Category Archives: wildflowers

Rain on zinnias, seeds on crackers.

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It was hard to keep up with myself last week, and with all the friends, projects and tasks that fill my life to overflowing. I guess I was somewhat playing catch-up after my mountain retreat the previous week. The garden got gently rained on three times that last week of September, which is unusual. Combined with fog on other days, the dampness caused mildew in the planter boxes, but mostly the lower leaves of the tall zinnias have been affected.

When I noticed the Japanese anemones looking better than ever, it occurred to me to plant a few more this fall, maybe some pale pink ones — but I corrected my impulsivity in time, and won’t be taking on one more project, what with so many others unfinished. A more reasonable goal would be to try to take better care of the anemones I have, and see if they can be encouraged to be taller and more robust. It’s a sign of their middling health, that they do not ever spread and multiply, and their flowers are few and small.

The sneezeweed I grow in a pot looks as well as it ever has. I bought it a few years ago at a native plant nursery, because I love the mountain versions of the flower. I put it in a pot so I could be sure to water it enough; the irrigation settings for most of my garden are set for drought-tolerant plants, and sneezeweed is not one of those. My type is pretty plain, or at least monochromatic, compared to the mountain ones.

In search of fancier kinds, a few months ago I browsed sneezeweeds online for quite a while, and ordered seeds for this one, Purple-Headed. When I am looking at seed catalogs or even plants in nurseries, all the options seem so do-able and desirable. But once the time comes to get on with the actual work of planting… well, I literally drag my feet. So who knows what will happen with these seeds…

I used my sourdough starter twice last week, first to make a large pan loaf of seeded wheat-and-spelt bread. This is the recipe I have been trying to perfect, but perfection hasn’t happened yet. I may have to pause the sourdough project while I branch out and reach back, to other breads I have made or have wanted to try, like chocolate bread, Indian flatbreads, and applesauce rye.

Buttery Sourdough Crackers was a satisfying recipe that used a bit of starter. This picture shows the dough as it was resting overnight, along with leaves of the lemon verbena that I am drying, after pruning my plant for the first time ever.

I used this recipe for: Rustic Sourdough Butter Crackers as my jumping off place, substituting half dark rye flour, and adding sesame seeds to one half, and poppy seeds to the other. I baked them a lot longer than the recipe called for. The resulting crackers are nice and crispy and easy to eat. The butter ingredient plus the sourdough tang is a great combination.

My friend Lucy and I took another one of our monthly walks, up in the hills again but to a park she hadn’t been to before. It’s mostly very brown up there now, but the poison oak is making red splashes in the landscape. And my old friend tarweed!

The Seek app tells me this is not either of the species I saw on my way up the mountain last month, but Hayfield Tarweed. And it seems to come in white or yellow versions, in one case growing side by side:

The third online Beowulf class was this week, and I spent more than two happy hours in the company of the most delightful teachers, Richard Rohlin and Jonathan Pageau. They both love the subject, and Richard is definitely a Beowulf scholar from way back. I will have to at least quote a couple of lines from the poem here eventually, though it seems that unlike me, most people I’ve talked to got an introduction to Beowulf in school. So you may already be more familiar with the story than I.

Apple orchard where I go.

At the end of the week, I remembered: apples! It’s time to make a trip my favorite apple ranch, and see which of their 30+ varieties is available now. I squeezed it in on Saturday afternoon, and added a stop at a nursery out that way, hoping they would have starts of some kind of leafy greens I could tuck into spaces in the planter boxes after I take out zucchini and tomatoes and eggplant. They did!

So here in the back of my car is a mix of apples Empire, Jonathan and Macintosh; and six packs of Swiss chard and collards. I do have chard growing right now, but I think I need more. And I wasn’t able to get collards started from seed in August.

One more glad sighting of late summer I want to share, is this half wine barrel that was unplanted through last winter:

When I put in some snapdragon plants in late spring, I noticed a couple of tiny mystery plants that didn’t look like weeds, so I left them undisturbed. Now everything has filled out and I find that I have beautiful Thai basil and tropical sage complementing the snaps. Gardens are ever surprising.

Happy October!

In the weeds and happy about it.

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On my way up the mountain earlier in the week I came across several plants whose common names include the word weed: Two tarweeds and two vinegarweeds. They all got my attention by the way they added color to the drying-out landscape of late summer.

When I was still only approaching the foothills, I saw bluish plants dotting the yellow-brown expanse stretching out away from the road, and it didn’t look like anything I had ever noticed before.

It may be that in the past they were not as tall and visible from the road, and that this year’s extra rainfall helped Trichostema lanceolatum to thrive. It was hard to get a picture of it without my socks attracting various stickers waiting in ambush, but this closeup on Wikipedia shows what a graceful flower form is hidden in the overall unimpressive bush:

“The plant is an important pollen source for native bees and other insects. When a pollinating insect alights on the lower lobes of the corolla, and inserts its mouth parts into the nectar-containing lower section of the same tube, the narrow corolla portion above is straightened and snaps rapidly downward brushing pollen onto the insect’s back.

“The volatile oils make it unpalatable to grazing and foraging animals.

“The indigenous peoples of California used this as a traditional medicinal plant, as a cold and fever remedy, a pain reliever, and a flea insect repellent.”

The two species of tarweeds caught my eye a little further on. I think it was mostly Fitch’s Tarweed, Centromadia fitchii, that had turned the slopes and flatlands gold in large swaths on either side of the highway.

But the more photogenic plant I managed to get close to was Heermann’s Tarweed (according to my Seek app), Holocarpha heermannii. Both of these plants are in the Aster Family, but different genera. A lot of tarweeds are in the Madia Family, but it seems that Heermann’s is irregular.

The second plant called vinegarweed grows along the roads in the High-er Sierra. When I first met it in 2009, it didn’t occur to me to taste it; maybe if I had, the idea of vinegar would have been uppermost? But my mind immediately wanted to call it Purple Haze, or Lavender Mist.

It typically gets my attention as I come  around a curve in the road, floating as a long pastel smudge on the shoulder. That first sighting was long before I had any kind of nature identification app, and when I eventually found someone who could tell me what it was (Sierra Vinegarweed or Lessingia leptoclada), that amateur botanist told me that if it had been up to her, she’d have named it Lavender Groundsmoke. The hope of encountering these flowers again would alone be enough to bring me up to the mountains every summer.

The last plant I will share has no connections to vinegar or tar; it is the favorite Mountain Pride, or Newberry’s Penstemon. In an average year, its flowers would have faded to brown by now, and in fact most of them have. But the snow hung on so late here this summer, till the end of July, that the earliest wildflowers had to wait at least a couple of weeks longer to emerge. I was happy to find one bloom of Mountain Pride still fresh and bright. These plants that sit overlooking the lake are a landmark for me, announcing at the end of my journey to the cabin, You have arrived!

Primroses were floating all around.

smells, summer, wildflowers, , , , , , ,

My friend K. and I took our first ever hike together — unless you count tromping up and down hills in San Francisco, which we used to do at Christmastime. It was a pretty easy walk, just over two miles, in a place I’d never been before. Three gravel pits near a river have been turned into small lakes, and the trail passes by two of them and loops around the third.

pennyroyal

As soon as we set off from the trailhead the distinctive late summer scents of live oak and fennel and redwood filled my consciousness. It was midday, and the warmth of the air brought out their special essences and melded them into that perfume that is one of the best things about the hot season; it makes me feel at home, and quite wealthy.

Rough Cocklebur

We saw large clumps of Rough Cocklebur, a new one to me; poison oak (of course), and — elderberries! I had just told a blogger last week that I never see elderberries unless I go to the mountains. And here were gobs of them. I wasn’t prepared to gather the berries, and it probably is forbidden anyway, as they are growing on public land. I didn’t even “gather” a photo, but you probably know what they look like.

The chicory wildflowers were the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Usually they are fading or for other reasons not very photogenic when I see them. This is the same plant from which the root is used to make a drink that people use as a coffee substitute. I have developed a love for the drink, hot or cold, that I brew from chicory that has been gathered and roasted by someone else.

chicory

My favorite discovery of the afternoon was Floating Primrose Willow, Ludwigia pepoides which was growing all around the lakes and out onto the water in broad swaths. [update: in my original title I called them “willow flowers” but Linda pointed out that in so doing I gave the impression that they are willows — they aren’t at all, are in a family of aquatic plants sometimes called water-primroses.]

K. and I hope to make a habit of our hikes together; neither of us can seem to make it happen if we are trying to go alone. We loved this outing so much. May God help us to continue!

Floating Primrose Willow

From dogwoods to biscuitroot.

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I’ve been with the family of my daughter “Pippin” for a few days, several hours farther north in California from my home; they live in the forest in the mountains, where the air right now is infused with the scent of pines and manzanitas and all the other woodland plants warming up and drying out after a wet and late winter. Every time I leave the house or get out of the car and smell it afresh, I take several breaths as deep as I can make them, trying to get the forest into my body.

There have been many opportunities to whiff aromatics in the forest and out of it, as we’ve visited higher mountain meadows and streams (Tamarack Flat), the botanical garden in Dunsmuir, the McCloud River and waterfalls, and a hilly spot from which to watch how the setting sun colored the sky above a volcanic mountain (Mt. Shasta).

I’ve gushed over the dogwoods and peonies, and marveled at the names of plants new to me, such as scorpionweed (Phacelia) and biscuitroot. We saw swaths of the carnivorous California Pitcherplant, wild onions, and the wildflower called Pretty Face.

It’s been too much for me to process, truly! Especially when every morning brings new experiences — and I haven’t even mentioned the bird songs everywhere. Pippin introduced me to a new app called Merlin, that listens to your space and tells you what birds are talking or singing nearby. And the children are older, and staying up later now in the summer, so I am spending more time with them, and not on my computer. One book we read together was Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat.

So I won’t be identifying these photos right now, but if you have any questions about them I’ll be happy to answer in the comments or in updates once I get home again. For now, I just wanted to share a little “whiff” of my adventure with you, and I’m sorry I can’t send you the birdsong and the scents. But I hope you are discovering some of those wherever you are. Enjoy!