A love letter to Joan Didion

Watch this documentary.

Harvest Moon - Peach Summit to the Sea

Up and out. For the mind and body. Perspective. 

One foot in front of the other, it's the only way.

Digging deep, fortifies.   

Mushroom hunting turned Summiting. 1,900 feet in 1.4 miles. 

Some scrambling. Some exposure. 

Perhaps, about 3/4th of the way up I thought I wouldn't make it both up and down. 

The steep down. It gets me. 

prize at the top: big views and last of summer's peaches 

My crew. Of note, Lucy was a champion, climbing up faster than me.

this sign is no. joke. 

knees. I feel you. hips, you too. quads...two days out and you're still letting me know that yes indeed, I'm alive.  

Then, turned west to the sea...

north

south

better late than never.

wow. to my core. thank you ms. Lidia Yuknavitch. you. just what I needed

dappled light

through dappled light spring sprung bright
old growth and salmon's creek
purple crowns, crested larks, and corydalis scouleri, rise above the lace greens
ferns unfurl

 thick needled blanket underfoot 

purple crown

spring's melt measured at 100% normal, my drought tuned ears welcomed the rush and roar,
the soundtrack of spring's melt. past, through and over my mind's chatter. now quieted.

now awake.

layers. of aspens kiss the banks. layers. of dog firs tower above

cool wind on the face

sun soaked resting spot, a river beach

a robin, boulder perched. meditating.

do something beautiful

...and other story telling inspirations found in moving pictures today

harvest

Muddy butternuts, glowing persimmons and community. I hope to write more on that soon, but for now it is a harvest from my old journal...An inspiration from Rilke:
"Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be giving you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Thank you Rilke and muddy butternuts.

Hello, again

How could I have forgotten this classic eighties movie?? So good! And where or where is Shelley Long these days? 

back on the trail

to salmon butte. 8 m out and back. 4000 feet up up up and down down down. 

through a foxglove forest

mushroom hunting off trail and found this creature...

Lucy the champion pin took on that hill 

mt. adams over the salmon huckleberry and mt. hood wilderness areas 

blooming beargrass with a view

nothing like that dusk afternoon light

Seeds. It's time. Let's do this.

It's that seed time of year...let the adventuring begin! 

I love a good seed packet, give me an illustration of a an early wonder tall top beet and I'll be tempted to frame it. I swoon over the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog every time. I cherish my new Christmas tradition of pouring over the Johnny's catalog with Ben's Dad. It happens in the down times, while dinner is cooking, or while we're driving to the next hike, he kindly responds to my endless questions about cheddar cauliflower and tokyo turnips. he never gives a much of a hint about what he might experiment with in the new year, and then, come spring I discover he's actually putting in those cheddars after all... I get so excited to open a seed packet and see what a vegetable looks like from it's start. from a whisper of a carrot to the big knuckly beet seed.

A seed is limitless possibility and a history book. prepare the soil. watch the sun and clouds, maybe even the moon cycles and definitely weather.com for a good day to plant. fingers crossed for the winning combination of little sunshine and a little rain. keep one eye out for your local predators, cats in my hood, birds in another. 

But before all the stories. Before all this cloud watching. There is the buying of the seed. You guessed it, my favorite kind of shopping spree. It's been a year and a complete life changing purge since I've had a garden to plant, so instead of rummaging through my old seed box, the shopping for NEW SEED!! was on this year. 

Where to begin?

BUY LOCAL. yep, there are seed companies that grow seed for where you are. buy it if you can, because those seeds will like it where you are. You might find the seed rack tucked away in the corner of your natural food grocery store, or at your local nursery (and what's a better way to lift the spirits on a rainy April day than taking a trip to a nursery?). 

In Oregon, I have two seed companies to choose from: Territorial (better seed packet design) and Nichols Garden Nursery (more varieties at my local spot and a lot of good reading on a tiny packet). No local options? Go regional. I hear good I couldn't resist some of the asian vegetable varieties sold by Oakland's Kitazawa Seed Company. And for my desert-dwelling friends, get drought tolerant varieties at Native Seed/SEARCH. Dying for that one-of-a-kind heirloom? have to have that wierdly nobbly winter squash that looks like you'll need a crowbar to cook with it? Go with Seed Savers Exchange or Baker Creek. And you can't go wrong with Johnny's of course. 

And DONT WORRY ABOUT GMOS! Really. Seriously. Don't. I've spent many of my hours in the past few months getting the low down on genetically modified food, for work. And, there are currently, in the year 2015, almost no genetically modified vegetables at your grocery store and even fewer to buy in a seed packet for your home garden. (There are only a few commercially available GMO crops currently on the market, most of which you probably won't grow in your home garden : corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, papaya, some summer squashes, and soy beans--there's also new non-browning apples and potatoes that just got approved, but I'm not sure how commercially available they are yet...) If you are still worried, buy seed with a USDA organic stamp of approval. Whatever you think of the organic label, it really means there are NO GMOs. for real. 

the poetics of fruit trees, recipes and freebies

It's spring spring spring here in portland. Everything is in bloom. We have leafed. We've moved from the pinks and yellows of magnolias, the stunning dog woods not just white but pink too, oregon grapes, and shocks of bright tulips, now into the lilacs and the irises unravel, into deep purples, some with wagging white tongues, others, instead, a full pale yellow. Time to get into fruit trees, and bees, and dust off projects shelved in the darkness of winter. Here's a smattering of my spring streetscapes...

hello first true leaves!!! of beet and lettuce to be

a portrait of a carrot

I'm finding myself on craigslist more and the free list gets me every time...

2 TVs and a dentist chair

original manual and operating instructions 4: Nordic Trac Elite

hot tub (lots of hot tubs...)

bathroom sink - cracked

an armoir and a sumac tree

small bag beaded necklaces

4 55 gallon drums

electric organ

1 stack martha stewart magazines

sawdust