a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Reflections

Fog and Less Fog

The morning fog is clearing early today. The past days it has persisted all day. This time of year the sun is not strong enough to burn it away. A few days ago, the fog shrouded the cottonwoods.

Each morning, hearing the ducks at the pond is a relief. So when I step outside, I wonder if they made it through the night. They are more exposed than the ducks in the garden. My desire for them to live as freely as possible conflicts with my wanting to keep them safe from harm.

They are most vulnerable when they wander into the woods, something they don’t do that often. Ducks love water. Most of the time they are either in the pond or on the bank, ready to swim away at the slightest sign of danger. The cruelest thing you can do to a duck is not give it water to swim in.

I saw a bobcat (Lynx rufus) the other day. But I didn’t recognize it at first. The animal snuck into the neighbor’s driveway. But I saw it for just a second, not long enough to know what it was. It was too small to be a deer. Not the right color either. And it clearly wasn’t a dog or a coyote either.

A few days later someone mentioned seeing a bobcat in our neighborhood. So that was what I saw. I saw one while bicycling some years ago, just up the road a bit. It calmly walked across the road in front of me. It climbed up a bank, turned around and watched me pedal by. I stopped to look at it. But it wasn’t the least bit concerned. Maybe it was sizing me up as a lunch possibility. And then it nonchalantly disappeared into the woods. I read that, “Its preference is for mammals weighing about 1.5 to 12.5 lbs.” So, that puts me off its menu.

The fog has been so thick these days that puddles form in the spider webs. So what do spiders make of these puddles in their webs? It’s far too much water for them to drink. Do they call a spider plumber to drain their webs?

The benefit of fog is that is reveals how many spiders there are. Their webs are everywhere. Life must be terrifying for a flying insect. At every turn there is something that wants to eat you.

October 5, 2020
First Blush of Fall

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.

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.

September 29, 2020
A Perfect Fall Day

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.

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.

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.

September 27, 2020
Blue Sky to Rain to Shaggy Parasol

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.

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 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.

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.

September 26, 2020
Six Short Weeks

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.

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 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.

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?

September 24, 2020