a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: September 2020

  • First Blush of Fall

    first blush of fall maple leaves

    The first blush of fall has tinged the maple leaves. It is getting cold enough at night for the leaves to start changing. The morning sun rays filtering through the towering cottonwoods are starting to show hints of yellow and orange among the leaves.

    first blush of maple leaves
    cottonwoods in late September
    Japanese snowbell berries

    Back when we lived in Seattle, I loved the Japanese Snowbell (Styrax Japonicus) trees that were in our old neighborhood. So they were among the first trees I planted when we moved here in 2005. As lovely as their spring flowers are, so are their fall berries. They look like miniature Christmas tree ornaments.

    The Japanese word for them, エゴノキ – ego-no-ki (ego tree), is not so flowery. The first part, ego, comes from the fact that when you put the berries in your mouth, they are very エグい – egui, sometimes pronounced egoi, which means acrid or astringent. So, as beautiful as the berries are, don’t try and eat them. Their skin contains a type of saponin, which can be poisonous. The trees may never have caught on in this part of the world if their English name was Acrid Tree. Someone decided to call them Snowbells instead. But who? Certainly someone who enjoyed seeing the first blush of fall.

    The technical name for these berries are drupes, which are “indehiscent fruits in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a single shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside.” And indehiscent fruits are those which don’t split open as they mature the way dehiscent fruits do.

    So could you say that someone who doesn’t reveal themselves is indehiscent as in:

    Martha never could tell what her indehiscent child was thinking.

    Perhaps not. Few like to read prose or poetry where you have to keep looking up words in a dictionary to figure out what the author meant. Certainly not anyone who enjoys the first blush of fall.

    pond in late September

  • A Perfect Fall Day

    september blue

    Skies don’t get bluer than this. Today was a perfect day to pick grapes. Six years ago I planted 15 grape vines, varieties of grapes that ripen this far north. Lynden Blue, Venus, and Canadice from the lovely folks at Cloud Mountain Farm Center & Nursery. Six years later the vines are heavy with fruit. For years we should have a bounty of grapes to enjoy each fall.

    basket of grapes
    grape bunch

    I’m happy. The chickens are ecstatic. All the grape bunches on the vine show how generous nature is. A grape vine doesn’t need to make thousands of seeds to reproduce, but it does.


    grapes in the kitchen
    milo plant

    During the summer, a few grains of milo fell out of the chicken scratch and sprouted at the corner of a garage door. When they first sprouted I thought they were corn. But they become something quite different. A few seeds have turned into thousands. This may be worth growing.

    milo grain head
    ducks feeding on grass

  • Blue Sky to Rain to Shaggy Parasol

    blue skies

    Yesterday, the skies over Chuckanut were cobalt blue. Today the rain has been falling since morning. The path through the woods is dripping wet. Which got me to thinking, that about this time last year I discovered treasure in the woods behind the cabin.

    rainy woods

    I tried keeping diaries when I was young. But I found I dreaded reading them later. I’d read a passage where I poured my heart out a year ago and wonder, what was I thinking? What if someone finds this drivel? Who we are changes as often as the weather. I haven’t kept a diary in years. But I do take pictures. 49,654 photos are in my photo library as of a few minutes ago. If I need to recall what was happening on a certain day in the past, I can look at photos from that day or nearby to remind me. I don’t need to read embarrassing passages about how I was feeling at the time.

    last year's shaggy parasol

    Last year on this very day, September 26, I discovered where shaggy parasol grow among the cedars behind the cabin. We haven’t had as much rain this September as last year, so I had low expectations when I visited the spot where the shaggy parasol grow.

    baby shaggy parasol

    There were no big shaggy parasol waiting today. Just the start of a baby, I think. With the steady rain of this week, we should be feasting on plump shaggy parasols soon.

  • Six Short Weeks

    ducklings at tank six short weeks after hatching

    Six short weeks is all it takes for a duck to grow. It’s hard to believe that the “ducklings” at the edge of the tank were but little puffs paddling with their mother in mid August. I miss their whistles and chirps. They have full throated quacks now.

    Until I had ducks, I had no idea how loud ducks can be. They aren’t as loud as parrots, but not far behind.

    ducklings in august - in six short weeks they will be almost grown
    ducklings with mother

    In late September, the ducklings are nearly as large as their mother. Ducklings are so cute, but if you want to enjoy them, you have to stop what you are doing. Otherwise by the time you pause to enjoy them, they will be grown.

    So if you plan on raising ducks, scratch out plenty of free days during the first few weeks after they hatch. You’ll only have a short time to enjoy the wee things. They grow so fast you can practically see them growing with your bare eyes.

    mint blossoms

    Mint is one of the last flowers to keep blooming well into fall. Their delicate flowers fed many a bee through the summer months.

    The apples are ripe. There is a special juiciness to apples still on the tree. Pluck one and eat it right away. That special fresh-off-the-tree taste goes quickly.

    ripe apples on the tree
    young rooster in the feed

    I was filling the feed bins today. While I went to fetch another sack of scratch, one of the Bielevelder roosters decided to go for the mother lode. Why bother with a feeder when you can have the whole bin to yourself?

  • 317 Days for a Miracle

    miso in crock 11.13.2019

    It takes 317 days for a miracle to happen. November 13, 2019, I put up a crock of miso with barley added to the soybeans, a first for me. 317 days is plenty of time to forget. It came to my mind this week that hey, I’ve got to try that barley miso I put up last year.

    miso after 317 days

    This morning I went looking for it. I didn’t find it where I thought I’d set it aside. Instead, I found an empty crock in that cupboard. I looked all through the house and garage. I went back to where I was sure I’d placed it, and found it hiding behind the empty crock.

    miso in crock 9/23/2020
    miso transformation after 317 days

    Removing the stone I used for a weight, and the plate I used for the lid, the dark, transformed miso is so warm and inviting. Opening up a crock of miso you put up and seeing the miraculous transformation is so much more fun than buying a tub of miso in the store.

    miso in a bowl

    The barley miso is slightly sweet and so delicious. It is definitely worth doing again.

    Calling it a miracle is maybe not the right word. Dictionaries define miracle as being supernatural. I cringe when I hear reporters use the word when a little investigation would reveal a rational explanation for what they say is miraculous. After a tornado destroys a town, they’ll say it is a miracle that so and so survived when their neighbor did not. But what are they saying? That it is a miracle that the neighbor died?

    Aspergillus oryzae, koji fungi, doing their thing over many months is hardly supernatural. As far as the fungi are concerned, I can hear them saying, “What do you expect to happen? Of course we’ll turn that mash of soybeans, barley, and us into something delectable. Just give us 317 days.”

    It’s still wondrous. It still fills my heart with joy. It still tastes so good.