Cold-Water Swimmers: Feeling & Picking Nature

 photo of Wortham Fountain by Buffalo Bayou Park, Houston, by eflon, Flickr Creative Commons. **         

            For Memorial Day weekend, the traditional gateway to summer, I bused to Fort Worth to see two cousins. While they're old enough to have kids in their 40s, my cousins run an active organ-building shop that employs people as passionate about music as themselves, busily interact with neighbors and friends, and chat each day on the porch while watching birds pull antics in the tall pecan trees, red oaks, and blue-flowering chaste trees.

            They also live all summer in their rambling, high-ceilinged old north Texas house with open windows. The cousins don’t use air conditioning, it seems.               Each morning, cool air wafted in the tall old casement windows, along with sharp and detailed bird-calls.

            In Houston--four hours south of Fort Worth and 20 miles from the Gulf  -- I had had the a/c on, at night, for exactly one week. My 1943 building has old windows, some of which stick. Plus, Houston is a place where humidity eventually descends. Of my three neighbors, two had used a/c since mid-March. I was being a hold-out, waiting till late May to turn on air in coastal Texas.

photo of Westheimer Street in Houston, J. Jackson Photography, Flickr Creative Commons. **

             Still, I was a happy hold-out. The natural way pleases me: open windows, saving energy, feeling air. There are many things I could say about heat and humidity--one is that I learned to adjust more easily to both by living in northern states.

            Surprising, yes. In New York when humidity rose from the ground, women wore sundresses and skirts, and men wore the lightest fabrics. We opened windows, employed fans. The same was true in Chicago, in Missoula, MT (where part of the summer can be fire-cracker hot), and in Seattle for the occasional heat waves of a week or two.  

           Heat varied greatly, from place to place -- like the types of plants that can grow in each particular soil.

             Philadelphia, 80 miles inland, was hotter and more humid, for longer, than New York. In Chicago, as they say, it's cooler by the lake. My first Chicago summer was spent three miles west of the lake, where my roommate (a European) and I sometimes lay on the floor like beached cats, to feel the better air along the floorboards. When I moved nearer to Lake Michigan, I could usually catch a breeze by walking along the lake. On certain days, though, nothing short of setting sail toward Michigan seemed to help.

            Naturally, all this experience in withstanding heat on certain days, while being aware that eventually the heat will go away – as one is certain in northern climates – tended to build my hubris. I began to feel that I was a heat expert.

            (Yes, I was all about the high-velocity fan. My favorite brand is Vornado, if you want to know.)

            It’s true that sometimes heat is hard to take, even in northern climates. In normally temperate Seattle, a heat wave of a week’s duration could bring many of us to work with raccoon eyes -- not having slept well on our overheated bed sheets the previous night.

            Maybe peculiarly, I regarded all this as character-building. I thought of it as what we did to make up for weeks and weeks of cool weather, or for having lolled in sunlight on Lake Washington beaches crowded with suddenly lively Northwest-dwellers.

            Because I still feel a bit that way, I’m glad that I was able to sleep at the cousins’ house with the windows open on Memorial Day weekend in north Texas. Lying there with breezes wafting in, hearing the trees stir -- felt lovely. With a good-enough fan, there are nights when it could be done here in Houston as well.

            I guess that's what's changed for me: Now I see Houston's weather as varying, too. I see the individual parts, the mornings and late afternoons. In the same way that I now notice which plants we have at different points, I now see that some mornings start out cooler, while others don't--and that some evenings, after the crush of certain days, are sublime for sitting in wafting breezes with an iced coffee. Photo of interior of Brasil coffeehouse, Houston, by Sarah Fleming, Flickr Creative Commons. **

            It’s still early, but I like things about the summer. Definitely, it's a thing to prepare for, like winter in Chicago. Handily, my apartment is old, shady, and wasn't built with only a/c in mind. Dressing for the weather is important. This means choosing fabrics that breathe--which I can find at Goodwill but not at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s, which sell a baffling selection of synthetic-material, short-sleeved “sundresses." I carry Gatorade and water. During the heat of the day, I walk slowly and in the shade, and am not outside for long periods. Working indoors during the main part of the day helps. Because evenings can be nice, I probably wouldn’t want to spend them working, anyhow.

            Does this mean I'm finished with cold climates? Not really, no. It just means, I think, that I want to experience the many flavors of a place's most emblematic season. I want to hold back summer a bit, so that I can look at it more closely. I don't want it rushing by outside of some air-conditioned car--not all the time, at least.             By the same token, I think I'd like to spend at least a week (or more) in fall and winter in the Northeast or in mountains. Because those are traditionally my favorite seasons, in crisp, golden-aired climates. And guess where the cousins always spent their summer vacations? Colorado or New Mexico. "We wanted to escape the heat!" said one of the cousins. Yep, I can get that.             But it's early yet, and I'm enjoying getting to know the seasons here. A week after Fort Worth, I sat one night with two new friends at Brasil, a Houston coffeehouse with a large courtyard next to an arty street. In the leafy shade of palmettos and other plants, we can spend time with our weather. All three of us had returned this spring to Houston, and we knew the city. We looked around at the late-night shadows of trees, felt the light air, and collectively agreed, “You know, I like it here.”

photo of crape myrtles at Menil Collection, Houston, by J.E. Theriot, Flickr Creative Commons.

**

**Photo of loquat fruit by DeusXFlorida, Flickr Creative Commons. I haven’t mentioned it outright, but some of you may have noticed that this blog's focus has shifted away from the Northwest. That’s because I’ve relocated to Houston. I grew up here, but I’ve lived away for more than 10 years, in New York/New Jersey, Chicago, and Seattle.

Perhaps more surprising, I’m excited to be back.

 Houston is a strange and interesting, multicultural place. I like the sunny, garden-like feel of my daily walks. While the city has room for improvement, I’m thrilled by the work we are doing toward sustainability and change.

  **Photo of a bike against flag mural, by Adam Baker, Flickr Creative Commons.

 These are exciting times for American cities. I base that on a $500 million plan to increase transit and trees in one Houston corridor; and an award recently granted to a similarly sprawling, sun-belt city, Phoenix, to improve walkability along its light-rail corridors. If you want more updates, look here.

 Back to gardens, I’ve recently compared greenery with a Los Angeles friend (who also moved there from Seattle). As it turns out, we share many of the same plants. Houston, like LA, is within a few hours of the Mexican border, and has the warmth of a lower latitude.

Everything around smells like jasmine, says my LA friend. I have to say, excitedly: This true for me, too.

 On my walks, I see star jasmine, vivid and RCA-trumpeted hibiscus flowers, and red, fuchsia, and white sprays of bougainvillea that cascade over fences.

   **Photo of bougainvillea, by jchatoff, Flickr Creative Commons.

There's also plenty of citrus. Most walks pass trees hung with the small, egg-shaped orange kumquats – those lovely pellets of Vitamin C -- and orange and yellow, plum-like fruit on the long-leaved loquat trees. The latter are called nospero in Spanish.

My mom recently asked what fruits I use in smoothies. Back in Seattle, each summer I gathered blueberries, and the blackberries that thrive on invasive vines in all the Northwest's untended spaces. My mom sighed, saying she wished more fruit grew here in Houston.

 It's a common complaint. Houston's often called a concrete jungle, although anyone who has spent time in more densely populated cities probably wouldn't agree.  

These days, I can see that although Houston isn't a place of mountains or dramatic landscape, the city's near-downtown areas have the lushness of the Louisiana lowlands. Plants grow, vines twist, frogs sing at night in curb-side puddles. While some parts of town, such as the mall-centered Galleria, have expanded too heedlessly -- and it's still important that we continue to put forward initiatives for parks and green spaces -- my perspective on the city has changed.

 These days, I feel that edible things *do* grow everywhere here. We just have to learn how to see them. At the moment, I'm excited about several plants. The first is loquats, from which we can make preserves, chutneys, garnishes for meats.

   **Photo of loquats in a bowl, by Infrogmation, Flickr Creative Commons.

Second is jasmine, whose vines and starry white flowers form most hedge-rows here. From its heady flowers, we can make infusions, for cocktails and to top ice creams.

  **Photo of star jasmine is by Herry Lawford, Flickr Creative Commons.

Third is mulberries, which are turning dark purple-black on their capacious, shade-providing trees. These are strange fruit, like blackberries in a worm shape, with their distinctly mulberry, non-acidic flavor. They grow so plentifully, and in such pleasant spots alongside bayous, that I have to like them. From them, we can make sorbets, jams, pies, and many other things.

**Photo of mulberries by BionicTeaching, Flickr Creative Commons.

 That's just the beginning, though. Much else will grow, as summer comes (and stays) upon the land.

Photo of Persian lemons (sometimes called sweet limes or sweet lemons) at the La Cienega farmers' market, in Los Angeles, by Chotda, Flickr Creative Commons. *** Addendum:

The lemons from Clear Lake, it turns out, were likely Ujukitsu lemons. They were and are wonderful, and I’ll be back soon with more information on citrus in unexpected places.

Here's the thing: With more than 70 varieties of citrus grown in Houston these days, and nearly 200 grown by one gardener 50 miles southwest of here, things in the tart and sweet scenario have grown confusing, to say the least.

Here's my piece on Houston Press's food blog, Eating Our Words, about my mistake in citrus ID-ing.

(Next, here's what I wrote, *before* doing the research for the Houston Press piece:)

When life gives you lemons in your very own yard, pick them gleefully. That is, do so if they’re Persian lemons. 

These lemons are a recent discovery for me.  Until this week, they were just the curiously round, thin-skinned yellow fruit that I picked from a friend’s back-yard. 

The yard ran down to a canal from Clear Lake, an arm of Texas’ Galveston Bay. It’s an area near NASA, so maybe space-age citrus was in order. Still, these lemons turned out to be ancient fruit. 

Like, Gardens-of-Babylon-age fruit. Or, at the very least, they’ve been popular in Iran and the Middle East for a long time, and people eat them at the first sign of a cold. 

We brought those decidedly lumpish fruits inside, thinking that they resembled ungrown grapefruit more than lemons. My pal sliced them in half, juiced them as we watched raptly, and handed me a glass an inch or so full of the opaque yellow juice. 

I looked dubiously, noticing that no sharp, lemon-fresh scent rose from the glass. What was this?  

Cautiously, I allowed my lips to meet the juice and drank. Wha-at? The juice from these lemons was that strangest of all considerations: sweet. 

The juice was foamy, frothy, soft to the mouth. Its citrus flavor was delicate, like the kindest of grapefruit. 

We’d established that this was not a Meyer lemon – the yard had Meyers as well, on a different tree, which we had left alone.  I haven’t been a fan of Meyers from the store, although I’ve yet to have one fresh.  

I’m saying, though, that these lumpy lemons were different. 

At my pal’s urging, we each happily filled a carrier bag with the charmingly misshapen citrus, carrying them home like pleasing treasure. 

I waited a couple of days to juice one or two more. In the meantime, the thin-skinned darlings lay in a crisper drawer on their sides. 

A few times, I pulled open the drawer just to look at them. I waited, because I didn't want to sully them with the wrong approach. 

Then, I juiced. I filled the bottom of a glass once more with the opaque liquid. I tasted.

Would the lemons taste the same, away from the citrus trees along the leafy edge of the canal? 

Their flavor was…exactly the same. Even in my kitchen, they had the same beautiful and surprising mouth-feel.  

But what were these lemons? They remained a wonderful mystery. My mother, who works at a natural food grocery, insisted they were Meyers. 

I felt strongly that they weren’t, because I liked them so much better. 

A few days later, I found Chowhound discussing the topic, followed by a link to a blog with the LA Times.

Persian lemons. They could be grown from seeds, the blog said. An Iranian-American kid in LA had grown some in a back-yard, from a seed from a local Mediterranean grocery. 

Kazow. 

    Photo of oranges being washed, by Cybrgrl, Flickr Creative Commons

**

             It all began when my friend said, “Feel free to have the satsumas in the bowl on top of the fridge. They’re from the tree out back.”

            I was alert at once. Yard fruit!             And tropical yard fruit, at that.

            This was on a trip to see family in Houston, 21 miles from the Texas Gulf Coast. It was early December. The outside temperature was 60F.             Sounds like good weather for citrus, I know. But I'm always excited to see tropical fruits, because they weren't common here when I was a kid.

   There’s been a real uptick in tropical-fruit growing in recent years, thanks to education from some of the nursery owners and the local organization Urban Harvest, which offers classes on which fruits thrive in a climate that is mostly warm but experiences freezes.

 Photo of satsuma tree by Shoshanah, Flickr Creative Commons

**

            I rushed to get the bowl, gazing at its bumpy orange contents. Real satsumas! They weren't your standard clementines or "sweeties" from a mesh bag, with 25 identical siblings. These were the real thing, and I could peel them for breakfast.

I proceeded to do so. The peels fell away easily, though they were thicker than the ones from the store. Inside were fresh, orange-hued slices, each separate. That was in the usual way, of course – but these satsumas were remarkable to me because they’d grown in the yard. 

   Photo of satsuma by Patrick Feller, Flickr Creative Commons.

**

It’s such a remarkable thing, to those of us who didn’t grow up in Californiaor Florida, these citrus fruits wrapped up in tidy, peelable packages.

I'd needed a lift, and this trip was giving it to me. Back in Seattle, I’d fallen behind on blogging, which I sometimes do when the weather turns dark and perpetually rainy in November and early December. It no longer seemed like good foraging weather – I hadn’t really made it out for mushrooms, but I’d heard the fall crop was thin because of extra sun and little rain in early fall – and I’d used up all my rosehips and sumac berries.

Ideally, I would have found local plants to buoy myself, and I did do some research on seaweed and kelp collections. But when I contacted someone who offers classes on seaweed collection, she confirmed that most of the collection happens in summer.

On the hiking trail, too, things seemed a little discouraging. One hike had been so wet that our rain gear failed and we ended up losing heat at a high elevation, although we fortunately warmed on the way down. On another hike, we set out too late and ended up hiking in the dark when the sun set at 4:10 p.m. because of the higher elevation. We -- and a bunch of other hikers caught in the same situation of early dark -- had to hike carefully and slowly over rocky, descending trail that we could barely see with our cellphone lights.

In both cases, I resolved to be more careful. Still, I needed a vacation. So here I was in sunny Texas, with oranges in the back yard. It was a pretty nice solution, I had to say.

  And there was more to discover. Later that day, I sauntered into the yard to see the vegetation. I noticed banana trees, which I’d seen in Houstonbefore. But on some of the big-fronded trees were groups of oblong green rounds, almost like large grenades. Could it be? I was pretty sure they were papayas. And indeed, nurseries and Urban Harvest confirm that papayas can be grown in the area.

Photo of papaya tree by Adrian8_8, Flickr Creative Commons **

The papaya trees were on the other side of the neighbor’s fence, so I had to leave them alone. They were green, though, so I was less tempted -- just impressed, really. I felt fired up. Fruit a-plenty around here!

Later I went running and noticed that the neighbors' yard across the street had a small, tropical tree laden with orange fruits. It might have been a satsuma tree, too. I wasn't able to check, because no neighbors were home. Again, though, I was thrilled to see how much fruit was all around.

A day later, my friend and I went off to look at outsider art and metal sculptures around town. At a yard crammed with distinctive metal sculptures near the railroad tracks, I saw a tall sculpture of a green monster that can be turned on, so that it moves its arms and legs and makes a loud growling noise. It's racing through the urban jungle, is the idea, and it was exciting.

 I looked all around at sculptures, each of which was an idea of its creator. That said, I couldn’t help noticing that in the next yard, separated from us by many feet of metal sculpture and a tall fence, was a tall tree hung heavily with yellow-orange globular fruits.

            I'd never seen a tree with quite so much large, colorful fruit.

            After we finished looking at the art yard, I pointed out the tree to my friend. He was excited and said we’d head past on our way out of the neighborhood. We hoped that from the next block, we’d be able to see it better.

           We drove around the block, craning our necks for the bright yellow fruits that were imprinted on our minds, but were disappointed not to see them on this side of the block.

             So, this blog entry ends on a questioning note: What was the tree? I think it was a grapefruit tree, based on what I've since read about fruits trees recommended for Houstongrowth.

  Photo of grapefruit tree by Conalil, Flickr Creative Commons.

**

            It was, I think, a whole tall tree simply chockablock with yellow-orange grapefruit!

            What a thing -- the fruit, less the tree -- to have around for breakfast, eh?             If you live in a warm climate, local organizations like Urban Harvest in Houston offer great classes on choosing and growing tropical fruit trees in your yard. The range of plants possible is broad, from avocados to starfruit to guavas. Articles like this one are full of great tips.             In future visits, I look forward to having more homegrown tropical fruits, and finding out what grows on some of those trees that were mysteries on this visit!

  Photo of grapefruit tree by antmoose, Flickr Creative Commons

 Photo of staghorn sumac by Dendroica Cerulea, Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Rose hips, pink clover, chamomile flowers. They're all tea ingredients, and I knew about them. But in my secret heart, I'd always thought that tea wasn't the most interesting thing to do with gathered leaves, berries, and rose hips. Surely, cake was better, right? That's what I thought until last weekend, when a rainy, cold Sunday met my previously frozen bag of deep red-orange staghorn sumac(Rhus typhina) branches and a warm hangout with friends.

  Photo of staghorn sumac in fall by Liz West, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

 In the 1928 house under the deep firs, friends Delia and Toliver had returned from their circuit of western Turkey, bringing me a large glass evil eye charm (extra-large, they said, to make up for my traveling), a red, orange, and yellow woolen scarf, some date-like fruits, and three kinds of apple tea (dried bits; large and ear-like dried bits; and some that were encapsulated neatly in green tea bags, ready for quick dunking at every cafe in Istanbul).

Delia and I had just gone for a walk to gather bright red and orange Madrona (Arbutus menziesii) berries and stored them for later use.

When we returned, Delia opened her freezer and said, “What’s this?” I suddenly recalled the sumac branches I’d picked a week earlier while walking from their house (where I was housesitting) to the grocery store. There were the rust-red berry branch clusters, in a freezer bag in Delia's hand.

Delia excitedly compared the sumac’s berry-hued branches with the jar of ground sumac that she’d brought back from Istanbul markets. She poured out some powder. “It’s the same color!”

We marveled at this, gazing at the distinctive “stag-horn” shaped clusters of cinnabar-colored berries, and at the ground spice from bustling marketplaces half a world away. It was interesting to think of the same (or a very similar) plant growing in Asia Minor, being ground for market consumption and baked on z’aatar bread and other savories.

We tasted the ground sumac. It was distinctly lemony, with a slight salt tang. Delia seized her laptop and found that ground sumac often includes salt for longer storage purposes.

  Photo of staghorn sumac by Liz West, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

Immediately after picking my sumac, I had lost interest in it, wondering if it was too rain-sodden and late-in the season. (It had actually been pretty late in the season for sumac –they’re typically gathered in late summer – but in the Northwest’s cool temperatures, sometimes plant seasons are extended.) I’d let the sumac dry a bit, then tossed it in the freezer bag and forgotten it.

But Delia, thorough and art-minded like the graphic designer that she is, opened the bag and arranged the antler-shaped branches on a butcher block. Tidily, she began to separate the berries from the branches.

Soon the wooden block was scattered with tiny, slightly fuzzy, round berries. We looked at them, marveling at the fuzz. Delia put them in a colander under a bright lightbulb to let them dry.

A couple of hours later, we dropped the berries into the tea-leaf (filter) receptacle of a glass tea pot, and poured in boiling water.

Photo of sumac berries in strainer inside tea pot, by Jody Marx

**

 In the companionable household, sitting at a dining table covered with bright treasures brought back from Turkey, we waited and listened to music.

After ten minutes, Delia brought out her new gold-rimmed Turkish tea glasses, and poured out the amber-red tea. To each tall, ceremonious glass we added a brown sugar cube from a dish on the table, and stirred.

 On that gray, rainy day we drank bright, warm tea with a native, lemony flavor that filled and warmed us. Sumac tea is sometimes called sumac lemonade or Indian lemonade. It felt wonderful to drink something from immediately outdoors, that had been carefully and artfully prepared. It came out tasting of the earth and of lemons and heat, all the layers of something wild.

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Photo of a Seattle bungalow in fall or winter, by Wonderlane, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

One of the things I’ve learned in the past 10 days: When in a dark, rainy place without the need to leave home for work, and while living in a lovely Arts & Craft house, well-insulated and well-gardened, it’s easy to become a sleepy shut-in.

But, here at the housesit house, I’m leaving my slumber. I’m happy to say that soon I start a copywriting contract gig at an ecommerce company. Also, I’ve done some political canvassing.

Here’s to the vigorous productivity and growth that follow any plant’s necessary dormant period, right? Ha.

And, as we watch those flood waters slowly recede from New Jersey and New York—where I once lived, have dear friends, and remember well the turn of the streets and sounds of people’s voices—it’s good to know progress occurs.

(Last night I ordered a pizza and specified the “South Philly,” in honor of areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. Because it’s the least I could do, the “Brooklyn Bridge” was more expensive, and I figured I could add my own bell peppers, after all.)

Photo of pizza by Arnold Gatilao, Flickr Creative Commons license

**

On an active weekend recently, I took a field trip to Kruckeberg Botanic Garden. It's a 4-acre public garden in a north Seattle suburb, founded as a private garden in 1958 by

husband-and-wife botanists and horticulturists Arthur Kruckeberg and his wife Mareen.  The place has more than 2,000 plant species, collected over 50 years.

Kruckeberg, a University of Washington botanist for decades, is known in regional horticulture circles for ground-breaking writing about Pacific Northwest and Western native plants.

His book, Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest (UW Press, 1996), is a comprehensive primer considered enviable by many regions.

The fact is, West Coast bio-climates are unique on the North American continent. They vary widely according to proximity to mountains, valleys, and the Pacific and other water -- and much of the contemporary planting research has taken place since the 1950s, including Sunset magazine’s Sunset Western Garden Book and Dr. Kruckeberg’s research.

What I mean is, these people have done important work -– so I looked forward to seeing Kruckeberg Garden. It has about 30% native plants and 70% exotics.

On a Sunday bus schedule, I took the bus to a spot five blocks east of the garden. I didn't realize that the blocks were long and terraced, descending toward Puget Sound’s Richmond Beach. The views of the Sound were pretty, but the streets were curving and sometimes steep. Luckily, no disabilities hindered my trip. (To those who go later: It's possible to transfer to a bus that travels further down the hill, then walk a level street to the garden.)

Plants seen along the way:

Pacific crabapple. I had been on the lookout for these, with their trademark oval shape. They are smaller than crabapples from some other regions – each an inch or less in length. They had rosy sides, and grew on trees in front of an elementary school. I’ve read that crabapples can vary from tree to tree; these had an unripe, bland taste. I collected a few, in case they’re better in jam mixed with berries.

Photo of (clockwise from top) spindletree (inedible), crabapple (edible), magnolia (inedible), and rose hip (edible), by Leslie Seaton, Flickr Creative Commons license. 

**

Red huckleberry bushes, with their light, multi-leveled grace, grew by someone’s mailbox. Unlike in most places around here, huckleberries still remained on the branches. They were next to the usual salal ground cover, which grows everywhere in the Northwest.

Photo of red huckleberries by waferboard, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

An apple tree in a front yard was hung heavily with large apples. They were rosy and buoyant, indicative of the plenty that is everywhere if we let nature grow.

After winding down the hill and past many houses, I found myself outside the garden and its small, almost residential-sized parking lot.

Trees clustered gracefully at the lot’s edges. A Kousa dogwood, native to Asia, had fruit caught on slender limbs. Each was a small red sphere flecked with bumps. The flavor is mild; I’ve eaten several more since then, and their taste has grown on me. They are light-weight, white inside, and remind me of the light sponginess and look of a cerimoya.

Photo of Kousa dogwood fruit (not yet fully ripe/red), by liz west, Flickr Creative Commons license. 

**

Keep in mind that Kruckeberg Garden is a small public garden, not a standard-sized city arboretum. Once you're there, the trail passes MsK nursery, where native plants are sold -- then descends a slope to a spacious lower garden. This lower area is part statuary and setting for restful glades, and part labeled plants and trees. If you go, check out the online walking tour.

On the slope above the lower garden, a 100-foot-tall Giant Sequoia towers. It inspires awe, with a 20-foot trunk that fans wide like a woman’s hips at its base and becomes narrower higher on the trunk. This tree was transplanted to the garden by the Kruckebergs in 1958 as a six-foot sapling. Now it is the height of a 10-story building, and towers gloriously, with branches fanning like so many umbrella spines up its trunk.

Next time, when it isn’t raining, I’ll see more of the garden. I’ll look for the birds, since more than 40 species are found there, and because the garden is free of herbicides and uses organic fertilizers. It's worth it for the sequoia alone.

Photo of a Giant Sequoia (taken at California's Kings Canyon NP) by upsilon andromadae, Flickr Creative Commons license.

Photo of wintergreen plants by Robert Benner, Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Today is my first day of housesitting at Bewitched Garden, in the north suburbs of Seattle. My friends, who gave their house that name because of its intricate back-yard garden, have departed for the marketplaces and fresh SIM-cards of the former Byzantium. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black; mso-font-kerning:9.0pt;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}

I'm in a house packed with good fiction, a shy, basement-dwelling gray cat, two small dogs (one with tall, fringed ears that leap in his friendliness, the other pint-sized and barking to ward me off, the new intruder), and an unfamiliar microwave.

First thing this morning, coffee was in order. Preparing to re-heat some left in an urn by the airport-scramblers, I tapped a button that read “microwave” (it apparently does other things: toast, de-frost, broadcast CBC…) on the electronic box above the stove. The printed screen immediately suggested, “Bacon?”

Ah, a non-Kosher microwave. These things usually start with “popcorn,” but figuring I’d go with the flow, I pressed “forward." The machine queried, “Center cut?” -- becoming pressing in its specificity.  High-grade pork, it wanted. Okay, I said. Forward arrow, again.  The screen had a further inquiry: “1-2 slices?”

Not for the noncommittal, steamed-vegetables substituted by Lipton-in-a-cup, microwave-user, this machine.

I pressed “yes” and watched as my coffee mug rotated.

The oversized crockery mug, its side painted with holly branches and kilned to a matte, bas-relief finish, made me think: Perhaps I too should have such mugs.

In my scrappy way, with my un-updated apartment and thrift-store items, perhaps I wasn’t setting myself up for success. I’m setting my goals too low, I reflected to myself over my good coffee, looking at the screen of the PowerMac as I typed.   I thought about how European houses and Turkish apartments are smaller, the beds narrower, the luxuries decreased. At the same time, I realized: Yes, but our culture (and most contemporary ones) is about the small things that make us feel settled in a place. 

The house is a 1928 bungalow. It has lovely windows and well-restored interiors. Its details are subtle, design-aware. On the back doorstep, tiny painted stones and rounds of mirror balance near a railing. They’re something to look at, meant to catch the light.

I woke this morning with light at the fine, square-set windows, each placed just where I would have it in the 1928 walls. Around me were soft, many-thread-count sheets, several pillows, and a warm and fluffy comforter.

Through the open windows, the sounds of birds singing and calling drifted up from trees and the pine-needled ground. Conifers could be seen through the shades.

I live in Seattle, but not in a place where I can sit in a garden, hear birdcalls, or smell conifers.

My home is walking distance from nearly everything exciting in the city, in my point of view. It’s a short walk from museums, urban parks, and much people-watching. It is near coffee houses and art spaces and interesting little night clubs.

This morning I sat with my coffee at an iron-work table in the Bewitched Garden.

It was clear, even there, that some things are always about perspective. I had a choice of two garden tables, one near the center of the patio, the other larger but stacked with outdoor chair-cushions under an umbrella.

Trying out the table without cushions, I realized that this section of yard was lower, more seeped by Seattle morning damp. A bit to the left, under the umbrella, the air was lovely and I leaned back with my mug.

Wintergreen plants grew near the table, I knew. My friend had instructed me to keep an eye out for them. She’d often had wintergreen as a child in Michigan. “It tastes like gum,” she said, this morning, before they scrambled for their late-arriving taxi.

The garden is indeed bewitched, its paths meandering like a country stream. They begin on the left side of the yard and pass a trellised grape vine, beds of violets and something like wild ginger, and a slender tree that might be a peach tree (it doesn’t produce, I’m told).  In addition, there are Japanese maples with their starry fall foliage, a shed in the corner, an iron bed-stead around which plants poke and grow, a few plaques and signs, a thin iron canopy over a bench -- its supports hung with a sparkly-sided lamp with a lavender bulb, herb gardens in squares, trellised wisteria, a side garden, and three gnarled apple trees set like benign witches around the yard.

I look forward to exploring the garden, and its wintergreen. 

Photo of single wintergreen berry by Nicholas_T, Flickr Creative Commons license.

Photo of rose hips and water drop on fence, by Karl-Ludwig G. Poggeman, Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Yesterday was a dark, Northwest fall day. The sky and the air were the color of middle-grade slate.

To me, this weather is a bit like having hot weather all the time, or truly frigid weather all the time -- one gets tired of it. Also, cloudy weather lacks drama. Days like yesterday fail to provide the comfort of furrowed clouds before a snowstorm, or the excitement of racing clouds before a thunder-shower.

Here the entire day, morning to actual nightfall, has the light quality of 6:30 p.m. in winter. And it's considered very routine.

Thus, this afternoon I decided to do cheery things. I’d exercise and go to a busy, brightly lit space – a large library. I’d walk in the crowds, use the Internet, listen to indie power-pop bands on earphones. 

(If you’re wondering, I listened to The Bears, Mates of State, Two Door Cinema Club, Tennis, Matt & Kim, and some things that came up randomly on Pandora.)

These things helped enormously. I felt socialized, cheerful. However, I’d told myself that I’d also go to a park and do plant-ID-ing.

But the minute I set foot outside the bright library, I thought, “Oh, why leave the light?” I'd decided, though: I would see which plants were turning color. I’d take the bus to the East Sidesuburbs.

Nightfall approached as I reached Kirkland a half hour later.  The dark weather had brought it on earlier – and the days were getting shorter.   

In a park near the bus stop I found rows of salal plants and pulled off handy clusters of the round, dark berries. Some were dried but flavorful, like slightly grainy raisins. Round, fresh ones burst with flavor. I loved them. It was great to find them still around, late in the season, too.

Photo of salal leaves and blossoms by La.Catholique, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

Pure usefulness must be why the Scottish horticulturist/explorer David Douglas took salal back to the UK for use in English gardens. He knew a good shrub when he saw it!

Around a corner, the bright orange and red urn shapes of rose-hips burst from dark shrubbery. Roses gone by! They were large, which is handy because it means more orange flesh for each mass of seeded insides.

Reaching for a large, dark-red one, I bit it and chewed its softness, feeling the immediate pop of Vitamin C and of consuming wild nature on a dark day. Everything seemed to brighten around me.

A man in his 30s passed and asked in surprise, “Is that a…tomato?” I told him what it was – he nodded, knowing what a rose hip was. “Vitamin C!” I said. He laughed and passed on toward the grocery store. 

Photo of rose hips in profile against white sky by Duncan Harris, Flickr Creative Commons license.

**

Now massed in a bag for making jelly are about a pound of rosehips, their flesh orange and red, their furled leaf ends curling friskily.

As full dark came on, the orange rose hips could just barely be made out, springing out from the abundant shrubs. Plenitude and brightness in the dark. 

##

So, that was Saturday. Sunday dawned much brighter, the sky white instead of dark-gray.  I’ve seen the contrast and observed enough to be glad for the light in the day.

It's also nice to have those pretty rose hips in the refrigerator. Now, to get some cheesecloth or a jelly bag!

Photo of vine maples by Yaquina, Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Sunday’s hike was golden in many ways. Its drive was overly long, and a foot was sprained on root-y trails. But it involved an isolated alpine lake, fall color bursting from rocky slopes, and the round, un-glossy delights of farm-stand apples brought from the town of Sultan.

The hike was to Hope Lake, in the Cascades near Stevens Pass. In less than two miles each way, we climbed over 1400 feet in elevation.  This meant it was fairly steep, and traversed narrow stretches of eroding trail above steep hillsides. The colors were startling, though. On hillsides above us, vine maples raced across the landscape in yellow and red.

Photo of vine maples against forest by David Patte, USFW, Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Expecting the dense, dark woods of the typical Northwest hike, I’d forgotten that we might be dazzled by the light and color changes of autumn. Some ferns and airy huckleberry bushes had also turned vividly yellow and orange.

As we hiked the narrow incline, we passed out-of-season bushes bare of thimbleberries and salmonberries, and I noted them for later. That said, those two are nearly everywhere in the region. But the raspberry-like thimbleberries are especially nice. I also like them because they remind me of the flat, wide buttons on 1950s coats.

Along the ground, bunchberry plants bore their red berries atop the four leaves. I ate one – only my second ever – and noted that this time, the grainy taste went down easier. This one tasted deeper and more sun-warmed, and I thought to myself that they'd be fine added to other berries to make jam.

Photo of bunchberries in dew by Pellaea, Flickr Creative Commons license. **

In Samuel Thayer’s book Nature’s Garden, one of my favorite foraging guides, he talks fondly of bunchberry. The berries grow in cool, northern forests, including Thayer's native Great Lakesregion.

We reached Hope Lake, which is really a pond. It appears shallow, and is backed by tall evergreens  -- probably hemlocks and Douglas-firs. Hope seemed more peaceful than the other lakes I’d seen in the Cascades’ Alpine Lakes Wilderness. This was the first time that the lakeshore was silent; no one was there, nor calling out as they ate their lunches.

Lakes in the backcountry of Yellowstone are quiet like this, too. This pond in the Cascades was like Grebe Lake or others circled by huckleberry bushes that I saw when I was a new hiker, a kid from a hot climate working at the park during college summers.  At the time, my heart raced when I saw fields of berries at a remote lake. Where were the bears? Were they watching?

Photo of Sitka mountain-ash turning color, by heystax, Flickr Creative Commons license. ** At Hope Lake, two weeks had passed since I'd been to one of the Alpine Lakes. Before, we'd seen only green and somber woods, but now, red and yellow huckleberry bushes and Sitka mountain-ash crowded the lakeshore, their colors splashed across the water surface.

Even late in the season, when most of the huckleberries had been picked clean of their fairy bushes, the mountain-ash was laden with bunches of red berries.

Sitka mountain-ash berries can make wine, I hear -- alhough I haven't tried it yet. It was great to see such plenty, to know that for every departed salmonberry, thimbleberry, or huckleberry, something new came with fall: something bright and wonderful.

   Photo of red currants by Liz West (Muffet), Flickr Creative Commons license. **       

Yesterday on a bus to Seattle’s Eastside suburbs, there was something familiar about the older woman sitting next to me, and the copy of the New Yorker that she was poring over.

Surreptiously, I checked out her eye-glasses. Had I seen them before? Had her hair been that exact shade?  

I wasn’t sure, you see, whether she was the lady whose seat I'd shared a month and a half before, on the return trip from an Eastside park where I’d gathered a bag of golden plums so ripe that some fell off their pits en route.  On that bus ride, my new buddy and I had talked avidly about politics, Harper’s magazine articles after 9/11, her war-protest activities downtown, and gathering edible plants. We had even exchanged email addresses, but I couldn’t recall whether I’d contacted her. It had slipped between the cracks of looking for possible roommates, considering whether to relocate to a sunnier city, and finishing out the field notebook I'd been using that week.  

Yesterday, I decided I would lose out if I kept silent. When she had turned away from her New Yorker pages to look at me, her face changed and she smiled. “Well,” she said in her slight English accent, “Can we believe this?” We had indeed met on that previous bus trip, going the opposite direction.  

It was great to see her again. This is what I like about talking with people about plants and gathering: Standing alongside a trail in any quiet park, I’ve met inquiring people who can either tell me more about the plants I see, or about the land where we stand, or who have questions for me. In every case, I have felt the sparkle of exchanging vital, life-giving information with another person -- and learning a bit about them.

 Was I gathering plums again? my friend asked on the bus, then smiled to acknowledge that she had remembered: Right, plums were no longer around, weeks later.

 Not this time, I said: Going hiking. As I flipped through a field guide I’d brought, Trees & Shrubs of Washington, by C.P. Lyons (Lone Pine Publishing, 1999), my friend said that she’d like to see gooseberries around, that she missed the days when they were considered standard pie material, especially in England.  

I'd also like to see gooseberry pie early and often. Gooseberries and currants are about and they're being used, I said – although it’s true that they’re not the commonplace pastry material they once were. These days they aren’t standard; they’re pleasingly retro.

 Still, I’d seen both berry types sold at mid-summer in the standard grocery store near my house. The farm name on the boxes, when Googled, turned out to be in Washington’s Yakima Valley.  It's an area known for its berry farms. The farms, it turns out, are supported by a network of irrigation systems that carry water from mountain snow-melt.

  At a farmers’ market I’d talked with another farmer from the Yakima Valley, who said that his family grew blueberries in the soil, which was rich from age-old volcanic activity in the area. “The blueberries love it,” he assured me, shaking his head. I imagine that the gooseberries and currants do, too.  

On the bus, my friend and I looked at photos of gooseberry and currant bushes in Trees & Shrubs of Washington.“That’s it!” she said happily.

In the same park where I’d picked the golden plums, I’d gathered a few currants and gooseberries that grew nearly pushed out by over-eager blueberies, I told her. I grew up in a warm climate, one with its warmer types of berries, like dewberries -- so I had been excited about picking blueberries, and especially marveled at the currants and gooseberries.   

It was a fine bus ride to have before a hike: Rediscovering gooseberries. My friend said, "Have a good hike," as I headed off. We decided we'd meet again.  

Photo of orange marmalade in jars by Comedy_nose, on Flickr Creative Commons license ** So, ever attended a food swap? I plan to go to my first swap this fall. Pals here in Seattle gather with friends to swap their canned goods, baked items, and other goodies (beer, elderberry wine, infused alcohol, truffles, you name it). It's also a great way to share garden excess, by bringing along a basket of zucchini or whatever's left. It sounds great. I became aware of food swaps a few years ago, when I joined the Facebook group for Food in Jars and began hearing about swaps in Philadelphia. Because I lived in Philadelphia for the summer of 2005 and I liked it a lot, I always pay attention to Philly news. It was great to hear swaps were active there, though I wasn't surprised. Now I hear from Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking that the Food Swap Network (which spans the U.S., Canada, and overseas) is holding a fundraiser, and we can help out by hosting (or attending) a swap before November 30th. Swap hosts are asked to collect donations from swappers for the network.  Kate Payne, Hip Girl's blogger, lists handy suggestions for swaps here: Annette’s Urban Farm Handbook challenge post. Here's some background information: The Food Swap Network currently has 90 swaps and is growing every day. The fundraiser will help cover the costs of creating a network site and making it a functional and attractive resource for existing and new swappers. Plan is, the fundraiser will cover five years of operations for the network.  Here's how to help: Host or attend a fall swap! Swaps can take place anytime before November 30th. Swap hosts are asked to collect donations from swappers. If every swap raises at least $45, which is about $2.50 per person for a small swap, the network will make its goal.  In any case, any amount swappers provide will help to reach the goal.  Donations can be sent by PayPal after you've had your swap, or contact the network if you'd like to mail FSN a check. Here’s a link to contribute directly to Food Swap Network if you are unable to host or attend a swap this fall. A last note from FSN:

"Thank you for helping us fill up our swap basket so we can continue to share that feeling of going home with a full basket of homemade goods!"

  Photo of mountain lake by Henofthewood on Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Saturday, a hike to Annette Lake in the Cascades with my friend E. We snacked along the way on clustered salal berries – and the occasional dusky blue or lightly red huckleberry on airy bushes.

The day was glorious: The last weekend in September, and still dry and sunny. This is unusual in the Northwest, but we’ll take it!

Back to berries, though. Admission: Until now, I’ve never really valued salal. Apparently that’s because I’d never had them fully, tip-top ripened to a dark navy, and on a sunny Cascade hillside.

They're an acquired taste: I asked E. what she thought, and she said questioningly, “Grainy, rough?”

Salal aren’t blueberries, I had to admit. They lack the easy charisma and bright flavor of more popular berries.

 But in this case, to me, they were downright flavorful. There was a depth to them, a sun-warmed richness. I wanted pots full of them, I wanted pies and crumbles.

  I was content with snacking, though. I gathered handfuls, each with its slightly hairy bulb and knobby end.

 They were ugly enough to be left on their leathery leaf-branches for me to find on a sunny fall hike, and I loved them for it.

Photo of salal berries by Nordique on Flickr Creative Commons license **

The berries provided moisture, Vitamins C and A, and the usual antioxidants as we headed up the 1600 feet of elevation change between the trail head and Annette Lake.

 I found them refreshing, and I was grateful: When I arrived in Washington state, I often walked past these and other berries, not knowing what they were. My past is full of the slight irritation of not knowing berries or fruits on trees, of feeling as I pass them that I could be wasting something valuable that will go bad on the branch.

Eating the berries gave me the “I’m a hardy hiker, I’m like Heidi with the goats in the Swiss mountains,” thought pattern that I alternate with “I’m like Grizzly Adams; I can survive!” when I’m flattering myself. And yet, it was a little bit true.

After a good many switchbacks and walking past many majestic firs and spruce, E. and I made it to Annette Lake. It is a lovely lake, surrounded by wooded hillsides. I always like the peace of arriving at a mountain lake after a long hike, finding the cove in the woods that opens with light, spotlighted by the sun as a rare place, a place of water that attracts all of us: animals, humans, birds.

We had our lunches there, E. with her tuna sandwich and shelled pistachios and fruit leather, and me with my peanut-butter-and-banana pita, HoneyCrisp apple, and dark chocolate squares.

We sat in the sun on the grainy beach, facing the light of the water, watching circles form on the surface and talking about relationships and life and work, and listening to the calling voices of the fewer than 10 other people on other shores of the lake as they threw balls to retrievers and talked about we knew not what.

The water, just to fill you in, was probably pretty cold. Maybe surprisingly, I didn’t go in! The sky was overcast when we arrived, and I had the recent memory of swimming two weeks ago in Mason Lake here in the Cascades, and finding that the water was not just limpid and chill, but downright bone-chilling. I’d learned that although I’ll swim in large bodies of water in any temperature, in mountain lakes I prefer to dip when they are sun-warmed and it is high summer. Call me particular, call me someone who doesn't want to be chilled before a long hike in falling light, and you will be right.

Another thing we found: A king bolete mushroom, or porcini. Not exactly a feast, but we also talked to the Forest Service officers about logging roads that are handy for berries (and presumably for mushrooms).

Photo of lobster mushroom, by gabriel amadeus on Flickr Creative Commons license ** Lately my mind has been consumed with foraging. I think of mushrooms and their fluted caps, rose hips swaggering on branches, bull-whip kelp in brash sections on the beach.

I know little about my topic, though. I look at many blogs, and I went chanterelle-hunting for the first time a few weeks ago. My knowledge is nascent, but I'm building on it.

The weather here in the lowlands of the Pacific Northwest is turning unpleasant for me, wet and full of leaf rot. The past few days have been dusk-dark at mid-day. They aren't just shorter since last week’s time change, but full of looming catastrophe in the hanging darkness and just-deferred downpour.

Walking in Seattle in the dim noonday, taking care not to slip on damp leaves piled along the sloping sidewalks, I think of Snoqualmie Pass and the Cascades. As of this morning, they have received fresh snow and an order to don tire chains.

The air at the Pass, I know, is brisk and cleansing to the lungs. Looming mountains lift the eyes into clear air or air hazed by snowfall. One feels the elevation of the barometric pressure, and steps with energy on snowshoes.

Sometimes the air and the snow are the cold water in which we can swim.

I look forward to diving into this land, to finding the rose hips and making a syrup to pour over cake -– to eating that cake and making other starches from chestnuts. 

To gathering.

Photo by VIUDeepBay on Flickr Creative Commons license. ** Days in fall in Seattle are like an Appaloosa horse’s hide: They can be light -- but often they occur in great muddy dapples that obscure the bright, making their own pattern.  

That's putting a pretty reading on it, though. What often happens is that I wake either thrilled by sunlight or lulled by gray. And sometimes the gray just makes a day in which it’s hard to be alert or even to have bright and clear eyes.  

Probably that’s why I like cold water: It jolts me. I rise from the waters bright-featured, clear-headed. Sunlight in a gray place does that, too.  

When in southern California, I’ve often thought that sunlight was excessive. All Pacific Coast weather is moody in its way, utterly different from the East Coast weather -- which follows its course through various seasons. Colors in the East are often vivid and primary.  

That said, winter in the Northeast isn’t really a primary color -– it can be midnight dark, or display the furrowed clouds of expected snow. But it’s very often sunny, bright days.  

I think that’s it: I like the bright, earned days of apple-picking time. I like them sharp as a Honey Crisp apple, with the same tang.

We have had some of those days in Seattle lately. Like the Appaloosa’s hide, they are variegated. Several dark, slogging days in a row precede the bright jewels that seem to last long.

I am glad for the variety, so far.  

It may be time to swim again. If last year I swam on January 1 – which I did -– it can be done again. We will see. It’s always time to push off into the challenge.