Out At Last

Day 353: I got out! It wasn't much of a hike and it almost didn't happen, but since I allowed myself to be convinced that I really should get a flu shot even though I'm having no social contact, I decided I'd check on my Shaggymane patch to see if dinner had sprouted yet. I pulled up at the little-visited trailhead, got out of the car and was just shouldering my pack when someone else pulled in and parked 25' away. In all the years I've hiked this particular trail, I have never seen another car at the pullout. Why this day? Thoroughly peeved, I took off my pack, got back in the car and drove to a different spot. I know the area. There's more than one way to get where you're going if you're familiar with the network of bunny trails and interconnections, and there are multiple options for making loops so you don't need to backtrack. Some are brushier than others, but that's never stopped the Crow. Plan A was quickly revised into Plan B, and incorporated a side trip up "Manke Mt.," unofficially named and not a summit of any significance despite its hand-carved waypost. A little over four miles later, I was back at the car without retracing any of my steps, but with no mushrooms in the bag. Then it was into Eatonville to get my vaccination, and when I told the pharmacist I'd just come in from hiking, he had one pressing question: "Did you see any mushrooms yet?" Yep, competition is strong in these woods!

I Am Light, I Am Shadow

Day 352: People might wonder why anyone would plant a tree which would drop a messy load of berries in their yard come autumn. It's for this, this right here: a once-a-year, hit-or-miss, might-happen-or-not event lasting a few days at most. Of course, I am speaking of the arrival of the Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum), to my way of thinking one of the most beautiful birds of the Pacific Northwest. A few days ago, the American Robins began working on the berries on the smaller of my two Mountain-ash trees, a native shrub rather than a cultivar like the larger one which overhangs my driveway, so I have been on a window vigil, hoping to catch sight of a Waxwing. Yesterday, deep in the shadows of the leaves, I spotted something not-Robin. It seemed to have a freckled breast, and that threw me off for a few minutes until I checked my field guide. Have I really never seen a young Waxwing before? The adults have a clear breast, so clear and uniform in colour that it looks painted, but yes, the juveniles are mottled and blotched. The youngster stayed hidden as much as he could, only tempted out as far as the juicy berries borne on a branch tangled into the neighbouring dogwood. Others were more brazen, but still gave way when an influx of clumsy robins overwhelmed them. I watched as bunch after bunch of orange berries disappeared into hungry mouths. I think the supply will last two or three more days at most. Then the brief harvest festival of Waxwing Days 2020 will have passed into history.

'Dee-dee Training

Day 351: After having a 'Dee-dee sit on my hand for thirty seconds while sorting through the black-oil seed to find the Perfect Seed (and discarding every other one, I might add), I decided it was time to take it to the next level. There were a few considerations I felt might cause the experiment to fail: one, that they normally eat out of my right hand, and two, that I would have to use my flunky little Sony point-and-shoot because I can't operate my "real" camera one-handed. Using a tripod was out of the question. The 'dee-dees would surely be frightened by it. As it turned out, my little friend here was very cooperative, not only staying in place long enough for me to get several photos, but coming back for seconds. I now know for certain that I have at least two 'dees who will come to my hand, having twice witnessed the second bird's arrival just as the first flew away. Meanwhile, the Nuthatch is becoming curious, sometimes hanging upside-down from the feeder to my left as the 'dees bravely perch on my thumb. So far in my life, my wild avian contacts include Grey Jays (unavoidable if you spend any time in the backcountry), a hummingbird who helped me water the garden by alighting on the hand holding the spray nozzle, Pine Siskins, and Chestnut-Backed Chickadees (no Black-Capped yet). A Nuthatch would be a real coup!

Bits And Pieces

Day 350: I have all the parts cut for the Scrappy Star quilt blocks and about half of the stars sewn up. When I put them together, I will be separating the blocks with "streets and alleys," i.e., strips of one more solid colour or print fabric. However, as I am certain you all know by now, shopping is somewhat difficult when you're in the midst of a pandemic, and I have not been able to find a suitable fabric to order on line. In any event, I prefer to handle the cloth even if it is identified as a quilting fabric. There is more variation than you might think in that seemingly narrow definition, one which includes poor quality goods openly woven, made with poor quality thread or printed on the skew. I've seen the same issues with "fat quarters" and learned long ago to be leery of bargains and sales. Perhaps it comes from having worked in a fabric store as one of my first jobs. We called ourselves "fiber fascists" in those days, those of us who would only buy natural fibers and well-made cloth. I think that's one phrase I can expunge from my lexicon.

Ceropegia Woodii, Rosary Vine

Day 349: Ceropegia woodii (or as I lovingly call this plant, "Knob") is commonly known as Rosary Vine for the bead-like tubers which form at the leaf axils under ideal conditions. It has been years since Knob grew any knobs, so I was surprised to find them when I stepped between his basket and the window in order to photograph the unusual flower. The grey tubers look like miniature land mines when young, but lose their spherical shape as they develop. When one sends out a new vine, it may be cut from the parent plant to start a new one, but do not bury it entirely or it will likely rot. Rosary Vine is remarkably tolerant of dry conditions, and even if it drops most of its leaves due to neglectful watering, it will probably survive if perhaps in a rather diminished state. Mine is full of dead bits, and the bench beneath it is littered with withered leaves, a strong indicator of the durability of the other houseplants you see hanging in my windows. Survivors, the lot of them, cussed and tough as an old boot like their crotchety caretaker.

Western Scrub-Jay, Aphelocoma Californica

 

Day 348: An infrequent visitor to my yard, a Western Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma californica, also commonly called California Scrub-Jay) came calling yesterday and sat still long enough for me to get a photo through the window. This species has proved elusive for me photographically. I often saw them when I was bicycling the Chehalis-Western Trail, perching on phone lines just beyond reasonable zoom distance from my lens and invariably flying off if I tried to move closer. I suspect their shyness would diminish as they became familiarized with a feeding station, thinking of my mother's claim that her Steller's Jays were skittish, moving if she so much as blinked, quite a contrast to the brazen bunch around my home. I can hope that Scrubby will stick around, although in past years his residency has been limited to a few days at most. According to the field guides, the species is roughly the same size as Steller's, but Western Scrub-Jay gives the appearance of being a little bigger than Steller's in my experience. His colouration is reminiscent of the true Blue Jay, and that lovely white tuxedo bib is a give-away as to his identity.

The Joe Log - Chlorociboria Aeruginascens

Day 347: The Joe Log is fruiting! Okay, I realize that statement is going to take some explanation, so grab your tea and sit down. The tale begins about a year ago when my botany partner sent me a photo of turquoise-blue disks whose shape seemed to indicate that they were the apothecia of a crustose lichen. However, there was no thallus visible to support that hypothesis, so I believed they were probably fungal in nature, and a small amount of searching my references brought me to Chlorociboria. I wrote back to him excitedly, saying, "I'd give my eye teeth to see one of those in real life!" Little did I know...

A few weeks later, Joe came up to do some yardwork for me and said, "I brought you a piece of that wood that had the blue fungus on it." I raced to the back of his truck and dug it up where he'd stowed it in a plastic bag. The cups were no longer evident, although the stick (roughly 18" long and 2" in diameter) still had a bluish tinge to it. I found a shady home for it in my flower bed, but then after further discussion with Joe about the conditions in which he had found it, I relocated it to a different spot where it was shielded from almost all light beneath the fronds of a sword fern.

Winter came and went, and I began checking it for signs of life early last spring. It hadn't slipped Joe's mind, either. "How's your stick?" he'd ask, and I'd report, "Nothing yet. Maybe it doesn't like it here." Through the summer, the stick dried out despite being in the most humid spot in my garden. I kept checking for any trace of blue. Nothing. A week ago, nothing. Today, in between rain showers, I said, "I think I'll go check on the Joe Log. Not gonna be anything, but y'know, if I don't check, I'll never know." I relocated a spider in order to reach through the ferns, pulled out the rotting, wet, icky stick and turned it over so that the side which had been laying on the ground was toward me and...Chlorociboria! Now with the actual fungus observable, I took a sample cup into the house for dissection. The flesh of the 3 mm disk was blue throughout, not orange inside, which allows me to conclude that it is Chlorociboria aeruginascens.

Grower's Tithe

 

Day 346: Here you see the grower's tithe. That is not to say that this portion of the grape yield will be set aside for my little feathered friends and furry foes; no, this is the portion they left for me, and it's just an ounce shy of a pound: ten percent, as tithes are generally said to be. Had I not picked them yesterday (and some of the fruit is a little tart), today's rain would have ruined the bunches. Even so, it's a better yield than I've had in the thirty years past, with one or two exceptions. I suspect that Interlaken would not be recommended for Growing Zones 6b-7a, although the plant itself is hardy to those temperatures. It's in the length of season where it falls down. We just don't have enough days between hard frosts for the fruit to ripen. This year, it got an earlier start, a little boost from a warmer Spring. That said, I am grateful for what harvest hangs hidden in the leaves where the jays and chipmunks never think to look, and even if I don't get grapes, every year I use a few dozen leaves for dolmas. It's called making the best of things even when they don't work out exactly as planned.

Elk Shed

Day 345: Stumping along in the deep, dark forest, you never know what you may find. I had taken a detour in order to explore a small shelf of moss-rich ground which looked like it might be chanterelle country, but finding only lobsters (which I do not eat), I began climbing back up from the terrace via a different route. Why waste energy in retracing my steps? I already knew there weren't any mushrooms along the descent. Unless I came to a dead end in an impossible tangle of downed limbs and trees, exploring new territory might bring a bit more for the dinner table or subject matter for a natural-history post. I had just rounded a rather large tree to avoid a steeper slope when something caught my eye. "That's not a branch," I said aloud. "That's an elk antler." One tip was broken, but the critter who wore it must have been an impressive beast. I moved his shed crown into a sun-fleck for the photo, and then replaced it where I had found it, hoping that it may lichenize in time and give me more material for discussion. I seriously doubt anyone else will follow this route, although a similar and somewhat larger antler I found in the same area a few years ago has disappeared.

Hobbit-Sense

 

Day 344: It took every bit of my hobbit-sense to find this small sampling of Chanterelles today, but I figured if I didn't go out now, the hard rain we have coming in on Wednesday would destroy any which might have popped through the ground. I knew it was too early, despite the fact that some years, I've harvested them in early September. I don't know their timetable, not consciously, but that same hobbit-sense for mushrooms told me that I was not likely to find many, not yet. Indeed, the recent rain (the first we've had in weeks) had spoiled many of the buttons, mold already growing on their caps, but I don't pick buttons. I leave them there to make more Chanterelles, using the wisdom which tells me it's not a good idea to saw off the branch I'm sitting on. This is a conservation strategy anyone who has ever gone mushrooming with me has heard me preach. I've seen too many "gold mines" plumbed to extinction by greedy professional mushroom-hunters. While this handful won't make a dinner, I can at least say that I didn't go out of 2020 skunked.

Mini-Slug

Day 343: While this is far from the smallest slug I've ever seen (I had a plague of micro-slugs on a downspout once), it was tiny enough to be cute, and although I suspect it of being our standard Banana Slug (Ariolimax columbianus), I can't be sure. Nor can I make an educated guess based on other slugs I've seen in my yard because...well, because oddly, I have had very few slugs in my yard here, and I'm at a total loss to explain their absence. I mean, this is the Pacific Northwe't. There are slugs everywhere, with the possible exception of my yard. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I have never had tomato stems severed at ground level, never found slime coating my lettuce. I do not see glistening trails weaving through my flower beds or the alpine strawberries beside my driveway. In fact, my only competition for those tiny, candy-sweet berries are the juncos who roam through the jungle of their leaves picking the ones which aren't quite ripe enough for the human palate. No, I don't have slugs, and even after that slug-plague I mentioned in the first sentence, I saw no full-sized ones that season. Except for that one occurrence, I could count the number of slugs I've found in my yard on the fingers of both hands, and would still have a digit or two free to poke buttons or pick my nose. I hope this one isn't a foretaste of slimier times to come.

Feeder Frenzy

 

Day 342: It's a madhouse out there! The hummer feeders out front are being swarmed by beautiful little Anna's, and the feeders (three) in the side yard have a constant stream of Chickadees (both Black-Capped and Chestnut-Backed, Nuthatches and that arrogant little Townsend Chipmunk who simply will NOT go in the live trap no matter what I use for bait. That said, no one seems to mind sharing. 'Dees of both species come together, the Nuthatch (possibly plural) sits side-by-side with either, and if Townsend is in town, the birds take the side opposite him. Sometimes he crawls inside to dine, the birds pecking away at the seeds he scatters out into the tray even as he scrabbles around in the interior. In the calmer moments, the sparrows, towhees, jays and juncos may also visit, although presently, they seem to be content to clean up what falls to the ground. Interim guests may include Red-Winged Blackbirds and Mourning Doves. The photos above were all taken within a ten-minute time frame: top left, Townsend; top right lower, Black-Capped Chickadee and upper, Chestnut-Backed; lower left, Red-Breasted Nuthatch; lower right, Townsend and Nuthatch. Everybody likes black-oil seed, and they're sure there's an unlimited supply at Café Crow.

Waiting For Anna's

Day 341: Obviously I'm getting a little desperate for material here, but this photo does mark a significant event. As I was standing by the window yesterday evening, a hummingbird came to the feeder, and as it turned its head, the light caught on its feathers in a manner which made my jaw drop. Unmistakably, it was a male...MALE!...Anna's, its crown and cheeks as red as its throat. By the time I had regained my composure and picked up the camera, it was gone. It was verging on dusk, smoke adding to the gloom, but I set up the tripod anyway in the hopes of catching my elusive guest. He did return, but my reaction time coupled with digital delay did not allow me to capture the colour. This morning, he has been back repeatedly and is being chased off by what I believe to be a juvenile male not yet fully coloured. The territorial bird seems to have more red on its head than the females exhibit. Perhaps I've had more boys around than I thought. It took the females a while to develop their throat patches. In any event, what lingering doubts I might have had about my identification of Anna's have now been dispelled entirely with the appearance of one gorgeous, if unfortunately camera-shy gentleman of the species.

Dropped My Needle

 

Day 340: It all started when I dropped my needle. Any experienced needleworker will tell you that when you drop a needle, you mustn't move until you've made a thorough visual survey of the area, and if that yields nothing, the next step is to move as little as possible but enough that you can assess where it might have fallen and rolled out of sight. Having performed both steps but failing to find the object in question, I then resorted to standing up cautiously while watching to see if it fell off me, but it did not. It was not in the cracks of the chair which I explored carefully with my fingers. A flashlight did not reveal it on the carpet. I was beginning to panic. A loose needle is a dangerous thing to someone who walks barefoot and to an inquisitive cat. The needle had to be found.

My "genuine leather" recliner began peeling when it was less than two years old, the "genuine" portion being no more than a micron's thickness laminated to fabric. I didn't realize they could shave it that fine! I put a slipcover on it to hide the ugly bare patches, and in the present circumstance, figured the needle might have worked its way through. There was nothing for it but to remove the slipcover, and when I did so, most of the remaining "leather" flaked off in bits approximately 1/4" on a side: thousands of them, veritable thousands. I decided then and there that the chair had to go, so dragged it down the steps and into the carport where it sat overnight. I called the garbage company to ask how much they'd charge to haul it away, but was told that they were not accepting large objects due to COVID. Damn. It was time to formulate another plan.

So what's in a recliner? Wood, steel, foam, fabric, and perhaps a few molecules which might have been related to a cow. The last two would be of no use to anyone ever again, but the foam could be used to stuff a cushion. The wood could be burned or reused, and the steel...the steel could go to the recycler even if it had to be reduced to smaller pieces which would fit in my bin. Thus it was that I spent three hours this morning deconstructing a recliner, and all because I dropped a needle.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Smoke Walk

 

Day 339: I'd reached my tolerance for being pent up indoors, so on the excuse of blog photography and the possibility of mushrooms, I headed up the road at a slower-than-usual pace. I did not find 'shrooms of any sort, nor did I find the fireweed which would have given me a reason to discuss fire ecology as it relates to certain plants, and by the time I'd straggled back home again, I'd decided that staying indoors wasn't such a bad idea after all. Yeah, won't do that again any time soon. Much as I hate to admit that I'm in a "sensitive group," them's the facts. That said, we think of smoky air in terms of ourselves as humans, but the critter community is no better adapted to breathe it than we are, and among the birds, the beasts and the bugs there are also sensitive individuals. How do your pets cope with this? Do you have, as I do, a cat with a heart murmur? Do you have a dog whose age or obesity makes breathing more difficult than it would be for a healthy puppy? Nor are these populations the only ones to suffer. Smoke particulates can accumulate on leaves, blocking the stomata which allow plants to "breathe." Returning from my brief smoke-walk, my skin feels oily, my hair feels weighted, and if my breathing is somewhat more shallow and laboured at the moment, my lungs will clear themselves after a few hours indoors. The chickadees and nuthatches, the cattle in the pasture, the very trees around my home don't have much choice.

Learning A New Technique

Day 338: There I was, going blithely along after having tatted several split-ring snowflakes, and suddenly the eye of my needle was on the wrong side of the work, preventing me from drawing the next ring closed in a manner which left the working thread in the proper position. My first thought was that I had read the pattern incorrectly, but no, I'd followed the arrows, worked the sections in the proper order, but my needle was definitely backwards. Then I realized something: although I've needle-tatted "throw-out rings" (TORs) on chain sections, I had never orphaned a ring off another ring. My pattern was written for shuttle tatters, but theoretically, everything you can achieve with a shuttle should also be able to be done with a needle even though it may require different steps. Thinking that was the issue, I pulled the work apart and started over. After several hours of frustration, I was almost resigned to having to form one ring as a series of chains which would have left it more angular than the rest, but I was still sure there had to be a way. After dragging out several other tatting books, I found the answer: use a second needle for the TORs. Live and learn, they say, and I consider a day wasted when I don't learn at least one new thing, although I usually like to know that I'm entering the classroom before I get partway into a project.

Flower Garden

Day 337: Known as "Flower Garden," "Grandmother's Flower Garden," "Grandma's Garden" and a host of other variations on the same theme, this quilt pattern is comprised of print hexagons arranged around a solid center, bordered throughout by another solid colour (in this case, the traditional white). It is purportedly difficult to piece, but thanks to a YouTube video, I am finding it an absolute breeze. That said, every single side of every single hexagon has to be treated as a separate seam, the thread cut at the end and restarted on the next hexagon, but by proceeding in this manner (a task which requires a substantial helping of patience), it is virtually foolproof. I am amazed every time I step over to the ironing board and...well, willyalookatthat? They press flat! I predict more hexagon-pieced quilts in my future: smaller, larger, perhaps with a second row of prints outside the first, and of course I will be on the watch for a yellow-background bee print to be turned into a honeycombed hive. The possibilities are myriad, and even though I'm not quite halfway through the piecing of this Flower Garden, I'm thinking ahead.

Cross Orb Weaver

Day 336: Araneus diadematus, the Cross Orb Weaver or Cross Spider was introduced from Europe and is now perhaps one of the most common spiders seen in the Pacific Northwest. I call them "big traingular garden spiders," or more precisely, "Oh, shit! It's on me! I ran full-face into it! Where is it? Get it off me!" The male (shown here) is substantially smaller than the female, but often builds his web adjacent to hers, there to hang facing downward as he awaits a disturbance in his net. I doubt he's expecting anything as large as me, and it was only by Mother Nature's good grace that I didn't set off his monitoring system as I bent over to examine something else in my garden. It generally takes a couple of mishaps each fall before I start paying better attention to where I'm going. Spiderwebs are a hazard every mushroomer knows, and while I'd prefer not to emerge from the woods covered in gossamer, the thought of having a cross-as-in-cranky Cross Orb Weaver somewhere on my person is even less appealing. What is it about spiders which raises the neck-hairs on most of us, even those who love caterpillars and other crawly things? I'll admit it freely: I'm an arachnophobe, if not to the point of panic, certainly to the outer fringe of "freaked." But a single big triangular garden-variety Orb Weaver is better than a nest of little gold baby spiderlings slung right where I'll hit them as I exit through my front door.

Black 'Hocks

Day 335: Several times in the past, I've gathered seeds from my black hollyhocks intending to plant them the following spring, but invariably, I've forgotten to do so. Perhaps this time, I'll remember. Single Hollyhocks are not as common as they once were. Most gardeners lean toward the showier doubles of most plant species. However, I have fond memories of the 'hocks growing against the alley fence behind my grandmother's house, reds and pinks, whites and yellows, and every one a single. As a four-year old, I probably sowed hundreds in the neighbourhood from pods I collected and turned inside-out to watch the seeds fly apart from their tightly packed nests. To me, "hollyhock" shall always signify a large, floppy, open flower. Those fluffy double things are something else, not hollyhocks, and they have no place in my scheme. My grandmother would be proud.

Today's Smoke

Day 334: It was worse during the Alder Lake Fire of 2015, worse for a few days in 2018 and 2019 when smoke from eastern Washington was carried across the Cascades and into my valley. And it is certainly better than what is being experience presently by residents of Oregon and California, but for all of my empathy toward their plight, the knowledge does not make it any easier for me, sitting here in my living room, to draw breath. The Mountain has disappeared behind the curtain and my neighbour's house is greyed by a thin veil. The stink of burn is heavy in the air outdoors and to some extent, seeps through the minute cracks which allow air circulation in my home. No house is air-tight; its occupants would suffocate if it was constructed so. Air quality is slated to worsen before it improves, as are so many things in the present climates, both literal and figurative. At least the smoke's term is limited.

Update: the top photo was taken at roughly 11:15 AM. The one below was taken at 6:45 PM. It's nasty out there.

Vertical Vomit

Day 333: Myxomycetologists disdain the use of common names for slime molds since they are not standardized as they are for many vascular plants. If you will forgive a momentary sidebar, a similar attitude is prevalent in the field of lichenology and although I find some lichen common names to be amusing, they create confusion between eastern and western species. In the matter of slime molds, however, one has to wonder exactly who was given the privilege of assigning certain epithets. Some of us are inclined to believe that the job may have been given to the researcher's pre-pubescent son in the case of "Dog-vomit." Fuligo septica deserves better. It is a very common slime mold, particularly here in our Pacific Northwest forests, and is usually first observed as a yellowish-white or yellow mass which looks...well, if not perhaps like dog-vomit, but something pretty nasty. In point of fact, Fuligo is exercising its role in the cycle of life as a decomposer. It feeds on the bacteria present in rotting wood. "Fuligo" derives from a Latin word meaning "soot," and refers to a later stage in its development when the mass turns black. It is not toxic, although its spores can cause allergic reactions in those susceptibe to them. It can achieve impressive size, purportedly capable of covering several square yards although this specimen of "vertical vomit" is the largest I've personally observed.

Lobster Eating A Russula

Day 332: After experiencing three "near miss" scenarios as I was walking up the highway last spring, I decided to abandon my local rambles in favour of the exercise bike. Now that traffic is somewhat diminished, I thought I'd take a chance on a morning walk. I didn't find much worth mention, but I did see several lobsters eating Russulas. Now before you think I've taken leave of my senses, I am referring to the fungus popularly called "Lobster," Hypomyces lactifluorum. Hypomyces is parasitic on russula and lactarius, and although it's prized by many mushroom hunters, its indiscriminate eating habits incline me to avoid it. Many russulas are boring; others are toxic. I do not know that Hypomyces neutralizes the alkaloids in Russula emetica, for instance, and would prefer not to find out that the host's purgative qualities remained. Likewise, some Lactarius species are quite acrid. In fact, I have heard various collectors describe the taste of Lobster as "fishy," hence its name. Others claim they don't notice a fishy flavour at all. Perhaps the taste depends on the host species. In any event, I like Lobsters, if only for the fact that they are an indicator of things to come. It won't be long now before the first Chanterelles pop through the duff.

Seeing Stars

Day 331: As I sit here anxiously waiting for Mousie to get home from work to open the enormous box UPS left on her doorstep two hours ago, I am working on three quilts at once, although all three are in various stages of progress. The Patience Corner quilt is on the frame, edging closer to completion of its handwork with every passing day. The hexagon blocks are made, and I'm machine-sewing them together with dividing rows of white hexagons, and in between, I'm cutting and piecing a new pattern of 8" blocks called "Twinkle, Twinkle Scrappy Star" according to a YouTube tutorial. It is purportedly "easy to piece," but I am not finding it so. I'm struggling with every meet. On the other hand, the hexagons are supposed to be difficult, and they're going together effortlessly, again thanks to explicit instructions found on YouTube. That said, the finished blocks of Scrappy Star trim up nicely to size, and since the points of the stars do not touch those in the adjacent blocks, it should be quick to sew together. I may run "streets and alleys" between the blocks, possibly using a star print to carry the theme. It's a good pattern for using up leftovers.

Division And Multiplication

Day 330: It's time to do the math: divide and multiply. All of my Sarracenias needed repotting. One had simply depleted its soil, but the other two had grown too large for their containers, and their blooms and foliage were both showing signs of overcrowding, becoming smaller with each passing year. It was a task I'd put off for far too long, so once the flowers had faded, I mixed a good-quality commercial soil 50/50 with peat to reproduce the conditions in which these insectivores grow naturally. Fortunately, they are fairly easy to divide by separating the crowns. One was split into two pots (you can never have too many Sarracenias) and the other two were put into somewhat larger accommodations. All four pots sit in trays of water on my back porch, there to gobble down mosquites and flies, or even the occasional hornet or wasp. During last year's mild winter, I experimented with covering them with bubble-wrap rather than bringing them inside when temperatures dropped for a night or two into the low 20s. They're amazingly hardy! If I wasn't dependent on a well, I would construct a more elaborate water garden, but for now, I just make certain that their "feet" are always wet. Daily maintenance keeps them happy, and is quick to do on my way back from the bird feeders.

Mac Pods

Day 329: Mac pods! No, not an advertisement for Apple products, but rather the seed pods of my pet Corallorhiza maculata. If you will recall, I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't get to my beloved mycoheterotrophic plants in the spring until one day I discovered that they'd come to me in the person of Mac, who cropped up unexpectedly in my back yard. I put stakes and flagger tape around her for protection, but even so, her stem was somehow bent but not fully broken just below the inflorescence. One must take into consideration that any plant which can survive a dormancy of 25-30 years must be pretty tough. Mac refused to give up and, with the help of her mycoheterotrophic partner fungus (type unknown), withdrew sufficient nutrition from the soil to bring pods to maturity.

A lot of requirements are at play in a mycoheterotroph's life cycle. It's not enough that she makes seeds, so fine that they are referred to as "dust seeds." Despite their microscopic nature, they rely on that critical, specialized fungal component to weaken their husks before germination can occur. Not only that, but the fungus helps break down soil nutrients into a form the growing plant can use. Without that fungal partner, Mac could not grow. Her seeds could not sprout. They would lay dormant until all the stipulations of her bio-contract were again met. It goes without saying that the rarity of a particular mycoheterotroph is weighted by the range of fungal partners it will accept. Fortunately, Mac is pretty broad-minded in that regard unlike, say, Cephalanthera. Will my yard be graced by her presence again next spring? We'll just have to wait and see.

Paired Sciences

Day 328: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it my love of exotic and semantically precise words which lured me into botany? Or was it the discovery of a floral gateway opening onto a full garden of exacting terminology and thus into a paradise of etymology? I believe the two sciences have walked hand in hand for so long that I cannot make that determination. In any event, this was a week for words of a botanical nature, initiated by an earlier inquiry from a reader as to the term for a plant whose flowers and leaves appear in different seasons. It was a word I did not know, so I turned to Arnie. His reply was straightforward: "There's a word for that?" My next appeal went out to David Giblin, Collections Manager and Research Botanist for the Burke Herbarium. As was the case with Arnie, he was stumped, at least temporarily. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to me, Arnie was digging, and as a matter of course, found several other interesting words which he forwarded to me with an admission that by the time he'd arrived at them, he'd forgotten what he was looking for in the first place. Rabbit hole!

Apparently I'd struck some nerves because David was also searching. I mean, there had to be a word, right? Botanists have a word for anything and everything to do with plants. Take "serrate" and "serrulate" for example. Both describe a type of leaf margin, a semantic distinction based on the size of dentition, and one I'm not sure I could apply confidently with a leaf of each type in either hand. Would I need a ruler? A magnifier? A microscope? Where does one end and the other begin? In the end, David's hunt was productive. He came up with "hysteranthous," and sent along a paper describing the phenomenon as it applies to autumn crocus (Colchicum). My three-volume dictionary does not include the word, although it acknowledges "synanthous," i.e., those plants whose flowers and leaves co-occur. The etymology of "hysteranthous" eluded me until I found "hysteresis," their roots originating in an entirely different Greek word than that which gives us "hysteria" despite the similarity. "Hysteresis" means "the lagging of a physical effect behind its cause."

Meanwhile, Arnie had dropped in my lap "hypogeal" (bearing seed leaves beneath the surface of the soil) and "epigeal" (bearing one or more seed leaves above the level of the soil) as well as "perennating" (which was obvious) and "phanerophyte" (a perennial plant which bears its perennating buds above the surface of the ground, as per Raunkiaer's system of organizing plant life by life-form category). I thanked him kindly for directing me to several new and unexplored rabbit holes, down which I am sure I will find many, many more fascinating verbal treasures. Of course I'm going exploring! Who do you think you're talking to, anyway?

Manrope

Day 327: Come aboard, matey, an' see you've a good grip on th' manrope fer th' seas be a bit rough fer lubbers th' likes o' yerse'f.

No, this is not the beginnings of a Morgan Corbye tale. My inspiration in that regard has fled temporarily, but not my love of things piratical. A box in my crafts cupboard has been nagging at me lately, so I dragged it out of storage, grabbed my marlinespike and made a few practice knots to retrain hands accustomed to quilting thread and fine crochet cotton to the bulk of rope. Once I had assured myself that I hadn't lost my touch, I set to creating a manrope. At its head, there is a bight which can be looped over a cleat for ease of removal when not in use. A single wall knot is placed to secure the bight, followed by a length of crown sinnet. Every ten inches, a triple manrope knot is made, terminating in a shorter bit of sinnet (because I ran out of rope) and a triple manrope knot as a stopper (center, facing the camera). I have yet to figure out how I will attach it to my porch rail, but there it shall be, as a warning to all who tread the gangway that an old pirate lives here, and if you are peddling politics or religion, her cutlass is within reach of her hand.

Grape Expectations

Day 326: I am envious of people with phone apps which can turn everyday photos into works of art imitative of the Old Masters. Not having a smartphone, the best I can do is fiddle settings in PaintShop Pro until I come up with something like this. Oh, well. That said, I have great...or should I say grape? expectations for the harvest this year, provided the jays don't get them all before they're fully ripe. The vine is laden with bunches, large and small, and through no effort on my part. I've tried several different pruning methods over the years to no avail, so this last winter, I threw my hands in the air and said, "Do what you will, grape! I'm going to leave you to your own designs." I see so many old grapevines rambling over garage roofs, clambering up fences, each one full of grapes in season: ignored, let go wild, untended, and fruiting like crazy. Maybe that's what Interlaken wanted. Technically, I suppose you'd call it a wine grape, or at least the friend who gave it to me dug it up, 25 years old if it was a day, and about 25' long on both sides when he delivered it only grew grapes with a mind to making wine. The fruit is small and seedless, tastes something like a Concord. The vine is now almost 50 years old and, in its tenure here, I've harvested a respectable crop of grapes only two or three times, missing one opportunity when I thought I'd leave the bunches through one night of light frost, only to discover that the jays prefer grapes a little tart. When I went out in the morning, Tupperware bowl tucked under my arm, there was not a single grape remaining, so thorough had they been in the hours just after dawn. Maybe I should wrap netting around some of the better bunches to preserve them for my own enjoyment. I don't mind sharing part of the harvest, just not all of it.

Hypericum

Day 325: The genus Hypericum contains almost 500 species, all of which can be generically termed "St. John's Wort," and includes a wide variety of growth habits from tree-like to woody-stemmed plants which may be annual or perennial. Gardeners are most likely to recognize Hypericum calycinum, a prostrate shrub or ground cover which bears 2" diameter flowers. It blooms almost continuously from early summer into September. While attractive, it is aggressive, spreading by sending out long stolons to emerge several feet away from the parent plant; however, it is this very nature which makes it a good choice for parking strips, driveway borders or in my case, beneath the lowest rails of my rustic fence. No need to search a nursery for it! It starts readily from any piece bearing a rootlet. Just be sure you put it somewhere it won't encroach on your neighbour's yard.

September Morn

Day 324: September Morn is a personal day of celebration and I should be up in the mountains somewhere, paddling around the border of hypothermia in a chilly alpine tarn to "wash away the dross of humanity," as I put it. But circumstances dictate otherwise in the year of 2020, not that there's any lack of "dross." In fact, if ever I needed that ritual bath, 2020's "dross" is a burden from which I may never be fully cleansed despite the most vigorous scrubbing. Instead, I contented myself with pulling a few weeds from the flower beds and picking tomatoes, delighted that the Nuthatch joined me in the festivities by sounding his "honk" call for the first time in my yard. Across the road, the vine maple is blushing at its crown, always in a hurry to take September into its arms. While halcyon days line up in the forecast for the coming week, I think of Septembers past, spent in utter and absolute solitude in the high country, so blithe and so very different from the solitude demanded by 2020. If I could choose one day in time to repeat throughout eternity, it would be one spent beside the creek where, for twenty-five years running, I spent a week to ten days alone in Elysium, the only sounds the creek's gabbling, the cry of the hawk above my camp and the antiphony of coyote and elk in sunset refrain. Offer me that single day again, and I will give you my remaining years in trade, so does my soul ache for September in that place.