Category Archives: nature

We return to the secret Warners.

mountains, nature, trees, wildflowers, , , ,
Jess Valley in the Fall

I was sitting on a log with my husband, in the middle of a tall forest. We were on our way back to the trailhead and not in a hurry to leave. “It’s so quiet,” I said. “You can’t hear a clock ticking, or a car on a road…”

“But you can hear pine needles falling on the ground,” said my companion.

That deep quiet is one of the things we love about the Warner Mountains and this whole corner of the state, Modoc County and much of Siskiyou County. You might go for several hours, as we did, and not see another soul.

“The Warner Range is not part of the Sierra Nevada range or the Cascade Range, but part of the Great Basin Ranges,” you will learn if you read the very short Wikipedia article on them. The Warners extend into Oregon, as you can see from the map at right.

This area is like a secret treasure. The forest and blue sky (we were hiking at over 6,000 feet elevation) seemed to belong to us alone. And it is true that few Californians have been here or even know anything about this hinterland.

Warner view 2003

Ten years ago we came here for the first time, with some of our children, and camped in the summertime. We hiked on the same Slide Creek Trail, out of Soup Springs Campground. I’m posting some pictures of that visit, when the main difference in the scenery was the source of yellow highlights in the views. Earlier in the year it was fields of mule’s ears (Wyethia) that made the bright splashes, but now it is aspen trees turning color.

Mule’s Ears Summer 2003

The mule’s ears have thick leaves when they are green, and after they are dried up, before they lie down on the ground, they clatter sharply in the wind. The aspens make a more whispery noise.

Jess Valley 2003

In 2003 we had stopped in Jess Valley at the corner of Road 64, because the setting of the farms between mountain ranges was perfect for taking pictures. I recognized the spot when we went by and we stopped again for more.

The air is so clean up there, it makes you want to breathe deeply and refresh every cell in your body before you have to go down to the valley again.

by Mill Creek
What the mule’s ears look like now

Our hike wasn’t the only thing worth remembering of last week’s trip, so I will try to write again soon on the culture and events of this out-of-the-way part of our fair state.

Two Glad girls by Mill Creek – 2003

They are playing all around.

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Happily, there is more talk about playing, and how children’s play fits in with the lives of adults — and that doesn’t mean driving them to nursery school or to the soccer field. We are referring to normal play that is not structured or organized or planned by adults.

Jody at Gumbo Lily wrote a wonderfully descriptive post about how her own grandchildren play near her while she works. Of course it makes most of us remember our own childhoods and the kind of fun we had all by ourselves. If you haven’t already, I hope you will comment on her post or here with some of your memories along that line.

Of outdoor play, I remember in my own early years making dolls’ houses in the dirt under orange trees, and the classic mud pies. If the children are “entertaining themselves,” and the adults are taking the opportunity to get some work done, the vast majority of what children do with their time is undocumented, and likely unremembered also. Two more ways we don’t control it.

snail toys

And lest someone think that a big ranch is necessary for the kind of play we’re talking about, I’m posting the only picture I can find, other than what I put up on my last post, of me or my children playing alone. If they are occupied, and the adult is occupied, why, there is no one to hover with a camera.

This picture was taken just after we moved from the country to the city. When we had a huge garden next to a cow pasture and a blackberry bog, across the road from an abandoned orchard, we had no snails. So when we moved here where we now live, they were a new and fascinating object of play, which I definitely did not introduce as a science topic. I don’t know what all went on with those snails, but I had to laugh at the way every little thing can be a toy on what Jody call’s God’s playground.

Now read her blog, because her examples are nicer.

The wind blows warm.

food and cooking, my garden, nature, , ,

The wind has been blowing balmy air into and around the house these days, but I’ve enjoyed some cool walks in the early mornings. Somehow this year the autumn atmosphere is calling me outdoors and I’m actually hearing, feeling the pull. I want to soak up whatever it is in the air while I can, before I get all wimpy and chilly all the time and just want to sit by the fire.

On the subject of fires, this warm wind has fanned the flames of a wildfire in one of our favorite nearby parks — eek! Mr. Glad and I saw the smoke from our front yard where we were working on the lawn and flower bed. Thank God, it was put out fairly quickly and burned less than 200 acres, of vegetation only.

In preparation for the controlled indoor fires I’m anticipating, my husband and I had just finished moving a half cord of firewood from our driveway, to stack in the side yard. My own method of carrying wood involves loading several pieces on my left arm, which was bare on this warm day, and right off was getting a bit roughed up.

I dug around in the rag drawer and contrived an arm protector from a section of worn-out sock. I’m showing you two pictures so you will be sure to see how clever I am.

Two logs loaded on….


Mr. Glad showed me a concave piece of bark that fell off a knobby oak log, and we admired the design of its inner side, one bit of art work that must be representative of gazillions of other lovely bark designs that no one ever sees. Then I made it our computer desktop background.

I’ve had to interrupt my outdoor reveries to cook up some of the bounteous harvest. Old friends hosted a women’s potluck and that offered me the chance to try out a new cake on the other ladies.

When I defrosted the freezer last week I had found various flours that I want to use up, and Mr. C. dropped off a bag of Golden Delicious apples, so I tried this buckwheat apple cake. Everyone loved it, and took home what was left over, except for the slice I saved for Mr. Glad.

The recipe calls for so many apples (six), that they completely solve the problem of buckwheat being a dry sort of flour. It was not overly sweet, and would be a good sort of cake for people who like to eat cake often. I used limoncello instead of the maraschino liqueur. I don’t understand how the cake on the original blog came out so pale. It’s as though the cook used refined buckwheat flour, which I’ve never heard of.

For the potluck lunch I also made a big bowl of tabouli, my method long ago adapted from a Sunset Magazine recipe called Bulgur Salad. Next summer I’ll share it. I was able to use parsley, mint, and tomatoes from our garden. I forgot to take a picture until after I’d stirred in some tuna to make half of the batch into a main dish salad for Mr. Glad.

Back out in the garden again, I’ve been deeply digging to break up the clay for planting some ranunculus bulbs and pansies where a shrub used to be. Some of its big roots were still hanging around and for the first time in my life I used a chopping maul to get them out of there. That was satisfying work.

One of the jobs on my autumn to-do list was to take out the Cécile Brunner rose in the far corner of the yard. This picture shows it four years ago, before it became a burden that is more trouble than it is worth.

I never thought I would say that about such a lovely rose bush, but this one is so vigorous, and vigorously invading three neighbors’ yards, that it requires hours of pruning three times a year, from which I come away scratched and bleeding, and wishing I could have done something else with the time. The bush is in a place where we don’t even properly appreciate its enthusiastic blooming.

I forgot that it likes to bloom in October, until my glance landed in its corner yesterday. It won’t do to whack it down in its glory, so I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before I tackle the job. I will sadly remove one more rosebush from my life, trying to live with the reality of my limitations. In the meantime, I cut some stems to make one last bouquet.

blackberry wine and a white fence

food and cooking, home, my garden, nature, , , , ,

At various spots in our town and country I’m sure I smell the blackberries turning to wine on their bushes – even as I am driving down the street or road that particular scent of summer-into-fall invades my car. I’ve never noticed it before…it’s probably all kinds of fruits breaking down into soil and earth and giving out their last sweetness on the way.

The sweet olive is blooming at the same time, and I must say, this is almost too much deliciousness to absorb in one day. I roasted pimientos from the garden last night, to loosen their skins, and that filled the house with…what shall I call it…Old Mexico? If Autumn has its special atmosphere, it must include all these ingredients in the recipe. We haven’t initiated the wood fires, and I’m wondering if I put off generating smoke, maybe I can prolong these other more subtle experiences. But pretty soon — maybe tomorrow?! — I will be shivering too much to care about that aspect of the season’s loveliness.

And there is plenty of visual feasting to do, with various plants making their seeds now, or putting out the last blooms, the flowers seeming even brighter in the slanted light. They are brave to emerge into the cold mornings when any day now they might get cut down by Jack Frost.

Echinacea Sombrero Hot Coral

 

October is the best month to plant any kind of peas in our area, and I haven’t had sweet peas in the garden in too long. The excitement of the fall garden is making me feel up to helping the little pea seedlings through the winter, so I went to the nursery to buy some seeds. Look what I found – an Echinacea Sombrero Hot Coral. When Kim at My Field of Dreams found something like this last month I ran to the store to get my own, but found nothing. Is this the name of yours, Kim?

Not all the fall colors are orange. Ground Morning Glory

A few weeks ago we had automatic irrigation installed, in the form of a system of plastic tubes running just under the surface of the ground all over the yard. Little black plastic emitters stick up at various places and cover the soil with a spray of water at whatever time intervals we program into the control panel.

Little fence is in the background near the street.

Not a week had gone by before one emitter very close to the front sidewalk was broken off, so we had the guys return and move that line back a few inches, and Mr. Glad installed pieces of wooden fence with stakes that poke into the ground. The paint was a little thin, so he put another coat over it first. I think it’s cute, and when the plants nearby have grown up bigger the white picket look will complement the foliage and flowers nicely.

This afternoon I’m headed back out to plant that echinacea, and also some stock and snapdragons. I’ll clear the pine needles off the cyclamen and trim the rosemary, and sniff and breathe in all these goodies of my garden.