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.