Pleurocybella Porrigens

Update: Again I stand corrected (mycology is not my field). These are not Pleurotus ostreatus, but a cousin, Pleurocybella porrigens, aka "Angel Wings." Both species are considered edible, although recently some doubts have been raised about Pleurocybella.

Day 352: "A noisy noise annoys an oyster," and perhaps that's why Pleurotus ostreatus, the Oyster mushroom, hides in obscure and silent niches in our Pacific Northwest forests. It is a beautiful fungus, its shelves thin and starkly white. It is edible and fairly easy to identify, although as with any mushroom outside the "beginner" types, some extra care must be taken to be certain of the species if it is to be consumed. Your correspondent has not seen it in abundance for many years, but looks back with fondness on a time when winter snacking included "mushroom chips" dried behind a wood stove to give them a smoky flavour. Dehydrated, Oysters are paper-thin and crisp, and no, you can't eat just one! However, there were only a few at this location, and the visual treat of seeing their translucent flesh glow against backlighting far outweighed any temptation to collect them.

See Attached

Day 351: We have come to the end of the fiscal year at Mount Rainier National Park which means that all the paperwork for volunteers which should have been turned in earlier in the summer now lands on my desk with the resounding thud of its weight. My desk was piled high when I arrived this morning, interoffice envelopes stuffed to bursting, reams restrained by binder clips, loose jumbles spilling everywhere, requiring ten minutes of organization before I could take the laptop out of its case. Among the stacks was a dingy blue recycled report folder, and I could see that it contained at least a few dozen volunteer agreements. In order to credit volunteers with their hours, they first have to be entered into the database. In other words, their initial record must be created from their volunteer agreement before the computer will accept their time. Volunteer Agreements are my first priority on any given day.

I'd already sorted several piles by the time I reached the blue folder and was talking to Kevin as I opened it, my eyes on something else in the room. When my glance fell on the pile, it took some measure of control to stifle a shriek down to a strangled, gasping curse. On the top of the assembled paperwork was a spider, long dead and dry, but a spider nonetheless.

It was Kevin who pointed out its location on the form, appropriately beside the words, "See attached." "You should get a picture of that," he said, and so I did.

All things considered (and trust me, I am considering them carefully), if I find out that our intern had anything to do with this, his days are numbered. Just sayin'.

Visiting The Kids

Day 350: Before the good weather slips away, I wanted to pay one more visit to my kids at Lake St. Clair, so I put the rack back on the car yesterday and loaded the 'yak this morning while there was still frost on the ground. I figured the water would still be warm enough that I didn't need waders and I was right, but the air still had a nip in it when I launched.

There's a closer ramp to the Sundew colony I call Jack's Lot, but my intention was to stay out for several hours and put some miles on the paddles. I didn't realize until I got home that the last time I'd been in the 'yak was at the end of July. Where did summer go? Oh, that's right...I was chasing rare plants in the Park and ironically, the Park's colony of Sundews never made an appearance. I checked for them on several occasions, scouring the area where they are known to occur, and never found leaf, flower or seed head.

At Lake St. Clair, Jack's Lot are doing fine, but I can't say as much for Sundew Island, a decrepit raft of logs and lumber. The one Sundew-bearing log of the raft has apparently come adrift and although I patrolled five miles of shoreline, I failed to turn it up. You may recall that the island drifted free from the northwest arm of the lake a couple of years ago, and was captured by a homeowner and chained in place in a shady cove. The resident Sundews weren't happy in the new location, so I hope they've sailed to a more pleasant harbour. However, as I said, Jack's Lot are receiving exceptional care. Jack has cut back all the alder seedlings on their two logs, exposing them to the light they love, and examination of their pads demonstrated a widely varied diet ranging from beetles to spiders and even several fairly large moths.

I only spent three and a half hours on the water today, and an hour of that was visiting the kids. I wonder if Jack has told his neighbours to be on the watch for that crazy naturalist who flies the Jolly Roger on the back of her bright orange kayak?

National Public Lands Day - Revegetation

Day 349: Yesterday, it was my privilege to be part of a revegetation crew working near Sunrise in Mount Rainier National Park. Nowhere on the Mountain is human impact more visible than in the subalpine zone, and particularly here where as late as 1970, a "drive-in" campground was available for visitor use. A gravel road cut through the meadow and hikers were allowed to wander freely through fields of wildflowers, thus creating countless "social trails" where vegetation was trampled and destroyed. The growing season is very short here, and plants did not have time to recover. Eventually, the area was closed to camping and the use of social trails was prohibited, but for the most part, the vegetation did not fill in. Enter revegetation crews, the heroes of the story!

For the last twenty years or more, the Park and several of its partners have been working together to replant these areas. Volunteers have been drawn in from the public sector to help out with this enormous project, and no single event in the Park points that up like National Public Lands Day. Approximately sixty people donned gloves and pushed wheelbarrows full of seedlings to a site above Sunrise Camp (now a walk-in camp), and there picked up trowels and knee-pads and set to work putting some 5000 plants in the ground. The weather was sunny but chilly, as one might expect when working at 6400' in late September, but most of the volunteers were veteran hikers or returnees from previous NPLD events, and knew what to expect.

"Reveg" is perhaps the Park's most popular volunteer project. All ages can participate, and a dozen or more young people were among our group. Some were Scouts. Some had come with their families to plant the seedlings cultivated in the Park's greenhouses over the summer. Other members of the group joked, "If I get down, you may have to help me back up," testing the creaky knees and stiff backs of their "golden years" in order to help with the planting.

Recurring questions include, "Isn't it kinda late to be planting?" and "What's the survival rate?" First of all, the growing season is very short at this elevation. Snow generally covers the ground from mid to late September until July. These plants have evolved to survive extreme conditions of alpine cold, but new seedlings have one major enemy: lack of water. Summer is a stressful time, even for established plants. Put in the ground in late season, these species stand a far better chance of taking hold. As for the survival rate, it's about 80%, and that's phenomenal.

Now And Then

Day 348 (bonus post): While working with the revegetation crew today, I kept thinking about my grandfather's photos from the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park, specifically one taken in the general area where we were planting. Although my memory misplaced the loop road and its myriad cars to a somewhat higher terrace, you can identify the location by comparing the ridgelines in these two images. I believe my grandfather's photo shows the old Sunrise Campground as it was in 1932, shot from a higher vantage point. The upper photo was taken today just before we began planting.

Happy Harvest!

Day 348: One last shot from the Puyal...Washington State Fair, this one to wish you a happy Autumn while I'm on the far side of the Mountain taking photos of volunteer crews working on various projects for National Public Lands Day. I drew light duty this time around, but I can't promise that I won't get my hands dirty at something. Nothing is harder for me to do than stand idly by while other people work.

Llamas And Alpacas

Day 347: Here's your quiz for the day: What's the difference between a llama and an alpaca (and yes, this is a trick question). Silly me, I didn't know, so I asked. Better to look like a fool for the sake of knowledge rather than to be a fool in ignorance.

First off, there's size. A full-grown llama is roughly twice as large as an alpaca. They were bred to be beasts of burden whereas alpacas were bred for their soft fleece. It should be noted here that a llama's coat has both long, coarse fibers and softer, shorter ones (the "undercoat"). Alpacas' coats lack the coarse guard hairs found in llama fleece. Both can be spun, but the spinner will spend much more time cleaning a llama's fleece of the coarser fibers.

Alpacas can be distinguished from llamas by their size, by the shape of their ears, and by the tuft of hair on their heads which often falls down over their eyes, giving them a comical appearance. According to most breeders, alpacas are gentler and more tractable than llamas. Llamas are more independent, and sometimes are even used as guardians of a flock of alpacas.

So what do you see here? I warned you this was a trick question! Both of these animals are alpacas, one unshorn and one recently given a trim.

Hot Chicks!

Day 346: Finally! Today was my last shift at the Washington State Fair, and I was beginning to wonder whether I'd see any chickens. A fair without chickens? Unthinkable! Oh, there'd been a few in the 4-H barn, just your standard, ordinary hens with none of the specialty breeds represented. The "poultry" barn was full of rabbits and pigeons. Rabbits? When did rabbits become poultry? But today, the poultry barn lived up to its reputation, although not nearly as lavishly as in years gone by. There were less than a dozen of the Polish mop-tops I call "Tina Turner chickens," and not even that of Silkies. Still, chickens is chickens, as they say, and no sense counting them until they're hatched, and I was happy to find enough hot chicks willing to hold still for portraits to make my day at the Fair complete. This lovely lady seemed to be saying, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille," while the rest of the hen party looked on, envious of her fame.

Kicking Up Again - Alder Lake Fire

Day 345: As predicted, the Alder Lake Fire seems to be kicking up again on both ends, most spectacularly on the east end where it appears to have come down a drainage to meet the 74 Road. That said, the InciWeb site has still not been updated (the last post was September 9), and the PIOs have been pulled from duty, taking their interpretive materials with them. I would hope that with an increase in fire behaviour, there would be some public communication soon, if only to mollify people who will likely assume that the fire has gone out of control. To the best of my knowledge, that is not the case. As the fire burns toward established lines, there is bound to be an increase in the number of smoky days.

Sheep Shots

Day 344: I miss having sheep. I don't miss the cold nights in the lambing shed, the annual search for a shearer willing to travel for the few dollars he could earn shearing four or five animals. I don't miss trimming hooves, wormings, stitching up wethers savaged by neighbour dogs. But I do kinda miss playing chase with the ewes and the sweet smell of the milky breath of a lamb fresh off the teat. I don't miss the ticks and keds, but I miss the touch of soft wool in my fingers when the first fleeces were rolled and bagged, and the feel of natural lanolin conditioning my rough hands. I miss...forgive me...lamb burger and mutton stews, but I do not miss transporting Ivy and Cindy and Dacron and Orlon to the slaughterhouse, nor driving away to leave them to the fate for which I'd reared them, fighting down emotions no person who raises livestock can allow themselves to own. Every now and then (especially at Fair time), I think, "I should get a sheep, save me mowing the lawn," and then reason kicks in. In truth, it's not having sheep I miss. It's the idea of having sheep, perfect sheep, romanticized sheep. Why, with that logic, I could enjoy thousands of woollies! Nah, I'll just visit them at the Fair.

Spotted At Longmire

Day 343: Scowling darkly at the bare ground where last week my best specimen of Ramaria araiospora had glowed as red as any stoplight, I was silently wishing multiple forms of harm upon the unknown visitor who had plucked it from the earth. I cursed myself mentally for having posted the location on line, inviting a question someone else answered before I could deflect the inquiry: "Edible?" What sort of lowlife would pick and eat a specimen under study? Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question. They're out there, and in far greater numbers than you imagine.

While not on the scale of illegal big-game hunting, harvesting anything not found in abundance is in my book a crime against nature and science. Worse, it sickens me to think that my inadvertent disclosure of the location led to the destruction of an example of an uncommon species. Now on guard, I will not make that mistake again, but the damage is already done.

To that faceless, nameless miscreant I offer this speckled beauty, spotted also at Longmire. Eat, and wander down the swirling, multicolored halls of hallucination to your heart's content, and when you reach mid-life and your kidneys and liver begin to fail before you've done half the things you wanted to do, remember I told you where to pick them.

Another Fair Favourite

Day 342: "Separating the sheep from the goats" became Fair policy some time ago due to health concerns for the animals, and nowadays, goats are exhibited early in the Fair and sheep are brought in during the last week or so. For that reason, I usually manage to miss sheep although they are right behind piggies on my list of things I'd like to see. Chickens also seem to elude me, their barn dedicated during the early part of the Fair to either rabbits or pigeons. However, among the "exotic" animals (a category which includes llamas and alpacas), there are usually a few goats, and since I enjoy goats almost as much as sheep, I search out their pens in the hopes of getting a few photos.

That's not an easy task, let me tell you! I don't care to do flash photography, particularly where there are animals involved. They don't understand why all those bright lights keep going off in their faces, causing their pupils to contract every few seconds. I personally don't think flash should be allowed inside the barns, but I have never seen any prohibitions. That said, getting a good picture without flash requires quite a bit more patience since the photographer not only has to deal with fidgety animals, but with people jostling the fence (the default makeshift "tripod"). However, with patience, the photographer can learn to judge when the ears will stop twitching or the animal will pause in its chewing just long enough to get a crisp shot. That's not saying I don't throw out 9 out of 10 images, but at least I've spared the critters another glaring blast of bright light in their beautiful eyes.

Spider Island

Day 341: Very little inspires Captain Morgan Corbye to loathing or disgust, those sentiments reserved for government representatives the likes of Franklin Beale, her arch foe. However, on the occasion of putting the Winged Adventure into a small island cove for careening, it was soon to be discovered that spiders rank close alongside the officious Harbourmaster.

Whilst ship's bursar Robin Penn watched over the sailors hard at work scraping the ship's barnacled hull lest in their enthusiasm for the task they might damage the wood, the Captain took it upon herself to head up a provisions party. Hoping at the very least for a few rabbits to relieve the diet of salt beef and dried fish the crew had taken aboard following their last raid, Capt. Corbye brought with her the ship's best archer, Padraic Alane. Though as a Scot, she damned him for an Irishman whenever his shots went wide of the mark, Paddy had bagged two brace, almost enough for a good stew, and was bending his bow in the hopes of a fifth when a shout of profoundly profane invective caused him to flinch and release the arrow prematurely. "'Tis a great bloody bastard o' a hairy bleedin' spider is gone down me shirt! O, 'elp me! Come get it orf me, ye cowards! It's atween me bloody damned boosums an' I canna get holt o' th' bastard!"

To a man, the crew froze in place, uncertain whether it was best to leave our Captain to the spider or risk losing a limb to her sword for a misplaced hand. It was Paddy Alane who came to her ultimate rescue, nocking an arrow, the tip of which he had blunted by inserting it into the first soft thing he could find before letting it fly as gently as possible to its target. With a shocked expression upon her sun-browned face, the ,Captain gave one brief look at the mushy remains of a mangled banana slug upon her chest, then peered into her linens and said, "Paddy, ye're a guid lad an' me saviour. I make o' ye now a 'onorary Scotsman, an' nevermore wi' damn ye fer Irish." Thus did Spider Island come to be so named.

Alder Lake Fire At 8 Weeks

Day 340: The Alder Lake Fire began with a lightning strike on July 26th at approximately 5 PM. The time is known because lightning activity was recorded by a weather satellite in the exact location where the first smoke was observed and reported on August 11th. On Sunday, just two days from today, it will have been burning for eight weeks and, as you can see by comparing these photos with the panorama I posted on September 6th, there hasn't been much change in the last two weeks. In fact, no updates have been posted to InciWeb since September 9th. In this case, no news is not good news. Due to the fire's current inaccessibility, it may simply smoulder all winter, waiting to burst back into flame when the forest dries out again.

Fire aside, I learned why the reservoir has been low all summer when it's normally filled for recreational use. Tacoma Power is required to discharge through the spillway a specified volume of water (measured in cubic feet per second) to ensure enough flow for salmon habitat in the lower Nisqually River. If they fail to do so, they must pay substantial fines. If we don't get some rain soon, the lake may drop to a record low.

Piggy-Wiggy Wigglies

Day 339: Working at the Fair has substantial bonuses. Best of all, I get a free pass for each day I have a shift in the Park booth and am allowed to enter the fairgrounds before the gates open. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the piggies in the Pig Palace, even with attendance as low as it seems to be this year. These little critters are impossible to photograph without flash when they're awake, all squirm and squeal and wiggles, but nothing is as cute as a contented and sleeping piglet, at least not in my book. What's not to love about those long eyelashes and wrinkly noses and enormous ears? Is it any wonder that the pig barn is the most popular animal venue at the Fair?

Ramaria

Day 338: Would-be mushroom hunters be warned: while many wild fungi are edible, it often takes chemical testing or microscopic examination of the spores to differentiate one species from another. For example, I know that this is a Ramaria, i.e., one of the Coral fungi often found around Mount Rainier and elsewhere in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. However, it could be R. botrytis, R. subbotrytis, R. formosa or even an aged specimen of R. araiospora, now faded to pink. Your narrator lacks the expertise to tell them apart, and with mushrooms, unless you are "105%" certain of a species identification, erring on the side of caution is mandatory. Many of the Coral fungi contain toxins, and while some people may not react to them, others may respond with mild to severe symptoms of mushroom poisoning. In other words, if you aren't positive of a species, do NOT eat it.

Just as a reminder, per 36 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 2.1 with respect to Mount Rainier National Park, "Edible fungi (mushrooms) - collection of the above is for personal consumption and shall be no more than one (1) gallon per person, per day."

Little Mothers

Day 337: I'm not being vulgar when I say I have a pot full of these little Mothers because that's what they are: Mother-of-Thousands seedlings, otherwise known as "pups." Kalanchoe (Bryophyllum) daigremontiana is a member of the succulent family and propagates by developing plantlets along the margins of its leaves. As they mature, the pups drop and root in any soil on which they happen to land, thus populating any flower pot which happens to be nearby, leading to a whole succession of Mothers-of-Thousands invading your indoor garden unless you keep them in check. They are a fun plant to grow and a good conversation piece, however if you pass any along to friends, warn them that they should keep the Mother away from pets and small children. All parts of the plant are considered toxic.

Let's Go To The Fair!

Day 336: It's that time of year again, and today was my first shift at the 2015 Puya...Washington State Fair. It will always be the "Puyallup Fair" to me and to many local residents, although it is quite different from the agricultural festival it was when I first began attending. It's become much more commercial, a place where attendees shop for vacuum cleaners, car squeegees, fireplace inserts, hot tubs, silverware polish, plastic trinkets, and with every advancing step, noses are assaulted with odors of foods which would not be considered fit for human consumption outside the fair venue. The Fair is all about money these days, as I discovered when I paid an additional $8 to walk through the Star Trek exhibit.

A Trekkie of the first water, I expected something special, perhaps a scale mock-up of 1701-D, Klingons lurking in dark corners, phaser blasts I should dodge or something of that nature. What I found instead were lighted panels showing the Star Trek timeline, stock photos and text straight out of the various concordances for the series. There were lighted instrument panels, but without any explanation of the functions, again falling way short of anything found in the concordances, and there was a mock-up of the 1701-D's bridge, but you could not enter it unless you shelled out an additional $15 to have a single photograph of yourself taken in the captain's chair.

There were four or five larger-than-life facial sculpts including Data, a Cardassian and Neelix, all with bulging artificial and unrealistic eyes. There was a Borg in its cubicle and Worf, standing life-sized in a dark bay, again both very bad works in resin or plastic. Largely, the exhibit consisted of costumes in cases, purportedly those worn by the actors, but every one looked dingy and dirty, like something which had been in grandma's attic for the last fifty years. You'd have thought they'd have had them dry-cleaned before putting them on display. I left the building after a mere ten minutes, feeling as if there were Ferengi gloating in the gloom over having bilked me for the price of admission. Trust me, there's more to see in any Trek convention's dealer room than you'll see here.

Although I was disappointed in the Star Trek building and the overall commercial nature of the modern-day fair, what I really enjoy most are the animals, grange displays and the Pavilion where all types of needlework from quilts to tatting are well-lit and nicely shown. Those things are to me what define a county or state fair. Give me pumpkins and sunflowers and 4-H sheep, and I'm a happy camper, even if I do have to walk through a concourse thick with a fog of deep-fried Oreo grease to reach them.

Purple When Purchased

Day 335: It was a pretty lavender colour when I bought it. I swear it was. I would not have bought a pink-flowering heather (or a pink-flowering anything else for that matter because I despise pink). It was a nice shade of greyish lavender, the colour one expects heather to be. Maybe it's the pH of my soil, although acidic soils generally influence flowers toward the blue end of the spectrum, as anyone who's ever tried to grow a pink hydrangea in western Washington will know all too well. Maybe it's taking up some of the red dye in the bark mulch I laid around it. That seems a more likely explanation. In any event, when I put in new plants this last spring, I added not one but two pots of heather. The second one isn't quite as rosy, but it's definitely not the same purple it was when I put it in the ground.

Ramaria Araiospora

Day 334: Ramaria araiospora could easily be dubbed the "stoplight of the forest" because its striking orange-red coloration will definitely pull you up short if you spot it during a hike. Also known by the uninspired common name of Red Coral, the holotype (i.e., the specimen from which the species was described scientifically) was collected near Elbe in 1967. The color fades to pinkish as the fungus matures, although I have seen many large specimens which were quite vivid. Something of a local phenomenon, watch for its emergence in the Longmire area after the first autumn rains.

Cross Orbweaver, Araneus Diadematus

Day 333: I've always called these "big triangular garden spiders," frequently prefaced with a scream when I discover I've walked into one of their webs and don't immediately know whether or not it was occupied. Fortunately in this case, my subject was on the outside of the window and I was inside which, incidentally, afforded an unusual dorsal view. Araneus diadematus usually presents its ventral aspect, belly to the light. It also invariably hangs head-downward unless hunting. Madame Cross Orbweaver had already scored her dinner and was in the process of putting away the leftovers when this photo was taken. Whatever hapless insect it might have been, she drew it carefully to her mouth parts, rolling it in web fibers as she did so, perhaps mistaking me for a larger predator. You may wonder how I know to call her by a female pronoun. Look at that abdomen. She's bulging with eggs, loaded with potential little baby spiders. Unfortunately for us both, members of this species seem to delight in placing their egg cases directly above my exits. Worse than having this lovely lady crawling up your sock is walking into a curtain of thousands of tiny golden baby Orbweavers, something I manage to do at least once every autumn.

Lace Maker's Rule

Day 332: For the last week or so, I have been developing a bobbin lace pattern (a sampler) to insert into the channel of an acrylic ruler designed with this type of display in mind. The lace is protected by a snap-in cover, removable if you want to change it out for another piece. Several factors went into planning the lace, width and length affecting the number of repeats possible in the alloted space, and weight of the threads (working thread and gimp). The pattern I created worked well with #60 cotton and #8 perle, but I decided I wanted to see what it would look like with a heavier thread carried along the sewing edges. I had worked one full motif using #12 perle before deciding it was too bulky.

About 35 years ago, I purchased a one-pound cone of white #60 cotton from a supplier in McMinnville Oregon, now long out of business. It proved to be my favourite thread, and now I find myself getting close to the end of the cone. Upon reaching the conclusion that I didn't like the look of the #12 in the edge, I was faced with a dilemma. Bobbin lace should have no knots. It is begun with the threads from pairs of bobbins hung around pins. If I cut my work and threw the completed section of lace away, I would not have enough left on a single bobbin to wind a new pair, i.e., I would be wasting all the thread I had originally wound on the bobbins. There was nothing for it but to unwork the piece, reversing my actions one by one until the entire lace was un-picked.

When a fiber artist is developing a new design, there are usually hitches in the process. I counted myself lucky that none of them had been in the way I'd drafted the work. Backing out of the lace stitch by stitch, I salvaged every inch of thread and completed the sampler this morning.

How To Waste A Morning

Day 331: I knew I should have gone blackberry picking two weeks ago. Two and a half hours and over a hundred driving miles later, this was all I had to show for my pains. My best spots had either been picked clean or were ruined by rain. Once I'd put them through the food mill, I had just over a cup of juice, a long way from the six cups I needed for a batch of jam. Blackberries...Himalayan or Evergreen...are the kudzu of the Pacific Northwest. What the heck is going on here?

Interlaken

Day 330: I'm ashamed to admit that I have never gotten the hang of pruning grapes, unable to tell a bull cane from a bearer which is simply leggy, never able to remember if I leave two-year old wood or the vines which grew last year. I've read the book. I've even been tutored by an expert, and yet my attempts invariably result in a grapeless grapevine, jays notwithstanding.

My Interlaken vine was transplanted as old stock twenty-five years ago. A former neighbour raised wine grapes with a few table varieties on the side, and brought it to me in the back of his truck, a rootstock the size of a washtub and arms thirty feet long. I cut it back radically after he drove away, and the following year, I harvested about ten pounds of grapes, unaware of what I'd done to encourage them. In subsequent years, I got a bunch or two, but staying ahead of the Steller's Jays proved difficult. They seemed to prefer their fruit just slightly tarter than my idea of "ripe," and thus I often went out with bowl under arm only to find that the vine had been denuded just before dawn. One year I got lucky. The stars aligned (aided by my fishing buddy's brother-in-law's pruning skills), and upon harvest, I brought in a whopping twenty pounds. He was the one who tried to teach me the pruner's art, but when left to my own designs, I butchered the job and went without a single fruit.

I began to wonder about the grapevines I'd observed rambling over abandoned garages and rural fences. They never seemed to be short of fruit, and it was plain to see that no one was tending them. I decided to test the Ignore Method. "Go, grape! You can have the whole damn garage if you want it!" Although not quite loyal to my promise to let it go wild (I brutally cut back some forty-foot extensions with the lawn mower and pulled others down out of the Philadelphus), Interlaken seems to like its freedom, held in check only by the bird-netting I threw over it when I saw it setting fruit. Today, I picked about five pounds of deliciously sweet green grapes. Yummy! And there are more to come!

Midas' Hoard

Day 329: I think I have the commercial pickers outfoxed. Most of my favourite 'shroom spots have fallen prey to money-minded gluttons who don't care about the integrity of the resource. They never leave a button, don't care if they demolish the delicate mycelium by pulling rather than cutting because their buyers pay by the pound. Some people will argue that pulling doesn't matter, but I have seen long-standing chanterelle patches decimated by the practice, never to recover from over-harvesting.

This afternoon, I only picked enough for an appetizer, admittedly a sizeable serving, but definitely short of a full dinner. I told myself I didn't need a hog-bait, so I only picked the cleanest specimens and left plenty more behind. In fact, today's basket of gold came from a second new location, discovered once again by following a botanical clue. The commercial pickers are already out. I've seen them parked alongside the road near what used to be some of my best mushrooming spots. Sooner or later, they'll pick themselves out of a job, but for now, I know where Midas' hoard of gold is stashed, and I'm treating it with respect.

Fire Status

Click to enlarge panorama

Day 328: A number of people have asked me for a status report on the Alder Lake Fire, given that we've had cool temperatures and some substantial precipitation. You might assume that was what the firefighters were hoping would happen, but in fact, the opposite is true. You see, the fire is burning in inaccessible terrain where the forest duff is eighteen inches to five feet deep, creating a bed of smouldering debris which could reignite at any minute until it burns itself out of fuel. Since the fire cannot be combated on its own turf (bad pun, I know), the firefighters want it to come to them. They want it to progress to the fire lines they're creating with bulldozers and saws. Only then will it be "contained," i.e., walled off inside a "big box" of fuelless ground. The precipitation has prevented the fire from advancing, but that is quite a different matter than putting it out. Even a heavy fall of snow might fail to extinguish it completely. It's not unheard of for a fire to rekindle a year later. In fact, that happened during one fire on the Olympic Peninsula.

As you can see from this 11-panel panorama, not much has changed in the last several days. The fire still stands at 280 acres, and crews have it 17% contained. With drier weather and warmer temperatures coming toward the end of next week, fire behaviour is expected to increase. While this may please the firefighters who, it must be said, are probably anxious to see the end of this so they can go home to their families, it means that we're liable to get smoky again.

In related news, Public Information Officer David finished out his tour, but before he left, he came up with a solution to the map issue. I hope the new PIO continues in the same vein.

Myco-Forensics

Day 327: Acting on a tip given to me by a floral friend last spring (and by that, dear readers, I mean that a little plantie told me), I stopped by ... cough ... excuse me, something in my throat ... this noontime in the hopes of discovering a new "gold panning" location, i.e., a chanterelle spot, and I was not disappointed. Okay, it took me 45 minutes to gather enough for a decent fry-up to accompany tonight's menu of chicken, but I left lots of buttons to grow up into bigger chanterelles. Better yet, I really doubt anyone else would think to hunt them at this site even if they could figure out how to access it. It's not that it's difficult to reach, but you have to know how. As for my botanical benefactor, I am not at liberty to give a name. In the science of myco-forensics, secrets must be closely guarded.

Particularly Peculiar

Day 326: When I was in third or fourth grade, I experienced a peculiar phenomenon of euphonics in that after saying the word "broom" several times in succession, it ceased to have meaning in my mind and became simply a mellifluous sound; meditative, if you will, and possibly akin to the similar "Om" of yogic mantra. I was a strange child, to be sure, and even then, my fascination with language and semantics was strong. Another linguistic form which continued to intrigue me into adulthood was that of the tongue-twister, and I went well beyond "she sells sea shells by the sea shore" to write my own. ""Few-fruited fennel flowers freely following frost" and "Merrily chewing cherries, very cheery veeries chirrup" are but two examples. However, one which seeped beyond the boundary of true tongue-twister into the realm where meaning ceases to apply was "particularly, peculiarly." It is not a complete sentence, and therefore I do not categorize it as a true tongue-twister, but try it three times fast. You will undoubtedly discover that you're putting an extra "-lar-" in the second word, and then a few repetitions further on, you may begin to wonder whether you are pronouncing it correctly or not. It's a rather disorienting feeling to lose a piece of your language. You may even feel mildly nauseous or dizzy. (The Surgeon General insists that I display that warning to potential practitioners.)

I'd like to be able to work that phrase into today's post, but the best I can do is to say that Clematis and Nigella both have particularly peculiar preposterously pretty pods. It's been a long week.

Are You My Mummy?

Day 325: Look what followed me home! As much as I would like to provide pollinators with their favourite foods, the tall sedum in the strawberry jar just outside my kitchen door was creating a scenario for a medical emergency with the number of honeybees it was attracting. I'm allergic, and more severely so to honeybees than any other species of stinger. I was courting disaster every time I went out to pick tomatoes, my backside to the bees only a foot or so distant. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I got stung if I didn't remove it, so on a cool morning a few days ago before the sun had risen, I cut the stalks back to the soil. Today, I dug out the roots and replaced them with this beautiful purple chrysanthemum.

Over the years, I've had mums winter over. It doesn't often happen that way, but on one notable occasion, I kept a dark red one for several years with no exceptional care. This year, I have a number of new plants which will require mulching, so I may just toss a handful of straw over Mummy if I have some left over.

A Hike To Lodi Creek

Day 324: This collage has been on hold for the last two weeks due to the Alder Lake Fire. The photos were taken on the day of the Volunteer picnic at Sunrise, at the turnaround point of a hike I seem to take every year on picnic day. Why the same hike? Because little Lodi Creek holds a special spot in my heart as one of the most cheering rivulets on the Mountain. Even in late season (and this year, dry), it can be counted on to provide a selection of wildflowers, particularly Lewis' Monkeyflower (Mimulus lewisii) which grows in abundance all along the stream's passage through Berkeley Park and down to Berkeley Camp.

Backpackers will know what I mean when I say that each stream has its own voice. Some babble, some whisper, some laugh. Lodi chuckles. Every rock in the creek bed has some amusing secret to impart to the water and Lodi chuckles at every one it discovers. Perhaps the mosses tickle it, or it finds the pink faces of the Monkeyflowers funny. Perhaps it finds floating fallen petals droll, or the shapes of roots straggling over its banks absurd. Whatever sportive expressions Lodi encounters as it rambles on, it obviously believes them very humorous indeed because they keep it chuckling until this merry stream eventually pours into the roar and rumble of White River's grand guffaw. I hike each year to Lodi to share in its delicious jokes, and when on rare occasion, I have more time, I will continue on past Berkeley Camp to visit another old friend, an unnamed tributary I call Giggly Creek. I think it knows something it's not telling Lodi. You can hear it in its whimsical titter.

Kevin's Artichoke

Day 323: First of all, let me wish my readers a glad, good September Morn! It's almost over as I write this, but the sentiment remains valid. September Morn, for those of you who don't know, is a personal holiday second only to Christmas on my calendar. I normally try to observe it by taking a cleansing ceremonial swim in a frigid alpine tarn, but today I spent it instead helping my good friend and supervisor Kevin and his family move into their new house. I only just got home after a long day of shifting boxes which, if not in keeping with my traditional celebration, was nevertheless a good way to honour the day.

As Kevin proudly showed me around property rich with beneficial native plants and pockets of landscaping, we made several discoveries, notably a grapevine lush with sweet seedless green fruits with a pink blush to their skins at the top of three terraces of raised garden beds. On the lowest level, several artichokes had withered on their stems, leaving only one enormous "thistle" head so radiantly purple that the colour did not look natural. This image has not been retouched or processed. Isn't that a beauty?