Tag: summer

Birth of a Poppy

I’ve had my eye on this young lady for a couple of weeks. She’s been hanging out by the steps off of the front terrace. Although I checked on her every day, her adolescence took forever.

But this morning, when I stepped out with a cup of hot tea, I discovered that she was blossoming! Poppies open quickly, particularly when the sunshine hits them, so I popped outside every few minutes to check on her. Twenty minutes later she was a full-blown floozy.

I love these little hairy caps. As the blossom inside expands, they
rise up the petals until they finally fall off.
Look at the crinkly petals starting to appear! And there’s a white filament of some
kind along the edge of the hairy pods. Maybe it protects the petals?
Isn’t this just beautiful? The texture of the petals looks like a ballgown.
In full sunshine, now that the rays are over the ridge at the top of the berm.
What a beauty!
And like the best women, she’s as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside!

A Love Story

King Boletus

If a picture says a thousand words, then the one above is War and Peace by Tolstoy—all 1200-plus pages of it. This is a king boletus, or porcini. He’s enormous. Fully six-inches-plus in diameter at the cap.

I stood on the mountainside, my heart beating more quickly as I gazed longinly at the sight of him. Was I hallucinating? Surely he was too good to be true. I looked around to see if anyone saw us, and we were alone.

He was mine.

Ranchman was up in the woods somewhere, communing with nature, unaware of the competition for my affection. The nearest road was closed, so most people weren’t venturing this far on foot. I was careful; it’s unwise to announce a relationship like this one too soon.

The coast was clear.

My large mushrooming knife, ready for action.

He shouldn’t have been here, out in the open, shamelessly sharing his handsome self with the world. He was firm and muscular, worthy of a shirtless photo on a romance novel. He should’ve been harvested weeks ago. Animals should’ve eaten him, or at least left tooth marks on him. (Okay. It’s a RACY romance novel.) He should’ve been full of worms. (He wasn’t, but there’s a pretty great analogy with online dating right there if stories my adult daughter tells me are true, and I trust her.

Holding hands with a King Boletus.

But instead he’d saved itself for me. And I loved him for his faithful devotion. (If only all relationships were this easy.) Then I cut him down in the prime of life and took him home (insert evil laughter).

To be continued next summer, when I sneak to this spot again . . .

Porcini Pizza

“The hills are alive . . .” with MUSHROOMS! I thought the harvest was winding down, but I was so wrong! We’re having a banner year, our mountaintops still littered with porcini. (Boletus, if you’re into Latin.)

An afternoon of foraging netted a few baby porcinis and two or three fine examples of king (or prince) boletus—the best of the best. I’ve had to find these fields on my own, with only vague references as to their location. People guard mushroom fields as fiercely as social-security numbers in these parts!

Ranchman was dying for “mushroom-something,” so I assessed the ingredients at hand and decided on pizza. While the oven preheated I cleaned and chopped the smaller porcinis (four cups) and retrieved fresh marjoram and thyme (two big tablespoons—we like FLAVOR in our meals) from the back deck.

Then it was time to saute everything while he fetched the cauliflower crust from the downstairs freezer. After cooking the ‘shrooms in a couple of tablespoons of fine butter, a (gushing) squirt of truffled olive oil, and a liberal pinch of salt, the mushrooms and herbs began to carmelize. The windows were open, and I’m surprised the scent didn’t draw our next-door neighbor or the local bears—one is a 500-pound cinnamon colored black bear, a VERY big bear.

With Ranchman breathing down my neck, I assembled the pizzas. Fresh bruschetta topping made from local farmers-market tomatoes, good-quality mozzerella from a nearby dairy, sliced black olives, and shaved perocino romano all but covered the crust before I popped the pizzas in the oven and made a salad.

In twelve minutes we stood in front of the oven door, looking at dinner, watching the cheese bubble. In fifteen I pronounced dinner to be ready, and we ate one whole pizza, saving the other for dinner tonight. This morning, though, I discoverd that Ranchman had reverted to his collgiate self and indulged in pizza for breakfast. Even though our season is already beginning to taper toward autumn, he’s volunteering to go back to the mountaintops for more mushroom foraging if I’m willing to cook them.

I think we can cut a deal.

August Rocky Mountain Garden

The flying pig weathervane in the upper-left corner reminds me of the liklihood that I’d I’d ever lead the life I lead. I am thankful beyond belief.


While autumn thinks it’s sneaking up on me, I’m enjoying every day in my garden. After a cool night of steady drizzle, I rushed outside this morning to coat everything in Deer Off again. (I’m not anti-deer, but they have plenty to eat without feasting on the bounty of my hard work. And they are very unresponsive to shouted abuse, slamming windows and doors, and the powerful and well-aimed jet stream from my garden hoses. The bums.)

A mixture of yarrow and blanketflower at the end of the berm.

Things get a little wilder toward the end of the berm, where the yarrow grows. This area gets less water, and except for the berm and my pots, our entire property is xeriscape. In other words, it requires very little water. We’ve had so much rain that the irrigation system is off, aside from the occasional sessions on my garden, and I try to be a good steward of this most precious resource. (Pass the wild hickory nuts. And if you’re not old enough to remember Euell Gibbons, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.)

Foxglove, lavender, yellow yarrow, and a very healthy potentilla I cut back this year.

But toward the house, where three 12-foot floor-to-ceiling dining-room windows overlook the blossoms and mountain range to our south, things become a bit more cilvilized. A dozen foxglove popped up in July, having cowered in the earth during our drought, and the bees from the apiaries over the ridge behind me are gluttonous. Their buzzing song accompanies my gardening, and I try not to think about getting stung, reminding myself that they have other things—like collecting pollen—on their minds. Four hollyhocks pierce heavenward, and I’m eager to see how they look (probably like ineffective sentinels against the . . . deer) in the grand scheme of a garden that really has no grand scheme whatsoever, other than containing what I like.

And my delphinium! Aside from the unfortunate fact that they emit a siren song to . . . deer, these flowers enchant me. While bees don’t seem to care for the tall spires of blue, purple, and white, hummingbirds swarm around the blossoms every morning, dipping in and out as they look for nectar. Bears like the commercial sugar mix that people dangle in weird little hanging plastic decorative pot-like things, but we’re discouraged from using them. My more natural approach attracts plenty of the migrating birds.

Lambs Ear and non-invasive daisies; geum in orange, yellow, and red; some funky red plant (also a deer-magnet) that blooms tall and whose name I never remember; and yarrow in every color known to the gardening world blanket the berm. The foliage is getting so thick that I’m having trouble planting my feet without squashing something, but I tiptoe daintily through everything, arms waving when I lose my balance—a berm is sloped after all, thank you so much— with the agility of a rampaging elephant, leaving just a little death in my wake.

My Seasonal Clock Bleats On

Some clocks tick. Others chime. This time of year, mine bleats.

Some of the sheep, which swirl and clump in irregular intervals.

One of the largest sheep ranches in the US is downvalley from me, and the owners import Peruvian gauchos every summer to herd flocks over vast swaths of BLM land that roll right up to the back of my property. The sheep eat noxious weeds and keep the grasses in check as we head more deeply into our dry wildfire season. (The light in these pictures depicts the passage of time. When I shot the photo of the dogs and scattered sheep, the sun hadn’t hit the mountainside yet. The photo above, and of the gaucho below, were taken two hours later.)

More of the animals, maybe half of what’s speckled out across the face of the mountain.
The Elusive Foxglove (and friends).

The sheep are a bit of a rude awakening when my garden is in full bloom, although August and September reveal their own unique beauty. The elusive foxglove (that pops up when it wants to) appeared this year. The Eidelweiss wave in the breeze, while the hollyhocks are so well-staked that they can’t move at all. Corsican violets compete with lavander as most-fragrant flower, and buzzing bees provide a peaceful soundtrack as I weed and prune. (I’m personally responsible for contributing to the apiaries on the hillside over the ridge, where someone is stockpiling wildflower honey.) Deer Off coats the delphimiums, which beats me sitting on the front terrace in a floppy hat, armed with the water hose on “Jet” to try (unsuccessfully) to repel the hungry beasts and alerting neighbors that the crazy woman is trying to drown the deer again. (Guilty.)

If I hand off my manuscript to the literary agent in May, I can spend my summer gardening, fly-fishing, playing golf, and mushrooming. Good to have a plan.
See the gaucho in the upper-right corner?

But back to the sheep, and the real truth behind their appearance: They telegraph that summer is turning toward autumn—not a welcome thought in a place where I had two inches of snow in late June. The animals always awaken us early one morning, bleating softly, or the muffled shout of shepherds or barking sheep dogs tease us out of sleep. It’s ridiculous how excited we get, flapping from thebed to open the blinds to try to spot the small creamy dots, or large swirling blob that looks like a living organism.

Two sheepdogs looking for escapees.

Given that I’m a city girl born and bred, the herd reminds me of how different life is in a small mountain community. I don’t mark seasons here by realizing that it’s time for the state fair, or that the streets are busier at 7:45 a.m. because of school runs and lumbering yellow buses being driven by harried-looking people.

Ignore the orangy-red tinged wild geranium leaves in the top right corner. I am.

Our seasons creep in more gradually and naturally at altitude, and I become aware of changing light and bleating sheep, the first red-tinged leaf on the wild geranium, or the sudden absence of robins. And weirdly enough I don’t completely dread the transformation, even though winter is always two months too long. Our summer is so vibrant, so powerful, that I respect that the earth needs to rest and gather the energy (and moisture) for another spectacular summer. Our seasons are a perfectly appropriate cycle, tying me to a bigger place, a greater purpose, a life beyond my own small world.

In just a few months I’ll be taking my cross-country skis in to be waxed. We’ll blow out the irrigation system so that pipes don’t crack beneath the deep snows. My husband will drag the winter tires out of The Dungeon (our storage), and we’ll take the vehicles in to switch out wheels.

So bleat on, friends, while you can.