every day is a good day
It takes all winter for flower buds to age until they glimmer like starbursts on a frosty spring morning. Fragile, these gobo (burdock) seed pods shatter easily, waiting for a passing beast to rub against them and scatter their seeds. Their spiny barbs latch onto anything. You can’t walk past them without them sticking to you.
Lavender, mint, oregano seed pods all wait for something to scatter them. They look fragile, but they’re not, surviving all winter through rain, snow, and frosts.
Soaking soybeans is an artful practice. The beans are so peaceful, resting in the quiet water. I let them soak overnight in gently running water. It’s just the slightest of streams falling into the pot, not even making a ripple, just a dimple you can see at the top of the picture. The flowing water gently purifies the beans. By morning they are plump and beautiful.
Outside the tofu cabin, the small sequoia we planted more than a decade ago is now so tall I have to tilt my head back to see the top. Behind it, the cottonwoods tower more than a hundred feet. If I live to be five hundred years old, the sequoia may tower three times the height of the cottonwoods and dwarf the cottonwoods. In 2519 a three hundred foot sequoia on Bow Hill will draw the attention of everyone traveling through the Skagit Valley. This sequoia is destined for great things.
Around the sequoia are these curious tracks. Are they Chicken tracks? I’m not sure, but they are the normal routes the chickens take on their meanderings around the pond.
Where many chickens gather, the snow is trampled to smithereens, three toes at a time.
It’s been a few years since the pond has frozen over like this. If it snows like forecast this weekend, the pond will become a white field, and maybe the chickens will take shortcuts across the pond to get to the other side, maybe. I’ll know if I see chicken tracks across the snow covered pond.
The forecast is for colder weather with snowflakes, but the daffodils pay no heed. They’re opening their bright yellow petals despite the nippy air.
The chickens love any day I make tofu. They pace back and forth by the cabin, waiting for me to appear with oakara おから, the soybean mash created during the process of making tofu. They go nuts if I have some spare tofu.
A narrow strip of land from northern California to southwestern British Columbia is the home of the only palmatum group of maples found outside of Asia, Acer circinatum – Vine Maple. How did they get here? Seeds carried on winds from Japan? Maybe a Siberian swan wintering in Japan took some seeds stuck in its feathers back to Siberia where it fell in love with a swan from the Skagit Valley, and as they preened each other, the seeds embedded in the feathers of the Skagit Valley swan who brought it here, and the seeds fell into the forest, maybe even this very forest thousands of years ago, and from here Acer circinatum spread to California and BC? Maybe I should put up a sign saying this is the very spot Acer circinatum first grew on the Pacific coastal belt of North America.
In midwinter when its leaves are gone, the long, twisting vines of this maple become airborne moss gardens. I would like to say world famous airborne moss gardens, but in a way its good that they aren’t famous, they aren’t even Skagit famous, otherwise the woods would be overrun with world tourists, arriving by the busloads, fresh off the jets, trampling through the woods to ooh and ahh and take selfies with them.
With no worry of a busload of tourists suddenly appearing, I can take my time adoring the cuteness of baby moss barely clinging to the narrowest of vine maple branches.
With no tourists bumping into me, I can let my mind fantasize that the moss growing on vine maples is the slowest growing moss in the world, and that just to get to the size of thumb takes a hundred years, though looking at the vine maple branch, that branch is a long ways from being a hundred years old which it would have to be if that fluff of moss was that old.
Perhaps in just a year or two, I won’t know for sure until I tag some baby moss and see how big it gets in a few years, the airborne moss gardens are lush and mini worlds of their own.
The sun is sitting low in the sky these days, casting long shadows all day long. We’ve reached that curious stage when the sunset is the earliest it will be this winter, and in five more days, the sun will set a minute later. Though the sunrise will keep getting later until just after the New Year, when by the third of January, it will start rising earlier and earlier.
One would think that sunsets and sunrises would keep getting closer and closer together until the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, but they go their separate ways for a short time around the solstice.
December broccoli is a delight. I pluck ripe clusters as the form, and new ones develop further down the stalk. They are so much fun to grow and eat.
Frost turns lavender and oregano into mystery plants. They are practically unrecognizable compared to their summer forms.
The Cuckoo Marans are growing up splendidly. It’s hard waiting to see their chocolate brown eggs. In early spring, their very dark eggs will be so much fun to gather.