Most Beautiful Day Of The Year

Forget-me-nots

OK, some might argue that there were some great winter days, but today was by far the best summer day of the year.  The weekend was cloudy, rainy, some sun poking through the clouds.  Chilly - in the 40s, low 50s.

Yesterday was sunny and much warmer, getting near 60˚F.  But today it said 71˚F on our outdoor thermometer and sitting out on the deck felt decadent.  The leaves are all out.  Some flowers too.

Phlox

Narcissus 

Got up and attacked my to do list.  A couple of unexpected things came up, but got them taken care of too.  One item on the list was to cut the May Day (Choke Cherry) tree flowers so they don't send seeds throughout the yard and neighborhood.  I had discovered - because of the flowers - that we had one way in the back of the yard, on the other side of the fence even.  I cut off all the branches, then cut off all the flowers.  But then I discovered another one near the deck.  These are highly invasive trees that also make moose sick.  I've posted about them before - May Day Tree Invasion - Obvious While Blooming.  

Choke Cherry Flowers 

There were a lot of planes flying over.  The Anchorage Airport FB page explains why:

"Runway 15/33 Closure: The North/South runway will be closed for preventative maintenance with an estimated timeframe from May 8 - 28th, from approximately 8:00am to 7:00pm, Monday through Saturday. This will likely result in more aircraft departures to the East over mid-town Anchorage and more noise impact to the community during those times."

But it was still nice working and reading lazily out on the deck.  

Dandelions: Free, Nutritious, and Abundant Veggie

The Boreal Herbal:  Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North has renewed my commitment to take advantage of the free, no effort crops growing in my back yard.  Dandelions are the most productive such crop.  So while the dandelions are still young and fresh, I've been incorporating some into my daily meals.  Here's from breakfast yesterday.





                                                                                           

Sutton's Lives!

Last year, longtime funky local Anchorage greenhouse Sutton's had for sale signs and they said they were going out of business.

Lesson 1:  Don't make assumptions without checking.

I didn't even go by Sutton's when I bought some seeds this summer.  I just assumed they were closed down.  I even told someone they were gone.  Today, I routed my bike ride by Sutton's to see how the property was transpiring.

Lesson 2:  Support your best local businesses.

I imagine that running a greenhouse is a real headache.  There's no time off during the summer at all, and lots of work to do in the off seasons as well.  So when you find a business you like, spend your money there, even if they might be a little more expensive than the big Outside franchises.  And don't assume that they will be more expensive.  Sutton's has always had this option I've never seen at the big box stores - buying by the plug.




What's a plug, you ask?  It's a tiny bit of earth in a seed tray with tiny cells good for one plant (though sometimes a couple more seeds get into one cell.)














Here's a plug tray of fennel.

Sutton's is a unique little greenhouse that just sort of grew over the years.  It doesn't follow any master designs laid out by plant marketers.  It doesn't look like any other greenhouse in Anchorage or most other places.











It's got its own style.

They even give a discount if you belong to the Alaska Botanical Garden, but I'd say, keep your card in your pocket and pay the price if you can afford it.  We want to keep these people in business this summer and thank them for offering a respite from large corporate retail.












There's still a for sale sign, but the lady I talked to said, "We're picky."  It seemed to me that it would be a perfect place for an organization that supports local citizens gardens and healthy eating.  She said there was a guy who was interested in buying who had the same idea.  

Lesson 3:  Spread they word so their work can live on and Sutton's doesn't get replaced with cookie-cutter apartments or condos.  Help them find a creative buyer.  

Dandelions And Chickweed Aren't Weeds

This blog is about how you know what you know.  When you look out at your garden and see lots of little yellow flowers what do you see?
1.  sunshiny color brightening your yard
2.  weeds
3.  nutritional food
4.  medicinal herbs

It all depends on who was able to shape your brain.  The chemical companies that need you to think they are weeds so they will buy their poisons?  A Korean friend who eats dandelion leaves regularly? An herbalist who taught you about natural cures?  Or your brain may have competing models in your head about dandelions.

When I first learned that dandelions and chickweed are edible, after a few summers fighting 'weeds' in my garden in Alaska, I toyed with a book that I would call "50 recipes of dandelions and chickweed."  But I had lots of other things to do and never wrote it.

So when I saw this book - The Boreal Herbal:  Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North, by Beverly Gray - in the book section of Costco, I started turning pages.

There are pages and pages of plants you'll see if you hike anywhere in Alaska.  (Beverly Gray, appears to live in the Yukon.)  Besides the obvious dandelions and chickweed, it includes uses for all sorts of common plants including spruce tips and devil's club.






Here's part of the section on dandelions:

click to enlarge and focus

And here's a little bit from the chickweed section.

There was a big stack of them at Costco on Debar last week.  This is a great field guide (though it's kind of big to carry around) as well as a guide to food and medicinal uses.

I mentioned the book to someone Saturday.  As I described it, she asked, "The one written by Beverly Gray?"  "That's the one."  She'd taken a workshop with Gray and couldn't say enough about it.

I think about the story of the Japanese visitors who were visiting an Alaskan cannery and were appalled to see all the fish roe being tossed.  That encounter resulted in a significant new export product for Alaskan fishers.

We have an abundance of nutritious plants in Alaska.  Judicious harvesting could lead to another market.  Our forests are a rich source of healthy foods.

Brussels Walls - Graffiti and Green

This is a quick post as we get ready to visit friends across the Belgium border into Germany.  We just spent two wonderful days with my 90+ cousin (my father's first cousin).  More on that later, but we need to go soon.  We're driving this part of the trip and I have to pick up the car.

But here are some walls - mostly in the short five minute walk between our hotel and my cousin's apartment.  I've saved the most impressive wall for the very end below.

These first three are one long mural that goes around the corner.  It starts on the right and if you look carefully, the yellow on the left on the first one connects to the yellow on the right of the second.

And then it goes around the corner.









Here's one with lush green vines.

And I'm guessing - didn't get to check with anyone - this one with the peeling paint is what you get when you pull the vines off.  But it just may be old paint.

These vines were hanging on the wires too.









Less ambitious graffiti.

The kids playing in front of the grocery below our hotel window.










And this one was much more serious.

Mom Leaves Her Stamp(s)

There are several drawers of stamps - cancelled stamps from all over, first day covers, loose stamps, unused US stamps in blocks.  And there are several stamp books.

Should I take them to a stamp store?  Give them to my grand children?  Put them on E-Bay?  The second option is my preference.  I think (ah the memory is such a malleable faculty) that stamp collecting was one of the ways I got interested in geography - learning the names of foreign countries and finding them on the map.

And looking at the cancelled stamps, many still on envelopes, I can't help thinking about the people or events or places or things depicted on the stamps.  And I wonder about how the letter writer chose the stamp - purposely or just because that's what the post office sold her?  And, of course, who were the people corresponding?  What was the nature of the correspondence?  In some cases my mom's collection affords the opportunity to find out more because the letter is still inside.  And I'm ever so distractible that I could spend a year just pursuing that.  Others have already written novels based on letters they found.

But we're just back home with lots to do and this wasn't supposed to be a long post, just some pictures of stamps. (Click on any of the images to enlarge and focus. They're really SO MUCH better if you do that.)  But, as I said, I'm infinitely distractible.

So looking through the box of stamps I brought home - these are unused US stamps that mean I won't have to buy stamps for a long time - I thought I'd just post some that I thought were visually strong.

Just imagine the challenge of creating an image that fits on a postage stamp.  There are a lot that are awfully busy and you have to look very closely to see what's in them.  Those that focus on one thing seem to come out best.

First, some portraits.  I think I like these because they're big and bold.  And I noticed that four of them are basically black and white drawings.

The Pulitzer stamp is the exception, but the quote is big and drew me in.  And the message - "OUR REPUBLIC AND ITS PRESS WILL RISE OR FALL TOGETHER" - is as important important today as when Pulitzer said it.  Here's more context from Pulitzer.org:

In May 1904, writing in The North American Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."

The media coverage of the current presidential race doesn't seem to me to be living up to Pulitzer's expectations for the press.

Here are a few stamps heralding events.  The Spirit of 76's power comes from our familiarity with the image and the post office's willingness to use three stamps to zoom in on the three characters.  The American Revolution tells us:

"Despite the near universality of this image as synonymous with Americanism and its instantaneous recognition in the iconography of the Revolution, the world of art has never considered it to be Art with a capital "A"."

And the picture on the stamp doesn't quite match up with the picture on their site.   But they add that painter (not artist according to the critics) Archibald McNeil Willard, made several different versions of this picture that was featured at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876.

The First Man On The Moon stamp says it all in a relatively simple illustration, that, I think, is also aided by images we've all seen before.

Finally, I like the image on the Mayflower stamp.  The Pilgrims are a little small, but the boat stands out and you can work a bit to see the Pilgrims.  My assessment is of the image, not, by the way, of the event itself.


I love these images of plant life.  I like the cacti particularly.  Do I really have to say any more?

Getting the details of buildings and places onto a tiny stamp would seem to be a bit of a challenge.  Here are some of the more successful ones in the box.  I particularly like the architecture ones and the lighthouse on the lower right.  The historic preservation stamp had to, apparently, highlight the theme and identify what was being preserved in each stamp.  They did the latter in tiny letters, which, when I blew up the image, showed how out of focus it was.  But they're challenging to my old eyes in the original.  For those who need to know the images are a) The Decator House, b) The Charles W. Morgan,  c)  San Francisco Cable Car, and d) San Xavier del Bac Mission.   (The links are well worth following.  I figure most people already know about the cable car.)

There have to be over a hundred different images in the box I found.  Some pretty dramatic and others almost looking like advertising.  I could do weeks of posts on these stamps.  And who knows, maybe I'll come back to them for future posts, but for now one more set - animals.

I really do like the top set - the 125th anniversary of the Berlin Zoo.  It's the only block of non-American stamps I've come across in the box.  And it's interesting that the German stamps in the set are different denominations.  I haven't noticed that among the US stamps.

The role of stamps

The little stamp has a role much bigger than one originally thinks about.  This should be obvious by the popularity of stamp collecting over the years.  The Art of the Stamp conveys a little of this, better than I can, in a description of the an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in 2003-4:

"Few works of art enjoy as vast an audience as American stamps. At their most basic, stamps are simple proofs of postage, but with the addition of graphic designs that honor national heroes and commemorate historical events, they become something much greater: compelling works of art that serve, in the words of W.B. Yeats, as “the silent ambassadors on national taste.” Each year, award-winning graphic artists bring their talents to a broad range of U.S. stamps. Working on unusually small canvases, these artists surmount truly unique design challenges to create superb miniature encapsulations of American culture and history."

How About A Pound For Plants - Where They Can Be Rescued And Adopted?

I just found a home for five containers of  cymbidiums from my mother's yard.  The first cymbidium came into my mother's possession on Mother's Day in 1958 or 59 or 60.  I carried this magnificent plant with three or four sprays of orchids.  My mother kept them alive for all these years.  Well, I can't guarantee these are the same plants.  But I know over the years she repotted them.  She also acquired new ones as gifts.

One of the pots had a beautiful spray right now.  A couple of others had stunted sprays of a couple of flowers budding.  I knew these plants weren't going to survive and went looking for a good home.  Fortunately I know some retired greenhouse owners living in LA and so I offered them to their daughter.  She'll get good help with them.

[Since I used this photo in a post the other day, I ran it through the dry paint filter in Photoshop for this one.]

Most of the other things in my mom's yard are pretty resistant to drought or they wouldn't have survived all these years - like the walls of jade plant and pencil plant.

But it made me think that there should be a pound where people can take plants to be adopted by new owners.  Looking on line I've found someone named Trina Studabaker in Aloha, Oregon who takes in plant orphans.

There are some organizations that do something like that.

The US Department of Agriculture has a Plant Rescue Center for plants that have been confiscated.  

There's the Williamsburg Native Plant Rescue

Williamsburg Native Plant Rescue (WNPR) is a group of volunteers located in Williamsburg and Hampton Roads, Va. The volunteers transplant native plants from construction sites prior to development, usually relocating them in public spaces, such as local parks and schools. However, recent interest in landscaping with native plants has led to projects involving replanting at the rescue site after it has been developed.

The Benson Plant Rescue in Omaha, Nebraska is in . . .

". . .  their 16th year of rescuing plants and recycling them with proceeds benefiting the Omaha Public Library by buying children's books. They distribute thousands of overstock and end season plants free of charge to low income gardeners.

Here's part of PlantAmnesty's mission:

PlantAmnesty, established in 1987, is a 1000-member mock-militant nonprofit organization whose purpose is to end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs caused by mal-pruning. We have a sense of humor and a mission. We specialize in using the media to alert the public to crimes against nature being committed in their own back yards, specifically tree topping and the nuisance shearing of shrubs. Once we have the public’s attention, we supply all the solutions: a referral service of skilled gardeners and arborists, classes and workshops, and YouTube videos and how-to literature on selective pruning in English and in Spanish. And we host volunteer pruning events for needy and deserving trees and gardens, including the Arbor Day Tree Prune and Volunteer Yard Renovations.For our work on pruning reform we have won several awards including three Gold Leaf Awards from the International Society of Arboriculture, the Arbor Day Foundation’s Education Award, and Washington State’s Urban Forest Stewardship Award.

Bixapedia says there used to be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants.

Antilandscaper also plays with that idea.

And Earthly Perfect also has a plant rescue addiction.

And there is an organization called P.C.A.P. (Pee-Cap) Prevention of Cruelty of Animals and Plants.

The Bureau of Land Management has a program for people to adopt Joshua Trees in the El Mirage Recreation Area.

You could find people to adopt your plants on Craigslist, but more likely it's about selling.

Freecycle is the best I can find so far.  It's a site where you can give away anything - not specifically plants.

While I didn't find exactly what I was looking for online, I think there's enough interest here for this to become a thing in the future.  Just have to figure out how to keep things healthy and pest free.  And I'm hoping readers might point out some examples where this is already happening.

Japanese Garden, Lilies, Birds, And Water

We visited with an old friend we hadn't seen in years.  She recommended the Japanese Garden in Van Nuys as the meeting place. 


Wow, we didn't even know it existed.  It was a great place to walk and talk. 

We know the Japanese Garden in Portland fairly well, having lived close to it when we were in that city for six months.   This one is totally different and interesting in its own way.

Lots of birds.  Like this osprey. 

And lots of lilies in a long flat rectangular lily and lotus pond.





And a wonderful way to catch up on lives. 







Not much time now.  Headed for the airport and Seattle before we get home.  If all goes well, we'll meet our granddaughter's plane in Seattle, which is why we're on such an early flight.  (Well, an 8 o'clock flight doesn't sound so early, it's getting to the airport on time that's the killer.)

So here are some of the pictures.

Lotus

Snowy Egret

There's an American Bittern sitting on the rock

There's also a very big modern building on the grounds that seemed too big and the style too space-agey for a Japanese Garden.  It turns out the garden is really part of a large water reclamation plant which sits directly next door and the building is for that rather than the garden. 


I didn't take any pictures of the building except of the garden through the walkway around the building.


The AAA explains this relationship:

"The Japanese Garden at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, 6100 Woodley Ave., is a water-treatment facility highlighted by a 6.5-acre Japanese garden."

It's a stark contrast between the garden and the plant which abut each other. 

And, apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks the building (not the plant, but the building which I didn't take pictures of) is space agey. From a Memory Wikia:

"The location can also be seen in episodes of Knight Rider (1986), Murder, She Wrote (1993), Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1995), L.A. Heat (1997), Charmed (1999), and Numb3rs (2009) and was featured in the action comedy Dead Heat (1988, starring Joe Piscopo), the crime drama Rising Sun (1993), the science fiction film CyberTracker (1994), the action film Red Sun Rising (1994), the comedy Bio-Dome (1996), the comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), the thriller Most Wanted (1997), the science fiction thriller Terminal Error (2002, with Marina Sirtis and Michael Nouri), and the science fiction film Sci-Fighter (2004). [1]"

Why Zoning Laws Matter - Landscaping: The Case Of Northrim Bank

This is the site of the now closed Northrim Bank branch office at 36th and Old Seward.  Notice the beautiful carpet of asphalt. Nothing is marred with soil or green in this picture.  (Though to be fair, there were a few bushes up along the building on the other side.)  This building was at this location long enough that the old Municipal code Title 21 for landscaping commercial property applied.  You can see how strict the code was.

This is where the "hybrid single point urban interchange" is planned for 36th and New Seward.  Given the state of the budget, maybe we can be spared the engineers' overbuilt creativity with exit lanes on the left, not the right. 

Now here is the new Northrim branch that just opened this week about a mile away.

And here it is from the other side. This landscaping is only a few weeks old and it already looks a million times better than their old location.

And a lot better than this location used to be. I don't have handy a good picture of the old lot, but you can get the idea from this picture of the rebuilt Sugar Shack coffee stand after it was vandalized and burned.   It's almost the same view as the one above, just a little closer.  Basically the whole space where the bank and parking lot sit now was just dirt with maybe a little bit of asphalt on one side and some weeds along Lake Otis. When we moved in here in the late 70s this lot was all birch trees. Then they all got cut down one day and it sat empty for years and years until the Sugar Shack was put on it.

I'm not sure whether the bank did this just to meet code or if they went beyond what the code required.  But I do appreciate it.

They even put trees and bushes in the ally, on the other side of the fence from the parking lot, giving the neighbors a bit of green screen. Some might say that the old Sugar Shack and old Northrim landscaping is the 'real' Alaska.  But I'd say the real Alaska was when this lot was all birch trees.  But I'll take this new landscaping over the open dirt space that's been here.