Category Archives: nature

Slow food and other good things.

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Sunday was a long and stimulating day for me, with church, the symphony right afterward, and going out to dinner with my goddaughter for her birthday. I was a long time winding down when I finally got home, and stayed up till midnight. That usually bodes ill for the next day, but today has been very satisfying so far. I took a walk, made soup, got my sourdough sponge on to the next stage, wrote a letter, and watched the birds for a while.

In addition to the hummingbird feeder I’ve got two feeders supplied with black oil sunflower seeds. This morning two dozen finches (house and gold), chickadees, sparrows and juncos were flitting back and forth from one to another and to the fountain. When a pair of fat robins landed on the fountain I did a double-take, startled at their size after seeing so many little birds day after day.

On my walk I took a loop through the park where we used to attend the homeschool park days (they continue), and noticed for the first time two species of abutilon, though they are big bushes that have obviously been around for years. All of the plant pictures here are from my walk.

 

This time I didn’t add any regular yeast to the Swedish Sourdough Rye, and I’m baking it all in pans. That’s how I used to do it in yesteryear, and it worked for me back then. I don’t have any patience with my fancy Dutch oven boules right now, and want some tidy slices for the toaster. I divided the sloppy dough into small, medium and large lumps and poured them into greased loaf pans, small, medium and large. At the moment they are rising like the very Slow Food that they are, and I’m counting on them being out of the oven before bedtime — not talking about midnight this time!

Spider Christmas Day

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I know it’s their Christmas, because all the spiders in town had been awake all night decorating. They ran to and fro along the creek banks for miles stringing their prettiest threads over pyracantha, ceanothus, grass and star jasmine — the milk thistle was draped extra thick and milky — but clearly their favorite thing to deck with silver and white was the wild fennel, at every stage of its growth, from fine fronds to long-dried seeds.

After a half hour of admiring the holy day celebrations of spiders, I was brought up short by a different sort of beauty. Willow bushes rising from the creek are lifting their buds heavenward; it must be their message of resurrection joy that filled my heart to bursting.

Christ is risen!

 

Don’t confuse the mane with the magpie.

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I saw this strange fungus on the walking path last week, and wondered if it were a puffball type. My nephew saw the photo on Instagram and told me it looked like Shaggy Mane Fungus. I thought he might be joking, but Wikipedia gave me the straight scoop: It is indeed Shaggy Mane, a.k.a. Coprinus comatus. “This mushroom is unusual because it will turn black and dissolve itself in a matter of hours after being picked or depositing spores…” It grows “in places which are often unexpected, such as green areas in towns.” The ones I saw were just up the bank from the creek. You can cook and eat the Shaggy Mane — I guess if you do so before it “dissolves itself.”

We are warned not to confuse it with the magpie fungus, Coprinopsis picacea, which is poisonous, and looks like this one, at right.

Or with the common inkcap fungus, Coprinopsis atramentaria, whose botanical name also starts with Coprin-, but whose form is nothing similar.

I’ll be interested to see what condition my specimens are in next time I meet them.

Gardening in sunshine and breezes.

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The picture below shows clearly how I’ve kept one of my Elephant Heart plum trees (far left) to about half the size of the other, by my prunings over the last few seasons. I don’t know why that is, but I seem to have continued the trend today. I pulled on my jeans and was out with the loppers before breakfast, because my gardener-helper was coming and would be able to clean up after me.

The north side of my garden is especially shady on this winter day, but it is a sunny and drying-out kind of day in any case, in the midst of a series of also welcome waterings. Everything is damp, and the sunshine drew out the scents of all the plants that we were trimming and cleaning up: a little bay tree in a pot, rose geranium, lemon. Alejandro said that even the fig branches gave off a pleasant smell where we sliced off a few branches in our team effort to shape that tree.

I found a flower on the fava beans, and buds on the azealea. The strawberry runners that I staked into the soil have taken firm root under the rice straw that is now so sodden that we threw it out. I hope it’s true, what those “old-timers” predicted when they saw the lizards last summer, that we will have a mild winter.

But the midwinter of 2018 was mild, prompting the fruit trees to bud early enough that they got frosted later on, ruining at least the plum crop — at least, that’s what Mr. Greenjeans, my youngest old-timer friend, told me.

I hated to stop my gardening this noon; I never get my fill of seeing the new buds, and pine boughs waving in the breeze – but A. and I both had tasks elsewhere to tend to. As the days grow longer there will be plenty more work to provide us with happy times in the dirt and leaves and fresh air. Every day in the garden reveals change and new beauty.