August

It has been very dry around here, and I've managed to take a photo that includes blue sky without too much smoke from all the fires in the region.  We haven't had rain for months and the temperatures have been hotter than usual, even for August.  So, I was surprised when I went out in the prairie today to see so much green.  Nothing out here gets watered, but native plants put their roots down deep into the soil where there is still some moisture, apparently. 

Did I Invent the Frappuccino?

In 1986, I was without a music gig (long story) and I went to work as a barista and waiter at a really nice dessert place in Seattle called Pacific Desserts, right next to Seattle Center.  Among their many truly-wonderful treats, they made a rich chocolate ice cream with Guittard chocolate, and they served Starbucks coffee.  Starbucks back then wasn't what it is now.  They mainly sold only to restaurants in the Seattle area, and the only two Starbucks stores in the whole world were in Pike Place Market and the University District.  They were obsessed with quality, the coffee was outstanding, and if you used Starbucks coffee in your restaurant, you could expect secret Starbucks agents to come once in awhile and order an espresso drink.  They were always very friendly, but they would get a coffee, critique your work (complements, too), and they had really good advice!

I had a great manager who cared that we made top-of-the-line espresso drinks, and he encouraged experimentation.  My masterpiece was the "Buzz Bomb."

I mixed a doppio ristretto shot of espresso (so a double, but I only use the first 1.2 ounces or so of the espresso) and 1.5 oz. of half-and-half together and chilled them in the freezer for 20 minutes.  We had an milkshake maker and I took a hulking scoop of the Guittard chocolate ice cream, put it in a frozen stainless steel shake cup, poured the chilled espresso mix over it and zipped it into a tiny milkshake.  They were SO GOOD, and you could sorta feel the air rushing around your eyeballs after you enjoyed one.

Anyway, one day the Starbucks guy came in, and I said that he had to try a Buzz Bomb.  He was skeptical but once he had a sip, his eyebrows raised and he looked me right in the eye, nodding, "This is very good, very good..."  True story.

I imagine any strong chocolate ice cream could work for this, but I use Tillamook Mudslide which is a very rich chocolate with pieces of dark chocolate (semi-sweet, I think).  The pieces get pulverized and the flavor is very close to the Pacific Desserts chocolate ice cream.  Because we don't have a commercial shake maker we put a stainless steel pitcher in the freezer and do the job with an immersion blender.  Put your glasses in the freezer, and be sure you chill the espresso/half-and-half mixture for 20 minutes.  If you use a regular blender, be sure to put the glass/blade part in the freezer first.  Making two at once seems to work better than one at a time, and then I use three little scoops of ice cream.   

The natives are restless

Needle-leaved navarretia (Navarretia intertexta), blooming this afternoon.

I have been clobbered by an evil stomach bug that has lingered now for four days, but I finally felt up for a little walk, and I wanted to check on a patch of small white flowers on sort of spiny stalks, just a couple of inches tall at most.  They've shown up elsewhere, and when these sweet furry green things became sorta sharp brown things, I assumed they must be evil.

When I saw them again this year in a spot in the second-year prairie, I had recognized that native annuals (like the previously-mentioned Midget phlox) were showing up in this area.  I thought that I had better identify everything, so I can walk through in the next week and pull the stray Prickly lettuce and mustard (thankfully, there is much less of this as the years go by).  They do have sweet tiny flowers, and before they become little sticker things, they make a lovely little patch like this...

And, sure enough, consulting my Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest (Turner and Gustafson), there it is on p. 161.  It looks like it will provide some needed competition to all of that Epilobium you can see sprouting around it.  We'll see how this goes, but my theory is that these annuals fill in and provide cover for the perennials that are coming up everywhere.  There's actually quite a bit of native grass species throughout, but they are still only little green threads.  After the perennials mature, these annuals remain ready to take advantage of any opportunity.  Now they're getting an unusual opportunity and I hope they behave themselves, but I think it is just this sort of biomass that creates an actual prairie as it composts.   

And here's a shot of clarkia and Oregon sunshine in all its glory as I walked back to the house...

Late Spring bloom...

Oregon sunshine, clarkia, Wyeth buckwheat, and yarrow blooming in the prairie today...

These images are all from my "second-year" prairie, the areas that I planted 18 months ago with the Palouse Conservation District grant.  There are some plants in this area that have been here for awhile--the Arrowleaf balsamroot (past blooming now, but you can see the large leaves on the right side of the photo) is fifteen years old--but most of this area was replanted with natives when I received the PCD grant.  This area is where I took the previous post's images of Midget phlox, which I didn't plant, but it was somehow inspired to show up here.  It is still blooming, but you can't really see it in this image--they really are tiny flowers.

One of the great successes of the PCD replanting was Taper-leaved penstemon (below), which I think is spectacularly beautiful.  This one blooming here was planted as a plant in a pot (from the Idaho Native Plant Society sale last year), but I also purchased a bunch of seed and there are many, many penstemon sprouts all over the place on the property now.  I am really looking forward to seeing drifts of this fabulous flower in the future!

One of the plants that I planted in this area years ago was this Gaillardia aristata, which has now grown into a substantial clump.  This is a plant that you can buy in a lot of nurseries--supposedly it is the same species--but the cultivar generally has redder petals.  I think the local native version is more beautiful.  The seeds for this one came from a population that grows a mile east of here.

I have to go through this entire area to pull seed heads off of cheatgrass and other annual grass species, but it is basically finished, as far as substantial planting is concerned... 

A gift

Midget phlox (Phlox gracilis), blooming in the prairie...

I have seen these tiny annual flowers in the middle of our property for years, pretty little pink flowers, mostly, though there are white ones, too...

They are the sort of tiny plants you can see all over native Palouse prairie remnants, but not in the more cultivated parts of my prairie restoration effort.  Until yesterday, I had not identified them, but they seemed so delicate and sweet that I assumed they must be native.  I pulled out my handy field guide last night, and there they were--I wouldn't have guessed that they were phlox of some kind.  Along with another annual, Blue-eyed Mary, which I have written about previously, I have been able to save them from my weed control efforts and it is an inspiration to see them coming back in the second-year prairie.  They are plentiful enough that I hope they spread their seeds throughout the property...Though you can't buy these sorts of plants from any supplier, I suspect their role in the prairie ecosystem is important, since they fill in and keep invasive species out, and they appear to react with the soil, making it more receptive to other native plants.  It seems like such a gift for Nature to plant them for me!

It has been awhile since I posted a shot of the five-year-old prairie restoration area in the northern part of the property.  Not much blooming there that you can see at the moment (the Midget phlox turns up south of this view), but it is healthy and thriving...There are actually quite a lot of nine-leaf lomatium there and other good things, but they get lost amongst all that Idaho fescue.

Back in business!

I just finished making a little wooden pad for the laptop so it can stay cool sitting on that nice antique South Persian mat (Khamseh Federation, late 19th c.).  After nearly two months (!), Palouse River Music is back to recording.  I hope it's another thirteen years before I have to go through all of that again!

Spring

When the grass widows are blooming, it's Spring.  For signs of excitement in the prairie, though, it's best to go to spots like this that have been established for a few years.  The areas I planted last fall are still pretty bleak (below). 

 In areas I planted in fall of 2013, there's more activity...

 

Close up, this second-year growth looks like what you might expect in the first year at this point, but a prairie unfolds at a very slow pace...Below, the wide-bladed leaves are Western groundsel, and the five-bladed leaf to the right is an Upland larkspur.  I hardly saw any larkspur last year, but in those areas now are numerous drifts of it.  It just takes this long to get going, and may not bloom until next year or the year after.

For comparison with images I've shot of this area in previous years, this is what a planting looks like in the second year.  Patience, patience...