Tag Archives: California

The parasitic snow plants are blazing at Tahoe.

friends, mountains, nature, travel, wildflowers, , , , ,

Mr. and Mrs. C. invited us to their cabin again on the south end of Lake Tahoe. At 6,000 ft. elevation it’s still pretty brisk in May, but the sky was SO blue, the lake was SO blue, and the air was dry, full of the smells of pine trees and cedars with some wood smoke thrown in. I breathed deeply.

Here is a map if you need to get your bearings. The lake itself lies on the Nevada-California state line. We usually approach from the southwest and drive through the state capital of Sacramento to get there.

I had escaped the world down below where picture storage was one of the many time-consuming computer problems that had recently worn me out, and I arrived with a reluctance to use my camera. Of course that didn’t last long, especially when wildflowers are out. May in the Sierras brings flowers you can’t see in the summertime, so I had to seize my opportunity, didn’t I? My other blog posts about the Tahoe area have different photos from what I came away with this time.

Cascade Lake in foreground, Tahoe in distance.

We hiked to the top of Cascade Falls one day. It drops and flows into Cascade Lake which lies just south of Emerald Bay, a little higher in elevation. This picture was taken from a granite shelf looking as straight-down as I could manage to the bottom of the falls.

Sticky Cinqefoil
                      This looks to me like some kind of buttercup but I haven’t found it in a book yet. (Update: I added the caption after one of my readers enlightened me.)

The Snow Plants have popped up all over, here and there on the floor of the conifer forest, with no leaves. Mrs. C. was coveting one, wondering how she might get a specimen to grow near the cabin, but what I found out on Wikipedia when I came home makes me think that would be near impossible to make happen.

The snow plant is sarcodes sanguinea, the only species in the genus sarcodes, in the heath family. It is unable to photosynthesize its own food, “…a parasitic plant that derives sustenance and nutrients from mycorrhizal fungi that attach to roots of trees.” Now I can imagine the roots of these bright plants extending deeply into the world of tree roots. If we are lucky, perhaps the right conditions will in the future concur and surprise Mrs. C. with a burst of red.

A lagoon by Kiva Beach

Another color that got my attention was the sand around Lake Tahoe. We took the yellow lab to swim and fetch and I sat on the shore and considered how all the grains of sand were warm golden tones, not like any ocean beach I’ve seen.


Wooly Mule’s Ears, also known as mountain mule’s ears, were in bloom, and I got a photo of them as in a perennial bed planted by Mother Nature, with a border of Squaw Carpet in front.

Wyethia mollis and Ceanothus prostratus

Here’s a nice flowering bush that I don’t know. Maybe someone reading this knows this plant? It grows in the forests on public land and in private yards. (Update: the same reader in a comment below is kind enough to tell us that this is Western Serviceberry.)


Did you ever do a Google image search of “lichen”? Amazing, amazing plants. Here is one of the more subtle designs, which we saw on a rock at the top of Cascade Falls, a lovely arrangement of vegetable and mineral and just one example of how God’s artwork is splashed all around the world for our pleasure and His glory. Thank You, Lord, for the refreshment.

Some things about the Day and the Earth

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In truth, I have never paid much attention to what is called Earth Day. But as someone just pointed out to me, every day is God’s day. That made me think of how “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” And how He created the earth, to be a home for us people who are made in His image. He is so good to us. And in the beginning he looked over everything that He had made and called it Good.

Yes, we selfish people have done a lot to wreck things. We do damage even when we try to fix the situation, because our motives are not often pure and we are filled with pride that makes us stumble. It’s a very complicated and complex earth and task, too, like a lot of situations we or other people create. More often than not, tricky to repair. And is it possible to really love the earth if you despise its Creator? I could get more excited about Creation Day.

“This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” It was a good day for that here, and I thought about Earth Day more than usual because I walked around outside taking pictures of some things sprouting out of the ground, the earth. Dirt Day would get me excited, too, I bet.

This is our lonely — so far — foxglove. Notice how foxglove has love in it? They are the loveliest, I think. In many places in Northern California they self-sow, but not here. I planted three last fall, and snails ate at least one of the buds.

I neglected the foxgloves for weeks and when I finally noticed the flower stem it was curving around on the ground. I rescued it and propped it on the fence. Many people who keep Earth Day are trying to rescue the beautiful things God made.

We and the neighbor rescued the fence that divides our yards last week. I had to detach the Cécile Brunner rose from that fence and tie half of it to another fence temporarily. I think it will be o.k. Today I took this picture of one of the roses.

The first California Poppies of the season have come out! They are our state flower, blooming from perennial roots next to a salvia, across the sidewalk from the lavender pincushion flowers.

When I thought about Earth Day, now when it is already tomorrow for most of you, I also remembered this announcement (below) that Kate penned in her childhood. And it’s the most important thing I know on this subject. I hope you had a good (Earth) Day. It was a gift from the Creator.

Sweet Dreams and Blue Eyes

agriculture, my garden, nature, , , ,

I relived one of the literally sweetest experiences of my childhood yesterday and I didn’t even have to journey the five hours back “home” to the groves my father used to tend so lovingly. We Glad gardeners visited a local nursery just to get one replacement plant for our project of last fall.

navel oranges in bloom

We were looking for a helianthemum, and they are in the area in back of the store, so we passed through the breezeway and were suddenly enveloped, not in a breeze but in a stillness heavy with fruit and flowers.

Overlapping rows of pots containing various citrus trees, including many oranges and mandarins, lined the alley and were exhaling their essence into that space. For me it was a whiff of the deep past, springtimes slowed down to a dream — orange trees taking their sweet time and confusing the mind, because isn’t springtime when everything and everyone is waking up and getting busy…?… but this air is like a drug that makes me want to lie on the grass and let my eyelids droop.

grapefruit and orange trees side-by-side

Our house was surrounded on all sides by orange trees, so that for many weeks every year we walked around in our own tropical island of scent. Can you imagine living in that house and being allergic to orange blossoms? Two family members were — and I pity them mightily, because orange blossoms are one of the happiest things in the data bank of my senses.

My husband and I had only a few minutes to find our plant, so I couldn’t linger, I quickly pushed on through to the shelves of California native plants and other drought-tolerant species. Our first choice wasn’t there, but we found this:

I had luckily forgotten my Western Garden Book in the car so I had to make two more passes through the little paradise to retrieve it. Then we read a bit together about the above plant and some other offerings.

In the end we did decide on this dear low-growing plant, a newish species of Blue-eyed Grass, developed from a California native, and sufficiently xerophytic for our needs. I remember my friend May showing me one of these wildflowers decades ago as we hiked in the Coast Ranges of our state. They aren’t really grasses but are actually in the Iris family, which seems obvious now that I know it.

new planting last October

Except for the one that died, all the plants of our project shown at right are bigger now, but there’s still a lot of space to be filled in.

I can’t settle on which is more fun as a name, Sisyrinchium or Blue-eyed Grass. This is the first we’ve ever had them in our yard, and as you can see, we bought two, because they are small. I planted them tonight, where a blue penstemon, actually two, one after the other, had died last year. I hope to have nice photos of them and the whole bed to show in the future.


And before the citrus bloom is past I will return to that nursery when I have time enough time to wander. I’ll consider the snapdragons in the back, and then the perennials in the front, and I’ll go back and forth through the citrus tree lane at least a few times. I’ll walk slowly each time past the mandarins and Meyer lemons and orange trees and sip my sweet daydream.

Blowing over tulips and into turbines…

agriculture, art, church, nature, , ,

When the spring winds blow, the howling through the trees and the chimes of the patio bells drown out the call of the garden so that I can listen to the world’s discussions on many matters, including — wind! Wind power, to be precise, and wind farms.

I had no idea that those scatterings of wind turbines on the Altamont Pass east of San Francisco were called farms. When a new turbine is installed they even call it a planting. Altamont is the wind farm I am most familiar with, but now I’ve seen photos of much more beautiful and even brilliant settings for these harnessers of wind energy, such as tulip fields in The Netherlands.

Turbines neatly lined up along a canal or placed here and there among what is primarily a tulip farm don’t impress me the way they do when spread over hills that would ordinarily be drab without them. In those cases, like the slopes in California that in summer turn golden brown — or a brown that is just plain dull — the wind turbines grace the slopes with dynamic art.

I haven’t taken the time to exit the freeway and drive to a good vantage point, but I think that one man who did got some lovely pictures that capture the beauty. The most artistic photographs cost more than I’m willing to pay for permission.

Several colorful photos are on the Pattern Energy site, gorgeous shots of their turbines at installations in Manitoba, Nevada, California and Texas. And some of these pages I’m linking to tell the stories of wind farm controversy in more depth than I will, so you might like to visit them for that reason, too.

The problem with the turbines is that they kill birds. The ones on the Altamont Pass kill more raptors than any other wind farm in the world, including the protected Golden Eagles, of which the world’s largest breeding population lives in this area.

This article explains that worldwide the deaths from wind turbines are a small fraction of total bird deaths from run-ins with man-made structures such as office buildings, power lines and our houses; who hasn’t experienced the dismay of hearing a small bird hitting – whack! – against a window? Even nuclear and fossil-fuel plants kill more birds than these converters of wind energy.

But it has been found that the more modern wind turbines, which are taller and slower, kill a much smaller number of raptors. So the old ones are being replaced. Bird and bat mortality are the topics of this site, annoyingly formatted but with useful links and an explanation of why Altamont wind turbines have been particularly deadly for birds.


Driving along Interstate 5 in California, we more than once have passed a truck carrying one turbine blade. These things are huge!

Here is a photo of a “re-planting” of a turbine.

If I were to take a trip past those fields of wind turbines this month the scene might be greener and wetter, something like this.

The labor and intelligence of mankind that is applied to growing tulips results in a product that gives delight to millions of people. The wind turbine is an elegant result of technology, a thing of beauty in itself for its simplicity of design, but also as a symbol of man working with nature and using the gifts of the Creator. Thanks to God for putting some of His own creativity into us His creatures. May the glory go to Him.