Category Archives: wildflowers

Comforted

California, church, nature, time, trees, wildflowers,

This afternoon I “had to” run an errand to my stomping grounds of yesteryear. It turned out to be a surprise gift, to drive home on the narrow roads winding through foothills where the sweetness of oak trees filled the warm air. Dark grapes were hanging close to the ground in the vineyards, soaking up the last of the sweetening rays. And wild fennel way higher than my head lined the roadsides.

All these scents and more combined over the half hour’s drive in ever-changing proportions to create a soul’s real comfort food. I had only recently been grieving the loss of a nice garden, breadmaking, my wits, and several other things I couldn’t even put my finger on. Today it was as if God through the instrument of Summer put His arms around me and said, “It’s o.k., Honey, the best parts of your Life That is Past remain, and will be here for you in the future.” And Summer was telling me that she is going to sit a spell yet and likely give me a few more hugs.

Oregon – Part 1

family, mountains, nature, travel, wildflowers

The aroma of corn tortillas fresh off the griddle filled the air around the warm rocks that rose jaggedly above the Crooked River. No brown-skinned woman was bending over a fire anywhere in the vicinity, but my grandchildren were wading in the shallows, above which billows of lacy white flowers swayed in the wind that puffed through the canyon. I put my nose in the flower clouds and sniffed; the delicious smell was coming from them, pictured here with wild roses.

It was just one of many richly faceted scenes from the last week, which Mr. Glad and I spent with several of our children and grandchildren in ever-changing groupings as individuals came and went as they were able. Oldest daughter whom I will nickname Pearl, and her husband and four frisky kids (who often are also lambs) flew from the East and rented a house big enough for a passel of kin, in central Oregon.

During the week at any given moment you might have found two or three, or nine or eleven, GJ relations lying on couches or in beds reading, or learning from Grandpa how to play cribbage, flipping pancakes for the whole hungry tribe, or bicycling around the neighborhood that was vast and strangely accessible for being strange. The older children could ride to the store for a gallon of milk and take the opportunity to pick up a bag of candy, too.

blue flax

This is a high and dry country, so our vacation house sat at around 4500 feet elevation. The spectacular Smith Rock was not far away, where I enjoyed the flowers like this blue flax, and white yarrow, while several of our boy-and-menfolk hiked a figure 8 up and around the rocks and got views of a string of long-spent volcanic peaks, usually with lots of snow still frosting at least the tops, up and down the Cascade Range.

I’m pretty certain that the aromatic flowers were of Poison Hemlock, Conium maculatum, in the carrot family, of which the Oregon Dept. of Agriculture says, “Several deaths of livestock and humans are attributed each year to this species.”

To be continued. 

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.

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.