Black Barlow

Day 230: Surely at some point in the history of pirates and privateers, there must have been a "Black Barlow," but if so, I have been unable to locate any history associated with that name. Even so, it seems fitting that this columbine should adorn the garden shared by extension with my seafaring alternate persona, Morgan Corbye. Perhaps some day, the fictional Capt. Corbye will find herself in waters dominated by Black Barlow (the temptation is strong to work him into a cameo role at the very least, perhaps more), but for now, his sails are raised well above those of the other more pedestrian columbines in the sea, dark and ragged and yet supreme. Whose name did this "Black Barlow" purloin?  Why, none other than that belonging to Charles Darwin's granddaughter Nora, who hybridized several Aquilegia cultivars which now bear her name in some form or another. "Rose," "Blue," and "Bordeaux" are just a few in the Barlow series. Somehow I can't imagine Capt. Corbye going sword-to-sword with "Pink Barlow," though.

From The House Of Chirp

Day 229: It won't be long before little faces begin popping up in the doorway of the House of Chirp. Mom has been making repeated trips out to capture food, and is already carrying away full-sized fecal sacs as part of her housekeeping duties. I have yet to hear the chorus of chirps which gives the House its name, but unlike human children, baby swallows mind their parents when told to hush or duck down because danger is nearby. Now as for this eggshell, it was dropped almost straight down beneath the House, landing on soft moss beside my garage door. The way the halves have separated indicate a healthy hatching. When it is time to emerge from the egg, a chick pecks a line around the widest latitude and the shell separates neatly (by bird terms, at least), held together by the thin membrane lining the interior. If a predator had opened it, it would be irregularly fractured and likely would be broken into multiple pieces. Swallows pick their nesting sites carefully. The doorway of the House of Chirp is a lightly-sanded 1 1/4", just big enough for an adult to fit through, small enough to keep the unpleasant neighbours (Starlings) out.

Smith And Hooker

Day 228: Last summer, weeks after the blossoms had passed, Arnie and I were discussing the flora found on the Park's Tahoma Woods property (Park Headquarters), and I mentioned Prosartes hookerii. He checked his list and showed only P. smithii, so nothing would do but what I went on what I fully expected to be a wild goose chase to document both species. When in flower, it would have been a relatively easy task, noting the exposed/hidden stamens and the length of the tepals, but identifying the plants from foliage was another matter, especially since I thought I'd only seen smithii in a few isolated locations where Star-flowered Solomon's Seal also grew in profusion. The leaves and stems of both Fairy-bells and those of Star-flowered Solomon's Seal are very similar, so in essence, I would be hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Were I to find smithii in one of the locations where I thought I might have seen it, I would need to examine the leaves to ascertain whether they were "glabrous to pubescent on upper surface, pubescent below" or "glabrous to glabrate except for the spreading, twisted marginal hairs." Needle in a haystack? Let's make that a four-inch piece of yellowish-tan string in a haystack instead. Okay, I'll cut to the chase: I found what I believed to be smithii in several spots, but without a flower to examine, I wasn't fully convinced. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to lay the mystery to rest while on a search for slime molds. Both Smith and Hooker were in bloom (left and right, respectively). I sent the photos off to Arnie as soon as I got home, and he wrote back saying, "Good work, Sherlock!"

Paint A Mile Of Canvas

Day 227: They say once you have "painted a mile of canvas," almost anyone will notice that their skills have improved. I have now illustrated over 30 birds and a small handful of flowers in addition to making a portrait of my kitty, and I am definitely becoming more familiar with what to expect from the various media I'm using in my sketches. I'm still exploring "style" and am discovering that it may need to be flexible when working with different subject matter. Inking a few feathers on a bird is one thing; applying it to a flower's center is another. I have yet to attempt watercolours seriously, having only recently begun to accumulate the hues I want in my palette. These were rendered in Prismacolor pencil and watercolour pencil, a combination I am coming to appreciate more and more. From the top left: Downy Woodpecker (possibly my best work so far), California Scrub-Jay, Red-Breasted Sapsucker, Northern Flicker, Western Tanager.

Nature-Built "Trail"

Day 226: When you travel cross-country in Pacific Northwestern forests, you're likely to come across game trails which, although they make penetrating the tangle easier, have no "destination" at their end. The herd disperses, the pack separates into individuals or pairs, and everyone goes about their own business, assembling again at some other location where a new section of "trail" may then begin. You may also encounter "social trails," those paths made by repeated human use to reach an attraction on the map or a reliable patch of berries or mushrooms. Until yesterday, I had always assumed that those two methods were the only way "trails" developed in trailless areas. Ma Nature showed me another.

When this Doug-fir fell, there was no one around to bear witness to the sound it made. It hit the ground hard, its descent not buffered by branches of surrounding trees. The impact had another effect: it compressed the soil, crushed the vegetation. The shock caused the trunk to break at its weakest points, in this case at either end of a sturdier middle section about 15 feet in length.  Did this section roll away? Possibly, but I rather think it bounced, tree trunks being rather springy and bendy on a large scale. In any event, it came to rest a few feet from the point of initial impact, leaving behind a "trail" which was as nicely laid in as any of our human crews could manage. For the length of one shattered Doug-fir, I had relief from heaving myself over similar logs to reach my goal, and was given a natural-history lesson in the process. Mother Nature is the best teacher of all.

Corallorhiza Trifida

Day 225: I spent several hours this morning heaving myself over wet logs and crawling around on the forest floor in search of Corallorhiza trifida. I found three stems, two at one location and a single at another. While not the rarest of Mount Rainier National Park's Orchids, C. trifida is far less common than most. If memory serves, the highest annual census my botany partners and I have recorded was just under thirty stems, in a year when all evidence pointed to an abundance of mycorrhizal activity. Trifida has been on the wane for the last few years, but it can remain dormant for prolonged periods until conditions coincide to meet its requirements. Its range of mycoheterotrophic partners is substantially lower than that of the more common Corallorhizas (e.g., maculata and mertensiana) which may be due in part to the decay of vascular plant debris from its associated species. The web is quite complex. Simplified, it can be said that soil, light and humidity conditions must be met in order for particular vascs to take hold, and unless plant debris is present from those species, the specific mycorrhiza cannot thrive. A mycoheterotrophic plant cannot grow without its partner, so all the pieces of the puzzle must fall into place at once. Of course, this project is doomed from the get-go without seed from the orchid and...wait, how did it get there? I feel as if we're discussing the chicken and the egg. Suffice to say that coming home with mud up to my knees, a wealth of bruises and scrapes on my legs and moss stains ground into my skin is a small price to pay for finding three stems of Corallorhiza trifida.

A Proper Cup Of Tea

Day 224: "All I want is a cup of tea. A cup of tea would restore my normality," said Arthur Dent. "Is there any tea on this spaceship?" Poor Arthur. I think most of us can sympathize with him on some level, especially after the last year. But as our hapless hero is about to discover, normality is probably going to remain out of reach for some time. We can be grateful that no one is reciting Vogon poetry to us now (four years of that was more than enough for one lifetime), but we should expect "normal" to restructure itself rather radically, perhaps to include two-headed beings from Betelgeuse, paranoid androids and strange small men obsessed with fiords. Fortunately and unlike Arthur, we still have tea, although sometimes I think I'd prefer a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster to keep me from deciding to go quite, quite mad.

Not Just Birds

Day 223: My ambitions may well exceed my talent, but at least I'm pointed in the right direction. I am not content with birds. I aspire to creating accurate botanical drawings, preferably in colour using whatever medium lends itself to my hand most readily. So far, that appears to be watercolour pencil, and in fact I've discovered that laying down a layer of watercolour pencil first eliminates most of the white flecks which regular coloured pencil leaves behind on even lightly textured paper. That said, I have also made another discovery: drawing life-sized helps me capture proportion correctly, and perhaps that's why birds came so easily. For the most part, they fit a 5.5" x 8.5" sheet of paper. My subconscious knows how big a junco's leading primary is; it is intimate with the curve of a Porch Parrot's yellow "eyebrow." Even reduced, my mind holds the ratio of a Flicker's tail to its wing. Why? Because I love my birds, and a friend who is quite an accomplished artist advises, "Paint what you love." Yet the skill for drawing a flower's petals seemed to elude me until I realized that I was trying to enlarge the blossom, figuratively trying to draw a mouse in elephantine scale. It wasn't working. Last night, I set a single Siberian Iris stem up in a little vase on the table beside me. If not botanically accurate, at least you can tell it's a flower.

Hoya Fitchii

Day 222: Hoya fitchii surprised me. After it produced two small flowers at the end of a spur, I thought the blooming period was done, and I was grateful for the event. The less commonly available species of Hoya are generally rather difficult to bring into bloom. "Fitch" is apparently an exception, at least under my care. It seems quite content in a north window. This lovely cluster of coppery, waxy stars went supernova late yesterday, and when I took it down from the hook for the photo, I noticed its sweet, faint fragrance, lily-like in its note. That was a bonus; not all Hoyas have a scent. Fitch is rapidly moving up the chart of favourite houseplants!

Adenium Joyful

Day 221: A little behind my other two Adeniums, this cultivar is aptly named "Joyful," and before anybody says anything about PINK, my decision to purchase this one several years ago was budget-based. The fancier colours are well out of my price range, and although I'd love to own "Golden Carrot" (orange) or "Good Night" (deep purple-black), it's not going to happen until one of my friends wins the lottery and gifts me with a substantial bit of pocket change. For the joy I can take when Joyful and the others flower, I will accept pink with good grace, glad to have such cheery friends to brighten my kitchen windowsill when the mood strikes them. Plum Beauty is also in bloom currently, with blossoms at the tips of both its stems. For most of the rest of the year, I'll be caring for tall sticks with a few leaves at the tops, but that is also something I can live with, given the eventual reward.

Dehiscence

Day 220: I wish I could share the experience with you, but for now you will have to satisfy yourself with learning a new word with which to impress your friends: dehiscence. It is the term used to describe the point at which a pod bursts open to release the seeds in its interior.

A friend whose anonymity must be preserved for this exercise knew that I wanted to make another attempt at cultivating a few milkweed plants in the Barren Wasteland in order to obtain their husks for hobby purposes. The first time I tried it, the seeds came to me with instructions to give them a chill-down period of six weeks in my fridge. The experiment was a total failure. These, however, had experienced the chill cycle naturally, promising a better chance of success. Now whether or not the seeds and their fluff were attached to the pod when she packaged them up is a matter of conjecture. I suspect so, based on circumstances which occurred some time later. You see, the Post Office lost the parcel. It disappeared into the bowels of some facility in Chicago and remained there for almost a month before I initiated an official search for it by the tracking number. I had no idea what it contained, although the friend had cautioned me to "open it over a towel." When it finally arrived, I did so, but that did not prevent the coma...the fuzzy white parachutes...from flying all over my kitchen. If the pod had been intact on shipment, it had dehisced in transit and the seeds had detached from the coma, liberating a flurry of silk to any passing breeze such as that generated by my heating system. I cannot imagine that the nameless friend managed to gather them in that state. I had to wet my hands in order to capture them, and even now, 24 hours later, I am still finding milkweed fluff in odd places. Forget glitter. It doesn't hold a candle to milkweed coma when it comes to going everywhere.

Silly Basket

Day 219: This little project has been languishing in the back of a cupboard for at least a decade. I found the materials while looking for something else in the depths and thought, "Well, why not? It'll give my hands a break from spinning." An earlier version went somewhere, so many years ago that I've forgotten who received it. The method used is called twining and is my favourite basketry technique. It employs a doubled strand of weaver which is twisted once between each pair of uprights; in this case, weavers and uprights are both hemp twine. I've added random beads in an alternating pattern, eight rows completed between each vertical occurrence to give the 4" basket more texture and visual appeal. What will it hold? Like Winnie the Pooh's Useful Pot, it can hold anything which will fit inside, even a a blue and somewhat deflated balloon.

Yoo-hoo!

Day 218: Bad photo, I know, but I wanted to show context. This...this right here is what happens when I inadvertently let the feeders go empty. In this case, it was a female Black-Headed Grosbeak, but the males, the Chickadees and the hummingbirds all know that if I'm sitting at the computer, they can come around to the front window and glare at me until I look up, which I usually do fairly quickly because...well, because you know that feeling you get when somebody is staring at you? Yeah, that. I never put more than a cup of seed in each feeder because the pigeons, starlings and blackbirds would clean up the food in no time flat. As it is, I stand at the window and shoo them away until the invited guests arrive. That said, when you're feeding a hundred or so "parrots," three cups of black-oil seed disappears pretty fast. I make them clean their plates, so to speak, to resort to picking through husks on the ground or to search for tiny bits in the trays, but when they truly hit "empty," this is what happens. Have they got me trained? You bet. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Colour Garden

Day 217: At no other time of year are my flower beds as lovely as they are from mid-May to early June. Foliage is at its best, the greens fresh and rich to set off a display of spectacular colour and form which seems almost impossible for such a small space. No shade dominates, reds popping up among the blues, white and orange dotted here and there, as random as the stars in the sky. I long ago abandoned any attempt to control the chaos of my floral universe. Its mind is its own, and its machinations too complex for me to decipher. And, lest anyone think that I am a good gardener, let me assure you that as in the larger universe, there are areas where the equation breaks down: bare spots of infertile or clayey soil which have resisted my efforts to amend them. One could learn a lot about physics sitting in the garden, or under an apple tree as the apocryphal tale of Newton's gravitational revelation advises us, and what grows and what does not is governed by an uncertainty principle more complex and confusing than Heisenberg's.

Birding With Pencils

Day 216: For the moment at least, I am attempting to make one bird sketch each day. I find that it takes at least an hour and a half (sometimes substantially more), and during the endeavour, I tend to lose track of the passage of time. When I finally reach the "Okay, that does it" stage, the morning has all but disappeared. I am also trying to improve my technique by watching YouTube videos on shading, blending, layering and so on, and it is obvious to me that I still have a lot to learn. Still, for someone who has had absolutely no training in art, I am happy with most of the portraits: 18 to date, one of which I will not make public because I could not capture the colour accurately. Top to bottom, left to right, here you see a female Black-Headed Grosbeak, a Piping Plover chick, Northern Cardinal, male Black-Headed Grosbeak, and a head study showing the differences in the field markings between Golden-Crowned and White-Throated Sparrows, often confused by novice birders who only catch a glint of golden yellow on the forward portion of the head. Each drawing was made from photos I have taken of the "locals" with the exceptions of the Plover chick (reference image from a friend) and the Northern Cardinal (a species we do not have in western Washington).

Lycogala Epidendrum

Day 215: Slime mold season has begun! Admittedly, this is a very small grouping of very small Lycogala epidendrum aethalia, but I was thrilled when I found it. Why? Because the director of an Oregon PBS film crew contacted me six months ago to find out if I would be interested in participating in a feature on slime molds. Even after I had explained that slime molds operate on their own schedule and the stars of the show might not appear on a timely basis, we agreed on a window in early to mid-June when they'd be most likely to appear. I will be monitoring this particular cluster closely in the hopes that all of the participants (slime molds, film crew and I) can come to an agreement on date and time.

Lycogala was the first slime mold to be described taxonomically, never mind that Carl Linnaeus initially called it "Lycoperdon" in 1753 because he believed it to be fungal in nature. The aethalia do somewhat resemble small Puffballs if you dyed them salmon-pink, but in fact they are masses of sporangia (fruiting bodies). If you squish a Lycogala bump when it's fresh, it liberates pink goo, protoplasm in which many cellular nuclei are present and potentially joining by fusion as part of the reproductive process. If allowed to mature, the aethalia turn brown and crack open to release thousands of spores, the next generation of the species. Lycogala epidendrum is commonly known as "Wolf's-milk," but before you open your mouth to ask why, let me say that some things must remain mysteries or life would be very boring indeed.

Calypso Orchid, Calypso Bulbosa

Day 214: I can always count on Arnie to provide me with reading material on the subject of plants. He's very good at finding snippets of information in research papers I can't access, and comes up with answers (or theories, as the case may be) when I question him about a plant's individual ecology. He also occasionally forwards things he thinks might interest me (they always do), and this morning's contribution was timely. It covered an interesting aspect of Calypso bulbosa, and fits right in with the photo I had planned to use as the basis for today's post.

This lovely little plant is native to the area, although it isn't abundant by any means. It is pollinated by bumblebees, and it goes a long way to attract them. It does so by deceiving them, pretending to offer prizes it does not deliver. Its scent draws bumbles to it, and the hairs on its lower lip mimic easily accessible anthers. It also displays false "nectar spurs" (not visible in this photo). A bee, visiting the flower for the first time, winds up going away disappointed, then landing on another  Calypso where it again receives no reward. The Calypso has the advantage of the bee's unwitting cross-pollination service, but not for long. The trick only works until the bees wise up to it, i.e., it's only effective with newly emerged, uneducated bees. Botanists refer to this tactic as "cross-pollination by deception," and Calypso has it down to a science, little liar that she is.

Secret Falls

Day 213: A few days ago, I took a walk up to Secret Falls. That's my name for it, anyway. USGS doesn't feel it merits a designation. Why "Secret?" Even though it's less than 50 yards from Westside Road, its 20-foot cascade almost entirely hidden from view by virtue of being around a corner of rock, and anyone who hears it as they walk by raises their eyes to a more visible upper tier which they assume is its voice. The stream which feeds it originates in the Lake Allen basin, although not the lake itself which, incidentally, is only accessible by those committed to serious cross-country navigation. I have been to the lake once, and having found a fresh cougar-killed deer (the carcase still steaming), I decided once was sufficient. However, my sense of adventure is strong enough to sometimes make me forget my age, and Wednesday's excursion found me climbing a steep, mossy slope in an attempt to reach the upper tier of the falls. About halfway there, I had a "mortality moment" (rare for me) and as I looked back down that which I had climbed, the Common Sense Demon on my left shoulder advised, "You're getting yourself in over your head for not having told anyone you might be up here." I cast one last longing glance in the direction of the upper falls (no longer visible from my vantage point) and carefully inched my way back down the slope, trying to remember where I'd seen bare, slick rock showing through thin places in the moss. Perhaps another day and a different route will take me there, when I've filed a flight plan with a friend.

Ideal Weight

Day 212: I am getting very close to achieving the ideal weight in my handspun cotton. The green thread crossing the skein is a commercial 8/2, the type I normally use for weaving tea towels, and although my handspun is too soft to use as warp, I believe it will hold up well as weft. I spin cotton in two ways: with a hand-held tahkli (spindle) or using a "book" charkha wheel. I find I can get a finer, tighter thread with the tahkli which, it must be admitted, probably does not speak to my expertise as much as it does to my patience. I get in a hurry with the charkha, feeding a little too much fiber through my fingers as I draft it back. The hand-held tahkli requires greater focus and consequently, the end result demonstrates more attention to detail. That said, the threads I am producing by either means are a vast improvment on the first lumpy, fragile attempts I made less than a month ago. Almost every day, I see my skill at manipulating the fiber becoming more refined, and I've learned a few tricks along the way for talking pesky slubs into thinning down before being wound onto the spindle as a length of finished single. Cotton is a delightful fiber, if perhaps not the easiest stuff to spin.

Hattie

Day 211: Hattie is in bloom. It's hard to believe, but this plant is over forty years old. I was given a tiny slip (two or three sections) by a friend who cautioned me, "It's very difficult to bring into flower." A decade passed before I figured out what its requirements were. It took me longer than that to discover its true identity. The friend had not known its scientific name and simply called it her "miniature Christmas cactus. Since the friend was Swedish, I referred to it as my "Swedish Christmas cactus" for many years before identifying it as Hatiora rosea, hence the nickname Hattie. While it is a distant relative of Schlumbergera/Zygocactus, the segments are much smaller in size and the flower resembles that of orchid cacti. Some might describe the flower as "pink," but I would call it "pale magenta" for the blue note it contains, and it is an electric hue which seems to glow in almost any lighting situation. Hattie has bloomed for me almost every year since I determined that she needed to be kept in a cool room during the winter months and kept quite dry, even to the point of the segments beginning to wither. Forty years later, she still only fills a 4" pot.

More Birds

Day 210: Believe me, no one is any more surprised than I am by these sketches. A month ago, I was telling friends that I couldn't draw a recognizable cardboard box, and I meant it. The few things I have drawn well (a portrait of my poodle, done when I was about 11, a Sphinx moth and a handful of pen-and-ink backcountry landscapes) were works I considered "happy accidents." However, there was a clue among those few successes: the love I felt for the subject matter. Perhaps that hint explains these birds, at least in part. Anyone who has ever exchanged more than a few sentences with me will have discovered that I am a "bird person," something which goes beyond mere birding/birdwatching. I try to get inside their heads, to figure out how they think, why they do what they do, to understand the way they perceive a world which is very different from my own vision of it. I attempt to communicate with them on their level, learning a few carefully modulated phrases in the conceptual spoken language of the crows, for instance, or refraining from smiling when a chickadee is eating from my hand lest the bird interprets the upturned corners of my mouth as the beginnings of a predatory threat. I do not make eye contact until the bird initiates it, allowing it to be the one who makes the first social gesture. There is no question that I love my "birdies," so please indulge me as I present another set of portraits of the friends who come to my yard: male and female Rufous Hummingbirds, Cedar Waxwing and Steller's Jay.

My Very Own Asarum

Day 209: The internet. I refer to it as "the world's largest source of misinformation." Let's use Mr. Vogel and Asarum caudatum as our example. In 1978, Vogel published a paper stating that his "observations covering a period of several years have shown that Asarum caudatum is regularly pollinated by fungus gnats." A few short years later, this was roundly debunked by another botanist, K. Lu, and it might have ended there but for the subsequent development of personal computers and the true villain, the world-wide web. Scores of other scientists have provided abundant evidence that Vogel was talking through his hat, but excerpts from his paper began cropping up on the 'net as soon as it was birthed and spread quite rapidly as harmful invasive species are wont to do. Vogel's kudzu of erroneous information propagated at a phenomenal rate, crowding out the native truths. Sound familiar? I promise you, this is not a political post. We now have a wealth of research to support the hypothesis that Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum) is autogamous/allogamous (self-pollinating/cross-pollinating), and that while coincidentally, fungus gnats may lay their eggs in the blossoms, they do not play a significant role in the plant's reproductive processes. And them's the facts. (And thank you, Arnie, for a wealth of reading matter on the subject.)

The Blackheads Are Back!

Day 208: I have Blackheads! No, I'm not going through adolescence again. The Black-Headed Grosbeaks have returned. Unlike the Evening Grosbeaks which are absent only the few months of winter, the Blackheads are seasonals, here for the summer like the seasonal rangers in the Park. While "on duty," these American Robin-sized birds will consume bugs, berries and and black-oil sunflower seed in vast quantities, and will fill my yard with songs similar to that of the Robin but more melodic and varied. They pair for the breeding season, and woe betide another Grosbeak who tries to encroach. Mid-air "beak fights" are common and spectacular; they will also attack intruding Steller's and Scrub Jays. In my observations, they are tolerant of Evening Grosbeaks, Spotted Towhees and smaller birds even when the feeders are at "elbow-room only" status. It's May, and the contorted filbert looks like a Christmas tree, dozens of yellow Evening Grosbeaks, orange Blackheads, and the occasional "raspberry juice" finch or Goldfinch thrown in for highlights.

Bush Fruits

Day 207: Last year, I did a lot of reading on the subject before taking the pruning shears to my currants (left) and gooseberries (right). Each requires a different method to produce the best crops. Apparently I did the job correctly, becaue both are loaded with flowers and, as you can see, some of the ovaries (the fruit) are already swelling. Currants bear most heavily on 2-3 year old wood, less on older stems. Old wood must be pruned out and half a dozen new non-bearing shoots should be preserved to bear the following year. Gooseberry stems, on the other hand, may be allowed to bear for three years before pruning out the old wood. New shoots should be thinned to 2-4 to maintain the bearing cycle. If you have trouble distinguishing the ages of the stems, you can code each year's growth with coloured surveyor's tape. Keep good records, and enjoy an abundance of "bush fruits" as jam and jelly.

Adeniums

Day 206: As houseplants go, Adeniums spend most of their days as tall grey-green sticks with a few leaves at the top. They are not particularly attractive during that portion of their cycle, but if you are patient and water them sparingly, your ship will come in when they bloom. The flowers of "Plum Beauty" (left) are nearly three inches in diameter when fully open; those of "Star Cluster" (right) are somewhat smaller, but usually occur in greater numbers as the variety name suggests. A few on this specimen had dropped before I thought to take the photograph. The secret to raising Adeniums is in the watering. Too much water will cause root-rot. When this occurs, the caudex (the swollen base of the stem) becomes soft and the plant dies. The easiest way to tell if your Adenium needs water is to heft the pot. If there is more weight to it than that of the plant and soil, don't water it yet. Wait until it feels light, and then flush it thoroughly under the tap until water runs out the drainage hole. Put your Adenium back in a sunny, warm window and don't water it until the pot feels light again. They are intermittent bloomers, which means that two or three times a year, your stick-with-leaves will turn into a showpiece of gorgeous, knock-your-socks-off flowers like these.

Yard Birds

Day 205: I don't want to bore my readers with too many posts of my sketching attempts, but on the other hand, I'm rather proud of what I've accomplished with the help of "Laws Guide to Drawing Birds." Each of these was based on a photo I've taken of the respective species: American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis, formerly Carduelis), Chestnut-backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens), Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus), Pine Siskin (Spinus pinus). In the case of the female Purple Finch, I changed up the background to reflect a behaviour I observed recently. Several Purps settled in on my blueberry bushes in late afternoon and began plucking the blossoms! Cornell advises that they consume nectar by biting the base of the flower. The bushes are now netted and outfitted with mylar ribbon, and now I understand why I didn't get many blueberries last year. The drawings were executed in a combination of ink and coloured pencil, and the wing detail in the Pine Siskin was a real challenge to maintain.

The Transplant

Day 204: Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum) is one of my favourite wildflowers. Now before we go any further, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I would never ever remove a wildflower from any area where it was scarce or where it was prohibited to do so. However, while I was searching for Trilliums to photograph earlier this year, I found Wild Ginger in abundance...not just a few, but hundreds...on the vacant lot next door to my home. I held a quick conference with my conscience even as my feet were carrying me back to the house for a trowel. We agreed that a minor relocation (less than 100', mind you) was justifiable. I chose a similar ecological niche where I thought it would be comfortable in my yard and, much to my delight, it is not only spreading, but one of the new plants is coming into bloom (lower right, the maroon bell is just beginning to open). The second half of its Latin binomial ("caudatum") refers to the long tails exhibited by the flower's three lobes. When fully open, the tails will extend two or three inches beyond the central cup.

It's Mango Time!

Day 203: One of my fiber suppliers always includes appropriate product samples with each shipment. When I placed an order for several bags of Corriedale roving recently, he threw in 10 grams (plus or minus) of a merino/silk combination in a colorway called "mango." It's been sitting on top of the harpsichord while I finished up a large bag of raw "cafe-au-lait" fleece, waiting for its test drive. While I am never likely to purchase or even use luxury fibers, I thought it would be interesting to spin it up at lace weight and double-ply it. What you see on the bobbin here is exactly half of the sample which, when doubled, isn't going to be enough to do anything with unless I use it to add a single row of "fuzzy" to the cast-on row of a hat. Next up, I'll be spinning a more practical alpaca/Romney blend in dark steel grey. I won't commit to spinning it at a lace weight until I've actually got it on the wheel, but that's what I hope to achieve.

Bleeding-Hearts

Day 202: Before you even think about saying it, yes, they're pink, but who doesn't love Bleeding-hearts? These are Lamprocapnos spectabilis, Asian Bleeding-heart, a cultivated species separate from our wild Bleeding-heart, Dicentra formosa. But back to that opening statement. While it's not 100% by any means, it has struck me over the years that at least here in the lower altitudes of the Pacific Northwest, blooming periods tend to be dominated by one or two colours. First, we have daffodils and dandelions. Yellows give way to pinks and red in character of Bleeding-hearts, Red-flowered Currant and the early azaleas and rhododendrons. Pink is followed by blue delphiniums in the garden and camas on the prairies, a touch of purple creeping in around the edges. Lastly come the whites, as if Mother Nature had exhausted her palette. She scrapes at the corners for elusive touches of tint, applies them sparingly if at all. When summer closes, she's had time to make a trip to the store and goes hog-wild on autumn foliage instead of flowers, holding back her whole range of blues for that pure and rare September sky.

Porch Parrot Head Study

Day 201: As I said to a friend just a few minutes ago, "Ego is a thing." I'm pretty proud of this one, but then, Porch Parrots (Evening Grosbeaks) are some of my favourite people. I did the sketch a few days ago using coloured pencil. I wasn't exactly happy with the way the pencil laid down on the lightly textured paper and was bemoaning the fact that I didn't own a blending stump (tortillon). I could have made one, I suppose, but I didn't want to risk messing up my work with a homemade stump. Then, in the process of looking for something else entirely in my arts cupboard, I found one. I think I'd put it away without any idea of how it was used. I did a test patch on scrap paper, liked the effect, and then took the leap to apply it to my Parrot. It substantially reduced the obvious accumulation of pencil on the "peaks" of the paper and also helped shade the colours. In playing around, I learned that a more rapid stroke warms the wax in the pencil and blends more smoothly, but a slower stroke allows for blending without entirely destroying fine lines. I still haven't settled on a medium for bird portraits, but I am leaning rather heavily toward coloured pencils, perhaps with a wash created with watercolour pencils (a different breed of cat) as an underlay or even as a glaze.

Mac Is Back!

Day 200: I've been checking every few days for the last two weeks. Mac is back! My "pet" Corallorhiza maculata in the back yard is all of an inch tall. So far, only one stem has poked through the ground, but I'm hoping for more with good reason: I believe I may have identified this particular plant's mycorrhizal associate. C. maculata is a mycoheterotroph, and as such is a bit less discriminating than some of the rarer species. It associates with a wider range of fungi, as opposed to C. trifida or C. striata which are more specific in their partnerships. My Mac may be working in tandem with Ramaria acrisiccescens, a common coral fungus which goes by the unlovely common name of "Blah Coral." Last fall, several lines of R. acrisiccescens fruited in her immediate vicinity along the shadowy edge of my wooded strip. Given the abundance of the fungus, Mac may be able to start a family of her own.