Sensing with soles

walking barefoot
each step is a new page
in an unfolding book
compared to wearing shoes and the constant
smooth smooth sameness

Equinox

The season is turning. A few weeks ago, a fresh layer of dropped leaves on the urban forest floor caught me by surprise -- most of them were still green.
 

It had been rather windy... but did the bigleaf maples care about the greenness they had yet to take back?

 

Some of that green is wanted by someone; they munched out the tasty softer bits between the veins of this red alder leaf.

 

Just a few days later, actual canopy color change seemed to hit the maples all at once.

While many things expanded to huge this summer season, not everything reached its full potential. As I began preparing a long neglected summer garden for its next season, this tiny cucumber was discovered beneath larger leaves.

season rolls on

In the forest, Oemleria is letting go of her leaves. Fast to get started on spring, quick to begin fall...

While thimbleberry still has scars from a spring hailstorm.

 

In the garden, pumpkins have long outgrown their hole-punched leaves, zucchinis hide and grow to surprising size + first ripe tomato!

summertime begins

First thimbleberries (Rubus parviflorus) and osoberries (Oemleria cerasiformis) found ripe and eaten today + garden soil thirstily sucking down water = it's summer! 夏天！

Beans of the Summer

Scarlet runner beans are a peak summer vegetable with flashy red flowers and large, prolific pods. Immature pods are like a meaty green bean and the mature seeds can be used as a dry bean.

 

When immature, the beans are hot pink. Later on they develop dark speckles...

As they mature the pink darkens to purple, and even continues to deepen as the seeds age off the plant.

Last summer a trellis full of runner beans -- including scarlet and less colorful types -- fell over in my garden. I'd meant to save them for seed, but they weren't very dry when they fell. I shelled them and put them on a dehydrator.

 The treatment was too harsh, judging by the cracked seed coats.

Figuring the beans wouldn't store well and might not sprout at all, I rehydrated them in preparation for cooking.

But lots of them did sprout - go beans!

 Then I cooked and ate them.

Urban Wildlife - an exciting encounter

Enormous Mantis @ the PSU Community Garden!

Fall Planting 10.13.13

Warm in the sun today, forecast the same.
Green beans doing their last. Planted summer-grown seeds of kale, radish, fava, parsley, cilantro, and pea. Serendipitous gift of elephant garlic, I shoved it into the ground too. Warmth will fool me as well as the seeds into extra action before true winter cold sets in.

gardens still growing

My small plot at the PSU community garden is a micro-patch of vegetable plants turned jungle these days. Kale, parsley, chard, and carrot hold flowers and seeds on stems much taller than I, pea vines finding their way through the mess, california poppy and st. johns wort flowers lighting up the understory. The dish of water I normally maintain at center has become swamp, but fresh water is still to be found - as in this dock leaf cupping rain water into a tiny lake:

 So overgrown it has become, fairies actually moved in. Can you believe that?

 This is the view from their skylight

And these carrot flowers float about in great balls like spaceships made of snow, releasing drifts of powdery pollen

 

 Back at the other garden plot, giant-vegetable-dreams are realized in this fabulous lettuce (key included for scale).

 Delicious beet success, short of soccerball-size, not short on sweet

Beets and Kale, a variety of leaf texture

 Lentils! Handful of dry lentils thrown in the dirt... add water, time, warmth and sun - the seeds show some of their programmed secrets. Fine leaves and tiny pods, nice to meet you long-eaten staple.

Spring Miscellany

What does a pea plant do when threatened? Grab the pistil!

A maple tree without maple leaves? I don't know what to think

One of my most favorite stamp-sized islands of life

 Oppidan forest

Spring in the Community Garden

March First, a warm day. In that garden tucked by the freeway I found: bright winter greens beginning to bolt (the new lush growth delectable steamed), a pile of radishes gifted from a friend, my hat quickly filled with fresh-picked herbs, and volunteer mache growing up quick and buttery.

Pea Beetles

I've been saving my pea seeds for several years, and never had a problem with bugs. This year though, I opened my seed packet just to take a look and found each with a round hole.

And a lot of little beetles, curled up inside of a pea or trying to escape from the packet.

Fava Beans

Fava beans, flourishing in the fall, killed with the first hard frost.

Spring in the Garden

It's decidedly autumn in the garden now , but I want to remember spring. I took these pictures on April 25, when everything was new, and the sap was rising (as I found when I trimmed the grape vines and their fresh cuts wouldn't stop dripping).

Fresh fig leaves (Ficus sp.)

Green cherries (genus Prunus)

Blooming hawthorne (Crataegus sp.)

The proud face of my garden pea (Pisum sativum)

New grape leaves (genus Vitis)

Garden

It's mid-September and I'm still putting seeds in the ground. I planted pea seeds (saved from the spring) two weeks ago, and now I have a line of healthy-looking sprouts.

I noticed a print in one of my new seedbeds. Probably raccoon? 

I've been picking and eating from the garden more days than not this summer. Here I have a small Hubbard squash, a cucumber, and a few ripe tomatoes. I also picked some green tomatoes for frying. The seed heads are a type of daisy, and carrot. 

Small-scale Farming

This 25lb bag of dry green peas...

...contains the split seeds of a variety of Pisum sativum (in the family Fabaceae).

And to my surprise, these seed halves can germinate! The plant embryo must be attached to just one seed half, or at least can be separated from the other half without damage. The germination rate for these seed halves, though, was very low (in the range of 10%).

The seeds grew into 5-6 inch tall plants -- before they began to fall. Maybe it's the tiny fruit fly chewing at the base of their stem, or maybe not. But for some reason the outer tissue at the very base of their tiny trunks is disappearing, leaving only a few thread-like strands of vascular tissue.

The plants were also unsuccessful at wrapping their tendrils around the provided supports. Even though the tendrils actually touched the supports, they seem to have forgotten that they are meant to wrap around other things, and not just in upon themselves. Was it starting life with just half of the normally provided nutrients that did these seedlings in? Or was it bad genes?