I don’t think the mailman would try to deliver anything into this mailbox, but it does serve as a backdrop to one brave rose. This scene is on the edge of the Rose House property.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Revisiting the Fort Ross Fourth
I wasn’t able to participate with my church in the Fort Ross pilgrimage this year, but I thought I’d re-publish my article about the yearly event that I shared five years ago. I hope you all had a blessed Independence Day!
Fort Ross State Historic Park has been a favorite destination of our family for decades. It is a restored fort from the early 1800′s, when California was not yet a state in the Union, and for a while the Russians had an outpost in Northern California for fishing and trapping and growing food. You can see lots more photos and read about the history of Fort Ross online.
I loved the place from our first discovery of it when the children were small. A historic association holds yearly re-enactment days that are great fun, but just visiting on our own was relaxing and renewing, at least in the summer, when the sun would break through the fog and you could smell the ocean and the baking grasses at the same time, and imagine the people of long ago.
After I joined the Orthodox Church, I was delighted to learn that our diocese has permission to use the chapel at the fort twice a year, including on the 4th of July. We worship in the morning and have a picnic afterward when the sun usually comes out. There is plenty of time to get back home in the evening for Vespers and maybe fireworks later on. I’ve made the pilgrimage three times now, and my pictures here are collected from all the visits.
It’s a short walk from the parking lot to the actual fort enclosure. The photo at right is looking across the field from the chapel.
The church building as restored is small, and sometimes we let the whole of it serve as the altar, with the congregation and the choir standing outside and the priests and deacons coming in and out frequently as they pray and serve Communion.
This year we all squeezed into the chapel, which is very intimate. I couldn’t get a good picture because of that window, but I am posting a bad one just to give an idea of the atmosphere. Very thin idea, indeed, as there is only the one visual dimension, and no conveyance at all to the other senses.
After the liturgy, the clergy and many others made the trek to the cemetery to sing a short service for the ones buried there. Others of us waited within the walls of the fort for their return.
The bishop brought a picnic lunch, too.
We waved plenty of flags to show our thankful allegiance to the nation whose birthday we were celebrating, at a fort now owned by Americans.
One year N. brought his hammered dulcimer and treated us to music at the picnic.
After lunch, K. and I took a walk down to the lovely cove below the fort.
One young parishoner and his mother had found treasures in nearby tidepools.
When we got back, the history talk by the park ranger was still going on. It leads up to instruction in loading and firing the cannons.
My favorite priest is getting ready to load the cannon.
A blue study of guys waiting for the explosion.
Bang! Poof! No cannonball was shot–only gunpowder.
The majority of California’s state parks are likely to be closed because of the deep debt our state is in. If that happens, our Fort Ross pilgrimages may become a fragrant memory, and something to hope for in the more distant future.
Update: Since I wrote that last gloomy paragraph, grassroots efforts of many people have improved the likelihood that the park will endure and continue to be one of my favorite destinations — and maybe as a pilgrim in 2015.
a summery poem
The Grass
The grass so little has to do,—
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,
And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;
And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,—
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.
And even when it dies, to pass
In odours so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.
And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,—
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were the hay!
-Emily Dickinson
I’m posting this poem for Lisa and for Jody, because they appreciate grass. I do too, but I must not be a good grass-photographer. All I could find in my files just now is a picture Pippin took at Hadrian’s Wall. Don’t miss the butterfly!
What’s growing in my garden.
I’m enjoying the garden so much these warm summer days, I had to take some pictures. I guess it is something like having a new baby who is always changing — makes you want to capture some of the wonderfulness before it’s gone forever. My memory alone is not up to the task, that’s for sure.
Most of our vegetables this year are just to the right when we step out the back door, just off the patio.
In the last couple of years we made a big effort to improve the soil and ended up with such a huge crop of tomatoes we couldn’t use half of them. I gave away a lot, and froze many quarts, which are mostly still in the freezer.
When I started popping cherry tomatoes into my mouth like candy last July I suffered some ill effects from all the acid, so I have learned to be moderate, and Mr. Glad always was restrained in his consumption of the fruits. This year we planted half as many tomato plants so that left room for some zucchini, which is bearing now. It’s been several years since we grew zucchini; I love to stir-fry it with red bell peppers and maybe some chili powder until it is toasty brown on the edges.
Remember the seeds my friend bought me at The Seed Ba
nk? Now the little fennel plants that came up from them have grown taller, feathery and bright. I have to keep pulling out the nasturtiums that are trying to take over that area. Don’t know if the fennel will have enough summer to mature, because as I mentioned, the Baker’s Seeds packets don’t tell you how many days to maturity, and who thinks of looking up that kind of thing once you have got back in the house and need to get on with other things.
I like to do my gardening and garden-thinking in the garden. I guess that’s one reason I can’t settle down and enjoy Gladys Taber. I borrowed three books by her from the library hoping I could share the joy of her with other bloggers. I found that I don’t have the patience. I can’t enjoy reading about her homesteading because my own is more compelling. And if I’m going to ignore my housework and garden it has to be for the sake of reading and writing about some other realm.
Or maybe just writing a blog post about my garden or house. Don’t you think if Gladys were alive today she would have a blog? And I would read it, I’m sure. Though I prefer to read the blogs of people who are alive and with whom I can have more of a give-and-take, practical relationship.
Then there is the fact that Gladys lived in New England and so many of the plants and the climate are unknown to me. I’d rather spend a couple of hours trying to identify a local plant than read Gladys’s truly lovely prose about her world. 
Here is a salvia plant I spent a good hour trying to identify, an
d which has been growing in my garden for a few years. The leaves get to be more than 10″ wide, and the flower spikes over 3″ high.
I’ve looked at a slew of pictures and descriptions of salvias but not one looks like this one. Maybe the nursery where I bought it developed it – I might take my pictures there and ask them. [Update: It’s Indigo Woodland Sage.”
I think it looks really pretty growing into the peeling manzanita, with a little red valerian in there for accent color.
I bought a new little olive tree! It was at the grocery store and was marked down 50%, and I thought it had been pruned into a very nice shape….could not resist.
So now I am the proud owner of two olive trees. The one I received as a birthday present a few years ago grew very gangly before Mr. Glad pointed out to me that it needed some training. This one seems to be off to a better start already, but it will want a bigger home soon.
I still have roses and more in pots. This last picture features the bushy variegated thyme that I always like to have around. A couple of times a year I shear it to keep it bushy, and it is forgiving if I am irregular with the water. I’m a pretty irregular gardener all around, and I specialize in growing generous and longsuffering species. Summer is also the generous season in the garden, so I am blessed.
Gladsome Lights 