags will be just about full by the time the peas are done, so I'll gently scoot them next to the pea support so they wont' fall over. When it's time to harvest the spuds, I'll just pull the bag UP since the bottom will be undone. That's the plan anyway! The branch is laid on top to keep the cats from pooping in the bags.

and lastly, a haiku that came to mind in the doing of it all...

vultures, black angles
silently boomerang, slow
under a thundered sky

Iris Luv

2010-05-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last night the setting sun was throwing unusually spectacular golden light which was bouncing off the flat bottom of a huge giant grey cloud. The light through the iris petals was almost coppery. #1 is a clump of purple and yellow iris(the yellow hasn't bloomed yet), interplanted with Lamb's Ear, wild dovefoot geranium, hens and chicks, and bronze fennel. #2 and #3 is breaking the rule "never shoot a photo into the sun", which I break this rule a lot. I got these by holding the camera at knee height and not looking through the viewfinder(which I also do a lot), I liked the unplanned composition and effects.

2010-05-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

Went to Bethany Nursery the other day, north of Beaverton, Oregon. It is right on the edge of the Urban Growth Boundary(which has wonderfully preserved a lot of farmland and woods from development). Had fun walking around and enjoying all the colors. No money tho!

Another Year Gone by

2010-05-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

The garden this spring, haven't planted any veggies yet, what you see are the perennials(healthier than ever!). Forest gardening huge success!

My 2009 garden journal is here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=74085&id=616102765&l=072661262e

Scrounged Garden Dec

2009-05-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

Aw, I had so many outdoor plans for today, but the winds kicked up and I don't want to be taken out by a flying widower-maker. So I'll share a few of my projects.
I collect rocks from wherever(which apparently there's a bill in Congress which would make this illegal) because I love geology and they make pretty good souvenirs. Eventually they find their way into some doo dad. The bowly rock above came from the east side of Mt Hood where we ride motorcycles, the round white rocks came from Lake Wenatchee in WA. In the summer I'll put some water in the bowl-rock for butterflies. I saw the first swallowtail a few weeks ago!

I made a trellis in the garden, this year I'll grow some scarlet runner beans on it. Again, scrounged oak branches(the size of small trees) and sticks picked up in the woods. I haven't wired the top together yet, but it seems pretty solid(it survived the 50mph+ winds today) and I like the idea of adding or taking away sticks.

A work in progress next to the house. I'm not sure how I'll finish it off yet. I got the rocks free from a lady who was ripping out half her pond. I took those toothy rocks from the first picture to make the sunflower/sun/maybe a sundial(some installations are temporary, ha!). I think I'll get some creeping thyme (creeping time?). The violets and dovefoot geranium will be allowed to stay when they creep in there. I'm not putting down any sand or crushed gravel like I'm supposed to(no money--unless I find some for free). I started sorting the pebbles Andrew Goldworthy-style in case I get an idea.

The things I wanted to do today:

Pick up rotten logs in the woods to lay in the new garden beds a la "hugelkultur"

Ride my dirtbike.

Start work on a new trail(actually it's cleaning up a deer trail).

Transplant two Oregon Myrtles from the woods to the garden. Also Fringecup, Oregon Iris and Lemon Balm. And stuff.

Clear my head by listening to the wind in the trees and nothing else--that's what I needed to do the most.

The Other Side of the New Leaf

2009-05-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

For awhile I've been mulling if I should include my gardening here on this blog. The focus of this blog is the "natural" ecology of my home, not neccessarily the artificial ecology of my garden. However, in spending 8 years now observing and contemplating the forest, who lives there and how they live there together, I find things I learn about the forest have influenced how I think about my garden.

Gardening in the temporate rainforest at elevation has its difficulties(technically it's located in transition between oak savannah and fir forest, at 1000 feet). The soil stays colder and damper longer, making seed germination iffy, at least when I wish seeds to sprout. The soil is a heavy clay, with lots of nutrition, but understanding is needed to unlock those nutrients. One can't just add compost ad nauseum to clay soil either, there are chemical bonds that are affected by certain elements. All a bunch of science very fun to learn. Over the years I've learned to improve the tilth of my soil, but I wanted to move beyond using outside fertilizers and amendments--for reasons of money(none to spare), and also the idea I should be able to use what is available right around me.

So after years of seeing the forest around me produce a jungle of biomass--I'm thinking why can't I produce that same abundance in my garden, instead of so much traditional spacing out. I've known about the Three Sisters concept--corn, beans, squash--but wanted to learn how to expand that for other vegetables. Of course this draws from basic concepts like square foot gardening and companion planting. But in the back of my mind I was making connections more based on relationships I observed in my forest and wanted to mirror those, in species and habit, rather than a vegetable garden that essentially is still full of a monoculture of non-native species I have to coddle.

Completely by accident I came across a group for Edible Forest Gardening on Facebook, and was happily gobsmacked that my idea was actually a "real" theory...so now I have a name for it. I'll continue my gardening experiments and share the info here, since inspiration comes from the forest--the land itself where I am gardening. making my garden native, instead of invasive.

The photo above shows my food garden before I started messing with it this year. The deer are voracious here as well as bionic, so the fence needs to be tall. It's mostly set up with raised beds. Last year I did nothing with the garden except mulch most of the beds, with either tarps or leaves, and added wood ash from the stove.

I gave myself a few parameters to work with this year:
1. Use free stuff, scrounge, beg, repurpose, recycle stuff from the junkpile.
2. Learn more about how the forest nourishes itself and use those same materials in my garden. After all, the dirt I've been working with has evolved to work with those resources, why not use them(relationships!).
3. Use more native species in the garden, either as food(Oregon Myrtle for example) or as nutrients to compost or mulch.

(and don't worry, I still ride my dirt bike in the woods...responsibly)

Striped Coralroot

2009-04-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Usually parasites are considered disgusting wormy things, but this one is certainly pretty! This orchid feeds through the mychorrizal soil fungus, one of those beings whose existence utterly depend on the total ecosystem package of soil, fungus, trees, and other living things.
Standing tall with its hosts, as it sucks their bloooood.

Dandelion Whine

2009-04-23T10:51:00.001-07:00

Yup! that's me.

I've always loved dandelions, and spent a lot of time picking them, even before I could say their name. My dad let them grow in the side yard just for me. I love their bright yellow pop and watching the flight of the seeds...what's not to love? (Thus the whine...)

Turns out dandelions can practically cure cancer(and may well do that too!). I came across a wonderful foraging-foodie blog http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/. I tried the recipe for Dandelion Bread and it turned out great!!! (recipe here http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/2008/04/dandy-muffins-and-bread.html ). Even my boys loved it.

The recipe calls for 1 cup of petals, this was all I could find in my yard. They made almost a packed cup.

The bread even looks yummy. It has a cornbready texture with just the right amount of moistness. I had to tweak the recipe a tad because I had to sub sugar for honey, here is my modified recipe:

2 cups unbleached flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup dandelion petals

1/4 cup oil

scant 1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

scant 1 1/4 cups milk

I can feel that dandelion miracle cure zapping through my veins...my dad is visiting this weekend to celebrate his birthday, I'm going to make him some Dandelion Bread!

Hummingbird Chick Photos

2009-04-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

I've often thought about hummingbird eggs and chicks--how impossibly small and fragile they are. The grown up bird is a wonder in itself--so much ferocity and daring in a such a small package--and then this package dares to migrate a thousand plus miles twice a year! Kind of makes my own derring-do seem pansy by comparison(no offense to pansies). And the nest is an architectural work of art to boot.

Eggs the size of a tick tack. Will wonders never cease. NO!

http://community-2.webtv.net/Velpics/HUM/

A New Leaf

2009-04-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

After an extra long winter(for here), spring is creeeeeeeping in . My camellia is blooming a month late. Been puttering around toting rocks, making new garden beds, adding native plants. I've also started researching and experimenting with using "foraged" fertilizer--or rather stuff that the homesteaders here would have used a hundred years ago because a) they had no money and b)that was all that was available, just like my situation. This entails learning about the characteristics of my native soil, how it behaves, and how to work with it so it will grow happy plants. I'm finding there is quite a lot of good stuff just lying around! I'll report back on the native resources/chemistry/garden interface here. Still thankful, more every day, to be planted here. Utterly.

Good Morning

2008-02-27T12:57:00.000-08:00

Here's the view as I turn down the hill on the way to the bus stop in the morning. It was cool to see the sun just crack open over Mt Hood's southern side. I like catching the sun when it first comes over the hills(or sets in west) because you can see the movement of the earth, and realize how fast we are rolling through space. I took this through my foggy windsheild--I lucked out that the camera didn't focus on the windsheild but rather on the trees. A trick I'll have to remember.

Tree Bones

2008-01-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

One aspect of snow I really enjoy is how it show the form of the tree as an individual.

Update on the mare's tails--when I looked up mare's tails on the web, it said they "foretell" a major change in the weather(in our case going from dry and very cold to wet and cold), as well as a warm air mass moving over. Now the weather man was saying "snow"--which is essentially a cold air event. How does the warm air "aloft" fit into the weatherman's schedule? The next day had freezing rain, rain that falls and freezes on contact with things in the cold air below the warmer air. Then the next day came the snow ;0). The mare's tails were more accurate than the weatherman who is looking at blobs on radar. All I had to do was look up.

Mare's Tails at Sunset

2008-01-25T23:37:00.000-08:00

I thought these were beautiful examples of some mare's tails (um, I think), caught in the sunset. The weatherman says snow's a comin', mare's tails say a big weather change's a comin'. Maybe the weatherman will be right this time!

Going to Town, Coming Home

2008-01-20T12:16:00.000-08:00

Pix taken while driving, point and hope I get it. A cool sign on main street.

Going home, one of those cloud windows opened up. My home is back up in the hills to the right under those really dark grey clouds. I did stop to take this pic, but took a lot more aiming out the window just pushing the button as I drove.

A Walk in the Snow

2008-01-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

It's been snowing(and melting) of and on since Christmas. It's still magical every time it happens. I'm the type who would go to Alaska for a vacation in winter.

A rare peep of sun...

Deer tracks...
I love how shapes and textures are simplified and amplified by the strong contrast of black and whites...
Thought these oaks were kind of Sleepy Hollowish...
Just having fun taking pix, and comparing what I'm seeing with what the camera sees.

My Christmas Miracle!

2007-12-31T18:01:00.000-08:00

Snow in Oregon on Christmas Day. The night before the local news gave something 3% chance of snow on Christmas in the Portland area. We are a ways out of town, and higher up, so we have a bigger chance, but it was still pretty cool.
I took a little walk and got this pic of a circluar rainbow in the mist--and there's three of them, co-centrically! Never seen that before, and I also saw it with my naked eye, so it's not a trick of the camera lens. Happy Holidays!!!!

Winter Solstice 2007

2007-12-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

For the past handful of years I've been trying to take a picture of the sundown on the Soltice, and it seems like since I've been paying attention, the sky is clear enough to mark where the sun falls on the horizon. I couldn't "get" the warm orange in the sky, and started messing around with the photo editing buttons, exaggerating, abstracting, and I think I "got" the feelings I felt--the warm fire in the belly sort...that all is well, a new year has begun. Today is really what I think of when the new year starts. And actually the sun will set in the same spot for the next few days, the earth can't turn on a dime. Though I suppose for its size, it does!
I started looking at the reflections of the orange in the potholes in the road...and actually got to thinking my potholes are pretty, nicely rounded, smooth mirrors of the sky, still holding light as the land loses its own light. Potholes are generally cursed, but sometimes you find some mighty interesting things inside, like one day I saw a junco in every pothole on down the road, each one of them taking a bath.
Merry Christmas!!!

Almost Dark, Almost Solstice

2007-12-14T23:57:00.000-08:00

Here's the view from my kitchen window, just before 4 o'clock, when I drive the two gravely miles down the mountain to get the kids from the bus stop. A few minutes after we get home it's dark, so they are leaving and coming home in twilight, and at the end of next week before Christmas break, it will be dark both ends. Then...the earth will stall, teeter and wobble, letting us have more light each day.

Bagging My Christmas Tree

2007-12-10T17:49:00.000-08:00

Here I am, snapping off a Christmas tree! Saw was dull, so I just broke it off. It IS the prettiest Christmas tree ever!

Mushroom Hunt

2007-12-06T21:37:00.000-08:00

First off, I don't know what kind of mushrooms these officially are, but I call them "Honey Mushrooms". They're popping out of oak logs and stumps, and always appear in a herd. I suppose I could call them "Butter Mushrooms" too, or Lemon Pie, Scrambled Eggs, Hollandaise and Toast, Cream of Chicken...

Ketchup

2007-12-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry to be away, my lap top has been in the shop(and didn't get fixed after all), so now I'm set up on a new desktop. Yay computers!

Every year there is one morning in November when the light shines through the firs like a big angel--there's just the right amount of mist to catch the rays. The trick is happening to look out the window to see it. Success!

My Town

2007-10-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday me, my sister and dad enjoyed our county's "Art Harvest Studio Tour". Most of the artists live in the country too, or further out in the woods so it's a fun driving tour too. I was glad to see the redneck element got their art in too--one sign in a tiny town was "altered" to say "Fart Harvest Stud Tour". Woo!

So I come down off the mountain...

We have coffee at Cornerstone Coffee Roasters. I liked the brass texture on the side of the old(still used) coffee roaster, burlap bags full of coffee beans from Columbia, Sumatra, and Africa line the floor.

The old main street is still there with all the old buildings full of shops and restarants and businesses. The trees lining the streets are on fire. Here is the corner of McMenamin's Hotel Oregon. It's always been a hotel, since the beginning, now full of photos of the town and hotel from when photography was new-fangled. Great fries and an awesome Terminator Stout milkshake!

Just a crumbling corner of a building. My town is one of the first in Oregon, and still retains the original layout and old buildings in the center grid. The town seems to work to preserve the old buildings and history, rather than replacing them with modern stuff. Our first stop for the art tour was an artist/bookmaker who lives upstairs in one of these old buildings. Her home was the masonic "gentleman's club", and includes an old speakeasy(with original bulletholes), a ballroom(yet to be restored) and a basement with a Chinese laundry(also yet to be restored) just as it was left a hundred years ago. She restored the club to it's original art deco decor and woodwork.

Of course there's WalMart and Starbucks and Lowe's on the outskirts of town, but I feel lucky to live in(well, near) a town that values its unique history and seeks to preserve it.

Next I'll post some art pix!

Let The Mushrooms Begin!

2007-10-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

Teeny tiny mushrooms everywhere. I'm hoping this will be a good mushroom year--we're supposed to get more rain, and the shrooms have been slacking off the last few years. Time for a bumper crop! I found this dime sized pair on a dead fir twig. I held the twig up to experiment with backgrounds and lighting. I'm thinking those fuzzy grey balls are also some kind of fungus, rust?

Morning Light

2007-10-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Just what it looked like at 7:20 this morning, to the west, out the front window.

Wood Work

2007-10-05T18:40:00.000-07:00

September is the month to "do" the wood. Oak and ash and fir and maple, each has their own firey quality. Seasoned oak will burn all night, fir burns hot and quick so it's good for starting fires and quickly warming the house. Ash will burn despite being damp or green(or both), and maple also lights up quickly, burns longer than fir, but not as long as oak. You need to have a mix of woods to cook a great fire!

Around here, neighbors ask "Got your wood in yet?" and debate how cold winter will be. The weather experts predict a colder, snowier winter--the ocean water is colder off the coast this year. Bring it on!!! We have started up the woodstove a few weeks early this year...

A site for a litle old woodlore...
http://www.the-tree.org.uk/TreeCultivation&Uses/Firewood/firewood.htm

Beechwood fires burn bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Store your beech for Christmastide
With new holly laid beside
Chestnuts only good they say
If for years tis stayed away
Birch and firwood burn too fast
Blaze too bright and do not last
Flames from larch will shoot up high
Dangerously the sparks will fly
But Ashwood green and Ashwood brown
Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown

Oaken logs, if dry and old
Keep away the winters cold
Poplar gives a bitter smoke
Fills your eyes and makes you choke
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Even the very flames burn cold
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
So it is in Ireland said
Applewood will scent the room
Pears wood smells like a flower in bloom
But Ashwood wet and Ashwood dry
A King may warm his slippers by.

People used to know this stuff....

Fly, Dragon!

2007-09-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

A few days ago this dragonfly flew into our house. My son caught it and since it played dead, he thought if it really as dead the next morning he'd take it to his biology teacher, since they're studying bugs. The next morning I could see it moving a toe, very faintly. So I put it on the porch rail in the sun to see if it would warm up and take off. It did(happily).

I think it is a Blue Darner, very sturdy. I was taken with its colors--turquoise, burgundy, espresso, avacado, teal. The same colors I'm using in a sweater I'm making for myself.
Being able to get a real close look at this dragonfly, I can see where people got the idea for fairies. And maybe where they got the idea for helicopters.

Poison Oak Can Be A Good Thing

2007-09-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Most of the time you hear people complaining about poison oak, and wondering what good can ever some of it. Around here it grows anywhere there's bright sun and it loves to climb oaks(its favorite) or a fir(in a pinch). It sends out little rootlets into the bark and moss(yes I've tugged on it to find out), but doesn't kill the tree.

What is good about poison oak? This time of year it is the first plant to turn to fire and lose its leaves(thankfully), finally turning a bright scarlet before the leaves fall.
It has a pretty palette of green to pink to scarlet, very pretty in the setting sun.
Poison oak makes lots of berries for the birds(a good thing), and keeps trespassing hunters out of our woods(another good thing). Most of all, I think its best good thing is that it makes me pay attention--so I don't wallow in it, of course, but watching for it as I wander in the bush sharpens my awareness for outlines and shapes, and I end up seeing a lot more.
It is very easy to uproot, and at least for me, when there's been a few good rains on the leafless stems, it's pretty harmless. I read once that the Indians would rinse off in a puddle or stream if they mashed around in the poison oak. I tried it, it worked(ok I didn't roll around in it, just brushed up against it. And I know I do get it if I don't wash it off right away, so I'm not one of those "immune" freaks). Your mileage may vary, of course.

My Brush With Art Forgery

2007-09-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd plug my other "work" blog--not that forgery is my work--here http://2stix.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-foray-in-forgery.html

Have a great day!

Summer Album, Part 2--Bouquets

2007-09-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

"Wild Things--You Make My Heart Sing!!"
Chives, Oregon Iris, Fringecup, Lady's Mantle, Fennel, Batchelor Buttons,

Mountain Arnica(yellow), Fringecup(lime) with lilacs and bluebells.
Lady's Mantle, Chives, Fennel, Batchelor Buttons, and Fringecup.
Nootka Rose, Honesuckle, Columbine, Camas, Fringecup, Dandelion, Wild Parsley, Monkeyflower, Menzie's Larkspur.

Summer Album, Part 1 Garden Flowers

2007-09-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!!
What a busy summer! Lots of knitting work, most for a book I'm part of that will come out next summer. We did some remodeling on the house(new paint, tile and vanity in a bathroom that started with a leaky pipe fitting, and chopping the garage in half to make a bedroom for the kids, which in turn made the family room truly a family room and allowed me to make my yarn lair in a corner of it).

There is a particular spot on the horizon where as the sun sets, it shines through the flowers in the veggie garden at just the right angle--probably just because its shooting through the right spot between trees and bushes. The mallow, the daylilies, the fireweed(yes I grow fireweed on purpose in my flower beds--I can't help it, it's MAGENTA!)

I wish I had flocks of Bouncing Bette, I'm letting it grow where it wants to. I love the intensely burning red-violet, this flower seems to glow on its own.

Meme Obligato

2007-07-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Whew, July is flying by! Between knitting and writing for a book due the end of July(I am 25% of a book due out next spring, my first one where I get my name on the cover!), taking care of the garden, and riding my new bike (WR250f, thank you Grandma!) and remodeling the downstairs bathroom(it started as a leaky pipe, you know "while we're at it")...not a lot of internet, ha!

Weeta tagged me for a meme, and hopefully I'll do this right...

The rules are as follows:
We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

1. Believe it or not, I am(or was?) an English Major, from Seattle Pacific University. I finished in three years plus one quarter of two classes--wind ensemble and independent study in German.

2. I let some of my vegetables in my garden go to seed so I can see what the flowers look like.

3. I love to sleep outside. With no tent.

4. I have worked as(remember I was an English Major): a wrangler at a horse camp, a graphic artist, a librarian, a knitwear designer and a housecleaner.

5. I hope to climb a big mountain someday. And go to Alaska, on the ferry.

6. I like clean windows.

7. I love riding drag by motorcycle, horse, or on foot(by that I mean "in the back of the line", not wearing opposite-sex clothes, but then I am wearing men's motorcycle gear so in essence, times two, I am riding "drag"...), I can lag behind out of the dust, be by myself for awhile.

8. I like to read auto-biography/memoirs (not biographies), natural history, or poetry of my favorite poets(like Theodore Roethke, Robinson Jeffers, William Stafford)--so much for "English Literature"!

And in case you're wondering, I've only gone off the trail four or five times on my motorcycle, purely by accident, of course. Grandma infected me with motorcycle love.

Ackk! I've got three to tag so far...

Cindy from Riverrim http://riverrim.blogspot.com/

Larry from Riverside Rambles http://www.silphium.net/blog/

BPaul from Fire Lookout Ravings http://forestjester.blogspot.com/

Cape Kiwanda Rock Love

2007-07-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

Ah summer, when the kids are home, and Mom can't even look sideways at the computer. So she gets up reaaaaallllly early and snags it. And I've been playing outside all day too.

Here are a few more pix from Cape Kiwanda. I love geology and rocks. Since I was there at midday with a big sun, there were lots of shadows and cracks and crevices and the whole history of the beach written there on the walls and "floor". I have fun taking pictures of geology for its graphic qualities, finding the pleasing abstract lines and shapes and balance.

These black rocks above make up a whole beach to the south at Yaquina Head(a really great tide pool place, plus lots of birds and grumpy sea lions). It was fun to see what the camera would do with this extreme lighting mishmash, above. Picture if you will, five 10 year old boys directly below the edge of the pic, poking the barnacles and mussels with sticks and shoving and pushing...very Lord of the Flies. And me standing in the middle stretching up to get my shot, ha! I just love the ribbon of shadow through this crack/miniature dry riverbed, almost Japanese garden-y.

(can you tell I like the vertical frame?!)

Weeta tagged me for a meme, so I will go ponder!

Cape Kiwanda Tide Pools

2007-06-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

On the south side of Cape Kiwanda, old sea floor basalt pillows house all sorts of critters in their nooks and crannies. These particular tide pools are well-loved, and probably over-loved, as most of the barnacles have been worn off the top of the rocks by scrambling feet. But the sides and underhangs are doing fine, covered extravagantly buy mussels, starfish, snails, anenomes, seaweed...

I found one starfish squeezing some mussels like a hand. It's popping the shell, and if I remember right, the starfish's stomach comes out of the "palm" and digests the mussel muscle(sorry, couldn't resist!).
Of course it was the "worst" time of day to take pictures--high noon--but I had fun experimenting to see how attempt to balance the deep shadows and over exposed sunny parts. I liked the shapes made by reflections and light and shadows on the water and the textures of the rock covered with living things.
The anenomes are balled up tight against the sun and drying wind. They are the olive green ball-shaped things with bits of shell which they "grab" (somehow!) to camoflage themselves. The same kind are open in the water below.
Most of the "good" tide pool spots--by that I mean a big area with deep creviced rock in an easily accessible popular beach(in the end they're all fun!)--have either naturalists or rangers, or at least signs to show people how to explore tidepools without damaging them. So generally people are careful, and the tidepools remain naturally wonderful.

I can't wait to go back on a cloudy day!

PS click on the pix for the detail! ;0)

Cape Kiwanda

2007-06-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Today we went on my son's "Getting Out of Seventh Grade WooHoo Field Trip" to Cape Kiwanda on the Oregon Coast, which is directly west of our house by about 25 or so crow miles. Or about an hour and a half by school-bus-filled-with-seventh-graders-and-an-ear-plugged-bus-driver-swaying-round-curves-on-two-wheels. (ha! it wasn't that bad!)

A big dune backs up the eroding sandstone Cape. Hubby said it was about 300' tall, but then he only got halfway up. I got all the way to the top(yes I was wearing my new hiking boots!). This picture shows the angle of the climb--and it was steeper for the first two-thirds. I figure I really climbed another halfway's worth at least since each step slides backwards through the sand almost to your step-taking-starting-off point. That grey pointy rock down by the water is Haystack Rock, the landmark of the area. Lots of seabirds nest there. And looking at my pic now I see it's not level(my poop-edness), and it's even steeper than it looks.

Anyways, I have a new appreciation for those bedouins in the Sahara trekking those dunes! Although they don't have to dodge out of control seventh graders jumping and tumbling down the hill...

Here I'm at the top looking south. It was fun to see how the waves curl to hit the beach. See the teeny people! In the lower right hand corner you can see where the rocks begin for the tide pools.
And here I'm looking north towards Cape Lookout, where the field trip people are Not Allowed To Go. My older son swears that when he was on his seventh grade trip he found a pirate cave down there and was almost perilously trapped and drowned in the cave by incoming waves. I was on that field trip, dang, why didn't he show me??!!
More pix to follow!

My Ebony Brown Slippers("There's No Place Like Home")

2007-06-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

Or...shoe fetish day...Got me some new REI Spirit III backpacking boots(forget Manolo whatsit!). Had fun going twice to REI to try on boots and have three people tell me what I wanted(make the voices stop!!), and two REI salespeople give me opposing opinions--oops I mean "product knowledge and expertise". But I prevailed and bagged this pair. Since color is very important to me, I am pleased with the French Roast coffee brown. These boots are really made by Raichle, and being myself a designer ever endeavoring to produce my own well made, well put-together product, I drooled over the simple practical lines, the rubber bumpers fore and aft, the nice hardly any stitching with no hanging chads, the sturdy feel that says "Mexico to Canada". As opposed to cush and flash and doodaddy labeltags and cheep.

My previous pair were a pair of Hi-Tec light hiker types, waterproof (not Gore-tex) mostly leather, which I put about a 1000 miles on till the soles were bald(that is the point I am allowed to buy new boots and yes I kept track). They aren't uncomfortable, but they felt thin as moccasins and I rolled on top of the gravel like walking on marbles. I was happy with them, and they're just starting to peel apart at the seams. Good for garden shoes.

So yesterday I put 8 miles on the new boots. My feet were only a little sore from the new-boot-stiffness, but no blisters or any complaints at all(cuz my feet are tough enough ;0)). I ended the day stretching my hamstrings by picking a pint+ of my awesome organic Oregon mountain-grown strawberries...

Today I put 10 miles on the new boots, with my "workout" pack of 25# of rice. My right foot got a tad numb, but I changed to my thinner wonderful favorite army surplus cotton/wool gun show bargain 3$ socks and feet were happy again. I know it's not the recommended way to break in boots, but I wanted to know, if say I happened to be in the Sierras on the PCT and needed a new pair, could I slap em on straight out of the box and keep on truckin'. Yes!

I'll report back on how many miles it takes to "break them in". Just in case you want to know;0).

More Roethke(kinda what I think of when I'm walking)--

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through the darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil--
Do these anologies perplex? A sky with clouds
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.

(If I click my heels together will I be whisked to Mount Rainier? Mount Olympus? Mount Baker? Mt Adams? South Sister?)

June Rain

2007-06-09T18:08:00.001-07:00

Rain all day long, no tv, not much internet because of clouds and drooping wet branches(yay!). Kids are taking it well. It’s the usual June rain, thorough and sopping, but not cold. Been listening to the rain through the cracked windows as I slave away on knitting for deadlines. Luckily it’s a project I can read a book while I do the wrong side rows. I’m reading The Wild Cascades; Forgotten Parkland by Harvey Manning, with poetry pieces by Theodore Roethke (I’m a Roethke fan). It was published in 1965(when I was born), and was an “argument” for the establishment of the North Cascades National Park. It worked. Here’s an excerpt. Manning talks about lollygagging, big time, on the trail. Just like what I’m doing kind of…my house is shaped like a tent(a-frame), and has big windows full of trees.

“…Possibly the only pure and quiet sleep remaining for civilized man if a rain sleep in the wilderness, an island in time.

Rain sleep is not deep sleep, not after twenty or thirty or forty more of less continuous hours in the sleeping bag, but rather a shallow half-sleep, a blend of fragrances and sounds of forest and river and memories of other wilderness days and nights. The sleeper hears the steady roar of the river and as he dreams the unified sound of the river separates into scores of distinct sounds from individual rapids and ripples, all flowing into a whole and complete dream of rivers present and past.

The sleeper also hears the rain on the tarp, which moment to moment and hour to hour varies from a steady rattle to a sporadic pit-a-pat, and he hears the hiss of wind through the branches as new rain arrives, and he smells the wetness of fir needles inches form his nose, and feels breezes on his cheek, and all this and much more enters the snug dreams of rain in the wilderness…

Always, too, there are such camp pleasures as the warmth of fire on fog-chilled knees and the slow sipping of a cup of hot soup. However, the sure sign of an alien is that he spends days of alpine rain drying socks, or more often charring them. The true citizen of the North Cascades aims only to keep dry the small path of heather under the tarp, and with it the sleeping bag and the food. So long as there is water in the sky there will be water in the socks and bots, and not until the sun returns will pants and shirt and sweater and parka ever be entirely dry. However, having come originally from the sea, man with his waterproof skin can learn to love wet. In the North Cascades, he must.”

(amen, hallelujah)

Now for some Roethke(in pieces)--

A wind came close, like a shy animal.

What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

I walk in this great decay;
The woods wet by the wind,
The dying moss, the brown
Features of time’s delay…

The far slope of the range, half light, half shade,
The final man, his bones adrift in fire,
The dream extending beyond darkness and waste,
To see beyond the self
This quiet’s but the means,
Whether it’s found or lost.

Leaves, leaves, lean forth and tell me what I am…

PS, This is one of my all time favorite books. Lots of wonderful mountain photos, and Mr Manning’s text is just right, describing hiking into and out of the mountains in pre Starbucks and Microsoft Washington. Published by the Sierra Club, you can easily find old copies for a few dollars, try Powell’s Books.

Oregon Gators

2007-06-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

Oregon does have alligators, they're just really tiny! The Northern Alligator Lizard(Elgaria coeruleus "blue") are about 8-10" long. They like dry sunny places, like rock piles and oak savannah. You can see they are the same color as the clay-ish soil. I found this one on our motorcycle track. It was a cool day, so the lizard was sluggy and posed well. Otherwise they are very quick! Their bellies are bluish, and because scales are not very flexible, their sides are pleated so they can breathe(you can see the pleat if you click on the photo). If you pick one up, be prepared to have it bite(it's not poisonous) or poop on you, or....
...snap off its tail, as this one has a few weeks ago. Compare the shape of the old scales and the new scales. The new scales will each expand to its full size. Check out the delicate foot and those toes.
Smile for the camera! Here I am, eye to eye, belly on the dirt to get the lizard's portrait--I'm about 6" away. I got a few nice headshots.
My guidebook says "The young a born live, fully formed, in litters of two to thirteen in late summer." That I'd love to see, teeny miniature lizards.

Poetry Thursday(a week later) "River"

2007-06-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

SLOUGH DANCE

In the low

slung stillness

of the Spring

sprung air,

the slick-wet muskrat

humps bump-backed

along the edge

of the muck

muddled slough. I follow

furtively, he slip-slides

down-bank, losing me

tangentially

in the thick

of long-stalked

cow parsnip leaves

held palms up,

concealing sly

muskrat goings on.

When I Grow Up

2007-05-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

When I was in sixth grade, a fire lookout/forest ranger came to talk to my class. I was so excited to ask questions, since I wanted to be one when I grew up. My family camped a lot throughout Washington, and I could think of nothing better to do than be a ranger and hike and camp all the time(or so I thought was the job of a ranger) or sit on a mountain and watch the world and take care of the forest.
*
Time for questions, and my big moment--”Can a girl do it?” And my big disappointment—“No, the forest service will never hire women”(this was, ahem, 1976). Of course by the time I got through college they were hiring women, and I found out the USFS always did hire at least a few women. But I remember how that comment went deep, and knocked me sideways from what I thought I could be, for a while at least.
*
So I’m not a fire lookout or a forest ranger, I've been happily a mom. And now I can sit on a mountain and watch the world, too. Yesterday this cloud poofed on the western horizon on a cloudless day. It soon drifted north, proving itself to be smoke(there is always the exciting possibility of seeing volcanic poofs of Mt St Helens too, but that’s off to the northeast). Usually there's been a few fires at that spot every year, the local timber company has some sort of yard over that ridge. One year there was an enormous smoke cloud and we got in the car and went looking for the fire to see how close it was and how worried we should get. A large pile of logs had caught fire(a Paul Bunyan sized campfire!), and the fire crews were on top of it.
*
The smoke cloud in the picture above was a pretty shade of shell pink. And I admit, I enjoy seeing how the upper winds shape the cloud, and how the cloud reveals the layers of winds(and how smoke behaves differently than water vapor)--in other words, I like to watch. The fire didn't last long.
*
Our local (defunct) fire lookout is called High Heaven. It's well-named!
*
The other day, during my evening walk, I saw five ravens flying west out over the valley, like they always do as the sun goes down. One raven, the right “wingbird”, half tucked its wings as if it was folding them back for not-flying, and also held them in a curve, like a ballet dancer curves their arms in front of them.. Then it barrel-rolled upside down clockwise(from my view), cronked at the upside down point and rolled back up the way it came(counter-clockwise). Quick, tight, one-two. It didn’t fall, tip fore or aft, skew or tumble, but simply rolled and unrolled like a homebound Blue Angel. And then, because it knew I wasn’t sure I believed what I saw the first time, it did it again, exactly the same, and again once more so I got it straight. Really.
*
I’m reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek(for the third time—1997, 2002, 2007) she describes the indulgent free-fall of a mockingbird…
“The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” (Page 8)
*
And so I was there for the raven’s trick. Although it has taken six years of being “there” to see it.

Wildflower Rainbow

2007-05-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

There is such a variety of wildflower colors TODAY, and I decided to pick some and arrange them in a rainbow. And, by chance or by golly, I happened to read this little story in a book I am reading A Touch of Oregon, by Ralph Friedman--really, I'm not making this up ;0)!
*
"...I asked him(Bob Ogle)to tell his favorite legend.
"This one", he proceeded, "is from the Teton Sioux and it's how rainbows came about."
"The fall was approaching and flowers were talking to each other. They said that it didn't seem fair that when the Indian died he went to the Happy Hunting Grounds. And the other flowers said, 'We just live for a short time and die and we're gone.' And the Great Spirit heard them and didn't think it was fair either, so he created a place for the flowers to go when they die. And when they go up in the sky they form the rainbow that you see after all of the storms."
*
From left to right:
Mariposa Lily, Nootka Rose, Red Columbine, Honeysuckle, Hairy Cat's Ear, Monkeyflower, Ox Eye Daisy, Pacific Hemlock-Parsley, Camas, Menzie's Larkspur and Oregon Iris.
*
And remember, Oregon Iris, Iris tenax or"rainbow holding fast"--it's not by chance it's on the end!

The Thrushes Arrive

2007-05-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

The last light shimmers sideways among the pink-pluming grasses bent to the northeast, glancing along silvered knife-edged iris leaves. The last bee bumbles along the stalk of a fringe cup tinged with coral. The air dances with clouds of gnats sparkling one last time as the mountain rises between the sun and us all. Into this full-blown Spring world Thrush arrives on this particular day--not yesterday, not tomorrow--its song spiraling up and away into the nightening air growing heavy with the damp that rises after sunset from the fresh green.
*

When I first heard Thrush's song, I was dumbfounded. I'd never heard the song before, or at least been in the right woods at the right time. Once you've heard the song, you can't not know it. The beauty of the song surpasses "pretty", "sweet" or "melodious", goes straight through "beguiling" and "ethereal", to where I am only left with "divine". Divine as in the romantic poets' sense of the quality of something so utterly itself, unfiddled with,unspoiled, as it was first spoke into being. And divine in the sense that something can still exist in this world in that way.

During the day Thrush sings pieces and variations of its song, crystalline shards dropped amongst the earthy mosaic of songs and drumming of other birds. But at dusk it all comes together in that long ascending spiral of something so rarely heeded in this world, "proof" I'll call it, of something outside our ken--the More, the Other. Hearing this song as the world transitions from day to night I feel like a window has opened on the new heaven and new earth--it's really there after all.

Thrush belts out this perfection of song exuberantly, over and over again in an extravagant repeat of "I am here in my now, I am in my place in my world, go and sin no more"--or as Thoreau would say it, "Live deliberately". The song sings from the middle of May until the middle of July as Thrush defines his home space for courting and nesting. Then no more Thrush-opera, and they leave for winter in Central America.

Listen one evening(or preferably many) in the thrush's home turf. Just like trying to grasp and truly understand anything, you need to take in the whole package--the song, the venue, the audience, the smells, the shadows, the light--a bird call tape doesn't cut it. Just listen, and it will all become plain and clear as the nose on your face--and then you're hooked.

Odds Are

2007-05-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

Each spring a pair of mallard ducks hang out in our vernal pool/pond/swamp. This year they built a nest in the bowl of a ring of ash trees. It is quite a cozy nest, with a mossy floor and enough of a sheltering bower effect from a few fallen fir boughs caught just above. You can see the duck pulled out some of her down to cover the eggs in a layer about 4" thick(it's been pulled back) and licorice fern fronds have been pulled down from above, probably to disguise the down comforter. But sadly the hen is now gone--I don't know if something ate her, or if somehow the ducks decided to move on. The pool is rapidly drying up(the fastest I've seen since we've moved here)--although plenty of cover and water remains(to my un-duck thinking).

Ten eggs, a delicate pale green-blue, lay like cold stones, gradually turning grey from the inside.
*
0 for 10

The other day as I was walking, I met a wild turkey family. They were crossing the two track into the grasses and irises above. The chicks were only a few days old, with mottled brown fluffy down with a yellow belly. The hen had quite a time keeping everyone together, getting them across the road and back out of hawk sight(I'd just seen a hawk cry and fly off here a few minutes ago). The chicks were still a little bumbly on their new legs, but weren't shy about plunging blindly into the deep grass. The hen kept up a constant gluck and coo with each chick, who responded with a peep. I've listened to this communication with my own chickens, and marveled at how much they spoke back and forth, even when the chicks were still in the egg. Obviously listening and knowing mom's voice is an important survival tactic! The hen wanted to rest under the shade of a small fir's low slung boughs, and tried to gather everyone. But typical of young things anywhere, a few stragglers lollygaggled in the road, having fun running willy-nilly in the wide open. So she herded them back into the safe grass and moved further into the small trees.

The grass quivered as each little chick wove through, walking by faith in mom's voice, not by sight.

7 for ??? so far

Today I found a lone turkey chick huddled on the side of the road. It looked weak, and there were definately no turkeys around. It had gotten sick and was left behind. It squatted on the dead grass that matched its feathers. I took it home, made a bed for it in a dog crate with grass, and gave it little containers of water and chicken food with a fresh worm, and tried to clean its gunked up bottom(a common killer of chicks). I knew it would probably, most likely, inevitably die. But I had a sliver of hope--I imagined it getting bigger and becoming part of my little chicken flock roaming the yard for bugs, or maybe one day following a flock of wild turkeys that pass through(it would have been always free to go), or even being content to stay and get big and fat--and tasty(we did smoke a wild turkey for Thanksgiving one year). So many different thoughts about this little chick: pet, wild thing, dinner. The chick seemed to like sitting in my hand, maybe it felt warm.

Such a delicate small thing to try to keep up.

0 for 1

There are, by my guesstimate, about 50 resident turkeys here in an apparent steady number year to year. Say 25 hens hatch 10 eggs twice(if the first batch goes badly), that's 500 chicks. Maybe 5 or 10 or 25 survive into adulthood each year. That's a lot of "bad luck", and that's just the way it is.

I like to read memoirs of pioneers, homesteaders and native americans. Survival odds were often much the same for them. Some dealt with it by not naming the child and not becoming "attached" until the child made it to around 4 or 5. Others cherished the child fully, knowing full well the investment would probably end in grief, and blessing its existence with love and thankfulness. I know I'm a "namer".

I "know" turkeys do not name their chicks, although listening to them communicate and obviously endeavor to keep track of the entire brood makes me wonder. Birds certainly have some sense of individual identity of themselves and one another--they defend territory, choose and know their mate among all others. Yet it is seemingly hardhearted to leave a chick behind, or let it go if it can't keep up. But that's just the way it is. Life goes on and on, it flowers every year. The thing is to keep going, to keep trying.

I put the dead chick on a stump. It will keep going on, as will many other chicks, in the gut of Beetle, the craw of Raven.

Butterfly Day

2007-05-12T22:32:00.000-07:00

The warm spring afternoon brings out the butterflies. An Anise Swallowtail (Papilio-- "butterfly" zelicaon--a name from The Iliad) spent a while nectaring on my lilacs. It visited each lilac blossom bundle, shivering its wings as it sucked lilac juice. I teetered on tiptoe on my chopping stump and took LOTS of pix, these two were my favorites. Anise Swallowtails like the tops of hills and ridges for breeding, and will stake out a territory and defend it, king of the mountain style. As I watched this swallowtail, two Spring Azures spiraled by overhead, and an orange Fritillary looped along the ground.

Taming of the Shrew

2007-05-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

The tiny shrew is a wonder. At about 2 1/2" long(in body) the Trowbridge Shrew is at the lower limit for how small a warm blooded mammal can be. To get an idea of size, the tip of this guy's nose is the size of a pin head, his foot is the size of a grain of uncooked barley. It sniffs around in the duff with it's array of whiskers, looking for any meaty morsel(earthworms, bugs), fir seeds and selected fungi. The Trowbridge Shrew is "stronger" and can burrow into the soil--look at those feet and think about how small those bones are!!

Shrews have an incredibly high caloric need. They eat their body weight each day, and can't go more than 3 hours without food. They need the calories to keep themselves warm because they are so small. Shrews do not hibernate or sleep--they carry on through the winter of their one-year lifespan, scuttering through the forest floor, even under the snow.

A shrew's heart beats up to 1,200 times per minute(and it's the size of a sunflower seed maybe?). All that hard work makes it easy for the shrew to be literally scared to death. Poor hearing and eyesight make it hard for them to evade predators, but they do have one defense-- they taste bad. However, owls, jays, and trout don't seem to mind.

So you're probably asking how I got this little guy to sit for his picture. I found him expired on the path. It's mind boggling how tiny he is, and like birds, he is mostly fluffy fur, his little body is maybe the size of a small peanut(in the shell).

Turkey Prom

2007-05-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

Each year, around the end of April, the wild turkeys come together for Turkey Prom. They like the cow pasture, which isn't much of a cow pasture since cows are only in it a few months out of the year on the early summer grass, which really makes it a great cow pasture--I would love it if I were a cow, and even as a human that green grass makes me want to put my head down and munch away! So the cow pasture remains a remnant of the oak savannah and wetland prairie that covered the foothills of the Willamette Valley.

So for Prom activities the hens peck for woolly bears in the new grass, while the 2 or 3 biggest and baddest Toms strut around trying to impress them. A few small groups of young batchelor turkeys without dates skulk around the edges of the party. When the Toms are showing their stuff, they are quite oblivious to who might be behind that tree, so I can get pretty close. The hens are still pretty wary though, and start moving away. All sorts of birds singing, mostly White Crowned Sparrow and Red Winged Blackbird, and the occasional beat of assorted woodpeckers(Pileated, Hairy, Northern Flicker, Red Headed Sapsucker) make up the band. The sparkly spring sun makes a great disco ball--and that shiny disco ball has quite the party effect on winter-rusty Oregonians, feathered and not-so-furry.

The turkeys are pretty thick around here, and aren't shy at all if you are in a car. I always stop and roll down the window and tell them how pretty they are as they waggle their warty blue heads. It's fun to listen to them gobble amongst themselves, and I'm sure they're so NOT telling me how pretty I am!

Counting Ravens

2007-05-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

(from May 2) SUN! Clearing clouds, everything still wet from last night's Noah Rain--a thick, juicy, soaking downpour. Wind in the treetops, high and thin. Birds perch in the sunshine, warming up, drying off. The weatherman promises hail, lightning, thunder and funnel clouds today.

And just like that the sun is gone. A shower passes over, wind whips the trees, tearing loose lichens, fir needles, bits of bark, new green tips and infant pine cones. Hail! First come 1/4" pellets, and chickens run across the lawn for their coop to escape the falling sky. Then 1/2" musket balls shoot from the sky. A flash of light, an immediate crack of thunder(woo-hoo!). Sheets of hail pelt the world, and yet a hummingbird dares to dodge hailstones!

Wait awhile, the sky rips open again to the sun. Top heavy tall clouds barrel in from the southwest, like cresting ocean waves in slow motion breaking over the ridge, trailing swirling gusty winds.

Every once in a while, a raven lauches from the ridge out into that roiling airspace above the valley. Opening its wings, it seemingly lets the wind decide its course and attitude, pitch and roll, altitude and stall and tumble. The bird stretches its wings and simply lets go.

Watching all this, how can I not think the bird knows it can fly, it's designed to fly, it's gifted to fly, and above all, that it's fun to fly? Why does a hummingbird fly in a hailstorm? Because it knows it can dodge hailstones? Because it wants to try?

Both of these birds have particular character(personality? attitude? or just a wild feather-hair?) trait that seems to inspire these flights--curiosity for Raven, daredevil-ishness for Hummingbird. Or maybe it's "just" some other need, like courtship or hunger.

So, what do birds know that we wish we knew?

(PS, today May 7--I SWEAR I saw a hummingbird zip-shoot straight up in the sky to about 100 feet, then stall and fall, then zip off like a UFO. Its metallic ruby throat was quite snappy against the blue sky!)

Iris Season

2007-05-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

Oregon Iris (Iris "rainbow" tenax"holding fast"--isn't that a beautiful name? and what an interesting image, a "rainbow holding fast") is blooming everywhere! They love dry sunny meadows, road edges, and even grassy clearcuts. They seem to grow very easily from seed, and spread quickly. The bloom opens up with a deep thistle purple, then gradually fades to pale lavendar. They also have pretty dark brown seed pods in late summer.
David Douglas, a Scottish botanist, came to the Pacific Northwest in 1824 to "discover" new plants(the Douglas Fir is named for him). He reports seeing Native Americans braiding these iris leaves into snares--for anything, rabbits and ELK!!

Poor David Douglas should have stayed in Oregon. He died at 35 in Hawaii, after falling into a bull trap-pit and being crushed by the intended trappee--the bull.

BioBlitz 2007--Conclusions and The End

2007-05-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

(Above) A shot of the oldest living thing on Indian Hill, Cougar Tree. Read more here:

http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2007/02/meet-cougar-tree.html

(above)My perch on the south side of Indian Hill. It's a great place to watch birds, both scuffling on the ground and flittering through the treetops. It's got a nice steep drop off to dangle the feet over. Cougar Tree is directly to the left.

(above) The trail home.

TALLY
(I counted species found, not individuals—most all had many representatives!!)Trees—6
Shrubs—15
Flowers—58, *1
Ferns—4
Mosses—10
Liverworts—2
Lichens—30
Fungus—13, *9
Birds—19, *15
Mollusks—3
Insects—14, *12
Mammals-- 6, *8

Grand Total-- 180, *55 =235 species altogether(so far)
*=resident species observed at other times of the year, just not during the Blitz week.
This includes two endagered species(*Spotted Owl and *Marbeled Murrelet).

DAILY JOURNAL
April 21, 2007
Lo 40.5’, Hi 47.2’, barometer—down, humidity(3pm): 82%
Low clouds skimming treetops, following slopes down into valleys. Steady rain all day sundown, lifting of clouds, clear at nightfall, stars!! Collected moss and lichen samples, branches with lichen on Indian Hill.

April 22, 2007
Lo 43’. Hi 57’, barometer—up, humidity (4 pm): 67%
High piled sharp edged cumulus, 30% blue sky towards east, late afternoon showers. Wind SW.
Late morning. Birds seen: Rufous Hummingbird, American Robin, Steller’s Jay, White Crowned Sparrow, Wild Turkey, Raven, Red-Headed Sapsucker, Pacific Slope Flycatcher, Chestnut Backed Chickadee, Mallard Duck, Varied Thrush, heard calls of Redwing Blackbird.
Found fresh deer, raccoon and bobcat tracks on a deer trail into tree farm(pix). Found a raccoon skull and a jawbone of a squirrel?(Pix)
Found a new-to-me flower, a catchfly/campion? Under mature spreading oaks in cow pasture. Camas blossoms rising up, blooming soon. Four turkeys. A woolly-bear caterpillar, black middle band with long white hairs on sides, in the grass. Found lots of a smoky brown coprinus mushroom all along west edge cow pasture(shaded and wet). Watched a shower pass in the dry shelter of a big fir(south side of Indian Hill), chesnut-backed chickadees kept popping by to get a look at me.
After supper. Heard a Pileated Woodpecker laughing. Helped a Rough-Skinned Newt completely cross the road. Just enjoyed the small beings and wild gestures—the wish of raven wing fingers through spring air, the bright rust of a robin’s breast against the twilight blue sky, remembering the watchful companionship of the nesting mallard pair on the pond.

April 23, 2007
Lo 41.6’, Hi 61’, barometer—up
Deep blue sky, small round fuzzy edged clouds fill 50%, gradual overcast into evening. Enough wind to creak trees, SW.
Early afternoon. Followed three bachelor turkeys in pasture(young males hang out together in the Spring while hens and the Big Guys are doing their thing). Found 6 Striped Coralroot under a mature spreading oak. Two deer in the tender new grass.
After supper. Heard calls of Pileated Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, various sparrow, junco, towhee, Steller jay, redtail hawk, robin, and other birds I recognize their calls, but don’t know which faces go with which songs.

April 24, 2007
Lo--, Hi—(not working), barometer—up
High bright overcast, then darkening grey bottoms of clouds. Occasional gusts from the N, sounds seem amplified
Noon. Lots of high flying birds today. Turkey Vulture soaring. Canada geese flying NW, calling to each other.
Late afternoon. wind high in the treetops, then it suddenly dies to silence, hush. I can hear birds at least ¼ mile away through the trees(I’m hearing red-wing blackbirds, and I know their pond is about ¼ mile away). Complete silence, punctuated by few bird songs. Strengthening sun, every leaf holds one raindrop.
After supper. Ravens flying west, like they always do in the evening. They pause in the treetops, speaking to each other. It’s easy to hear how Raven seems to have speech, their sounds seem formed by a tongue, rather than just a squawk or song, like other birds. High wind in the treetops, listen long enough, by hours or days, and you can hear what the wind is bringing tomorrow—rain, cold, warm, sun. Listen long enough and even silence will speak what you need to know.

April 25, 2007
Lo 42.5’, Hi 59’, barometer—up, wind swings from N to SW and back.
Overcast, a cold wind picks up in the late afternoon. The trees creak and clack in the indecisive wind. White Crowned Sparrows follow me, singing in the cascara, or maple, or Saskatoon along the road. Each individual sings a slight variation on a basic song. Maple chains swing heavy and golden in the wind, their newly unfolded leaves flitter like paper.

WHAT DID I LEARN?

I discovered two new plants, one I didn’t know the name of—Grove Lover (Nemophilia parviflora, waterleaf family), and one completely new flower I hadn’t seen yet and can’t find at all in my field guides.

I learned that it is a good thing to have multiple field guides to help identify cousins. Photos or illustrations in guides may be made of plants 500 miles away, or 3,000 feet up in elevation, and examples will “never” be exactly like what I have in my hand. I learned more about how shade or sunlight changes the form of a leaf, and how better to understand all that stuff the book says about sepals and hairs and axils, and then use it to better my ID skills.

I learned it’s easier to see birds when I have a prior understanding of where a bird likes to hang out—chickadees like firs, flycatchers like thickets, woodpeckers peck in the canopy.

I decided my Indian Hill has come a long way in transitioning from a grassy savannah hill to a conifer forest in the past 80 years. Most of the species found prefer a moist, open conifer stand of mature trees. I am amazed to find Fairy Slippers, they require a very particular environment and relationship with firs and fungus. The firs have topped the oaks, which means the oaks will die soon in the fir shade.

I understand better how it takes a long time to understand a place, and discover its secrets. My tally is a result of 6 years of watching this place, and I know there is even more to find.

REFERENCES

BOOKS
Acorn, John and Ian Sheldon, Bugs of Washington and Oregon. Lone Pine Publishing, 2001.

Alden, Peter and Dennis Paulson, National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Pacific Northwest. Chanticleer Press. Inc, 1998.

Alt, David, Roadside Geology of Oregon. Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1978.

Baron, Nancy and John Acorn, Birds of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Lone Pine Publishing, 1997.

Gunther, Erna, Ethnobotany of Western Washington. University of Washington Press, 1945.

Laessoe, Thomas, Mushrooms. Dorling Kindersley, 1998.

Lincoff, Gary,ed, Guide to Mushrooms. Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Matthews, Daniel, Cascade-Olympic Natural History. Publisher’s Press, 1999.

Moore, Michael, Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West. Museum of New Mexico Press, 1979.

Pojar, Jim and Andy MacKinnon, Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast; Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. BC Ministry of Forests and Lone Pine Publishing, Vancouver, 1994.

Searfoss, Glenn, Skulls and Bones. Stackpole Books, 1995.

WEBSITES
Field Guide to Fungi(Pacific Northwest)
http://www.blm.gov/or/plans/surveyandmanage/Field_Guide/Fungi/Fungi.pdf

Field to Terrestrial Mollusks(WA and OR) http://www.blm.gov/or/plans/surveyandmanage/Field_Guide/Terrestrial_Mollusk/Terrestrial_Guide.pdf

Northwest Oregon State Forests Management Plan (2001) http://www.odf.state.or.us/DIVISIONS/management/state_forests/sfplan/nwfmp01-final/nwfmp.asp

Oregon Flora Project, http://www.oregonflora.org/

Rare, Threatened and Endangered Species of Oregon, http://oregonstate.edu/ornhic/2004_t&e_book.pdf

Two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet, one heart.

BioBlitz 2007--All Creatures Great and Small

2007-04-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

I decided I was too impatient to wait a half hour for each of my pictures to load for my BioBlitz Critters....so I give a picture of moi BioBlitzer as a young child, doing her first BioBlitz. I still love dandelions, especially big fat juicy happy ones covering a lawn(mine).

I'll share the photos another time. (I have tracks, skulls, drawings, holes and middens!)

Again, if it has an asterisk *, it means I have observed these critters at other times of the year. I know they are resident, and wanted to include them. On the other hand, if there is no *, it means I saw it, or its fresh tracks.

BIRDS
Varied Thrush(Ixoreus naevius)
American Robin(Turdus migratorius)
Mountain Quail (Oreortyx pictus)
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) I've seen these roosting in the oaks when they are eating on something in the cow pasture. It is a wonder how they fly with their (up to) 6' wingspan through the gnarly oak branches.
Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)
Rufous Hummingbird(Selasphorus rufus)
Red Breasted Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus rubber)
Northern Flicker(Colaptes auratus)
Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)
Winter Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)
Common Raven(Corvus corax)
Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)These like to perch of the very tops of the firs, and so would I, if I could.
White Crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) In the summertime, these guys sing all through the night.
Golden Crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla)
Dark Eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)
Spotted Towhee(Pipilo maculatus)
Wild Turkey These (yummy when smoked) birds perch in the low hung large branches of the maples at night.
Pacific Slope Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis)
Hairy Woodpecker(Picoides sitkensis)

BIRDS SEEN OTHER TIMES(WINTER, SUMMER)
Year-round Birds:
*Black-Capped Chickadee (Parus atricapillus)
*Red-Breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis)
*Brown Creeper (Certhia Americana)
*Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
*Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) occasional, nested on the hill 2001, 2002
*Ruby Crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula)
*Belted Kingfisher
*Red Tailed Hawk

Summer Birds:
*Swainson’s Thrush (Catharus ustulatus)--proof that heaven exists
*Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Dendroica coronata)
*Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana)
*Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus)
*American Goldfinch (Cardeulis tristis)
*Black Headed Grosbeak(pheucticus melanocephalus)
*Evening Grosbeak(Coccothraustes vespertinus)

Freak One-Time Sighting:
*Marbeled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) at least I was told it had to be "freak", they do come this far inland, but it "had to be" lost.

MOLLUSKS
Oregon Megophix(Megophix hemphilli) small pale snail ???
Small ochre snail
Puget Oregonian (Cryptomastix devia) rusty snail ???
Slugs
(I found a great online field guide to snails/slugs, so I’ll have fun gathering shells and figuring out what they are. There are a variety of rusty snails, so I’ll start collecting snail shells).

BUGS
(I'm not very good with bugs, I don't have a big bug field guide)
Clown Millipede(Harpaphe haydeniana)
Black Millepede
Fritillary
Carrion Beetle
Acorn Weevil
Box Elder Bug
Black Ground Beetle
Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia)
Woolly Bear Caterpillars(in various combinations of striping)
House Fly
Crane Fly
Bumble Bee
Yellow Jacket
Tiny Red Spider-Mite that lives in fir bark

Bugs Seen Other Times
*Rain Beetle(Pleocoma spp.)
*Preying Mantis
*California Prionus (Prionus californicus)
*Metallic golden flies on cow poop
*A large variety of wasps and bees
*Polyphemous Moth (Antheraea plyphemous)
*Lorquin's Admiral Butterfly (Liminitis lorquini)
*Red Admiral Butterfly(Vanessa atalanta--what a pretty name!!)
*Mourning Cloak Butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa)
*Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon)
*Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus)
*Oregon "Old World" Swallowtail (Papilio machaon oregonius)

MAMMALS
Blacktailed Deer(Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) tracks, beds--the deer sleep on the east side of the hill in winter(protected from the wind and rain) and on the west side of the hill in summer(nice cool breezes), so Indian Hill is a kind of deer hotel. They also like to hang out in the oaks on the west side during the day.
Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus) S, O, df cone middens, and they leave nibbled boletes atop mossy rocks
Douglas Squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii)C, cone middens
Townsend’s Chipmunk(Tamias townsendii) C, cone middens
Trowbridge Shrew(Sorex trowbridgii) mature C, dead in path
Vagrant Shrew (Sorex vagrans) dead in path

*Short-tailed Weasel(Mustela erminea) road kill
*Pacific Jumping Mouse (Zapus trinotatus) W, C(cats drag in)
*Coyote(tracks, scat, calls)
*Raccoon (tracks)
*Mountain Lion(sighting, tracks, carcass)
*Striped Skunk(Mephitis mephitis)tracks, road kill
*Bobcat(Lynx rufus)sightings, tracks, scat
*Deer Mouse(Peromyscus maniculatus)

SNAKES, FROGS, AND OTHERS
There are a variety that live very nearby--there is a vernal pool full of frog life, and the snakes love the grass, and the lizards love the rock wall. But I've never happened across a snake on the hill(too moist and coniferous?), or a frog--even a tree frog(too dry and oaky?).

Lastly, I will do a wrap-up post, with a final tally of species, thoughts, and a bibliography. Just trying to be scholarly.

BioBlitz 2007--Lichens, Mosses and Ferns

2007-04-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy the moss-liverwort-lichen category. The Pacific North-WET is heaven for these critters, and I'm always amazed at the variations, the colors, the forms, and the biology. Mosses can be difficult to ID(I need to take a class), so my list is not complete or accurate. Lichens are a little easier, but I know I didn't get them all. There are a whole 'nother set of species that grow in treetops as well, so I always check out a freshfallen tree for mosses and lichens.

More moss-lichen-fungus pix:
http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2007/02/fruiting-bodies.html
http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2007/02/you-can-find-lipstick-in-woods.html
http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2007/02/lichen-love.html

My Cedar shake roof has collected quite a varied assortment of lichens as well in its 30 years. Another day, another BioBlitz project!

(above)A small portion of the boulder I was going to inventory(but that will have to wait for another day--I promise to do it later, it is a wonder!!).The large leafy lichen is Lungwort. It turns bright green in the rain. Click on the photo to get a sense of the diversity of mosses and lichens--and other parts of the rock have just as many DIFFERENT kinds, all in their preferred climate(sunny, shady, under dry overhanging stuff, in the dark).

I took these pictures of various new-fallen sticks to show how many different kinds of lichens line the branches here.

(above, left to right) Ragbag, Yellow Reindeer Lichen, Beaded Bone

(above, left to right) moss "A", Cetraria platyphylla(purple leafy), Frog Pelt, moss "B"

(above, let to right)Methuselah's Beard, Forking Bone with fruiting body, Platismatia glauca(pale green leafy)

(above, left to right) Ragbag, Sea Tar, Bark Barnacle, Beaded Bone(with fruiting bodies "budding")

(above, left to right) Cladonia sp., moss "B", Methuselah's Beard, Antlered Perfume, Ragbag

FERNS

Lady Fern(Athryium filix-femina)C, W, E, L to montane
Sword Fern(Polystichum munitum) C, W, L, M

http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2007/04/fern-magic.html
Licorice Fern(polypodium glycrrhiza)C, W, L

http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2007/02/licorice-fern.html
Bracken Fern(Pteriduium aquilinum) C, W, E, O, L to sub-alpine

MOSSES

Red Bryum (Bryum miniatum)rock
Plume Moss(Dendroalsia abietina)maple, oak
Tall Clustered Thread Moss (Byrum pseudtriquetrum)
Coastal Leafy Moss(Plagiomnium insigne)
Ribbed Bog Moss (Aulacomnium palustre)
Douglas’Neckera (Neckera douglasii)
Rough Moss(Clapodium crispitolium)
Cat-tail Moss(Isothecium myosuroides)
Curly Thatch Moss(Dicanoweisia cirrata)
Wet Rock Moss (Dichodontium pellucidum)

LIVERWORTS
Common Scissor-leaf Liverwort(Herbertus aduncus)
Tree Ruffle Liverwort (Porella navicularis)

LICHENS
Dust Lichens(Lepraria sp.) various kinds
Cladonia Scales(Cladonia sp) dead oak
Bark Barnacle(Thelotrema lepadinum) C,W
Lettuce Lung (Lobaria oregana) C, W, old growth
Lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria) C, W
Lobaria linita C, W
Frog Pelt (Peltigera neopolydactyla) C, R
Questionable Rock-Frog(Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia) R
Rag Bag (Plantismatia glauca) everywhere
Forking Bone(Hypogymna inactiva) C, O
Beaded Bone (Hypogymnia enteromorpha) C, O
Antlered Perfume (Evernia prunastri) C, W
Devil’s Matchstick (Pilophorus acicularis) R, C, W
Lipstick Cladonia (Cladonia macilenta) C
False Pixie Cup (Cladonia chlorophaea) soil, tree bases
Dragon Cladonia (Cladonia squamosa) ground, decaying wood
Cladonia carneola
Coastal Reindeer (Cladina portentosa) ground
Cladina mitis
Cladina uncialis, dry, well lit O, C
Methuselah’s Beard (Usnea longissima) C, W
Common Christmas Tree (Spaerophorus globosus)
Common Witch’s Hair (Alectoria sarmentosa) C
Parmelia sulcata
Parmeliopsis ambigua
Hypogymnia metaphysodes, C
Pseudicyphellaria anomala
Lecidella euphoria
Lecanora rupicola

Now I'm off to work on Critters!

BioBltz 2007--Fungus Among Us

2007-04-26T23:12:00.000-07:00

Eye candy comes first...

Little Japanese Umbrella

I don't know what this one is. I found them lining a very old rotted fir stump, between the bark and what was left of the wood. I jammed the camera down into it, and clicked away. I really like this pic, makes me think of octopus.

Grown-up Panther Amanita(the psycho-delic-probable-death-inducing-while-mutant-mosquitoes-suck-your-blood-mushroom, so innocent-looking...)

Newborn Panther Amanita

Oak Blossom (my made-up name)

(Spock's) Bladder Cup

FUNGUS
Witch’s Butter (Tremella mesenterica) dead fir
Mazegill (Daedaea quercina) oak stumps
Golden Gumdrop (my name) (Dacrymyces deliquescens) dead fir twigs
Bladder Cup (Peziza vesiculosa) soil
Little Japanese Umbrella (Coprinus plicatilis) soil
Oak-meal Paste(my name) (Phellinus punctatus) dead oak
Clustered Oak Bonnet (Mycena inclinata)dead oak
Panther Amanita (Amanita pantherina) soil, with firs
Ink Cap (Coprinus sp) soil
Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) dead fir, oak
Oak Blossom Fungus(my name)(Stereum hirsutum) dead oak

Unknown Little Orange Cap--photo above, on rotten fir
Little Brown Mushrooms

Tiny Grey Mushrooms

Mushrooms I’ve found other times:
*Russula, soil, with firs
*Bolete, soil
*Suillus, soil
*Blue-Green Slime Head (Stropharia cyanea), dead oak
*Yellow Morel (Morchella esculenta) soil
*Lemon Disc (Bisporella Citrina) dead oak
*Splash Cup (Crucibulum leave/Cyanthus olla), soil, cedar post
*The Goblet (Pseudoclitocybe cyanthiformis), live oak
*Giant Club (Clavariadelphus pistilaris), soil

*Little Pink Mushrooms

NOTE--Blogspot is being superslow the past few days uploading pix(it could be my computer), so it's taking me a few days to get my BioBlitz posts done with the pix. I have two more planned--Ferns, Moss, Lichens, Liverworts and Creepy Crawly/Walky/Flyers, just so ya know!

Bioblitz 2007--Indian Hill Flora

2007-04-25T14:36:00.000-07:00

Description of Indian Hill

Imagine a medicine wheel (a circle with four spokes, oriented NSEW). The north half contains mostly fir and a few maple, with sword fern and snowberry. The south half contains mostly oak, with about 20% large firs, a handful of young firs, and about 20% mature maple. Herbaceous plants cover most of the circle, with wet-loving plants in the NE quarter. The SE quarter has a steep rocky bluff, with (cool!) moss and lichen covered rock faces. Shrubs grow in the more shady and wind-protected areas. Thickets line the E edge of the circle.

I would guess none of the firs are more than 75 years old. When we logged a little, we counted rings, and none were over 75 years—even a fir with a 4 foot diameter(it had some rings that were 1”!). There were also scrawny firs the same age with a 6” diameter. I counted rings on two oaks we cut last summer, each about 24” in diameter, one was about 145 years old, and one was 168 years old). The biggest oak is about 3.5’ in diameter.
Rainfall averages per year: Portland, OR 37”, Coast Range 80”, Indian Hill(2004) 77”. Prevailing wind SSW. It averages about 36” of cumulative snow per year.

Eye candy comes first...

Chocolate Lily

Sessile Trillium

Slender Toothwort

Star Flowered Solomon's Seal

Striped Coralroot

Oregon Iris (a very pale version)

Broad Leaved Shooting Star

KEY
S=dry savannah
C=conifer moist forest
W=wet forest (streambanks, springs, deciduous)
L=low elevation
M=middle elevation
R=rocky
E=edge(between forest and field)
O=open forest(with mostly mature trees)
F=currently flowering 4/07
*=resident but not up or seen or arrived yet

TREES
Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)S, C, L to montane
Grand Fir (Abies grandis)dry C
Western Redcedar (Thuja plicata)C, W, L, M, shady
Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum)S, W, L, M
Garry Oak (Quercus garryana)S, L, R
Oregon Ash (Fraxinus latifolia)W, L

SHRUBS
Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus)C, S, L, M, O
Oceanspray (Holodiscus discolor)C, S, L, M, O
Saskatoon (Amelanchier alnofolia)C, S, L, M, O, F
Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis)C, S, L, O
Pacific Ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus)C, L, M, O
Nootka Rose(Rosa nutkana)C, S, W, L, M, O
Thimbleberry(Rubus parviflorus) C, W, L to subalpine, O
Black Raspberry(Rubus leucodermis) C, L, M, O
Trailing Blackberry (Rubus ursinus)C, S, L, M, O
Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus discolor)
Cascara (Rhammus purshiana) C, W, L, M, E, shady
Beaked Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) C, S, L, M, O, shady
Poison Oak (Toxicohdendron diversilobum)S, L, R
Pacific Ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus) W, O, L, M
Ocean Spray (Holodiscus discolor) W, O, E, L, M

LILY(Liliaceae)
Star-Flowered False Solomon’s Seal (Smilacina stellata) C, W, L to timberline, shady, F
Hooker’s Fairybells (Disporum hookeri) C, W, L
White Fawn Lily (Erythronium oregonum) S, L, O, R, F
Sessile Trillium (Trillium chloropetalum)C, W, O, F
Chocolate Lily (Fritillaria affinis) S, C-E, M, F

IRIS(Iridaceae)
Oregon Iris (Iris tenax) S, L, M, O, F

ORCHID(Orchidaceae)
Fairy Slipper (Calypso bulbosa)C, L, M, shady, F
Striped Coralroot (Corallorhiza striata)C, W, L, M, shady, F

PURSLANE(Portulacaceae)

Siberian Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia sibirica) C, W, L, M, shady, F
Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) S, L, M, F

PINK(Caryophyllaceae)
Big-Leaved Sandwort(Moehringa macrophylla)C, S, L, M, R, F

MUSTARD(Brassicaceae)

Slender Toothwort (Cardamine pulcherrima) C, W, L, F

SAXIFRAGE(Saxifragaceae)

Fringecup (Tellima grandiflora) C, W, L, M, E, F
Foamflower (Tiarella trifoliata) C, W, L to subalpine, shady, E

BUTTERCUP(Ranunculaceae)

Red Columbine (Aquilega Formosa) C, W, L to subalpine, R, E, shady

ROSE(Rosaceae)

Goat’s Beard (Aruncus diocus) C, W, L, M, E
Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) C, L to subalpine, E, O, F
Large Leaved Avens (Geum macroplyllum) C, S, L, M, O
Silverweed (Potentilla pacifica) W, L, M

PEA(Fabaceae)

Tufted Vetch(Vicia cracca) C, S, L, M, E

EVENING PRIMROSE(Onagraceae)

Enchanter’s Nightshade (Circaea alpina) C, W, L, M

CARROT(Apiaceae)

Cow-Parsnip (Heracleum lanatum)W, L to subalpine, E
Pacific Sanicle (Saniclua crassicaulis)C, S, L, E
Mountain Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza chilensis)C, W, L, M, E
Parsley-Leaved Lovage (Ligustichum apiifolium) S, C, L

WATERLEAF(Hydrophyllaceae)
Pacific Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum tenuipes)C, L, M

MINT(Lamiaceae)
Creeping Charlie (Glecoma hederacea) W, C, O, E, L
Self-Heal (Prunella vulgaris) C, O, L, M

ASTER(Asteraceae)
Nipplewort (Lapsana communis) C, S, L, M, E
Oxeye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) S, L
Canada Thistle Cirsium arvense) O, fields
Burdock(Arctium minus)O, fields
Dandelion (taraxacum officinale) O, fields

OTHER
Oak Mistletoe(Phoradendron flavescens) S, L
Robert Geranium (Geranium robertianum) C, S, L, O
Dovefoot Geranium (Geranium molle) S, L, F
Broad Leaved Starflower (Trientalis latifolia) C, L, M, O
Manroot (Marah oreganus) W, L, O, F
Cleavers (Galium aparine) W, L, M, E, O
Duckfoot/Inside-out Flower (Vancouveria hexandra) W, C, shady, L, M
Broad-Leaved Shooting Star (Dodecatheon hendersonii) S, O, F
Vari-Leaved Collomia (Collomia heterophylla)

SAPROPHYTES
*Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) C(mature), L(blooms in July, 3 patches)

SEDGE

Green Sedge (Carex viridula)

Creeping Spike-Rush (Eleocharis palustris)

GRASS

Pacific Brome (Bromus pacificus)

INTRODUCED HERBS
Lemon Balm

Burdock

Sweet Woodruff

Queen Anne's Lace

Next up: Ferns, Mosses, Liverworts and Fungus

And after that: fauna(mammals, bugs, birds)

My Bioblitz 2007--Indian Hill

2007-04-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

The hill behind my house is a rough circular mound of basalt boulders and rubble about 400 feet in diameter. It lies atop one of the N-S running ridges of Oregon’s Coast Range. The elevation at the top is about 990’ and the elevation at the lowest base is about 850’. In the Eocene(50-60 million years ago) this land was underwater. Lava flowed occasionally, bubbling out and hardening into seafloor basalt “pillows”. The rock-pillows range from 6’D boulders at the base of the hill, to grapefruit and smaller cobbles on the top of the hill, and no other hill in the area has as many rocks. By the Miocene(20 million years ago), this land had been lifted up, both by shifting faults and subduction zone scraping action, and formed into Oregon’s Coast Range. (Photo of mossy "pillows" and my teeny house).

My hill lies in a transition zone between oak savannah of the western foothills of the Willamette Valley and conifer forest of the interior Coast Range. From about 3-4,000 years ago to roughly the end of the nineteenth century, the local native Americans, the Kalapooya, burned the Willamette Valley the and Coast Range foothills each year to encourage grasses for game, to help the large acorn-bearing oaks grow wide without competition, and to provide habitat for other food plants(camas, tarweed). To the east of the hill lies a 100+ acre cow pasture that retains much of the savannah characteristics, and to the west conifer forests stretch to the sea. (Here is a photo of the cow pasture, showing the open field with spreading oaks, as well as scattered young firs. The pasture is grazed for about 2 months out of the year.)

Here is an old oak stump that bears the marks of those old grass fires--

Since the fires stopped, the conifer forest has been creeping back through the oaks. Eventually the oaks will die, shaded by the taller firs. Here is a photo(in the bottom third portion) that shows what the crown of the hill looks like with oaks(grey, no leaves yet), maples(new green) and firs. The upper two thirds of the photo shows the transition to second-growth conifers, on into the west.

Surprisingly, for all its backwoods reputation today, this area(and the valley shown in the photo above) was one of the first homesteaded in the Willamette Valley. The first post office in Oregon was in this valley(a settler decided he wanted to be the first post office in Oregon, and simply set up shop). A boundary tree(and its replacement since the first one fell), used in marking the land for homesteading claims, marks the NE corner of our land. We call our hill “Indian Hill” because local rumor says it is so rocky because the Indians buried their folks up there, and covered them with rocks. It certainly would make a great place for a grave, in my opinion!! But it sure would be hard digging with all that rock! And we haven’t found any bones…All those rocks and dry southern exposures used to be home to rattlesnakes, one of the few places rattlers could survive in the Willamette Valley. They’re gone now(?!), the settlers shot them and let their pigs loose on the hills to fatten up on snake and acorn.

Next up, a description of the Hill's layout, and the list of trees, shrubs, and plants found on Indian Hill.

BioBlitz 2007--Here's My Blitzee!

2007-04-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'd like to introduce my Blitzee for this year's BioBlitz. Behind my house lies a heap of rubble, about 3-4 acres in area, the top is just shy of 1000 feet(our house is at 960', and the foot is at about 900'). It is unique in that it is a huge pile of rock, and it is also about 80years into transitioning from oak savannah "back"(or would it be forward?) into the conifer forest of pre human effects. It is a vertical transition(being at the upper elevation boundary of oak habitat), as well as a horizontal one(being at the western edge of the Willamette Valley and boundaries of old native american fire management). There is a push-pull going on between the oaks and the firs(cue Rush's The Trees song, although it's no that big of a fight), and a mix of their respective companion species.

My observations for the BioBlitz have been gathered from the seven years I've been here, looking, listening, watching, walking this place in all weather and seasons. I'll share what I've learned about the geological history(its giant rock pile aspect is unique among the surrounding hills), the human history, and the species who call this hill home.

Fern Magic

2007-04-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

An exuberant patch of Sword Ferns--Polystichum (many rows) munitum(armed)--wonderfully Medusa-ish in all that un-whirling.
I've wondered where the idea for a treble clef design came from, and I have to say it's from a fern. Has to be.

Here is the frond of a Lady Fern--Athyrium (no sheild) filix-femina(fern woman) with an interesting contrast to latin name above. Ferns never fail to amaze me in how they pack their frond into a such a tight little package--the entire form is there, ready to expand as it unrolls. First the main stem, then each blade-leaf uncurls. Lady Ferns prefer wet ground, and since this patch is growing on a dry hillside, I think there must be a spring under it's feet.

How did they learn to do this??? Ferns are a very old primeval plant. I don't know anything about how ferns evolved, but its modern frond launching system is pretty cool!

Yesterday's Walk

2007-04-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

The BigLeaf Maple is dangling its flowers. They're edible, I tried one--sweet, then grassy, nice texture and crunch in the mouth. The leaves are emerging and unfolding like butterflies. I was so happy I could get the leafy green glow with the blue sky.
A rare beauty, the Chocolate Lily(no I didn't taste this one). Fritillaria (checkered) affinis (related) or anceolata. Other names include Checker Lily, Mission Bells. Their bulbs have rice shaped bulblets, which native americans would steam or boil. The deer seem to like nipping off the tips, along with the bracken fern fiddleheads.

Here's a relative of the grocery store cyclamen--Shooting Star, Dodecatheon(twelve gods) pulchellum(beautiful). It likes the dry open woods of the oak savannah, as does the Chocolate Lily. It does transplant well. I love their colors--magenta, burgundy and pale yellow.

I can't help it, I have to say this plant is absolutely beautiful backlit by the setting sun...

It's poison oak!

NPSO Walk in Airport Park, McMinnville

2007-04-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

Today I went on a "Lichen and Lilies" walk with the local Cheahmill chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon in Airport Park(next to the armory by the Mac airport). We learned about the basic forms of lichens, what makes them different from moss, and were introduced to a few common lichen species. A nice bundle of lilies were dicovered as well. The weather was purely Oregon Spring--fine mist, pale shadows, tree drip and a nice downpour.

The park has a nice collection of mossy(and crustose lichen-y) water fountains scattered along the 2-mile loop trail.

Many of the Western Trilliums were already turning an elderly pink.

The trail crosses a creek lined with lacy Lady Ferns.

One of a nice patch of Pink Fawn Lilies.

And last, a cryptic message carved in a beautiful old four-boled Madrone, "I DO". Very Thoreauvian, I thought--"I do hug trees, I do kneel in the mud, I do welcome rain, I do breathe green".

Aye, Calypso I Sing to Your Spirit

2007-04-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

Another treasure has sprung from the forest, Fairy Slippers (Calypso bulbosa). This little beauty is actually a parasite--it depends on mycchorizal (sorry, I'll have to fix the spelling later)fungus filaments connecting to green plants to obtain it's nutrients(Fairy Slippers have no chlorophyll). It is very particular in where it needs to grow, and very rare. If you pick it it will die, the roots are very fragile. Here is the face of one that grows on my NW corner.
And here are a few down by the bus stop, lit by late afternoon. The Haida Indians used to eat their corms, describing them as "greasy"(we would translate that as "buttery"). Haida girls would eat the corms to enhance their decolletage.

Every field guide describes them as VERY RARE DO NOT PICK EVER. And here....

is the miracle. A space about 20' x 30' is covered with them!

Backing up more...I turned the color booster way up so you can see how many there are by their magenta glow. I get so excited when I see this every spring. It gives me a tremendous shot of hope for this world. (click on it to see the plethora...it's not a very good picture, but I only wanted to convey the abundance;0)

Seeing Things

2007-04-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

This year has been lean for mushrooms here. "Usually" this white coral fungus comes out in November all along the south edge of our property. It finally appeared a few days ago in a few little clumps. The needles are douglas fir needles, about 1" long.

I first stated learning about mushrooms when I moved here 6 years ago. Those first two years were awesome mushroom years. I have a photo album full of photos cataloging about 90 distinct kinds(I numbered them because I didn't know their names yet). Each year I go through and pencil in when I find them, kind of like recording wildfower blossom times(which I also keep record of). At first I thought mushrooms were as regular and dependable as wildflowers, but I've discovered they appear on entirely their own capricious schedule.

By far the most mass of a mushroom or fungus is hidden in the ground or in a rotting log. The mushroom we see is it's "flower", which it sends up to release spores only when the underground "roots" have gathered enough nutrients to support making the "flower". This may take years. You can learn what trees and environments certain species prefer and make an educated guess as to where you might find some, but know that in the end they can be maddeningly unpredictable and elusive and puzzling--which makes finding mushrooms akin to finding pirate gold(and mushroom lovers will know what I mean!).

SO, how to find them. I've started reading Stirring the Mud by Barbara Hurd. Here's a few paragraphs about what makes a good mushroom finder, by way of thinking about looking:

"It is, perhaps the single thread running through mysticism--that you must wait patiently, that to go hunting what is mysterious and life changing with a magnifying glass or a jabstick, armed with intent and a sense of your own deserving goodness is futile. Biologists say that wild animals often interpret a head-on stare as an act of aggression. The moment you decide to stare down the periphery, it is no longer periphery. What might have beeen there either will overwhelm you, or more likely, will sink out of sight, melt back into the trees, retreat into the inaccessible reaches of memory.
"The paradox is that to see clearly, you must learn to see obliquely. You must look ahead and, at the same time, widen your peripheral vision so that it extends not just in great arcs around your head, but over the ege, into the margins where the visible and invisible, dreams and reality, land ans water, emptiness and profusion mingle. It exists at the edge of things, in the vast margins, like a wild animal. The trick is to wander there without intention, to float eye-to-eye with fringed orchids, to make yourself available to what lives there..." page 12-13

Amazing what mushrooms have to teach us....

On a sad note, I have to return Mushrooms Demystified, by David Arora, back to the library. It's a wonderfully thick and dense field guide to CA-OR-WA 'shrooms, with all the technical hoo-hah, humor and off-kilter nicknames that come from true love("wuv, twu wuv"!). Here are a few too good to pass up(I suspect Arora made some up):

Lizard's Claw Stinkhorn
Dung-Loving Bird's Nest Fungus
Starving Man's Licorice
Hairy Fairy Cap
Chicken Lips
Dead Man's Fingers
Dead Man's Foot
Poor Man's Gumdrop
Big Laughing Mushroom
Train Wrecker
Plums and Custard
Woman On Motorcycle
Poison Pie
Slippery Jill
Pungent Slippery Jack
Acrobatic Earth Star

Hmmm, back to the white coral fungus---Scalped Cauliflower? Branching Bone? Frozen Exploding Pimple?

Spring Firsts

2007-04-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

An update of firsts from the past two weeks. I am at 960', about 30 miles inland as the crow flies. In the first mile and a half down to the pavement it drops about 500'. Flowers and leafing trees there are appearing about 1 week before they do here. Kinda interesting what a difference 500' makes in Spring's schedule.

The First Oregon Iris of 2007!

The tallest(and so maybe the FIRST?) Bracken Fern frond. They have the same curve and head tilt-wave and long eyelashes as giraffes on the savannah(at least to me...). The deer have been nipping their heads off.
Dew drops on spider web-mesh.

The FIRST Fawn Lily! The petals droop and curl with the humidity.

The "Little Pink Flower"--the second flower of Spring(after violets). I have NO idea what this is, I can't find it in my shelf of field guides(really).

The FIRST Spring Beauty. Tasty in salad, FULL of vitamin C. Succulent!

Home, Where My Music's Playin

2007-04-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today was full of cold sunshine and shifting winds--clean fresh air I could breathe deep into. I played outside all day, taking my walk(8 miles--I needed to go for a long time), gathering rocks for the edging around my new firepit, starting a fire, walking the dog, picking flowers, sitting by the fire admiring my new firepit, and watching the turkey vultures soar. All my chosen activities on this sun-day of rest. And my head is blown clear of pavement, advertising, California-bling and all the insomniacal(is that a word?)weariness it inspired.

I took this photo while walking the dog after supper. The clouds were doing amazing things, one moment looking dark and stormy, the next brilliantly pure and cheery when the sun broke through the "glory holes", sending rays down on the forest.

All I could think of was how thankful I am to see these things, to live within them.

Going Home, the Black and White Version

2007-03-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

Castle Crags, to the west of I-5. Aren't they gorgeous? Castle Crags State Park is nearby, I hope we can camp there some day!! I was so happy to be there at the right time for the shadows!!!

Mt Shasta veiled by clouds. Fresh snow near Mt Ashland.

Oak trees made sacred by their globes of mistletoe(by ancient Celtic legend). North of Medford.

And that's the end of it!

Going Home, Back through Jefferson, I-5 North

2007-03-31T16:45:00.000-07:00

Homeward bound, through the Siskiyous. More pix shot at 65 mph.

This beautiful thistle-pink shrub was in bloom everywhere, especially in the late morning light (I'd love to know what it is?) Every pine needle shone in the sunlight.

Here is a cinder cone of Mount Shasta right next to I-5. It's so pretty with a fresh dusting of snow. I also thought it was kooky how the pavement patch below it mirrors the shape of the cone.
Mount Shasta, with fresh snow. And I caught an I-5 sign(inadvertantly!)
My favorite shot of Mount Shasta...there were some low clouds that ruffled around the base. I enjoyed watching the mountain and clouds change in their balance of light and shadows as my perspective traveled north.
Roadside metal art, a bull--oops it has an udder, so I mean a cow, and a dragon. In my hometown(McMinnville) we have an artist that makes enormous sculptures just like this, amazing horses in all poses, cowboys on horses, mammoths, giant roosters...

Welcome home!

Escape From LA

2007-03-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

North through the Grapevine(I-5). Relief. Fresh air. No palm trees. No movies stars. No gummy sidewalks. No landscaping. No In-n-Out.A faint tint of Spring. Cattle on a 1000 hills. Dry thirsty land, just the way it was made.

The mystery of dry land shaped by water. Distant small wildflowers seen because they are legion. The delicious specter of the earth ready to rip apart underfoot.

Wyldthang's LALA Experience

2007-03-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

Spring break road trip to LA to treat teenage sons to Paintball Nationals and Magic Mountain.
Silly Oregonians, thinking it would be smooth sailing on the 405 on a Saturday afternoon!

I knew they did oil in LA, but it was still weird to see the workings next to tourist traps and upscale whatever. I liked how the "pristine" beach boardwalk opposite the oil refinery showed up in the window reflection. Kinda creepy.

I found some chainsaw art! Wished I could have taken them all home to stash in my woods.

Here's what a 60$ tent site looks like in Huntington Beach. Notice we are the only ones in a tent site, with an actual 30$ walmart tent. Notice our van is the oldest vehicle in the park, by at least 10 years. At least there wasn't any gum on the ground. And no bedbugs.

Sunset on the pier at Huntington Beach. Wild fractious paintball going on to the left.

Flower!

Hubby's destination of choice, Guitar Center in Hollywood(with a huge vintage guitar den). The entrance has all these handprints of famous rock n' roll types. Hubby got to play a 1961 Stratocaster, just like the one he lost when a friend "borrowed" it in college. All the 1961's were 30,000$. Hubby occasionally sits in the corner and rocks back n' forth.

Spring Break, Jefferson State, I-5 south

2007-03-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

See, it really is a state, it's the one between Oregon and Sacramento.

Had fun testing the camera(NikonD40) at 65(well sometimes 75)mph. I used the "little running man" setting. Found I had to roll down the window--the camera sometimes had trouble focusing between the distant landscape and the smudged or glare-y windows. These three shots are of the west side of I-5. Cattle country, No-Man's Land. Just the way I like it. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through those hills. Someday...someday...

More later!

Gone for Spring Break

2007-03-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

Back the end o' March(I can't wait to get back, there's NO PLACE LIKE HOME!!)

Green and White for St Patrick

2007-03-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

More Indian Plum...

Iris blades in the sunlight...
Snowdrops...
This little patch of snowdrops is a mystery. It survived logging, and originally was in the middle of deep, deep woods. Snowdrops are not native, and I know there is not another patch for quite a long ways around. A bird must have carried the seed.

Indian Plum

2007-03-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

The Indian Plum has sent out its leaves and let loose its white blossom chains. Oemleria(named for August Oemler)cerasiformis(cherry shaped) is a common shrub in the Pacific Northwest, the first leafer of Spring. (I googled August Oemler and all I can find(at least going three pages deep), is an astronomer who likes Bootes--an interesting mystery to solve someday.) It grows to about 15', and has separate male and female trees.

The blossoms of Indian Plum, according to the field guide, smell like "a cross between watermelon rind and cat pee"; mine smell like grass--that a cat indeed did pee on. The "plums" are miniature, about 1cm. Supposedly they are sweet when ripe, but the birds love them too, so good luck finding a ripe one. An older name is Osoberry. The native americans ate them raw and cooked, and made a dish for feasts mixing the plums with oolichan(a small fish)grease.

Every year I watch for the Indian Plum. Its new leaves sit upright and are shaped like candle flames, and do indeed glow in the bright sun that comes through the leafless trees. The blossoms are a happy beginning to the long line of wildflowers soon to come. The Indian Plum does seem to transplant well, and grow tall pretty fast if they're in the right spot.

Stump Homes

2007-03-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

Cleaning off my desk the other day(which just resulted in re-organized piles), I found this picture my dad sent me. In the 30's and 40's the Big Tree Inn was a few blocks from where I grew up near Des Moines, WA. DesMoines was originally a log town, with mills and docks for loading logs on ships, and now it is a nice little bedroom community of Seattle with a cool marina and a handful of beach parks. The "Big Tree Inn in the Charmed Land"was built from a 2000 year old redwood tree. The original living tree was 300 feet tall, the dbh was 20'. The butt end, shown below on its side, was sawn in half before being loaded onto a rail car, then hollowed out and reassembled into this tiny restaurant for the hungry traveler. A chicken dinner with all the trimmings could be had for $1.50. Sadly it burned before I was around to see it.

Oddly, it bears not a small resemblance to The Stump House in Eureka, CA. This place too met its demise by fire in the 90's.

The following two pictures of stump houses are by Darius Kinsey, the "Ansel Adams" of the pioneer days of the Pacific Northwest. Lots of folks lived in stump houses...a good use for the enormous stumps left behind.

"A fiddle, a bicycle and thee..." how much fits in a stump house? The small print says this house was 8x10 inside.

You can see the springboard notches on the side of the stump. The caption says the window was the most expensive item in the house. You can see a real stump house at the Tillamook Pioneer Museum in Tillamook, OR that an old skanky trapper guy lived in. I think it makes a wonderful house. On the other hand I'd rather leave the tree on top, too.

Of the few period articles I've found about stump houses, it seems the locals viewed stump squatters as eccentric...of course people who lived in stumps had no other option. You can read about one resident here http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skagitjournal/S-WArea/Bielecki.html . Most of them spoke of their stumps with affection.

What would it be like to live in a stump? Sam lived in one in my favorite childhood book, My Side Of the Mountain(by Jean Craighead George)http://www.jeancraigheadgeorge.com/ . I imagine a stump would be just enough, and nothing more. One could learn many things from "just enough".

Home

2007-03-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

The theme for Good Planets is "Home". Here's a few pix of my nest, nestled in the trees. Growing up my sister and I were always making lean-tos, little houses under a cozy spot in the trees. My childhood home had second-growth woods along the back where we and the neighborhood kids played. Of course those woods are houses now(they sit on top of springs and are constantly having water problems-haha).
My home is an a-frame, unobtrusive, just big enough for my family, with all outdoors around us to live in. I have learned a lot about myself living here, who I really am, what makes me tick. I am really myself here, and I'm thankful for that gift, something I'll carry no matter where I may have to live in the future. It seems the big picture of all life comes into its proper perspective here. I can hear myself think(or not think, just be...).

So this picture kind of sums up what I feel about "home". The top of my house peeping out from the surrounding woods--a small, simple place, full of loving family, deep within natural nature, "far from the madding crowd".

Two Moons

2007-03-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

Between Two Moons

As the Budding Moon flies
through a cold starfull sky
newts slumber beneath moss
blankets, dreaming
of Spring.

Oaks tower, quiver
in the waning persistance
of the north wind, the earth
swells and heaves, rolls
over restless, waiting
for the Leafing Moon.

Soon. Spring
waits to exhale.

(top photo, noonday moonrise; bottom photo, early morning moonset)

Colors of the Ohanapecosh River Water

2007-03-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

Here are some more pix of the Ohanapecosh River in Mount Rainier National Park(see previous post for trail journal). I've never seen a river with so many colors in the water. Even the rocks in the gravel bars are a rainbow of greens, reds, yellows, pale blue and greys(I do admit I took a few home).

Every morning my sister and I would get up about 6am and walk around all the campground loops, savoring the quiet new morning. One morning the water was this beautiful turquoise blue. I wish I knew what caused it. Something happened upstream, or upglacier maybe? (Growing up I remember a similar paler blue in the rivers after a heavy snowmelt). A few hours later the water was back to its more transparent teal color. Of course it was utterly beautiful in real life!
This is a pool we found by taking a deer trail off the main trail. The water was a very intense emerald green(this photo was scanned and didn't translate well). Out of the many pools we saw, only this one had this green. I wish I knew what combination of light and reflection makes this green!
This photo shows how crystal clear the water is, in reality! You can also see the rainbow colors of the rocks, and the pretty ribbons of sunlight and shadow dancing across them.

And here is the deep turquoise/teal blue around the granite boulders.

Again, I'd love to know what combination of things and atmosphere produce these colors. Same water, different light coming through the trees, different light bouncing off different rocks, different depths, different speeds of flow.

Mount Rainier Journal: Hike on Chinook Creek/Ohanapecosh River, August 2005

2007-03-02T15:04:00.000-08:00

Here at home, snow, rain, snow, rain, rain, rain. As the plants begin to sprout I start thinking about summer vacation and new or old places to explore. My family has visited and camped at Mt Rainier National Park since before my folks were married. When we woke up in the morning at home near Seattle, we'd look out the window to see if "the Mountain" was out--whether or not you could see it was all you needed for a weather forecast. A few years ago my sis and I and our families went to camp at Ohanapecosh, on the south side of Mt Rainier. One day we asked the ranger to show us a trail no one used, that would end up back at camp. He showed us this trail, that starts at a pullout along highway 123, and follows water back to camp. He was right, we saw no one, not even footprints, until the Grove of the Patriarchs. So here we go...

(Hike, Deer Creek to Ohanapecosh River/CG--about 6 miles to the Grove of the Patriarchs, then 2 miles to Ohanapecosh Campground, gradual downhill, mileage is a guesstimate. )

Right from the roadside trailhead, I am swallowed up by the forest as I make a steep descent into the canyon to the confluence of Deer Creek, Needle Creek and Chinook Creek, and continuing along Cedar Creek. Falling water chases itself down canyon around and over and through a gully of tumbled granite boulders. The water is so clear I can see the fish, the fish see me and flick away. The air above is thick with the green of hemlock, cedar and fir. Rattlesnake plantain is blooming, its tiny pale ½” blooms perfect miniatures of tropical orchids. The trail through the forest is softened by the duff of fallen needles and squirrel middens of dissected fir cones are left in the trail undisturbed--not many feet pass here. Large granite boulders lie submerged in the hillside. Red and blue huckleberries are everywhere, perfectly ripe.

If I pay attention well enough, I can find small side paths or deer trails that lead to pools or waterfalls that I would never see or know were there if I kept to the main trail. I could spend all day following this river with my camera. One path leads to a clear deep pool under a waterfall, with pebble shallows as the river flows on. I wish I could swim like a fish, circling the pool, breathing that beautiful water. Looking up from the pool I can see what lies beneath the forest floor in the cliff wall around me, cedar trees wrap their roots round cracking granite, forcing the fingers into the rock, prying it apart.

The trail crosses many tributary creeks, each one unique in its beauty, speed and music. I come to the confluence of the Ohanapecosh River and Cedar Creek, a loud crash of water shooting over big boulders. The bridge is just scary enough over the river--one handrail is missing, with a 30 foot drop to the river below. It’s a great spot for lunch, dangling the feet over the wild torrent that thunders by at tons per second in an extravagance of clear water.

As I keep on, the trees are getting taller, wider. I’m getting thirstier and the huckleberries are just right, popping with a rush to match the river. The trees are now giants. Their wide trunks bend and reflect sound, concealing and revealing the roar and rumble of the river. The trees are so big and old and full of experience they somehow express a being-ness, an individual life lived in this forest left alone in peace.

The trail angles up the hillside away from the river. Water sounds fade away as the river flattens out and slows in the widening valley floor. I hear more birds, sparrow calls, an unfamiliar song. I hear my own footsteps, my heart beat. Wood sorrel, vanilla leaf, pipsissewa, wintermint, coltsfoot, devil’s club, Oregon grape, salal--all old friends. I run my fingers through the licorice-stalked deer ferns. Bunchberries glow with their late summer crown of six neon orange berries. The afternoon wind stirs in the treetops, high and fine through the billions of needles on the huge firs and feathery cedars.

The river sounds return as I round an outcrop of granite with a surprise of a long vista to the far hills. The trail drops down through a tangle of vine maples and alders and the smells of wet and decay and nettles. I’m back on the river flowing wide and slow over a cobbled beach. A suspension bridge sways overhead. The Grove of the Patriarchs waits on the other side, and I'm back in the tourist realm.

(I have more river pix to post tomorrow--Good Night!)

Fire

2007-02-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

In the 1930's, about 75 years ago(please remember this figure), a huge fire burned in Oregon's Coast Range. It burned so hot the damage was equal to being "glassed" by atomic bombs. Virgin forest was stripped to the ground, soil sterilized by the heat...

(pic from the Tillamook Forest website)

Oregon decided to rebuild the forest by salvage logging and replanting. 73 million trees were replanted BY HAND. 3 billion seeds were sown by helicopter.

Today it is a diverse, lush, thriving forest. It's not a sterile timber farm. I've found trilliums, various orchids, a Pacific Giant Salamander, heard spotted owls and pileated woodpeckers--all species which depend on old growth forest characteristics.

We've camped here a lot, explored trails and streams. Remembering the wasteland of only 75 years ago makes this place miraculous.

I planned to post this for Good Planets Carnival, but Blogger wouldn't load pix. The theme was Fire, so I thought of this place that was so completely and utterly devastated. But in a very short(in forest years) 75 years, nature, with a boost of replanting, has remade itself. The mosses, lichens, fern, shrubs, herbs, bugs, slugs, amphibians, fungus, were NOT seeded--go take a look for yourself what they've been able to accomplish.

Snag Life

2007-02-26T21:20:00.000-08:00

I love the wet colors on this old standing snag. The decaying grain waves round old branches, some edges covered with lichen, some freshly chipped away. In the summer you can put your ear against it and hear critters knocking around inside--a bird nest, bugs munching, a squirrel squirreling things away. Big sheets of bark lay around the base. The pileated woodpeckers peck away at it, slithering their long tongues into holes to lick up ants. Deer beds are scattered around the quiet hollow where the snag stands. An old broken up calf skeleton lies half buried in the leaves nearby, probably left by a cougar.

I can only hope I have as much life when I'm dead!

Licorice Fern

2007-02-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

This wonderfully big maple(4' dbh)has a nice mane of Licorice Ferns. They have the licorice chemical in their rhizomes, and the Northwest tribes used it for sore throats. The ferns are "summer deciduous", they come out in fall as the moss gets wet and moistens the rhizomes. The pretty fronds last all winter, through snow and freezing, until they dry up in early summer with the moss. Licorice fern can be found on hardwoods--oak, maple, alder, ash--and on mossy cedar shakes.

Snow Day

2007-02-26T20:44:00.000-08:00

Just a little bit of snow, 3" that melted away as I walked. The sound of melting snow falling out of the trees was noisy as a heavy rain, the sun worked its way round lazy cloud fog. Maybe more snow tonight...I liked the colors of the bush, the red rust of last year's berry vines, the light green of lichen coated oaks, and the deep green of the fir trees. Frogs silent in the cold. Indian Plum sending out white blossoms. New snowberry leaves curl up against the snow.

Ape Cave, Mt St Helens, WA

2007-02-24T20:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't been able to load pix for a few days, probably because of the rain. Which will last the next week. Thick, heavy, wet, Noah-build-an-ark rain. So here's a story about a fun place to visit. You enter the cave in the middle and most folks walk down. But if you go up you can have some fun rock scrambling(flashlight in the teeth), and climb out a hole in the ceiling. I went with my sister's cub scout troup, and we came back to a dead starter in the mini van. And we shocked and amazed other cave hikers as we replaced the starter in the parking lot(dear BIL to the rescue!).

APE CAVE
Sept 3, 2005

Deep in Bigfoot country on the south slope of Loowit(others call it Mt St Helens), under a pelt of scrubby young firs and scraggly wind beaten uncle firs, a crack in the ground reveals an old lava tube. Years ago a few bushwhacking Boy Scouts discovered the cave and named it for the Abominable Forest Man, thinking it was the perfect place for his lair.
A steaming live volcano lurks in the near distance. The land has the air of frequent destruction. The braided meandering bed of the Lewis River lies wide in ashy sand and cobblestones. Ape Cave is the remains of a lava river that flowed two thousand years ago. As the edges of the flowing lava cooled, the sides and the ceiling formed.
Long ago lava flowed through the future Ape Cave for about three years, cooling around the edges, bubbling over through cracks. Stone cold now, it stays a constant damp 42 degrees, a fact repeated on signs and by the ranger tour guide--“It’s cold, wear a jacket!”. The walls are alive with slime and I’m warned if I touch it, it dies. Someone asks the ubiquitous bats-in-the-cave question and the ranger explains bats(Little Brown Myotis) abandoned the cave years ago because of all the noisy tourists.
Walking down-cave, the floor is treacherous, strewn with boulders that fell from the ceiling as the empty tube cooled. The ranger assures us that all the boulders that will fall, have fallen. They still look head-splitting. My eyes strain to see as clearly as they’re used to in daylight. I feel queasy thinking of the ancient molten lava that flowed here for three years, but after awhile though the cave starts to feel sheltering, even homey. The cave meanders, just like a river does. The rangers rent propane lanterns and hopefully you get one with a fresh tank. The cave smells of damp sand and old cold, with undertones of burnt hair and clothing from careless lantern-bearers.
Ape Cave was closed for a few years after Loowit blew her top. I remember hearing the blast when Loowit lost her head, an almost subsonic stomach-punch of inconceivable power. During that time of footlessness, sand castles began to form again on the cave floor, colonizing the cave as water dripped from the ceiling to wear away at the floor. The path of the wind is also written on the cave floor. The wind blows down-cave or up-cave depending on the season, gently shoving pebbles back and forth wearing parallel grooves in the floor.
A large part of the fun in exploring Ape Cave is people watching. Despite signs and rangers drumming warnings “The cave is cold and damp, wear a jacket” or “The cave is very dark, take three sources of light” people don’t pay attention. I helped one woman over the rocks with my flashlight as she said “I just don’t understand why it’s so dark in here” (she was wearing sunglasses). Another woman teetered down the steep stairs in a tank top, shorts and high heels --“I don’t understand why it’s so cold in here”. No, they don’t understand…
Listen to what people say…”It’s so dark in here”, “Why can’t they clean up the rocks on the floor?”, “Where’s the Boogey Man?”, “Let ME carry the flashlight!”. Being in the cave brings people in touch with their long-ignored inner caveman, and it is unsettling. Yet some delight in the foreign landscape. Kids rush on ahead to find the Meatball, an Indiana Jonesy stone medicine ball wedged overhead. They beg their parents to please go to the very end of the cave and suggest turning off all light. Terrified parents squeak “NO!”
I’m down to the last bit at last. Time to get down and crawl the last 50 feet or so. The ceiling gets lower and lower, I crouch and waddle, crawl, and finally wriggle like a snake with my flashlight in my mouth to the little room at the end. I sense the immense weight of the rock around me, ready to fall and smash me. Most people(the adults), if they enter the last bit at all, panic a short way in. They turn around with difficulty and rush to get out, breathless, into the now-spacious main cave.
I go further in with the others who want to go to the end(the kids). I like the not-knowing what is ahead…will I have room to turn around, or will we all have to back out? But in the end--surprise!-- there is enough room to stand up. I feel the timelessness, no sun travels across the sky to mark time. I think of the forest growing above, roots creaking down, seeking the water that seeps down around the walls. I want to leave my handprint.
Traveling back up-cave, the way is familiar. By now my eyes are used to seeing in the dark, my mind fills in the blanks of detail left by the dark. I lag behind, trying to find a place in the bends where light disappears fore and aft. I turn out my own flashlight, savoring the inky silent black. I stand against a wall and smile at folks who come along. I can see they think I’m nuts to give in to the dark.
I come back to the entrance, climb the metal fallout shelter stairs back to the surface. The daylight world bursts open, shimmering with a clear, piercingly beautiful light. My eyes are overwhelmed by detail, having gotten used to seeing in shadows. Now coming up into the young woods I feel like I can see everything--the grain of the basalt, the spores on the ferns, every needle, bark bug and far off cloud. The cave has given me eagle eyes.
I breathe deep the sunshine, and Bigfoot smiles from the hillside.

Fruiting Bodies

2007-02-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

Flowers of winter! Moss, lichen, fungus and mushroom. A whole lotta spores flyin' around!

Snail

2007-02-21T22:17:00.000-08:00

I found this snail when I was poking around the streams (look back a few days). All the leaves have turned a deep russet. Alder, maple, oak, cascara, hazelnut--they all turn the same color. And the snail matches.

Spider Webs

2007-02-19T21:09:00.000-08:00

I found these webs up on the hill last year, about February. There were about 20 of these particular spider(about 12" across), hung in the snowberry bush and old weed stems. All of them were strung with silver beads of dew. One is beautiful, twenty is dazzling.
There were other webs revealed by the dew, some small and round, about 4" across, some haphazard, attached to three points with a messy mesh. I could see how different kinds of spiders liked to build their webs in different places, or in different heights off the ground.

Thoreau Joke

2007-02-19T17:16:00.000-08:00

“When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods; what would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall?” (from "Walking")

When I read this I had to chuckle--I know he meant mall as in public garden walkway type of thing, but I know he would have been even more mortified at the current meaning of the word and all it implies.

Frog Eggs, Frog Eggs, Roly Poly Frog Eggs

2007-02-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

Today I found a globe of Red Legged Frog eggs in the pond. It hangs down under the water to about 6" deep. Each egg has a dark center surrounded by a small clear marble sized sack. There are air bubbles caught around the edges. If you'd like to see a photo of the proud mama or papa(sort of), go to February 11. Over the next few weeks other globes will come into being, and the dark centers will grow teeny tails. And then poof! TADPOLES!

Water

2007-02-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

On the way to the bus stop to get the kids I stopped at this small ravine to poke around, follow the water, slap through ferns. Streams running full after the Noah rain over the past few days...

HOW OUR WATER CYCLE WORKS

By molecule rain rises

from the sun-winnowed ocean, and inland falls,

bolting from the lightning-ripped sky.

Drop by drop, rain

burrows deep into the dark,

sluices worm burrows,

licks cleft and crevice,

bursts back into grey day light.

Brown ribbons snap,

snake round root and rock,

slither down gully and gulch,

tangle back into streams, come together

to run away downriver.

And then, in the far gone of the afternoon

emptied clouds drift silent, spent.

The last of the silver streams unlace

from the darkening hills,

braid into final graceful bends before the sea

and slip slowly back into the turning tides.

10,000 Steps

2007-02-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

Every day I walk a little or a lot, mostly a lot. When I'm not walking on my land, most of my walking is on a 1/2 mile stretch of road in front of the house, back and forth.

I can see far and wide, near and small. I pass through mature second growth oak/fir forest(second growth because of the annual fires set for a few thousand years by the native americans, but now aging into old growth), young fir replanting at different ages, dry banks and wet dark permanent tree shadow. I can see clear cuts, mature second growth, new replanting, selective cuts, and the tips of a secret BLM patch of gigantic old growth trees. I watch for wildflowers sprouting and blooming. I listen to birds and watch them fly into the west in courtship or soaring thermals. I see where the sun sets each night as it travels across the horizon through the year. At one end stands a lone old growth doug fir with a 8' dbh(I named it Treebeard), at the other end is a long vista through a slot in the repeating hills. I walk in cold, hot, ice, sun, and even rain, and watch weather roll overhead.

I keep a log of miles, if only to imagine when I've walked to Alaska, or Patagonia. Since the fall of 2004 I've walked 1508 miles on this 1/2 mile stretch, worn out two pairs of boots. Barry Lopez sums it up pretty well for me, below.

“Whatever evaluation we finally make of a stretch of land, however, no matter how profound or accurate, we will find it inadequate. The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can ever know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard. To try to sense the range and variety of its expression--its weather and colors and animals. To intend from the beginning to preserve some of the mystery within it as a kind of wisdom to be experienced, not questioned. And to be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know

the land knows you are there.”
--Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams, p 204

Valentine

2007-02-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

(stump on the hill with chainsaw graffitti: DP+CP)

Would You Be(Wood Ewe Bee)

in-ground gathered snakes

slumber, slowly sliding round

warm winter dreaming

*****

pressed hearts valentine

up a mud trail, womb-swaddled

fawns kick, moss awaits

*****

furled fiddleheads frond

in secret, green wooly curls

shiver juicy, whorl

*****

pond-held blackeyed eggs

cluster, twig-cradled, ripple

rocked frog hope grows

*****

tender spring tinders

Indian Plum, fingertips

flicker green flames

Air, part 2

2007-02-13T22:14:00.000-08:00

This week's theme for Good Planet is "air". How can one take a picture of air? We see air as what is not-there. I chose clouds, because they are elements of air that come together and move apart, absorb light, reveal mass of molecules with shadows--air becoming visible as it dances between the influences of high and low pressure. So here are some photos of just clouds, all from the past month or so.

Air, part 1

2007-02-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Walk

2007-02-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

Fungus on oak twigs. They remind me of cherry blossoms.
Found this shelf fungus at the base of a maple. I think it might be an Artist's Conk(Ganoderma applanatum)? It is white underneath with white spores.
These little red bugs are everywhere in the shallows of the pond. They're about the size of a sesame seed. (can anybody tell me what they are?)
This young maple tree was scraped badly, probably when we were dragging logs around. It seems to be healing itself well.

Appaloosa Deer

2007-02-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

I call this local doe the "appaloosa deer" because she has a blanket of spots like an appaloosa horse. She's passed on this trait to two other deer we've seen, a doe and a buck, although their spot pattern is much smaller, just over their back or hips. I've seen her around for about 4 years now, and I hope she has a long life, with lots of her special fawns. I hope I can live here long enough to see how far her genes will spread.

Red Legged Frog

2007-02-11T23:39:00.000-08:00

Today I found a slightly squashed red legged frog in the road. They are waking up in their mossy beds in the bush, and making their way to their birth ponds, crossing a road(usually at night). The dead one wasn't broken too bad, I took a few pictures back and tummy(felt like a coroner) and was going to share them, but then it reminded me of anatomy class in college. I had a lab to learn about nerve and electrical impulses through muscles. Our group had to pith a frog, and take its back leg and set it up to make it jerk with little bursts of electricity. I felt sorry for the frog(I believed the whole theory was true, a diagram would've been enough, and besides, I have put my hand on a live electric fence before...). I'd had no problem dissecting a dead bullfrog in high school--that was fascinating. But killing the frog to prove a point seemed too much--I'd have rather watch those electrical impulses hop around a pond. So here are a few photos of LIVE Red Legged Frogs (Rana aurora"dawn, red") I took a few springs ago. I just happened on these frogs being lazy, usually they are skittish.
Here is one floating in the pond. Their bellies and legs are a pretty coral orange. They spend their days and nights croaking on the edge of the pond calling for a girlfriend. It gets quite loud here in February with hundreds of frogs calling day and night, along with the little lime green Pacific Tree Frogs. They will lay their eggs in grapefruit-sized clusters, attached to sticks suspended in water. Last year I counted 13 egg globes in the pond.

They are disappearing from the Willamette Valley, both from habitat loss and being eaten by gluttonous non-native bullfrogs. But in the hills lots of ponds and swampy places remain for them--for now.

Lil' Sprouts

2007-02-10T14:41:00.000-08:00

The Dovefoot Geranium is sprouting everywhere in the shady places. Here are some sprouts in a pine cone(Jeffrey Pine? Coulter Pine? I picked it up at a rest stop near Mt Shasta). The first leaf from the seed is a pretty coral pink. When the plants die off in the summer, the leaves turn the same shade of pink(very pretty en masse). It is a non-native species introduced from Europe. Apparently the leaves are shaped "just like" dove feet. Hmmmm--why not Juncofoot Geranium, Ravenfoot...? I'll have to check out the Mourning Dove's feet when they return in the spring--they like to hang out and lick salt from the well outflow in the driveway.

Go check out the Earth-themed photos at http://wanderinweeta.blogspot.com/ for the Good Planet blog carnival.

An Ansel Day

2007-02-09T19:56:00.000-08:00

It's probably no surprise I'm a fan of Ansel Adams. Today began in fog, with the top of the clouds just beyond the treetops. The sun would brighten and fade, and finally the sky cleared to grey and gray. A certain species of moss glowed an electric green despite the grey. More frogs are waking up in the bush, croaking yawns. Chipmunk burrows are freshly opened. A few sparrows try out their spring songs. Great light to think in black and white.

leaf buds harden
small stony fists defy
icy winter winds

Saw a cool bumbersticker: EARTH (I want a t-shirt!!!)

*****

Coming home from town today I saw a flock of canada geese school in the sky. They arranged and rearranged themselves in long angled lines, slowly circling over the lush fields of newly sprouted winter wheat and hay. Despite having no "head", or obvious leader, the flock changed direction, swirling as one, without crashing, butting heads, or rear-ending each other.

one thousand geese fly
in one mind, bantering
dark rippled ribbons

Abundance

2007-02-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

On the east face of a small boulder by the Cougar Tree--a myriad of lichens, let me count their ways. The rock(a big bubble of basalt) the size of a bale of hay. This first photo is an area just off the ground.
This photo was taken near the top of the boulder. Mosses, lichens(all three kinds), liverworts, a small Licorice Fern.

Soon I'll take my field guides up there and do an inventory. But for now, I'll be content to wonder at the variety of life on this one boulder.

From "Walking" by Henry D Thoreau---
"Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labour. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking."

Sunset in a Rainstorm

2007-02-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

Today the rain finally came, we've had a "drought" of 3 weeks or so since the snow and ice. A dark afternoon sky, heavy with humidity and rain. You could almost hear the moss fluffing up with moisture. So, to set the stage, everywhere grey and darkness, all our heads in the cloud.

And then, a hole opens up in the sky right over the setting sun. I think of that line in Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, when her servant comes to tell her the coffee barn is on fire: "God is coming!" A sight so strange and wild and unearthly it could only mean the Almighty is coming to check up on us. The hole grew along the horizon until eventually a strip of pale gold ran along the mountain tops, and a cobalt cloudy sky hung above.

Good thing I was paying attention!

You Can Find Lipstick in the Woods

2007-02-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

Found this Lipstick Cladonia (Cladonia"club-like" macilenta"thin") on a dead oak log. Just under an inch tall, the little clubs have bright carmine red little hats, or more scientifically, apothecia(fruiting bodies). The same red on the scalp of male Ruby-Crowned Kinglets, who are sifting the fir tops far above for bugs. A very small speck of red, but such a surprising color to find in the middle of winter.

(click on the photo for the full effect of red)

Proof of Life

2007-02-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

A neighbor of ours passed away a few years ago, and now his place is for sale. I took a walk to look around. I knew Mr C a little bit, he'd come by occasionally to visit. He was deaf, but could read lips, and as long as you didn't concentrate too hard, you could understand him. He also carried a little pad he wrote or drew pictures on to help explain himself. I don't know how long he'd lived here, but he told us he was spending his retirement living simple in the woods, and supported himself cutting wood. He had a "hula" girfriend in Hawaii he liked to go visit when the winter got too cold for his bones.

He really did live simply. His bachelor pad was a big garden shed--no power, no water. A propane stove, a futon, a bookshelf with an old rusty can of Chunky Soup, a Tom Clancy novel and a library book "Care and Maintenance of Chainsaws". There's an old 1940's style maytag washing machine out back. Around the property were a few unfinished buidling projects--a framed gazebo and a framed 8x8' cabin--both being reclaimed by the lichens and mosses. This old window was leaning up against the bottom of the cabin. All the buildings(or started to be a building but never got finished)were sitting with a nice view.
Found some old logging tools on a sheet metal wall(I really liked the colors reflected in the corrugation). An ancient bleached white elk antler lay between two cook pots on a small outdoor table. His car and truck are entombed in berry vines.
An old ax stuck in an oak. Wonder how long it will take for the tree to grow around the ax head?
As we walked around we thought of Mr C and I wished I'd taken him more pies. I know he loved living here in the woods, with the trees and all the critters. His home was completely plain and simple--a roof, a bed, a stove, a few books, and various implements for deboning a tree. I knew he was completely content to live here, and I was glad to have known such a person in this world.