Red, White, and Blueberries

It's the Fourth of  July, which means, of course, that the 80- and 90-degree, relentlessly sunny, azure-skies days that we've enjoyed for a week have abruptly ceded the stage to gray, overcast, low-60s weather. Fingers crossed it brightens up a bit. (Nice weather is scheduled to return--natch--after the weekend.)

But! Still in the works are the other joys of summer, aside from sun and heat, namely the holiday's signature RED...in the form of fresh Rainier cherries...

and white (in the form of marshmallows that will later be smooshed in S'mores over a backyard fire--Jet-Puffed, of course, because they are apparently "America's Favorite")...

and BLUE, in the form of locally grown blueberries (which admittedly look more purple now because they've been baked into the Blueberry Yogurt Coffeecake, made using a recipe from the wonderful cookbook Dungeness Crabs and Blackberry Cobbler).


No, really, it WAS hot the past week, and not just "Oh, you Seattle-ites think a 70-degree day is roasting" hot. Really, 80s and 90s. MID-90s! Proof: here is the sign put on a fence up the street by an enterprising girl who was busy plying the thirsty multitudes with beverages. Note, please, the parched dragon.

If overcast skies persist, we might not see much of the colorful fireworks, but by then we'll be working on the colorful Rhubarb Marionberry Crisp, shown here before it's gone into the oven while a bloom of frozen condensation still rimes the berries (from the Phinney Farmer's Market) nestled among the rhubarb grown in the backyard garden.

Even if we don't get to see any fireworks, we can always find a rainbow somewhere, such as this celebration of the Supreme Court's recent ruling on DOMA as exhibited by Adirondack chairs up the hill.

Monkeyshines in the Rockery

When a mystery plant pops up in the garden, it feels like a bonus Christmas day. True, sometimes the plant turns out to be the equivalent of coal in the stocking (like the time the seemingly delicate orchid in my garden turned out to be the highly invasive noxious exotic Himalayan balsam). More often the plant is a pleasant surprise, like a patch of feverfew or a tintinnabulation of Canterbury bells.

But sometimes it's definitely more like receiving an especially charming gift. That's how I felt when I saw this little wisp of yellow flowers growing out of a crevice in the rockery out front. I first noticed it last year and finally got a chance to look at it more closely when it sprouted again this year.

I hadn't planted it in this seemingly inauspicious spot. And usually the only wild plants that get a foothold in the rockery are ferns (welcome) and horsetails gone haywire (unwelcome). It looked so delicate it seemed improbable that it could muscle out a little space for itself in this rocky, sunbaked wall.

But Phinney Hill does have a multitude of underground springs trickling through it. They gurgle above ground in some places (a nearby street  has a channel down one side specifically to allow the spring to flow downhill into a storm drain). Many of the plants that appear to be growing in unlikely places are tapping into this hidden source of moisture, which is why lush ferns are able to grow at the base of our rockery.

A bit of research reveals that the little yellow blossoms appear to be a kind of monkey-flower, probably Yellow Monkey-Flower, Mimulus guttatus, and that it's not at all surprising that it thrives in the rockery: it is a plant that likes to grow in "wet ledges, crevices, weeping rock faces, seepage areas, along streams, near springs, on gravel bars, in wet ditches and clearings," according to the book Plants of the Pacific Northwest.

It got its odd name, according to this book, because apparently the flowers have "grinning, apelike faces" in the eyes of some beholders. The genus name, Mimulus, echoes this observation: it refers to a buffoon or "actor in a farce or mime."

Monkey-flowers have been introduced into European gardens, particularly one variety that exudes a musky scent. Some varieties thrive in such inhospitable settings as zones splashed by salty Pacific spray and the lips of steaming Yellowstone geysers. Because of the amazing array of forms this genus takes, yellow monkey-flowers serve as the equivalent of fruit flies in evolutionary studies, helping to tease out the intricacies of genetic variation and inheritance.

Native Americans used the plant's leaves to make teas and ate them, raw or cooked, in their meals. Explorers and "settlers" picked up on this use of the plant, too.

When Lewis and Clark encountered monkey-flowers in their western travels, they added them to their stash of samples to bring back East. Lewis specifically added yellow monkey-flowers he collected along the Clarks River, a tributary of the Blackfoot River, in Montana on July 4, 1806.

Today, that little flowers resides in the Lewis & Clark Herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. It is probably one of the world's most adventurous monkey-flowers: According to the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks website, "Lewis's collection of common monkeyflower traveled over Lewis & Clark Pass, down the Missouri River and eventually made its way to St. Louis and then to Philadelphia."

After reading that, I feel as if the monkey-flower growing in my rockery is puffing itself up and saying, like Pigpen in regard to the cloud of dust around him upon hearing it may be soil that was trod on by Nebuchadnezzar, "Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't it?"

Because There Are Not Enough Cats on the Internet

Selling a home, scrambling to keep up with work, and other adventures have prevented me from enjoying the fun of blog writing. So today you will have to settle for some pictures of cats. Because God knows there simply aren't enough images of cats on the Kittennet...I mean, the Internet.

Django, indoor cat, contemplates the outdoors.

Django, indoor cat now indoors, contemplates most recent water-bowl artwork.

A kittycat's dilemma: Poor Pebble can only sit inside one box at a time!

Pebble likes peas. When bored, we sit and watch a cat eat peas.

My friend H's cat, who fears she has fallen into a vortex.

Pebble. Sunshine. Sleep.

Rainbow Sprinkles Is a Unicorn? No Way!!!

Things have been upside-down, inside-out, topsy-turvy, willy-nilly, hither and yon, and at sixes and sevens lately, leading to a shameful neglect of many things, such as the garden, dog walking, and this blog. Hence a lazy blog post featuring a round-up of most excellent signs spotted around the area.

This pair of signs in Duvall makes me wonder if one person owns both businesses:

Speaking of sweets, this sign appeared in a local grocery store recently, and made me wonder just what this advertised confection intervention might involve:

" John Doe, you stand accused of removing tags from pillows.
Have some chocolate. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?" 

The item below is actually a product, not a sign, but as nobody else is around to tell me what I can and can't put on the blog, here it is. I see things like this and think (a) amazing what the human mind can dream up, (b) amazing what the remains of ancient plants and dinosaurs can be turned into, and (c) I can't imagine what the people in foreign countries who work in appalling factory conditions must think when they are asked to manufacture these things for the U.S. market. And yet: of course one needs a unicorn sprinkler in order to put rainbow sprinkles on cupcakes and ice cream. It would be so utterly perfect for teatime with a cow-shaped creamer on the table.

I think the non-Niall and non-Harry members of the band One Direction could really use some Sprinkles the Unicorn cheer. We encountered the sign below at the Pike Place Market around Christmastime. Imagine coming upon a group of cardboard standees of yourself and realizing that you are overstock while these two blokes have sold out and are on backorder. Oh, the sting of rejection.

And finally--this sign in Wedgewood  made us wonder where the dirty customers park when they bring in their dry cleaning.

Bye, Bye, Hummingbirds

In the scant two weeks between now and my last blog post about the hummingbird nest in my friend's garden, the hummingbird chicks have gone from being nothing more than floppy little appetites with stubby, gaping beaks to needle-billed birds with buzzing wings. They now hang out with their mom in a treetop, where she defends them and feeds them with as much vigor as she did when they were tucked in the nest. My friend R.'s pictures are below. Enjoy!

The empty nest.

Little Miracles

My friend R. has endured a long and difficult winter. It was a tunnel of a season, and happy news made spring a burst of light, both figuratively and literally, at the end of it for her, her family, and friends.

And Nature, after having been so cruel, now saw fit to present a tiny gift: An Anna's hummingbird came and made her nest in a shrub in her garden, weaving it on a limb at head height and within arm's reach.

Fortunately for this trusting little bird, she selected a garden in which  nobody would disturb her, though she doesn't appear bothered by people peeping at her or photographing her at long range. She goes about her age-old springtime duties without any knowledge of the meaning with which we, the watchers, invest it.

The first nest she built, for example, was destroyed by a violently windy rainstorm. So, too, were the miniature pair of eggs she'd laid in it. Undaunted, she immediately set to work again, carefully constructing a new cup of wispy leaves, tiny feathers, and plant down, bound with spider webs and stippled with specks of lichen and moss. 

She weighs no more than a nickel, yet has the heart of a lion, persevering against all odds. 

We're certainly not the first to notice how fearless and determined a hummingbird is. Various Native American peoples credited hummingbirds with the power to stop volcanic eruptions, cause rain, create stars by stitching the night sky with their beaks, and fly above the sky to see  past the blue. 

The Aztecs esteemed a hummingbird god of war and sun and believed that the souls of fallen warriors became hummingbirds. Many cultures believed hummingbirds carried messages between the human world and The Beyond.

To the Maya, the hummingbird was the sun in bird form. An old Mojave story tells how a hummingbird brought sunlight from the underworld and gave it to humans. Its role as a pollinator of flowers was appreciated, too, and inspired the Taino of the Caribbean to consider the hummingbird as a symbol of new life. 

"Enough with the symbolism," the bird nesting in R.'s garden interrupts. "I have two 'symbols' of my own to tend!"

Soon after building her new nest, she'd laid two eggs--a typical clutch size for a hummingbird. Each egg was about the size of a jellybean. 

About two weeks later, the eggs hatched. The impossibly small chicks together weighed little more than a paperclip.

But what an appetite they proved to have! 

Now the female hummingbird spends the day feeding herself so that she can feed them. She carries a porridge of tiny insects and spiders mixed with nectar in her crop and regurgitates it into the gaping maws of the chicks. 

Anybody who has watched a hummingbird feed her babies is astonished that the babies survive it; they could all go on to careers as miniature sword-swallowers.

A typical day for a hummingbird requires lots of energy-intensive flying, including hovering beside flowers. A hummingbird's small size adds to its caloric demand: its surface area is proportionately larger for its size than a bigger bird’s, so it loses body heat more readily.  

So it's not surprising that a hummingbird has a high metabolic rate requiring lots of fuel. A hummingbird eats about half its weight in food each day and spends about 15 percent of its time feeding and another 80 percent perched, digesting.

It's hard to imagine how the mother bird manages to meet her own caloric needs, let alone that of two ravenous babies who also need to be kept warm. Or how she manages to survive and thrive despite the hailstorm that pelted us last week.

What about Papa Hummingbird?  Where's he during all this drama?

Well. Papa has nothing to do with the babies. He's too busy staking out territory and showing off his beautiful crown and gorget of iridescent red feathers to do any grocery shopping or spoon feeding. I photographed the one below showing off in Carkeek Park.

In barely three weeks, the chicks will be ready to leave the nest. Then each one will strike out on its own, having nothing more to do with its mom or its sibling. 

In the words of John James Audubon himself, it will fly "on humming winglets through the air, suspended as if by magic in it, flitting from one flower to another, with motions as graceful as they are light and airy, pursuing its course over our extensive continent, and yielding new delights wherever it is seen."

A Magycke of Unicorns

OK, so a bunch of unicorns is actually known as a "blessing" (one of the many collective terms for animals that have their origins in poetic works dating back to the 1400s and are not, as is popularly believed on the Internet, established technical terms--which in no way diminishes how clever or pretty they are).

Certainly being infested with unicorns would be a blessing, compared to the rabble of rats we recently paid to have eliminated, and the irritation of fleas we suppressed. (I realize that we may now have guaranteed that nobody will be visiting us anytime soon.)

Hmm. An infestation of unicorns would probably mean lots of sparkles and rainbows. I could deal with that.

Anyway, I did happen to notice an uptick in unicorn sightings this past week.

I encountered this at one of my favorite coffee shops, Java Bean in Ballard:

A day or two later, this sign appeared in another coffee shop, this time in Duvall:

Then an ordinary trip to the grocery store--about the most mundane errand imaginable--yielded yet another unicorn sighting (and this one even *lights* *up*):

Shortly after, I was browsing in a bookstore and took a photograph of a book I wanted to remember to check out later on at the library...and when I looked at the photo online, tucked way up in the corner (cropped and enlarged here for your benefit) was yet another unicorn, on a different book.

It's not like we have a shortage of unicorns at home. There is this one in the bedroom, created by the Resident Teenager back when she was the Resident Kindergartner:

 And its twin, in the bathroom:

And this goofy little guy, leaning against a Belleek butter dish...

who lives right next door to a unicorn crafted out of an old flocked toy pony by an artist friend.

We are blessed with unicorns, indeed.

("Right, blessed," says Charley. "Sure, yeah, blessed, whatever. Go away and let me sleep.")