Wildflowers between April Showers...

Last week we left our one slim acre and traveled east to lend a nurturing hand to my Aged P (an aged parent, as per Charles Dickens' Great Expectations). These days our ninety-six year old mother needs some assistance and my brothers and sisters and I have been coordinating shifts. During my five day shift while my mother took her midday nap I would take some exercise. My midday walks led me up a familiar stretch of country road I used to walk as a boy back in the day I didn't have a lift to town five miles away. It was a lonely road those days, a busted up stretch of pavement where snow banks piled up roadside in winter and sweet clover grew in summer higher than my head. But no one was a stranger those days. And even if you were, drivers would still lazily lift a hand and  forefinger in greeting as they leisured by. Many memories as I walked along. It was this stretch of road where I was adopted by a yellow and orange tabby kitten I named Winnifred although Winnie, I later learned, was not a "Winnie" but a "Fred."

Years later I traveled the same stretch by bicycle, a boy's full-sized Columbia 36"wheel bike my parents purchased second hand from a party in a neighboring town. The money most likely came from my allowance but I have no memory of it. In its day the Columbia was a top of the line model, replete with a buzzer style horn that never buzzed and a headlight that never lit. The balloon tires tended to go rogue on sandy stretches of road and throw its rider in the dust. Our relationship was one fraught with flat tires and a considerable amount of walk and push.

My walk took me a mile or so up a gentle grade to where the road crossed a canyon in which I hunted groundhogs in the spring and quail in the fall during my nimrod days. The day before I noticed a scattering of early sunflowers (American balsam root) on a west facing slope, their cheerful, golden faces announcing spring.

When I was a boy and the sunflowers bloomed, I would hunt the hills for spring wildflowers, gather some, take them home to my mother, and present her with a wilted fistful of spring. Today six decades later the sunflowers beckoned again, an invitation to search the sagebrush slope for the first wildflowers of spring. Why not, I thought, as I spied a game trail that tracked down slope to the roadside. I struggled up the trail, grasping branches of sage for support, pulling my way uphill. My feet seemed to catch on every little twig, wander into every badger hole, trip me up on uneven ground. Stopping often to catch my breath, I stumbled my way through the brush to the patches of sunflowers, peered beneath clumps of sage for sprigs of new grass where I knew the wildflowers would be. And there they were, not many, as it was a bit early for them, my favorite wildflowers, their beak-like blossoms perched on fragile stems:"shooting stars," (Dodecatheon pulchellim) our favorite name for them although other gatherers called them bird beaks or bills because of the dark purple, pointed bases extending from swept back pink petals. These striking little dainties belong to the primrose family. A careful search of the area yielded only a couple dozen, far from the days of fistfuls. I had hoped to find delicate "baby faces"(Lithophragma glabrum), tiny white doilies with reddish navels but they were nowhere to be found. I did not want to make the two mile return trip on all fours, so I quit my search and stumbled back the way I'd come. Just as I was about to negotiate the game trail descent, I happened upon a few stalks of bluebells (Mertensia longiflora) which I plucked and added to my sparse handful....

Which I delivered to my mother a half hour later. To see the smile on her face was well worth my struggle in the sagebrush. I'm fairly certain my fistful of spring reminded her of the wildflowers she sought and plucked herself when she was a girl. For this gatherer the flowers were those of memory, too, but if I told you I gathered them with the ease I did in childhood, instead of from a seasoned three score and fifteen years, it would be a bald-faced lie.

Shoveling in the Sweet Peas...

One of my favorite Grant Wood paintings bears the title "Spring Turning," the subject a newly furrowed Midwest cornfield, soil most certainly turned by horse drawn plow, each furrow neatly curled upon the next, following the contours of the land. The painting is so much more than that: it's a celebration of spring, a sign of renewal, a one dimensional statement on canvas that "Hope springs eternal." And the newly turned, warmed soil opening itself to welcome the seed.

March 31. The target day for me to plant the traditional row of sweet peas. Planting them the last of March, early April insures a bounty of fragrant bouquets by late July. I have all new seed this year, some fresh genetics as the saved seed for last year's crop did not perform well. It's eager to go in the ground any time, but sadly the garden is not ready to receive it. My mechanized plow horse is in the shop, awaiting new oil seals so its vital fluids don't seep out. Our world has gone crazy these days. No telling when I'll be able to have my machine back for the spring turning.

Back in the Victory Garden days gardeners did not have access to gas powered tillers, nor were their garden plots large enough for plow and plow horse. The garden patch was turned by spade, one shovel bite and turn at a time. Although I can't remember doing so, as a boy growing up by the river, I must have spaded up my small garden plot to prepare it for planting. My old beekeeper friend Lester Broughton had an ample garden plot on the second of his two lots in town. Each year he raised blue sweet corn, pole beans, and beets (for the greens). Come spring he'd march to the garden with a spade and spend the better part of a day turning the entire plot by hand and he an old man. Though I offered to bring my tiller and work the plot for him, he would have none of it. Like most old men Lester was set in his ways.

Recently I shared my dilemma with the environmentally sensitive Nancy L. Not only does Nancy L have a low tolerance for litter and trash that accumulates on the roadsides of our Valley, neither does she suffer slackers. "Why don't you use a shovel and work up the row?" she recriminated. "That's what I have to do each spring." Well...this old man has his pride, too. And a shovel.

This morning. Shovel and turn. Shovel and turn. One shovel full at a time, three shovels full wide, until I had unearthed a twenty foot section. With no tilling path to follow, I had the tendency to stray from the straight line and bear to the left. I could see the faint trace of last year's sweet pea stubble and used it to keep me on course. Then came the raking, ridding the turned earth of rooted weeds and other litter, smoothing the soil into a level seedbed. Next I furrowed the bed between two fenceposts, planted and covered the seed. As I went about my task, I considered that I'm now about the same age as old Lester when he spaded up his garden and planted his corn, beans, and beets.

At the risk of being called a slacker, I've decided to spade and rake the row in three stages. The first is done. Tomorrow I'll spade up the second. After all, I'm an old man.... And like Lester, set in my ways.

Lists...

I'm not much of a list person. Perhaps I'd get more done if I were, but I'd rather go about the day scattershot and what gets done, gets done. I've often thought about keeping a small notebook in my pocket as I go through the day making a list of the things I notice need doing around the place. But then there's the problem of the pen or pencil. I'd probably lose the first or bust the lead off the second when I sit or stoop over. A list, though, is a stressful thing. A list purports. A list demands you do something and usually in a certain order. I suppose you could make a list of fun, relaxing things to do, but these things usually take care of themselves, don't they?

It seems we always have a list stuck to the refrigerator. "We're out of catsup." "Put it on the list." We need more bacon, cereal, butter, eggs...toilet paper." Put 'em on the list." We even had to add "post-it" notes to the post-it note as we had listed ourselves out of post-it notes. I'm more acceptable of grocery lists as they mostly list foodstuffs, of which, by the way, I'm an avid fan. I find browsing the aisles of the grocery much less intimidating than the plumbing project I've put off or climbing a ladder which usually involves a paintbrush or backed up gutters.

Of those who make and use lists, I find there are two kinds: the first meticulously check off each item as it's gathered. This, of course, requires a writing utensil and you know where I stand in that regard. The second, to which I belong, gathers the goods one at time, making a mental note of each as it's added to the cart. Attending to a list in this manner often leads to considerable backtracking and willy nilly rambling through the aisles. But I don't mind: I'm in the company of food.
.

Those who are familiar with the shelves of produce may even "route"their list, thus directing themselves through the store with ease as they gather one item after the next.

Shoppers oftentimes leave their lists behind, either drop them accidentally or just discard them in their carts. I find such littering makes great reading; not really an invasion of privacy as no one includes his or her names on the list. It's entertaining to peruse the items and guess what's for lunch or dinner. Some lists even include a meal's menu, meatloaf, for instance. If the shopper is in a hurry, I suppose such forethought cuts a few minutes off the task, but I don't mind browsing around; it's food, after all.

I puzzle over some items on the lists. It's not often you find a shopper partial to parsnips. Or one who plans to purchase two pounds of butter cream icing. (Save me a slice from that cake.) Bosc pears? Do some recipes specify "Bosc?"Why not Bartlett or D'Anjou? "Cold beer." Why would someone buy warm beer? "Prunes."Aha...the organic "cleanser." Some seem out of place on a grocery list. "Flea meds?" (But no pet food?) Some lists are definitely "to-do" lists. "Call Dad." "Return bracelet." "Call Sally when counselor calls me." (Gotta be more to that story.) "Talk to an attorney about revoking power of attorney." (The bare bones of a novel, perhaps?) One was a holiday list. Which holiday? Guess. "Reindeer ears." For "Sawyer": "headphones, tennis shoes, rifle" (Sawyer, don't shoot your eye out! Or anybody else's!) If Shane was lucky he might be gifted an "outfit, beer stuff, bedding, novelty item" (ah, expect a surprise in your stocking, Shane). I've found phone numbers (need a dentist?)) addresses, library book due dates, dimensions and materials for a "weekend" woodworking project.

I'm not totally averse to lists. Let me list a few of my own. New Year's resolution this year: list all the books I read during the year, titles and authors. Last year: variety of garden produce I took to the Sky Valley food bank: types of produce, dates and pounds of each delivery. I list mite treatment dates and number of applications per colony.

And then there is the intimidating "Honey Do" list. Now I'm not saying that was what showed up on the fridge shortly after I retired from wrangling sophomores, but each time I passed by, I felt a gentle coercion as if each item was a squeaking wheel. Over the next few weeks I made a point of showing the list to house guests, by way of sharing with them what was planned for my newly acquired freedom. The list bullied me for a few weeks. Then it mysteriously disappeared. I have no idea what happened to it....

A Tool of the Trade: or Smoke Gets in their Eyes...

It's formal name is "Smoke Engine" but to those of us in the bee business this invaluable tool is

referred to as "our smoker."

Defensively territorial and fiercely protective, each female honeybee is armed with a "sting in its tail,"a strong deterrent for those who would steal her honey or harm her coworkers or queen mother. Beekeepers need a diversionary tool to calm the bees during an inspection or routine maintenance of their hives. Since time immemorial they have used smoke to mollify their charges. Primitive peoples used smoldering chunks of wood to assist them in honey theft. Then there were those old school European beekeepers who wafted cigar or pipe smoke over their bees to calm them.

Back in my halcyon days of beekeeping (I've "messed" with bees since my mid-teens), I read somewhere that when bees are confronted with smoke, they immediately head for their honey stores, begin gorging themselves on their honey stash in order to save it should their home be on fire. An interesting theory to entertain, but I suspect bees react to smoke in much the same way we humans do when campfire smoke drifts in our faces: we immediately shift our positions to clear our eyes and nose of the distracting fumes. Distraction...that's the effect I believe smoke has on bees. Beekeepers employ it to divert attention from their intrusion and send the bees scurrying in the other direction. And here's where the smoker comes into play.

A smoker is little more than a small firebox with a bellows attached to supply more oxygen to the smoldering fuel within. Each compression of the bellows sends a puff of smoke from the smoker's spout. The more expensive smokers come with a heat guard to protect the beekeeper from accidental burns as the firebox heats up in the same fashion as your woodstove (see photo 1). The vent hole at the bottom of the device allows the firebox to draw well and keeps the fuel within smoldering.

When I tend my bees, I always announce my arrival by issuing a few puffs of smoke at the entrance of each colony. Next I pry up the lid and direct a cloud or two of cool smoke across the top bars. This approach sends the bees scurrying down the face of the combs and allows for less interruption when the lid is fully removed. Pop the lid without the smoke and the bees issue an alarm pheromone that the inspector readily smells. A billow or two of cool smoke precludes such a response.

When the bees align their heads between the top bars in a "ready to launch" configuration, a gentle puff or two across the frames neutralizes their launch mechanisms. (A word of caution: the smoker is a tool of combustion and will become a flame thrower if the fuel is superheated; the last thing beekeepers want is to create a blast furnace that will scorch their bees.) I use canvas gloves when inspecting and sometimes give my gloves a good smoking to discourage the bees from taking too great an interest in them.

If you ever see a t-shirt that reads "I smoke burlap," rest assured it's worn by a beekeeper. Burlap is the go-to fuel for a smoke engine: coffee sacks, potato sacks, seed sacks--all work well, burn slowly and provide a nice, cool smoke. Some beekeepers use other fuels to supplement the burlap. I use dry cow "flops," or as I call them, "meadow muffins." This "alternate" fuel must be dry and well-aged.

I gather the bovine by-products in Eastern Washington range land after the cattle patties have sunbaked and lain in the fields for a year or two. Other fuels are wood pellets such as those used for animal bedding or pellet stoves. Forest duff, leaf matter, and evergreen needles are also fuel sources. In the carcinogenically unenlightened days when paper filters were used as vehicle oil filters and folks changed the oil in their own cars and trucks, some beekeepers set the old filters aside to drain and dry and later used them for smoker fuel.

A bee smoker can at times be a cantankerous assistant. Your bees are getting restless. You reach for your smoker to calm them and ah, shucks, it's gone out. Stone cold. And just when it would have come in mighty handy, too. I can think of no better affirmation of Murphy's Law than a snuffed smoker. I've learned to take along extra fuel and matches to the out yard because where the smoker's concerned, if it can go out, it will. And much to the bees' delight and the beekeeper's dismay.

Allow me to introduce my smoke engine. For years it has served me well to the point I've had to replace the bellows recently. It is dented and covered in creosote. I periodically have to scrape the rim and the spout cap to rid the firebox from excess buildup or the lid will seize up and have to be pried open before the next ignition. I've learned never to let it cool with the lid on lest it freeze up and become a frustration.

The smoker is a useful tool that is certain.

However, if used incorrectly it can cause a serious burn or singe the wings of your bees. Use caution afield when igniting your smoker, especially during dry weather when you're working an arid out yard. The tool is easily snuffed by stuffing a wad of grass in its snout. Always leave it outside until it's stone cold to the touch. Structure fires have happened because an unwitting beekeeper set a smoldering smoker on the back porch, in the shed or barn. All smoldering, unburned fuel should be doused with water like the campground fire or shoveled under dirt lest a wayward spark ignite something by accident.

The smoke engine, perhaps the most valuable, frequently used tool in the beekeeper's arsenal: whether you're new to the trade or a sting seasoned veteran, don't leave home without it.

The Valley Shorn...

A brief interlude of Indian Summer has brought out the silage trucks in full voice. The road shoulders between here and town are a' flutter with corn chips, the litter of fall, if you will. In their defense, the "corn flakes" are organic and by the end of the month the landscape will absorb them.

Stilled as well is the stentorian growl of field 
tractors after turning over the corn stubble and seeding the fields for an early crop of pasture grass.

Gladys and I glide past cornfields barren now of the waving corn that has kept us company all summer. The sight of fields naked but for row upon row of nubby stalks elicits a strange twinge of loss either from the barrenness of the landscape or the sense that one season is about to give way to another. The starkness of the fields puts me in mind of a couplet from the English poet Alexander Pope: "Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy/And shuts up all the passages of joy." 

The farming business is at the mercy of Mother Nature and I take some comfort in the fact the weather gods have granted the Werkhoven dairy operation a short window of dry weather in which to harvest their corn and pasture grass. 

The corn crop of seven hundred plus acres is now a mountain of tractor-packed silage in the silage bunkers. As we pedal by the huge mound, the Werkhoven crew, family mostly, spread huge tarps over the pile and secure them with tire-like weights. The silage will cure and ferment for a few short weeks and then become a daily staple of the herd's diet (locally grown in the cows' backyard) to supplement the alfalfa hay trucked in (with voices, I might add, equally grating) from the hayfields in the center of the state.

Though I've several times been witness to this Valley ritual, I remain amazed at how 1000 acres of corn and grass, the work of spring and summer, can be compacted into an area less than  half an acre, a feat that seems to fly full force in the face of physics....

The laborers seemed only too happy to pause a moment from their work to grant The Ripple a photo or two. But not without a quid pro quo, the surety that their enthusiastic waving will be imprinted on the Valley history in The Ripple's pages. I was only too happy to oblige.... 

  

The Procession of the Equinoxes...

I saw a cartoon the other day--"The Family Circle," I believe--where the little girl shares with her brother that the remaining months of the year all end with "brrrrr," a strange, but apt coincidence--at least for us in the northlands. Just days away from the autumnal equinox, The Farmer's Almanac, that beacon of weather prognostication, has published its 2019 winter prediction. TFA has added a new phrase to the lexicon of ominous wintry weather. Whereas we northern folk have become all too familiar with "polar vortex,"The Farmer's Almanac has forewarned that winter 2019 will be a "polar coaster." But if you live west of the Rockies, rest easy: the "coaster" will target the mid-west and the east coast. The Almanac appears to have smiled favorably on us westerners, predicting a mild winter with near normal temperatures and precipitation.

There are those who scoff at the prescient Almanac. If you are one of the doubters, there are other predictors of bad winters to come. I came across a list of twenty of these old saws the other day and thought I'd comment on some with the Valley in mind.

Number one: "Thicker than normal Corn Husks." Considerable amount of corn in the Valley, fields of which I cycle by often. Normal looking ears of corn to me as I pass. Sweet corn is coming on, too, and the ears I've shucked seem to be no huskier than normal.

Number four: "Early departure of geese and ducks." The Valley's migratory water fowl just commute anymore, don't they?

Number five: "Early migration of the Monarch butterfly." Sightings of these iconic butterflies are rare in the Valley. I've only seen two in the forty plus years we've lived here. And those two, I doubt, were migrating.

Number six: "Thick hair on the nape of a cow's neck." I'll leave that diagnostic to the Werkhovens.

Number seven: "Heavy and numerous fogs during August." No worries on that one. Just a few the last of the month--and light ones, too, gone before mid-morning. Hey, my tomatoes have yet to show signs of late blight.

Number 10: "Early arrival of crickets on the hearth." Crickets? In the Valley? Have you ever seen or heard one? Pantry moths, however: we've had a blizzard of 'em all summer. I'll endure a hard winter just to rid the house of them.

Number eleven: "Spiders spinning larger than usual webs and entering the house in greater numbers." Not this year. Usually I have to bushwhack my way out the front door and into the garden. If I thought they'd set snares for the pantry moths, I'd leave the doors open night and day.

Number seventeen: "See how high the hornets nest, 'twill tell how high the snow will rest." Hornets here nest in the ground. Disregard that one....

Number eighteen: "The size of the orange band on the wooly bear (or wooly worm) caterpillar." I have yet to see one this year. (By the way, after the woolies go through the change, they become an attractive bug, the Isabella tiger moth.)

My favorite is number twelve: "Pigs gathering sticks." If I happen to see Grammy and Charlie heading to the barn with mouthfuls of sticks, all bets are off. I'm heading to Lowe's for their biggest snow shovel....

And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street...

I offloaded Gladys in the Swiss Hall lot around 9:00 a.m. just in time to exchange greetings with Andy Werkhoven. "Good morning, Mr. Werkhoven." "Good morning," Mr. Johnson as Andy flagged down a big Massey Ferguson tractor chopping grass, trailing the conflicting odors of diesel exhaust and new mown hay.

On down the road we ting-a-ling a woman slapping blue paint on the east side of Sam Werkhoven's old place. In full sun, too. Summer painting advice: "Follow the shade, Ms."

A quarter mile later we see Kelly Bolles tractoring a brush hog over his strawberry field. Easier to find those lost strawberry plants?

Off to the south a helix of buzzards soaring higher and higher in a Valley thermal. A good omen for Brother Tim who has a hand launch glider contest today in Carnation. (Buzzards achieve maximum results from a minimum of effort.)

I pass Bill Boyce returning from his early morning reconnoiter in the Valley wilderness area.

On over Riley Slough ("Tualco Slough," the sign reads). The resident blue heron apparently gone fishin' elsewhere.

Bridge construction site was silent this morning. The weekend, perhaps? But then this is a County engineering affair. Nine 103' long pilings for deck support left to drive. Are the other forty-three already resting on bedrock fifty feet below?

On the return leg below Decks' hayfield I come upon a man and his dog out for a stroll. As the dog turns to wait for his master, I discover the four-legged companion is in fact a coyote pup. We startle it from behind and it quickly bolts into the corn. "A young coyote," the walker smiles as we pass. "I just saved your life," I joke.

Andy Werkhoven again, this time piloting the big Massey Ferguson limo, chauffeuring a small boy (grandson, perhaps?) I wave. Andy tries to coax a return wave from the lad but he wasn't having any of it.

Just not much going on in the Valley this morning....