Eat a picnic, kick a puffball.

birds, family, mountains, trees, , , , , , ,

We all drove to the closest Giant Sequoia Redwood grove for a picnic among those mighty trees.

Bigelow’s Sneezeweed

On the way, I showed the family the place where my favorite patch of Sneezeweed can always be found, though I’m rarely able to see them at the peak of bloom as they are right now.

In the redwood grove as well, more flowers were in bloom midsummer than in September when I often come.

Western Azalea

Most, like the wintergreen and Violet Draperia, were past their prime, but I was still excited to encounter the plants at this stage when they are saying in color, “Look here!”

Violet Draperia

If I would ever make it up in June, I might see the dogwoods when they are beginning to bloom —

Pacific Dogwood

Though most of their petals are browned and fallen, the graceful lines of trunk and limbs are as elegant as ever. The gooseberry and currant bushes are loaded but the berries are not ready to eat.

Rigo patiently counted 242 tree rings:

Back at the cabin, we like to throw seeds off the deck for the chipmunks and Golden Mantled Ground Squirrels. Then the boys spent time looking under currant bushes for the critters’ hole. Raj came across a puffball under the deck, and never having seen one before, instinctively thought it was some kind of strange ball, and kicked it.

From the deck above, I heard his surprised voice saying, “Something’s wrong… there’s a problem — Grandma, please come down here!”

When I saw what had happened I explained to him about how it works with this kind of fungus; we arranged the unripe pieces to show that it’s a Sculpted Puffball.

Rigo thought that one of his Pokémon cards had blown off the deck, so while Kate and I were hunting around for that, and I was keeping an eye open for more puffballs, suddenly a bird flew up at my feet and revealed this nest in the grass:

As I’m writing the story next morning, I went out to look down at the nest; I had pushed a couple of sticks in the ground on either side to keep us from stepping on it. It looks like the mother bird is still sitting on her clutch of pretty eggs. [Update: I think they might be the eggs of a Dark-Eyed Junco.]

Breaking news: A few hours later, a baby bird has hatched!

They carry him in.

friends, poetry,

Seamus Heaney wrote this poem after he’d had a stroke and found himself being carried by his friends. That’s why he particularly highlights the friends of the paralytic in the biblical miracle of Christ, who removed roof tiles to let him down in the middle of the crowd inside the house, and thereby played a part in the healing that Christ’s accomplishes. The story is in Matthew 9:1-8, which is today’s Gospel reading in the Orthodox Church.

MIRACLE

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
But the ones who have known him all along
And carry him in –

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
In their backs, the stretcher handles
Slippery with sweat. And no let up

Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable
and raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

For the burn of the paid out ropes to cool,
Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
To pass, those who had known him all along.

-Seamus Heaney

Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo

 

Boys fish, hunt and climb.

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Kate and her family joined me at the cabin yesterday, and we’ve already packed in a lot of fun. This afternoon Kate and Tom introduced the boys, whom I nicknamed Raj and Rigo at their births, to fishing.

The boys also climbed around on the granite boulders near the shore, and after discovering tangled messes of used fishing line and candy wrappers, they began to enthusiastically hunt down every piece of trash they could find, crawling into crevices and scrambling up and down to score just one more item, to get the lake shore a tiny bit cleaner.

I identified a new buttercup I hadn’t met before, and saw again the lovely Pearly Everlasting, which in July has just opened the flowers that will continue to look nice for several more weeks.

Later after dinner, while they drank hot cocoa, I read to Raj and Rigo the story of Jack and the Fallen Giants, a recent retelling of the traditional tale by Jonathan Pageau. It has beautiful and evocative illustrations by Eloise Scherrer, and thought provoking elements such as riddles: “What has more weight, heaven or earth?”

In this telling, Jack is frequently famished and worn out, but he perseveres and climbs higher and higher every time, and receives bursts of strength that give him renewed zeal.

I think that whether they realized it or not, my grandboys could relate to Jack’s exertions because of all the tasks they’d accomplished for themselves this afternoon. In any case, in spite of a cliffhanger ending, we had a good time reading that story.

Boy adventures to be continued!

I ascend through goldenrod and grasses.

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My journey to the mountains took me more than eight hours, owing to the search for a fruit stand on the way. I followed several Google leads to popular stores where I might pick up peaches and a watermelon and other items close to the farm, just before leaving California’s gloriously productive Central Valley. This project led me out of my way and brought me to destinations along county highways with nary a turnout where I could imagine a fruit stand ever having existed.

In frustration and great disappointment I resigned myself to having to buy the produce at the last good grocery store further along my way in the lower mountains. But I prayed as I headed back toward the correct route, “Maybe, Lord, you could lead me to a fruit stand that Google doesn’t know about.”

And there, “in the middle of nowhere,” south of Madera in an area called Trigo on the map, I saw the sign that read, “PEACHES APRICOTS CORN” — It was a real place, not a mirage, a tiny outpost with a nice lady who helped me load my box of treasures into the car. I’m certain that as my happiness turned into enthusiasm and then extravagance, I bought way too much for Kate’s family and me to eat — I will probably need to make a pie or soup up here to use it all.

Then, as drove off and headed up through the sandy blond, hay colored foothills, baking under the midday sun, I calmed down and fully entered the experience of the rising elevation and of leaving that everyday world behind. No need for a map, because I know the way.

After the expanse of golden hills comes the area where orchards of date palms grow, and then the miles of oak forests, after which the climb gets steeper, and the foliage denser. There are the elderberries in bloom, waving their flowers in the breeze, and huge bushes of lupines growing on the banks and reaching out with loaded purple stems.

The goldenrod is spreading its gold across the meadows, and a certain elegant grass grows alongside. The Grand Mountain Dandelion is at its puffiest, and smaller puffs on the wild buckwheats refuse to pose for a photo but prefer dancing in the wind.

In spite of my dawdling along the way to say hello to these old friends, I made it to the lake and the cabin well before dark and was welcomed by my sister and her husband.

I slept very well, they went home this afternoon, and tomorrow the rest of my group will arrive. I’m in the High Sierra and feel on top of the world.