Crow's New Wings

Day 291: For the last six months or so, it has been becoming more and more obvious that my six-year old Accent was leaning toward becoming a money-pit. Its worst ailment to date affected its circulatory system, i.e., it suffered a nearly terminal case of injectorosclerosis and had to have a four-way bypass to the tune of a thousand crisp greenbacks. Although that fixed the immediate symptoms, others inclined me to think that the fuel pump would be next to go. I hadn't been as kind to it as I'd intended when I bought it, and I'd been compelled to make some inventive stop-gap repairs to the body as well. All things considered, we'd reached the point where I felt I'd be throwing good money after bad, leading into a probable cascade of events deleterious to my finances. Sometimes you have to spend money to save money, so after careful (if quiet) thought, today I entered into a lease and drove out of the showroom with a "symphony silver" 2018 Hyundai Elantra. There are no logging roads in its future, promise.

Monotropa Uniflora, Indian Pipe

Day 290: Monotropa uniflora is one of my favourite mycoheterotrophic plants. Okay, that's a hard call to make since I'm generally fascinated by all mycoheterotrophs, but there are a few which rise straight to the top of the list. Indian Pipe is one, for all of it being fairly common in PNW forests. It is relatively non-specific in its choice of fungal partner, growing where the mycorrhizae of several different Russula species occur. Other mycoheterotrophs are more selective, although that specificity does not necessarily mean that they are more rare; the rarity depends on the fungal associate, although conversely, an abundance of the fungus does not necessarily guarantee a similar abundance of the mycoheterotrophic plant. It's kinda like that old saying from the Depression era, "If we had ham, we'd have ham and eggs, if we had eggs." Or this one: "It takes two to tango."

IPC Bud Blancher Hike

Day 289: The Invasive Plant Council took a hike on Eatonville's Bud Blancher Trail today, which is to say that Program Coordinator Lisa Zander and I had a grand time hacking chicory, pulling tansy, documenting lactuca and knapweed in addition to subsidiary duties like visiting lower Mashel Falls, playing with frogs and taking a relaxing dunk in the Mashel River. We made a 9-mile loop out of it per Lisa's phone app, climbing on up past the falls to Pack Forest's road system, returning along the north boundary and passing through Smallwood Park. As for anyone else who signed on for the hike and failed to show up, you don't know what you missed!

Sparganium Emersum

Day 288: I don't think I will ever be able to think of Sparganium emersum without remembering how Arnie led me through the rushes and into a bog, not realizing that there was a trail only a few feet away. As we made our way out to the plant he was intending to show me, I took a mis-step and wound up sunk to the hips in mud while he perched on a log, laughing and taking photos for posterity. The Sparganium was a bonus. Even though it is a much larger plant than the one we were trying to identify, he'd completely overlooked it.

That's the way it works. Obviously, when you're looking at the broad overview, you stand a good chance of missing small details, but the converse is also true. Once you have attuned your eye to search for flowers only a few millimeters in diameter, your mind tends to dismiss larger subjects as unimportant. Once I've zeroed in on something and have set my visual and mental scanners to detect it, I could walk right by an elephant and not notice it was there.

Barren Wasteland

Day 287: I call it the Barren Wasteland: the ten-foot wide space between my house and garage. When I first moved here, I thought to turn it into a vegetable garden, working around the concrete and wood dead spaces which cover the pit where my water system's captive-air tank lives. Little did I know that nothing but weeds would grow in that soil...not radishes, not zucchini, and definitely not corn or peas or tomatoes. A few years' experiments with bush beans yielded rather sickly crops, so after several attempts at trying to draw blood from the proverbial turnip, I threw in the towel and let the Barren Wasteland go. Then one year I hit on the bright idea of making it a wildflower garden. I bought a mix of seeds "designed for the Pacific Northwest" without paying too much attention to the content. It came up mostly California poppies which, despite being pretty en masse, are undesirable for their tendency to go out of control and into monoculture. My vision of a rampant English-garden style space refused to go according to plan until I relocated a vigorous Rudbeckia to one corner, apparently providing just the "lift" the Wasteland needed to take off on its own. I even found that some of the wildflower seeds germinated long after they'd been sown, delicate Deptford Pinks shooting up here and there accompanied by orange Wallflowers and the occasional Tall Phlox from some prior point in history. I added Rose Campion (purloined from a friend's yard) and more Rudbeckias, even a wild currant. Little by little, the Barren Wasteland filled in. Today, it's far from barren, but the name persists for this "wild space" where colour now crowds out the weeds. I'm happy with it, even though I am still pulling California poppies.

Moocher

Day 286: I'm not convinced I have the right scientific name to attach to this critter, but I think it's Tamias townsendii. You can infer what you like with respect to the common name; I'm going with "moocher." The little stinker repeatedly tried to brave his way along the log to see what I was having for lunch at the south end of Packwood Lake, but as soon as I'd shift position or the light would glint on the camera lens, he was off like a shot. Admittedly, what I carry for trail lunch probably wouldn't do him any harm, but I'm conditioned to avoid feeding the wildlife, and it does upset me when I see people offering critters things which humans really shouldn't eat either. You know M&Ms aren't good for you, and those salty chips are going to put your blood pressure out through the roof, to say nothing of the nasty artery-clogging fat they were fried in. What makes you think you're doing wildlife a favour by passing your bad health habits along? Moocher got the lecture instead of food, not that it'll stop him from hitting up the next hiker.

The Joy Of Gardening

Day 285: Mmmmmm, such wonderful rewards! This is the second batch of blueberry muffins I've turned out from my three bushes. The two mid-season types accounted for the bulk of the harvest. Oddly, the self-fertile dwarf plant only put on about two dozen berries. I've also picked three nice Oregon Spring tomatoes and a handful or two of Sungolds. "As you sow, so shall you reap!" When you garden with love, you get good returns.