a man and his hoe

The End of Flowers

October 11, 2020

It is the end of flowers, or so it seems. The time of flowers is closing. Just a few remain.

The lovely hydrangeas have gone to subtle leathery shades. By now a diligent gardener would have snipped them clean. “Cut them back and they’ll bloom better next year,” I’ve been admonished. But things dying have a gentle beauty of their own.

What is it like to be the last flower left?

To be the last petal clinging? To know that you are all that keeps the end of flowers from happening?

To take one last gasp and float down to oblivion?

It takes 225 to 250 million years for the sun to make one orbit around the galaxy. 125 million years or so from now, earthlings peering through telescopes will be looking at the other side of the galaxy.

Traveling at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to reach the other side. Or you could stay put on earth and get there in 125 million years. Though, since everything else is swirling around too, can you really say you are on the other side?

That far in the future, will anyone be noticing the ending of another season of flowers? I like to think so, though what will humans even be 125 million years from now?
20201010

October 10, 2020

I didn’t realize today’s date was so special until I sat down to write this. 20 20 10 10. Strung together, 20201010, it almost looks like code. I wonder if someone in the year 1010, on October 10, wrote down 10101010, paused, looked at it, and had a fleeting thought about it being so binary.

Fall has deepened. The leaves are starting to pile up. Between the intermittent cloud breaks, the sky is a deep autumn blue.

The birds have discovered the ripe Asian pears, 梨 (nashi). We’ve had so many I don’t mind. Is it the Stellar’s Jays, the Pileated Woodpeckers, or the Flickers that have found them? I’m guessing it is the Stellar’s Jays. And where did that name come from? From a German scientist, Georg Wilhelm Steller. Talk about a hard life. It took him ten years to reach Alaska. He didn’t even make it to the mainland. The boat he was on landed on Kayak Island off the coast of central Alaska. The captain wanted to stay just long enough to get water. Steller pleaded for more time to explore the island. The captain gave him 10 hours.

The crew was shipwrecked on their way back to Russia. They spent the winter on Bering Island where the captain died. They built a boat out of material salvaged from their wreck, and made their way back to Russia. But Georg Steller never made it back to his wife who stayed in St. Petersburg. On his way home he died of a fever at the age of only 37.

Talk about a sad, tragic tale. And I never would have known this if a Steller’s Jay hadn’t pecked at a ripe nashi by the garden making me wonder, where did that name come from?

What other names are there for these birds? The Chinook call them Iqesqes. In Lushootseed, one of the Salish languages of this area, they are called Kaykay.

Come to think of it, each year a Pileated Woodpecker or two finishes off the apples. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen any.

There are still plenty of big, ripe nashi to eat. I culled 75% of them at the start of summer and it paid off. This October I have the biggest, sweetest nashi I’ve ever had. Next year I may cull even more. It does make me wonder if I cull all of them save for one, will that one nashi grow to be the size of a basketball?

I received this wonderful hat woven from Merino wool by a wonderful person wanting to exchange it for some miso. It will be a wonderful reminder of 20201010. She threw in some nira ニラ seeds in too. I’ll remember 20201010 and Georg Steller when I harvest them.
Am I Growing the Wrong Grapes?

October 6, 2020

Am I growing the wrong grapes? Maybe. The grapes along the fence that are ripe are wonderful to eat. I’m enjoying them. And the chickens enjoy them as much as I do. I am surprised that birds aren’t devouring them.

But last night I had to take a picture of these grapes which were featured on NHK’s Good Morning, Japan. Two bunches of grapes called “Yamagata Shine Muscat” brought 300,000 yen ($2,800 USD) at auction. Which means that each individual grape cost approximately $28. These grapes won top prize at a produce competition in Yamagata. And it is the fourth year in a row that the top winning grapes at the competition auctioned for 300,000 yen.

It’s a lovely fall day here. Too nice to worry about trying to grow grapes that sell for thousands of dollars. The day started with no fog and blue skies. This will be a great day to be outdoors.
Fog and Less Fog

October 5, 2020

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.
First Blush of Fall

September 29, 2020

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.

a man and his hoe

The End of Flowers

20201010

Am I Growing the Wrong Grapes?

Fog and Less Fog

First Blush of Fall