Category Archives: nature

Spiders, Perfume, and Hot Lips

my garden, nature, trees


Technically it is summer, and we do have days above 80°. The summer squash and Blue Lakes are producing, and we even picked a Persimmon orange tomato, so I shouldn’t complain. But it’s a good year to notice features of the garden other than vegetables.

The manzanita was peeling magnificently a short while back and we stared with unbelief at its ability to hold on to the peeled bark with some kind of magical glue.
fennel between manzanita and snowball

It’s in the part of the yard where over a year ago I planted a tiny fennel bush that has now grown into a mighty giant. Spiders have taken over that end of the garden this summer and they really like building webby bridges from the fennel to the manzanita and over to the rhododendron and the pine tree.

…also to the snowball bush, and back to the fence, and including the wisteria, and….if Mr. Glad hadn’t taken the broom to a dozen squatters yesterday I’m afraid they’d have wrapped it all up and out of my reach for good.

This morning I got entangled in the sticky threads just going through the door to take more photos in the mist. The red sedum is in bloom, and one of the two types of rose geranium that share a pot in the middle of the patio where we are sure to bump the leaves frequently and release that heavenly scent.

The hybrid verbena lived all through the winter, and the New Zealand Spinach self-sowed abundantly, so they make lush neighbors to the summer squash at the other end of the yard.

In the Spring I planted a new salvia, called Hot Lips, if I remember right. Each little flower is a half-inch across. 

Do they make you think of a kiss? Well, then, I send them to you as a greeting on this summer’s day.

 
 

California Mountains – Directions and Points

nature, travel, , , ,
Mr G. with shooting stars

The point of going to the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada was to take a hike out of South Lake, above the town of Bishop. When my husband first proposed this trip, I liked the idea of driving to a trailhead that is already high up there; I knew that our day hike would likely not be too strenuous.

After spending the day driving down from Tahoe, mostly on Hwy. 395, we stayed at a nice motel that made luxuriating possible. Making the most of our relaxed schedule, we didn’t get to the trailhead until what was to us an embarrassingly late hour, and I’m not going to publicize it here. When we left Bishop, though, it was already 80°.

shooting star

A mere 22 miles up the road, the temperature had dropped to 60° — because we had gone in the upward direction 5,760 feet. We got nice and warm, hiking for six hours close to the sun, but the thermometer never rose above 75°. When we stopped to cool off or take a drink, we could quickly do that in the shade of a boulder — but the mosquitoes liked the shade, too.

I couldn’t begin to photograph all the flowers and many of my pictures came out too bright owing to that midday sun. Anyway, Mr. Glad and I had made a deal that I would leave some space on the memory card for his shots of larger landscapes and peaks, so for ten whole minutes at a time I would try hard to pretend that I didn’t have a camera with me.

I did think many of my readers would appreciate the one mountain picture I took myself, of this brown peak (at right). Now ladies, does it remind you of anything? How about…a heap of cocoa powder, maybe? It’s called Chocolate Peak.

It was odd that I didn’t feel a need for the boost a dark chocolate bar might give me, hiking along a trail that continued to ascend in the direction of Bishop Pass for our first few hours, up where the air is thin.

I did need to stop pretty frequently to catch my breath, but all in all I was exhilarated, and my mind was composing about 20 different blog posts in an effort to process all the beauty and excitement of the dramatic topography.

When we got back to the car I quickly wrote a few notes to work from when back home in front of the computer. Sadly, when that time came a few days later, I found that without the context that stimulated such a fervent response in me, I couldn’t even recall all the main points that were to flow from the title of this installment.

Since he was a young boy my husband has liked to hike up to mountain tops or mountain passes where he could get a view, and know that he had reached a specific goal. I, of course, would be happy to sit by a field of flowers and work on taking close-ups while getting whiffs of pine needles on the breeze.

That’s partly because I long ago found that orienteering is not my thing, as was well demonstrated on this hike. During the outward bound portion I felt, without thinking much about it, that we were hiking in an easterly direction, but looking at the map later, I learned that our path led pretty much due south.

And every few minutes the mountains change position relative to one another, as it seems when you are getting closer to one and seeing the other side of its neighbor, so I never learn to recognize them. This is one reason to hike particular trails until they become familiar.

paintbrush and columbine with granite

That is probably not going to happen, considering how our hikes are less frequent these days. As for reaching a panoramic viewpoint or summit of anything, on this hike we didn’t try to accomplish that goal. At an unremarkable spot along the trail, Mr. G. merely said, “I think we should turn around now and go back.”

Of course, he knew that the next day he’d get fantastic views of many of the particular mountains he’s come to love during his life. And that is a hint as to the upcoming posts on California Mountains.

(Previous posts in the series: Getting Over,
Tahoe, Rivers and a Song )

all the ingredients are here (poem)

love, nature, poetry, work

This poem that Maria posted last week strikes a chord with me; I keep reading it over and over.

Isle of Skye (photo by Pippin)

MESSENGER

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

~ Mary Oliver, born in 1935, American poet

(I saw it here.)

California Mountains – Rivers and a Song

agriculture, nature, travel, , , , , ,

(This is the 3rd installment of my July vacation travelogue.)

Lake Tahoe sits on the California-Nevada state line, and the rivers in the surrounding mountains form the setting of the ballad “Darcy Farrow.” Ian and Sylvia were singing this song the first time I heard it, and I still think their rendition is the best. I heard many examples on YouTube while looking for one to post here.

As we drove down the highway south from the lake, we weren’t far from “where the Walker runs down to the Carson Valley plain,” and in fact we crossed all three rivers mentioned in the tale, the Truckee, the Carson, and the Walker. We even listened to Ian and Sylvia sing from the CD player at one point in our journey.

Of course I don’t like that Young Vandy put a bullet through his brain, but in comparing this story with other traditional songs I find I like it better than ones where the young man instead kills his beloved by accident or out of anger.

These rivers descend toward the east from from the northern Sierras and always refresh my mind as I watch them from the car. The Walker stays close to the highway longer than the others, and where it flows through desert-like terrain it captivates me by the contrast it gives to the sagebrush-covered banks. It’s fast and furious and carrying a lot of irrigation for the green fields of alfalfa grown farther east where the land flattens out. I recall those expanses of green and the beautiful Nevada cattle ranches in the shadow of the mountains — but we didn’t go that way this trip.

Four years ago we visited this area, and I wrote hasty notes in my journal as we sped along through ever changing layers of conifers, sagebrush, aspens and meadows, trying to preserve the moments of beauty. I didn’t get to catch my own photo of the rivers on either trip, but I found this one on the Web.

And below is one of ours, showing the mountains where the heavy snowpack from last winter is still melting and filling the rivers with icy water. On Hwy. 395 this far north the elevation is still above 5,000 feet so the summer temperatures don’t get extreme. The cattle looked content, and I know I was.