Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.
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I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. –Helen Keller
I know, I already posted a quote of the week, but after thinking about it, I am embarrassed to have posted that particular one as my very first Quote of the Week. Mostly for the reason that it is a bit obsolete, and needed some commentary to bring it into today’s world. You can go to the Quotes page to read the collection of all the weekly (or however often!) quotes–I hope it works.
So I am posting this Bonus Quote. And this is a picture of Helen Keller, from Wikipedia.
It’s beach season here. Other than late summer and fall, the beaches are too cold and/or windy, and in early summer too foggy, to be reliably enjoyable. At no time of year is the water very warm: the ocean current flows from the north, which makes it chillier than on the coast of Norway, its beaches benefiting from water coming the other direction.
When we drove out to the beach for a birthday party the roadways were thick with Queen Anne’s Lace. If I’d been alone I’d have been very late for the party from stopping to take pictures. One guest brought a stem of it.
Of course, flowers love to grow at the beach cottage, too, and the young girls love to make bouquets.
After eating we walked down to the beach.
Years ago our friends released some domestic geese into the lagoon and we think it is their descendants who mingle with the indigenous fowl.
The young folks were playing a game
something like the Dr. Pepper of my grammar school days.
This rascally boy had something to do with his sister getting wet and annoyed.
I’ve written about Spot before, here and here. As I was stalling on what to call her, B. decided on Ocelot. A few days later she arrived wearing a collar with the name CASSIE on it, and her address, just a few doors down the street, at a house belonging to a very responsible family I have met. So, she doesn’t need a home! She is like a kid in the neighborhood (maybe an only child?) who likes to roam around and hang out at other people’s houses, eating their food and breaking their rules.
In fact, when we were still feeling more compassion for her, she went into the depths of our abode, on a high shelf in a closet, and knocked boxes and clothes into a heap on the floor. That is definitely a no-no.
But she never cared about or for us; we knew it by her growls. She likes Gus. Now I’m less welcoming to her, but I still like to call her Ocelot. And she is an independent girl; yesterday she arrived without a collar again.
The last decade of my life has been intense with wildflowers. I tried, before that, to learn some of their names, mostly from my husband, and from nature centers in the forests that we camped in with the children. It seemed too expensive to buy wildflower guides, and the only time I would think of it was on vacation.
Then daughter Pippin turned into a naturalist. Then she got a camera, and we had computers, and wowie, Let the Learning Begin! I now have such a collection of (mostly) her pictures on my computer, taken wherever she may go, but mostly in California. Several times I have been where there were many flowers, and when my husband would let me stop and look at them, so I am learning more.
This summer was a treasury of flowers, and I actually did learn the names of more than three, but to keep this post short I will just tell you about the three that stumped Pippin and me. I looked in six wildflower guides, she looked I don’t know where, and we couldn’t figure them out. My friend Di put me in touch with her friends who live near Yosemite, visit there nearly weekly, and are cataloging the flowers in the park. They knew right away what these three were, so I give credit to them, and when they come out with a book I’ll let you know.
My picture doesn’t do justice to this plant that makes a soft lavender haze along the roadway, breaking the monotony of green trees and and grey pavement. Somehow from your car the impression and depth of color are more intense, though pastel. As you may remember, I called it purple haze or lavender mist. I just saw it last week in the more southern Sierras.
Sierra Vinegarweed
I sent this photo to my experts, and they told me it is Lessingia leptoclada. Wife Expert said that if she were naming flowers she would call it Lavender Groundsmoke. See? we think alike! But the common name, I discovered, is actually Sierra Vinegarweed. Not so appealing.
Sierra primrose
Mr. Glad was the discoverer of this flower on his hike up Clouds Rest in Yosemite. My Experts said it is rare in Yosemite and is Primula suffrutescens or Sierra Primrose. They had just “searched it out” and found it themselves two days before he did, on Polly Dome.
Scarlet Gilia
About this bright one they said, “Another favorite of ours…Ipomopsis agregata ssp. bridgesii, Scarlet Gilia (it used to be Gilia aggregata), also called Skyrocket, in the Phlox family. We see it every year along Tioga Road, and it was especially abundant this year.” It’s another one that makes a swath of color along the highway, as in the picture at top.
There you have it, a taste of my beginner’s nature studies.
