Category Archives: travel

Spices and Summer

family, food and cooking, home, travel

This summer is very busy:

1) We are pretty much finished with the actual remodel work on the kitchen and downstairs, so now we have to move everything back into place.  We knew there were some young men in a family down the street, so B. and I went to see about hiring one to help move furniture, and they invited us in for a visit. Their house has the same floor plan as ours, and their kitchen still has the old dark brown laminated particle board cabinets! Coming back home to the light and cheery changes here made me very thankful.

My newly revised kitchen has some pull-out trays in one cabinet, perfect for storing my undisciplined collection of spices and other seasonings. Now I can see clearly what I have, without having to stoop or kneel on the floor to look in the back of a low cabinet. Just in time for old age! Many of my odds and ends of containers of spices and herbs already had labels on the top, so I only had to add a few more to complete that convenient aspect of the display. It seems to be the only thing all the bottles have in common. You know you can click on the photo and make it larger if you want to see my weird library of flavors.

The upper tray is shallower so I put the shorter containers there, alongside my box of teabags that I bring out for guests to choose from. On both trays I tried to have the spices on the left and the herbs on the right, but I wasn’t very strict about it. Since I don’t make gallons of soup every week anymore, the large containers of seasonings aren’t necessary, and I will convert to smaller ones gradually as I use them up. It was buying these ingredients in one-pound packages through our food co-op that led to keeping generous quantities. Two or three times kind friends have given me collections of spices as gifts, which only encourages happy expansion.

2) We are going on the second extended-family vacation of the summer, leaving this weekend, this time to an area near Bend, Oregon called Sunriver, where daughter Pearl’s family from the East are renting a house for as many of us as can make it. We’ll stay most of a week, and have plans for visiting Crater Lake, hiking, river rafting, swimming and fishing–though not all of us want to do all those things.

3) After the Oregon fun, Pearl and some of those grandchildren are staying at our house for a few more days. Just in time we are getting boxes and downstairs furniture out of the bedrooms upstairs so they won’t have to camp midst the chaos. They won’t care if the pictures aren’t back on the walls; the swimming pool is still in its place.

4) I have been reading a lot, since I discovered that some books actually do stay open on the treadmill shelf at the gym, and do not fall off. The Cairo Trilogy was like that, all three volumes just the right size and shape, and old enough that the binding wasn’t too tight. If only I could write reviews while walking fast uphill, but just underlining passages is risky enough. If I’m lucky I just end up with very wiggly lines all through the book, but occasionally I drop the pencil or the book and make an embarrassing ruckus.

There is so much I want to muse about while writing blogs on these books. I hope the summer isn’t too busy for that.

5) Son P. is getting married this summer! He is the 4th child, and the 4th to get married. I started to say they have gone down in order, but I should say that they have gone up to the altar in order. I think this couple won’t have an altar, though, as their wedding will be outdoors. We are as thrilled as can be about our soon-to-be daughter-in-law, whom we have known since she was a darling baby. Glory to God!

Wet Drive on Pentecost Eve

nature, travel, wildflowers
 

I came home yesterday so that I could make it to Pentecost. Vigil last night was wonderful, of course. But today I am sick and had to miss the feast. Being kept at home has given me a chance to put up some photos and share the sights of my drive.

While still on the flats I saw acres of alliums under a sky as white as their flowers, with drops of rain starting to fall out of it. They are onions, yes?


After it began to rain in earnest I noticed the yellow lupines covering the hillsides, where blue and purple ones had been last month. I had to hold the umbrella over my camera to get these photos which show the flowers fuzzed-out by the effects of wind as well as waterlogging.


Only three minutes to snap my pictures, but ten to try scraping my shoes of the mud they’d easily picked up on the side of the road, enough to throw a large vase.

 

Farther down the road clover and vetch are in flower together.
That soil should hold plenty of nitrogen!

On the home front, the amount of rain we’ve had so late in the spring has made a big difference in the landscape. The roses are huge, and the old seeds I threw into the ground without much hope sprouted quickly and are growing fast. Natural sprinkling is more effective than me holding a hose. The temperatures have been low, with wind, too, so mildew hasn’t been a problem.

I never feel right complaining about wet weather in California, seeing as we grow so much of the nation’s fruits and vegetables on land that doesn’t get rain for several months of the year. Even if we got several years like this, it wouldn’t change the basic arid climate. Every refreshing shower postpones this summer’s inevitable drought.

Snow and Birds

food and cooking, nature, travel, , , ,

 

 

On the way up to Pippin’s place this week I stopped in to see my friend Myriah. She lives in a low mountain region where the street names are Quail, Pine, and Towhee. Tall conifers fill all the yards in her neighborhood.

But I didn’t spend any time outdoors that afternoon, because of drenching rain. We stayed inside and I got to meet her miniature parrots that I think are called parrotlets.

She gave me bags full of fabric from a gift that an elderly friend had made to her. I don’t know how I will manage to make use of it–yet. But I got ideas, looking at her inspiring quilts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Driving down to the valley again, I came into sunshine, and the air was warmer. Then at Lake Shasta, fuller than I have ever seen it, buckets of rain made driving hard at any speed. It was awfully cold here at my destination, but it didn’t snow, until this afternoon. Light slushy snow, then what Pippin calls popcorn snow, a sort of cross between hail and snow. This is a view from across the street; it’s only dark because of the clouds.

The snow paused for a spell, and birds came to the feeder! I didn’t see them, of course, until Pippin pointed them out to me, just a few feet on the other side of the window above my sinkful of dishes. We took pictures of the Black-Headed Grosbeak and the Mountain Chickadee. The Grosbeak was a bird she hadn’t seen before this spring.

My daughter and husband haven’t lived here a full year, so every time something comes into bloom or loses its leaves it is an event.

 

 

Everything was so different at my first two visits especially.

The crabapple trees in front are covered in flowers now.
And one of the birches uprooted in the very rough winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m wondering if this is a quince brightening up the roadside.

 

 

I built a fire in the stove this morning, as it was colder than yesterday. And the cats seemed to enjoy it. They slept in nooks and crannies all around the warm room.

Pippin made us some kale chips tonight. I’m not sure I’d ever have tried them if she hadn’t demonstrated how easy they are:

 

 

Take a bunch of kale, wash it and tear approximately 2″ pieces off the stalk. Dry them in a towel or salad spinner, and put them in a bowl. Toss with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bake in a 350° oven for about 12 minutes, stirring a couple of times.

She thinks you should try to cook the kale on parchment paper as her original recipe directs, but she hasn’t always done this. The kale comes out looking brownish-green, but it is crispy and light and flavorful. One person could easily eat a whole bunch this way. We don’t know how much of the nutrient value is retained, and I haven’t researched what anyone else says about that.

When I get home again I will be in the midst of the disarray that seeps into my mind and makes me incapable of writing more than one coherent sentence per day. It’s been nice to relax away from the home that is not homey, and play with Little Scout, who’s seven months old now and lots of fun. While he napped I read and wrote, and even laid away a draft for a little blog I can post later if I feel like it.

Waterfall with Train and a Dipper

family, nature, travel, wildflowers, , ,

Over the weekend Husband and I enjoyed a trip together to visit Pippin and her family; this time it was a short vacation, not the grandma-only working visit. Though I must say I prefer not to split life into such categories; I like the attitude that we tried to take as homeschoolers: Always on vacation, always in school. When traveling, I always learn things, whatever you call it.

We were in too much of a hurry on the drive up for me to take pictures, but I have to at least mention that my eyes were sated with lupines, great spreading fields and banks and roadsides full of them, on and on for two hours. The farmland, once we got toward the center of the state, was impressive with plantations of tiny tomato plants, onions in rows, and clouds of wild yellow mustard filling the ditches and anywhere the fields hadn’t been plowed.

A smudge on my camera lens turned into a glaring spot on most of the photos I took (and yes, it was the real reason, I know now, for the mysterious brightness of that calendula I posted a while back), but we will just have to overlook this imperfection when it shows up, as in this shot showing how my socks happened to match the tiny violets that have sprung up all over Pippin’s back yard.

Four cats still co-exist in the household, where they line up for meals twice a day. The big eyes belong to Little Cat.

A highlight of the weekend was seeing some waterfalls that flow year-round. Near the parking area from which one sets off for the falls, we had to wait for a train to pass over the crossing, before we could get to the other side and leave our car.

Everyone thought that someone else had put the diaper bag and the baby backpack in the car, but no one had. We did without, and took turns carrying Baby Scout.

We had to walk close beside the railroad track for a mile to get to the scenic spot. As soon as we began hobbling over the rocky slope next to the rails, the train that had just passed reversed direction and slowly came back alongside us hikers. If I had any hobo blood in me, I’d have wanted to pull myself right up and go somewhere, anywhere, just for the romance of it.

The train was remarkably quiet, rocking gently on its tracks. Our boots made more noise crunching on the largest gravel I’ve ever seen. After five minutes or so of this unreal intimacy with the looming cars, they had rolled away behind us, and we could see the Sacramento River, down the mountain where the train had blocked our view. We looked back to see this image of the locomotive backing away behind us.

The falls come right out of the hillside, not from a specific creek or spring, and fall into the river, which bends into a curve at that spot, so that it’s not possible to catch the whole span of water falling. It’s even hard when you stand in the middle of the river downstream, as we learned from one who has done it. So my photo shows about 1/4 of the total waterfall.

Pippin notices birds. She pointed this one out to me after she’d been watching him for a while.

She’d also seen his kind before at this falls, and was pretty sure she’d seen it go under the water. When we got home she looked him up in the Peterson Guide and found out he is an American Dipper or Water Ouzel. And they do walk on the bottom of streams! My picture didn’t come out as clear, so I give credit to my daughter for this one.

On second thought, my photo is so different, I think I will show it to you, too. But it’s hard to see my guy in all the glitter of the water spray.

 

John Muir called this bird the Waterfall Hummingbird, and wrote a lot about it. The illustration below comes from his writings, and I assume is by his hand.

ec1e2-muirouzel

I never know what I will learn when I’m with my “Nature Girl” daughter. We looked at the cedars growing around the falls, and she showed me that some of them were Port Orford Cedars, which love shade and water. Their needles are softer and finer than the incense cedars that are more common.

The contented Grandma and Grandpa are walking back along the tracks
in the westering sun.

I learned the name of a brilliant bush that startled me several times on my journey earlier this spring driving this route, it was so dramatic popping out of the grey-green hillsides. Pippin told me it is Redbud.

Frequent sightings of Redbud cheered our way home again yesterday, and we weren’t too hurried to stop and capture it in one dimension.

It was a very full weekend. I haven’t told half of what I saw and heard–but writing this fraction in a blog I hope will help at least some of it stick with me a while.