Cross Spider

I’ve moved to a new city three times in my life, and each time I might have made a better first impression if I'd arrived in town wearing a T-shirt that said “I KNOW--I should have seen this place five years ago.”  Or ten years ago, or fifteen, depending on the age of the person telling me what I’d missed.  Everywhere always used to be better, according to the people who were cool enough to have been there.  Did you know that Austin, Texas was the greatest city on planet Earth until exactly the moment the Liberty Lunch closed for the last time?  What was the Liberty Lunch you ask?  Oh, nothing, I guess you just had to be there.  Seattle was pretty cool too, until they closed a bowling alley and a Denny’s in Ballard, and all these condos were built on top of the artists who used to live in the trees and drank independent coffee before that was even a thing and we wore flannel because it was the thing to wear, not because it was the thing to wear, you know man?


That’s the right of people who stay in their hometown though.  If you stick with a place long enough, you do earn ownership of it.  You can complain about the way it is now, and cherish the way it was, if you want to.  When I go back to my hometown I might as well be a tourist.  All the stores are different, I know about three people I could call.  Here I've met people who have been working the same plots in my community garden for thirty years.  They really do remember Seattle when it was a lot different.  Their regional complaints actually contain bits of history.  If Seattle seemed better to them back then, maybe they seemed better to themselves then too. 


I’m not a native northwesterner, and I'm not trying to pass myself off as one, but if I should need some kind of credential to prove I'm rooted here, I could point out that my son is a native, and that’s a serious thing to me.  He might become a rolling stone when he’s older and leave this mossy place, but it’s important to me and to Jordan that he have a hometown.  We love our hometowns.  Even if you can’t go back, it’s good to have a place you can’t go back to.  Some people can’t not go back anywhere, so how do they even know which way is up?      


So I’m trying to learn about this place, taking Henry out to explore it and reading about the history of the land and the people, and I’m finding that I love it here.  I hope that if I love it, Henry will find it easy to love too.  Yesterday morning I was at work, and when the sun came up I went outside and it was raining.  It was maybe the first good rain after the summer drought season.  I wanted to jump out of my skin, I was so excited.  It was like dreading the first day of school, but then when you get there you find out your best friend from two years ago moved back to town and he’s in your class.  Henry is going to know how lucky he is to live in beautiful Washington State, with these hundred year red cedars and these salmon who (hopefully continue to) return every year.  We’ll always have to grow more peas and cabbages in our garden than tomatoes and peppers, but they’ll taste better to us because they’ll be our kind of food, from our kind of place.


Also, I'm going to try to teach him that it's bad manners to welcome people to your town by explaining to them the sad fact that they aren't cool enough to have seen the place in its most recent heyday.  But shoot, some people can't help themselves.

Cross Spider

Araneus diadematus

Family Araneidae

Here's a common lady to see during autumn in Seattle.  Henry and I found here in the blackberry bramble behind our apartment.  They're harmless to humans, but they sometimes devour the male after mating.  Another fun fact: they digest their food before eating, by throwing up on it.  Neato!

--Tim 9/27/11

Black Huckleberry

I would like Henry even if he wasn’t my boy.  Everybody’s into slow things now, like slow food, slow money; Henry is a slow baby.  Which is perfect for me, because I’m a slow man.  Henry took an extra ten days to gestate.  It’s going to take me an hour just to write this blog.  No reason to hurry.

We just got back from camping.  Henry’s favorite camping game is to go up to a tree and touch it, then go over to another tree and touch that one.  He laughs if your run with him from one tree to another, but if you start at a run and then slow way down to a slug’s pace he goes bananas.  He keeps looking at that tree and cackling his head off until you finally touch it, and then he’s looking to the next one.  He takes life one tree at a time.

He’s not sure enough on his feet yet to walk from one tree to the next on his own.  Walking is another hurry he wasn’t in.  It’s like that Cat Stevens song, where he says if he didn’t have hands he wouldn’t have to work.  To Henry, walking is just more work.  I move really fast when I’m at work, to get everything done on time; it’s how you can tell I don’t care that much about it.  When I’m doing something important, like helping Henry pet the dog more gently, I takes my time.

Black Huckleberry
Vaccinium membranaceum
Family Ericaceae (Heather)


In some places in Washington State, black huckleberry (or thin-leaved huckleberry) can be the most common under story bush of the middle elevation.  That was definitely the case where we were this weekend, Tahklakh Lake in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest, below Mt. Adams.  Every trail in the campground was cut through huckleberry bushes.  One reason could be fire ecology: black huckleberry regenerates fiercely after fires, and native people in a lot of areas burned the under story to encourage huckleberry growth and eliminate other plant competitors.  


Even at the start of autumn Henry and I were able to find our fill of the fat black berries to eat, and the leaves were just beginning to darken to a gorgeous plum color that will paint the entire forest like it’s covered in jam until the snows come.  

--Tim 9/26/11

Nootka Rose

If you ask Henry what sound a sheep makes, he says "Ba, bababa, BAH BAH BAH!"  If you ask him what sound a cow makes he says "mew."  If he sees a raspberry bush, even without any berries on it, he points to it and shouts "Dada!"  We took him to the state fair and he loved the pigs, the pygmy goats and the John Deer tractors best.  When he wants to throw a ball or a clementine he winds up like Felix Hernandez and whips it.  He had his first haircut and he didn't cry.  He's been camping three times, nine total nights.  He barks at dogs.  He's in the ninety-fifth percentile for head-size.  He will not wear socks.  He figured out how to spill a sippy cup, and he does it on purpose and laughs.  He feeds his dog Cheerios.  He eats with his own fork and spoon and he can open the freezer door.  He prefers playing in the sprinkler to going in the pool, prefers splashing in the lake to the sprinkler, but likes to be in the river best of all.  He gives us kisses when we tell him goodnight, and he warns us when something is "hot".

So what if he doesn't walk yet?  Everybody walks.

The other night we went foraging for wild rose hips.

Henry helped pick the fruits.  I've read that the rose hips are best after the first frost, but the not-quite ripe ones were the easiest to work with, and the least likely to be full of larva.

He can also say "flower".

Each one contains at least one-hundred million seeds.  We scraped those out with a small knife.  The raw fruits are chewy and tangy.  They're not too good.

I made four jars of jam from the hips, two with blackberries we picked (4 cups rose hips, 1 cup blackberries, 2 cups sugar) and two with rhubarb from the garden (4 cups rhubarb, 1 cup rose hips, 2 cups suger).  The one we've tried so far is delicious.  How many one-year olds eat rose hips?  I bet he walks before most babies try their first rose hip, that's for sure.

Nootka Rose

Rosa nutkana

Family rosaceae 

This wild rose grows up and down the West coast, and is one of two native roses to the Puget Sound.  (The other one's the bald-hip rose.) It's long been in use as a medicinal tea by native people, but the hips were only eaten as an emergency food.  Some babies were bathed in water boiled with nootka leaves to promote strength.  During World War II, when the Nazis successfully prevented most tropical fruit from importation into Britain, The Times encouraged people to gather wild rose hips and printed instructions for creating a vitamin C supplement.

--Tim 9/7/11

Tomatoes

Its sort of amazing to me when someone isn't willing to share.  If I remember childhood right, it was basically grownups forcing kids to share everything constantly until they graduated and moved out.  You shared your gifts with your brother at Christmas, your cake with your friends on your birthday, you sent your toys off to Goodwill in the spring, you shared your candy with the little kids at Halloween.  You never wanted to, but the entire kid calendar was pegged to sharing, so you shared.  You shared because it was the only way to keep the adults out of your hair.  That's the social contract: you are made to share as a child, so that sharing will be second-nature by the time you're an adult.  You need the entire society to reenforce this concept because, of course, sharing sucks.

If you didn't share, you'd still have all your candy and cake, and 100% use of your toys.  You'd want for nothing, and good thing, too--anything you DID want for, no one would share with you.  The reason we teach kids to share even though it sucks is that you get something better than you give with sharing.  You don't get all the junk you want, but you do end up with a community you can live in.  You wind up with a bunch of people leaning on a lifetime of parental bullying to get each other to pitch-in just enough to keep society from falling apart.

Henry doesn't want to share.  It doesn't take long to figure out that sharing is a drag.  So now I find myself on the other end of the contract.  Now I'm the one hectoring him to share his tomatoes with his buddy Harrison when they come to our garden, and not to bogart Harrison's tomatoes when we go to theirs.  For now I'm lucky though.  Henry only speaks about a dozen words, and none of them is "Why?"

There's a list of thirty gardeners at our garden patch who have donated produce to the food bank.  Henry and I are number twenty-nine.  "Why Dad?  Why I gotta share?"  Henry will learn to share through the ritual forcing of his mom and I, every day, for the next two decades.  He's going to ask us why he has to a lot.  Getting us a heck of a lot higher on that list might not make sharing easy for me to explain, as this muddy post attests, but at least it might give me one leg to stand on.  

I shouldn't say that Henry NEVER likes to share.  When we were at the garden with little Harrison and his dad, the boys were pretty sweet to each other.  Harrison gave Henry some of his cherry tomatoes, and Henry responded by petting Harrison's head, the nice way we taught him on the dog.  Then he let Harrison take the tomatoes back, and laid his head on Harrison's leg, to get patted on the ear.  These boys... they're some good boys.

Tomato
Solanum lycopersicum
Family solanaceae (nightshade)


Tomatoes are related to a lot of dangerous plants like henbane, deadly nightshade, and even the potato, which can make people terribly sick.  After it was first brought to Europe from Mexico (having originated in the Andes), its poisonous cousins and what was considered a rancid smell led the founder of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, to name the fearsome plant "lycopersicum": wolf peach. Thus began a checkered history that led finally to the tomato becoming "the most popular garden vegetable in the world" according to a website I found that doesn't site sources.

You say "tomato", I say "wolf peach".

--Tim 8/29/11

Indian Pipe

On Saturday my brother and I took Henry out for an all-day hiking/fishing trip in Wallace Falls State Park.  It was a big trip, and if we'd had to hike another 100 feet I don't think I would have made it, what with 26 lbs of Henry strapped to my front and another 20 lbs of Henry supplies strapped to my back.  We hiked five and a half miles and 2,000 feet up to Wallace Lake near Gold Bar, WA, fished for five and a half hours and achieved sunburns under cloudless skies, caught no fish of usable size, then stumbled the five and a half miles back out again.  It was basically a perfect day.  But if it's proof you want....

Uncle dan and the sweaty man.

Look at that view!  We were nearly the only people who came up here all day, and it was gorgeous weather.  I was talking to my brother about it, and I realized that if you built this place, and only the three of us showed up, it would be a failure and it would probably have to close down.  But no one built this lake, it just exists whether we show up or no one shows up.  And the whole world used to be like that!  Everything that was, was for it's own sake.  Now every single place you go in a typical day was built for someone's purpose.  School, work, home, the store--all of those places would close down and disappear if they could no longer entice or compel anyone to visit them, so they pander or bully to get people in the door.  There's dignity in a place like a mountain lake that conducts itself as though it will be here forever.  There's a lesson for people there as well.

He was so proud using his own spoon... I did what I could to keep dirt off it but you know.

He scooted in there himself, I guess it was pretty refreshing.

My baby-talk voice is so weird.

Indian Pipe

Monotropa uniflora

Family monotropaceae

We saw this ghostly plant and thought it was a mushroom.  Turns out it's a white plant that grows as a parasite on mushrooms.  It's white because it has no chlorophyll, so it gets no nutrients from the sun, as other plants do, but instead grows in dark spots under trees where it can suck nutrients out of tree fungus.  

It was used by Indians to treat eye infections, but eaten raw it's mildly toxic, so keep it out of your baby's mouth, even if he was a well-behaved boy all day and he really wants to eat it.

--Tim 08/23/11

Thimbleberry

On Friday the family had our pictures taken at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, and before the photographer arrived we picnicked in the grass.  I couldn't believe how well Jordan got around on her crutches.  It was her first big walk since the accident, and she crutched over hill and dale without complaint, though I know it must have been tough for her.  She can bend her knee now but can't bear any weight on it.

Henry had a good time as well, he likes to point at people's dogs or birds that he sees and holler at them, and the Gardens proved a good spot for that.

The photographer was very nice and competent, and from the pictures on her website she seems to do a very good job.  My sense of her is that she didn't go to art school or get a lot of training, but has probably just taken a whole lot of pictures and come up with her own sense of style.  She reminded me of an argument I had with a friend of mine this week.  We were arguing about cooking, supposedly, but really we were arguing about All Of Life.

I said that I'm a good cook, because the food I make tastes good.  She said that if I was really a good cook, I'd be able to cook anything, including more difficult dishes.  If a guy serves me pudding, I say, "nice pudding", if a guy serves her pudding, she says, "so you can't make flan?"  I didn't realize it at the time we were arguing (I just thought she was being annoying -- let me say I'm a good cook, lady, what do you care?), but we were really debating Results vs. Technique.  I said good food comes from good cooks, she said good cooks have great skills.  What strikes me in retrospect is that obviously both of these statements are true.  Both of these facts form a feedback loop.  We cook, we get good results, so we cook again, getting a little better each time.  If we get to a certain level, and we still like it, maybe we go to cooking school and spend a week just dicing onions, but in general we don't practice technique apart from getting results, and we don't get results without gradually improving our technique.  

So when can I actually say I'm a good cook?  When can our photographer say she's a professional?  When is Jordan an expert on crutches?  Well... when we get good results.  I'm still right!  But with the caveat that we must keep improving, so we can always say "yeah, I used to think I was good, but lately I realize that now I'm really good."  

On the other hand, entropy: everything is gradually breaking down all the time, such as thimbleberries.

Thimbleberry

Rubus parviflorus

Family rosaceae (rose)

For pure sweetness, I've never tasted any better berry than thimbleberry.  They're close relatives of raspberries, and taste similar, but with less tartness, less moisture, and more sugar.  They fruit in early summer in the Northwest, and the ones at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens have already passed their prime.  First the salmon berries come and go, then the thimbleberries.  Then the black berries.  Henry gets older too.  I want time to get better at being his dad, but nature doesn't give time, it just rolls right on.  Here's Henry now, let's see what he has to say: kklku8luuqs8uqw8u

I think that means I better go play with him, while I have the chance.  Here's what a thimbleberry ought to look like:

--Tim and Henry 8/22/11

Bittersweet Nightshade

Henry and I were walking our dog before supper tonight picking blackberries, when we found this guy growing amongst them:

I freaked a little at first because I thought it was a plant called deadly nightshade, turns out it's a somewhat less toxic relative.  Anyway, it was a good reminder to keep an eye on the little guy any time we're picking berries or just hiking in general, and to teach him to keep his paws off any wild plants unless Dada says they're okay.

It's funny the way nowadays we often think that it's important to kindle a connection to nature, but one man's nature is another man's wilderness.  Or more to the point, "nature" can turn into "wilderness" on you in a hurry.  In an urban greenspace we won't run into a bear or a wolverine, but a rabid raccoon?  Maybe.  Maybe we'll stumble onto a poison berry or a patch of stinging nettle.  Maybe a bird bomb will drop on us.  If given the choice, the pioneers who first lit out into the territories might have played it smart and just stayed home to watch the tube.  

We do have the choice, though, to go out if we want, and trade a small portion of our wealth of comfort for a piece of what most of the folks from less domesticated times and places had and have in surplus: sunburn, scratches, the occasional tummy-ache, and most importantly an up-close familiarity with the wild world that  sustains us all, contains our cities and farms and our visions of the future, birthed us and gave us our sense of ourselves, and can makes us stronger, and hardier, and wise.

Bittersweet Nightshade

Solanum dulcamara

Family solanaceae (nightshade)

Bittersweet nightshade is a vining perennial native to Europe and Asia, probably first brought to the Americas as a landscape plant due to its pretty purple flowers and berries the change from green to yellow then orange and red as they ripen.  Drugs.com lists it as a medicinal plant going back to Rome in 180 AD used to treat skin irritation, while in the US it was being used as a diuretic a hundred years ago.  Now its an "unsafe poisonous herb" according to the FDA.

The ripe berries are likely to cause vomiting, maybe worse in children, and every part of the plant is poison, but the unripe berries and the root are the really bad news.  Fatalities are rare but they're there.

Apparently, its common for them to grow around Himalayan blackberries, too, so be careful out there, ya'll.

--Tim 8/15/11

Red Huckleberry

Yesterday afternoon Henry and I set off into the woods looking for huckleberries.  We'd seen some days ago on our usual trail along Thornton Creek, which runs past our apartments, but when we got back to the spot they were gone.   Either people, or birds, or hopefully not a bear had gotten to them.  The only rule of huckleberries is get them while you can.

So we started to tramp around, hunting.  Henry sang us his good luck song.  "Da da da da daaaaa...."  We moved slowly and looked carefully, naming the trees we went past as a way of making sure we were taking it all in.  "Big leaf maple, Douglas fir..."  Then a pit bull came crashing through the bushes, stopped ten feet in front of us and started barking at us.  I had Henry in the carrier, and my brain wanted to turn and get the hell out of there, but I knew that would just make him chase us.  The dog had his head down and his shoulders were twitching as he edged closer, still barking.  I yelled out "Is someone missing a dog?" and wondered how I was going to fight this thing.  Pocket knife or just kick him in the face?  Then I heard a guy.  The owner came running up with another pit bull, also not on a leash, and a big white dog, not on a leash, and a little rat-dog, on a leash.  "Sorry," he said, as all four of his dogs were barking at us now, "they're not used to  seeing a baby in a carrier."  Wow, interesting fact, dickhead.  Sorry to bring my baby out in public where he might disrupt the fragile sensibilities of your unhinged killing-machine.  Too bad there's no possible way to restrain your aggressive dog, other than a leash or course, which you clearly don't have access to, other than just the one.  I was seething.  As they went passed us he sheepishly asked, "are you having a nice walk?"  I said something nasty to him.  

After that I was a little wound up.  Henry didn't seem to be bothered, but I was walking too fast and not paying enough attention.  We startled a rat and he ran into a thicket.  The only berries we saw were devil's club, poisonous.  Then, after about a half and hour, when I was calmed down but ready to head home in defeat, I looked up and realized we were standing under a ten-foot tall huckleberry bush.  Or was it a tree?  I didn't realize they could be that tall.  We plucked every little red berry we could get our hands on, which apparently isn't the fastest way to harvest them.  You're supposed to rake or shake the branches and just let the berries fall off.  We know for next time.  Then we went home and ate them, another successful outing in the bag. 

Red Huckleberry

Vaccinium parvifolium

Family ericaceae (heath)

Red huckleberry grows along the West coast from Southeast Alaska down to San Diego, in acidic soils or from the stumps of dead trees.  Indians cultivated huckleberry patches and ate the berries both fresh and dried.  They also used the berries (which resemble salmon eggs) as fishing lures, and made medicinal tea from the leaves to treat diarrhea and allergic reactions.    

Red huckleberry also resembles red elderberry, which is poisonous.  The major differences in appearance are that elderberries occur in big clusters, while huckleberries occur individually, and elderberries have big, opposite leaves, while huckleberries have small, alternate leaves.

Red elderberry: 

POISON POISON POISON POISON


--Tim 8/12/11

Peas

Henry and I had a big garden day.  First we picked dried peas.  Peas are just about my favorite vegetable to grow, because they're fool-proof survivors, you can start them really early, during the most enthusiastic part of early spring, and they're delicious.  They also suck in nitrogen from the air and stuff it down into the soil to feed our future crops.  We ate all the fresh snow peas we could through the cool summer we've been having in the northwest (sorry everybody else, about your heat-wave), and now that the sun is finally out we're picking the dried pods to shell and put up in the pantry.

Taking Henry to the garden is my favorite thing.  He scoot-scoots around in the mulch and whines for raspberries and unilaterally decides to harvest an onion sometimes.  He winds up with dirt all over his face and sometimes his arms get a little pink and I always have to keep him from getting into the rhubarb leaves and it's usually the most joyful thing we do in any given week.  And afterwards he always sleeps well.

Also, thanks to our buddies Harry and Daniel, we came home with a heavy bagful of fresh potatoes.  This is my first real garden, and these guys are our first garden buddies, and I'm so thankful for both.  There's something about growing food that makes me want to share it with people, and it reminds me that we need to see all of our friends more.  If you're our friend, come over for dinner, will ya?

Peas
Pisum sativum
Family: Fabaceae


It's fun to eat foods that have been cultivated for thousands of years.  Sometimes I think about all of the people who probably ate peas at one time or another, from Abe Lincoln to Julius Ceasar. Some of us may be the subject of Shakespeare plays or time-travel buddy-comedies, but we all eat the same peas.  At least, we do if we were born in the last 5,000 years or so and have access to produce originating in Egypt or the near-east.
Anyway, I don't really need to say too much more about peas, but here's this, from  the WSU Extension Service:


In Norse mythology, Thor gave peas to humans as a punishment, not a gift. One version of the legend says that he sent flying dragons to use them to fill up and foul all of the wells on earth. The dragons were a little clumsy though, and some of the peas landed on fertile ground, giving the people a new vegetable. To calm and flatter the even angrier Thor, the mortals dedicated the vegetable to him and ate peas only on his day, Thursday.


Here there be monsters:

I found a few of these sweethearts, called pea moth larva, in my pods at shelling time, having each eaten through a pea or two.  The internet says that crop rotation and harvesting your crop early are the best way to foil this guy.  

--Tim 8/9/11

Himalayan Blackberries

Today I took Henry out to pick our first blackberries of the season.  They basically blanket the city of Seattle in an undifferentiated thicket of thorns and drive over a smorgasboard of our native berries, but what the heck, come late summer they explode with big black fruits.  They taste sweet when they get old and saggy, but now they're still young and tart, so we picked a pint in the bramble behind our apartment building and made a jar of jam from them.  Henry has scratches all over his shoulders from the thorns.  I put him in overalls to protect him, but it was hot so I let him wear a sleeveless shirt.  He hung off my left side in the baby-carrier, eating every third berry I plucked, and he wasn't shy about letting me know when a berry cane reached over and gave him a love-tap.  He condenses the phrase "Yowza Dad, you're doing it wrong!" into a simple "Ahhhghhh!"  Its a lot easier for me to understand, so I appreciate it.  Jordan wonders what the doctor will say about the scrapes at his checkup tomorrow.  I say little boys get scratches: it's what they do.

        

Himalayan Blackberry 

Rubus armeniacus 

Rosaceae family

Bred for fruit production in Armenia (and not central Asia as the common name implies), this invasive weed was introduced to the US in 1885.  It now runs feral in twenty-five states and a couple provinces.  It packs a one-two-three punch for survival.  One, it has sharp thorns to keep away predators, two, wide leaves to shade out competitors (Douglas Fir and Western White Pine here in the Puget Sound region, among others), and three it can reproduce both through seeds which the birds eat, and by driving one of its canes back into the soil and sending out runners from there.  

I've worked on crews trying to eliminate blackberries from watersheds by digging out their massive root balls, sheet mulching over and replanting, and it seems to me... get used to the blackberries.  It's a ton of work requiring a bunch of people to clear even a small area, then along comes a sparrow and plop! another blackberry bush.  And don't let those goat buffs tell you grazing is the answer.  The goats munch the stems down and then they grow back like a fertalized lawn.  Better to stop complaining about the blackberries and just eat em.   

--Tim 8/8/11