Family, Flowers, Food

As documented in Martha's blog, she along with my mom, aunt, and uncle came and visited for a few days in April.
True to our food culture, we spent a lot of time making, eating, and talking about food. Martha took pictures of it, but I mostly watched her carry around our one colorful salad plate for three days because it was her 'accent plate'.
I stuck to taking photos of our trips to the Refuge (aka my favorite place in the South Sound) and Point Defiance Park in Tacoma.
Here, Aunty and Uncle watch bagels boil and puff up.

Here's part of the remaining freshwater wetland at Nisqually NWR, a view from the visitor's center platform.

Point Defiance is a huge park (there's also a zoo & aquarium) with multiple gardens embedded in it. We spent some time oohhing and ahhing over rhodies and azaleas

The little sneaky crabby spiders are out in force, capturing bees. Some of the rhododendrons had flowers the size of grapefruit, like the white blossom to the right.

Plenty of gorgeous azaleas too, not quite as in-your-face magnificent as the rhododendrons, a little more subtle.

 We then moved on to the native species garden...

 A tiny lily who's name I have forgot above, and intensely sweet smelling false Solomon's seal below

Currant berries fully formed already on a red-flowering currant, while shrubs elsewhere are still in full vibrant bloom. And a little anemone, not much larger than a quarter.
We found a place in the sun to eat our picnic, and watched the crows and robins stealthily advance on our position. And there was a heron. And Nancy found some turkey tails (fungus) which are rather pretty.

 All in all it was a good visit, and I know some of them rest easier having a reference point for where I live and where I go on mini adventures.

Today we are going to the Prairie Appreciation Festival, so we can properly celebrate all those millions of camas turning the prairie into a rustling blue lake.  Happy sunny Saturday!

A vibrant life-giving dictator...

The Sun has dubious control over my life. For the first few years in Washington the winters didn't really phase me, but now I look towards the dark damp winter and feel silent despair wave and ripple down my spine. At this point it is probably 90% psychological, but more and more I miss the suffocating dead heat of California and laugh unsympathetically when the locals whine when the mercury bumps above 80 degrees.
Sunshine rules my life. I curl up like a cat in the rectangle of sun that graces us in the morning through the sliding glass doors. I wake up increasingly early, now averaging a 5:40 wake-up without any attempt to train myself into the rhythm. It is with great joy I come to a day off and realize I can get up before everyone else (happily) and get errands done, stare at birds, coo at flowers, and put in a full 4-6 hours before the Otter even peeks his head above the sheets in his den. Sadly many businesses don't share my enthusiasm for the bright, clean early hours, but wonderful Winco is open 24/7, so I can always get the groceries done before too many other people get the same idea.
In such a fit of early morning wonder, yesterday I embarked on a little drive to Mima Mounds, convinced that the spring would bring something lovely to the lumpy prairie Brandon and I visited in February.
Suffice to say, I am very glad I went. Here, a chocolate lily nods along, one of a few to still be seen blooming.

 The common camas began in dribbles but soon swelled in number to dapple the prairie pale shimmering blue in the morning light.

 There is a much less common form of camas that blooms white.

 Camas by the thousands, if not millions

 Deep dark violets here and there, popping out of the low vegetation like little secrets

I wondered briefly if any shooting stars were still flowering, looked down to my left, and lo... Most already had little seed capsules.

 One small patch of the threatened Golden Indian Paintbrush and a more common orange paintbrush

Nice moss, about to release gametes

 Little star flowers beginning in the woods

 It was a gorgeous day, I spent a large portion of it reading in the sun. And that is life here, cheers!

The Signs of Springs, and Sultry Summer Days

Spring is a month early. There is no way around that. Ornamental cherries and plums are blooming left right and center, the daffodils are still faintly trumpeting - but mostly kaput, salmon berry flourishing in a pink rivaled by red flowering currants. Oregon grape is blooming here and there. Temperatures neared 70 degrees in March when it should have been consistently cool and drizzling.
While skimming the news recently I read that some Floridian politicians are attempting to do away with reference to 'climate change' in official reports. I didn't dig further, because I would like to believe the best in people, and maybe they have coined a better term for what is happening on our world.
 A pale morph of the lovely red-flowering currant.

I recently had a college educated, intelligent hippy chic counter a discussion of our early spring (the frogs never really stopped chorusing this year - they should have been silent for months, and we were at a stormwater pond doing an amphibian egg mass survey...) with something to the effect of "well they aren't seeing global warming in Wisconsin, its been a record cold year yada yada" (I added the 'record' part, but it has been quite cold on the other side of our continent). While I fish faced (opened and closed my mouth, struck dumb by this assertion from a woman in the environmental field) the biologist we were with condescendingly defined global warming - an overall warming trend accompanied by variable and more severe fluctuations in weather patterns. (To be fair that particular individual makes me giggle pretty frequently - I think perhaps she doesn't have much of a filter.)

My point I guess is that I didn't read the article about Floridian politicians because, well, I would like to pour positive energy into the world, and reading such articles is a sure way to defeat this optimistic goal. People like to (try to) use tiny bits of evidence to counter a huge body of scientific work, and it is infuriating.
Its snowing! If the world is getting warmer than why is it snowing! Take that, climate change believers!
Bah.
Ask the skiers, snowboarders, farmers and so on on the west coast about their snow pack. They might smack you in the mouth. Maybe.
You can see this trend. Whether you believe it is due in part to human activities - that's a whole other discussion. But to at least acknowledge that something is happening and you may need to respond by developing infrastructure to support your population (in a low elevation sate surrounded by ocean)... Ah. Not feeling so positive now, am I?

I take comfort in the fact that plants and animals are actually on a whole pretty resilient. We've done a lot to decrease the habitat quantity, quality and range of many species, but so have other events in the past. Although we are undergoing a mass extinction currently, if the world is around in a few million years there will probably be interesting and diverse life again, completely unlike what we have now.
This is by no means a cop-out. I believe we should take steps to minimize our impacts, protect and improve remaining habitat, educate others... I know I am preaching to the choir, but so far I have no other audience.
That people are unwilling to think about the consequences of their actions is...loathsome. Here I am feeling guilty for my level of consumption, even though it is significantly lower than a large portion of the American population. In a water-rich region I worry about water waste, in a food rich nation I feel sick when I dispose of food we just didn't get to before it went off. I'm getting harder to live with.

I dream of a world where clean water is not fought over, where resources are not squandered, and we care for the earth that provides for us.
Is that too much to ask?

Now lets look at some pretty pictures to make us feel better, shall we?
A trillium, in a patch of what must have been well over fifty plants.

At the tail end of February we embarked on another hike, to make up for the overly-thrilling birthday hike. We ended up at Mt. Rainier, which is the only place I have seen snow this year. We did a short little trail to Comet Falls, it was nice.

There had clearly been a big storm/avalanche/catastrophe in the area in recent years - the trees lining the valley  bottom near the falls were all snapped off at the same height, in the same direction. We speculated for a while, and came to no particular conclusion. 

In early March I did a little monitoring for a restoration site (its actually a mitigation for water withdrawal, but restoration all the same). I get so easily distracted.

I also caught a shrew (although at first I was truly convinced it was a vole - having seen neither in real life and only having Redwall references to draw from, and all the vole holes around).

 In mid-March we had Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) training off in the woods, where I was stunned to find orchids, violets and even a trillium in full bloom. There were fairyslippers

Lots of them

And Twayblades

I forget the actual name for these structures, but its what lichen use to release spores.

 Violets, willows and wood sorrel too - people left and right were plucking up wood sorrel to eat the leaves - to show how clearly badass they are for knowing what plants you can eat. Although I don't know why one would bother when there was plenty of salad to be had at lunch and dinner every single day. People like that kind of irritate me. Sure I know I can eat a whole host of plants out in the woods, but I wouldn't unless I was desperate. Also - why are you destroying something that will give you a minimal nutritional boost when there is free food literally 100 feet away? Don't we do enough damage as it is?

Excuse me while I dismount my high horse.
There were also these clusters of some kind of Amanita. The interesting and confounding thing to me was that all sorts of people noticed these mushrooms, but not the fairyslippers and violets growing directly next to them (to the point where they were walking on the orchids to instagram these mushrooms... not that I am much better but at least I watch my feet).
Sorry, I think I still have a foot stuck in that high horse stirrup.

There was actual learning too - I took a search and rescue course in which we did case studies of real searches, learned tracking, grid searching and a little bit of ropework. The "man-tracking" and rope work were my favorites. Can you see the print?

We learned to assemble rigging to pull harnesses and litters upslope, it was very neat! Our instructor said he was impressed with us, which I am going to believe at face value because it makes me feel goodly.

In other news, I house sat for a week and ended up with nearly 5 dozen eggs. They had these neat trilliums in their garden. I am still a little stunned that I can make this tasty bread. Last week we barreled through 2 loaves like it was nothing. Mmmmmm.

Thanks almost entirely to one lovely Auntie&Uncle who I will be seeing soon, I purchased a new little point and shoot Canon, which I am overall pleased with. It's (understandably) not quite as 'smart' as the old camera, but it produces quite nice closeups, which was a primary consideration. You can judge for yourself; all the photos in this blog -except from Comet Falls - are from the new camera.

Happy Sporadically Sunny Saturday!

(Sunrise at Nisqually NWR)