Snowdrops

I returned to Oregon last night, after a day's travel.  (Which, in the mindset of the colonials who I learned about on the East Coast, and the pioneers who wagon-trained across the Plains to this coast, is pretty dang miraculous, to travel that far that fast.)

I skipped to the end of the season, too.  We have a full bed of snowdrops outside! The bulbs' greenery are poking through the dirt, too -- crocusses, daffodils, bluebells and early tulips.  My carrots appear to have survived the cold stretch we had in December, and I may be able to harvest some by the end of February.

So far, so fast!

Autumn Non Sequiturs

Autumn officially starts in the USA in about 3-1/2 hours (in Oregon, at 2:18 p.m. September 22, 2009, according to the paper).  I learned recently that in Australia, someone has sensibly assigned the season changes to calendar dates, so it has been Spring there since September 1st. (And wouldn't it be easier if Winter began December 1st and "exits March the second, on the dot"?)  That said, I do appreciate the old-fashioned view that the seasons change with the sun and stars, not the calendar or the earthbound weather.

(a much better quality video is available here - after the ad - one I can't pull into my blog)

Here is a charming interview with a little girl who displays a thick Yorkshire accent. I have not been able to trace it back to its origin, but I wonder if it wasn't for a linguistic study (or a joke to be played upon the girl's father). To be watched only as long as you are interested in hearing the dialect. [Note added later: I did track it down finally on Youtube -- the interview was by her uncle, because she is cute.]

Prepping for winter in the garden

Our winters here in P'land are so mild that I hesitate to call it "winter", after decades of Minnesota cold and storms. On the other hand, it does get cold enough to freeze, and the rains get as depressing as the dry coldness in Minnesota, so, if one associates the term "winter" with "unpleasant weather", then we have winter.

Our fall has been unusually warm and dry. At the end of October, we have had about 1.5 inches of rain, about half of normal. The last two weeks have been unseasonably, unreasonably, beautiful, with intense leaf color, balmy afternoons and sun and clear skies every day (even better, every morning has started with atmospheric mist -- "atmospheric" meant both literally and figuratively -- which burns off about noon). I haven't spent as much time outdoors relishing the weather as I should have done, but about every other afternoon I've tinkered about the garden a bit.

I won't post photos, because it's all boring dirt to look at. The good photos, I hope, will come next spring. I've planted about 100 tulip and daffodil bulbs all over the front yard, and another 100 or more bluebell bulbs, plus another 50 crocuses, snowdrops, and other early small blooming flowers. I've also pulled up about 50 dandelions and other deep-rooted weeds from the weediest part of the lawn (so weedy, almost no grass is there, just clover, moss and weeds).

Yesterday I finished by tossing grass seed over all the bare parts of the lawn, and I moved the hydrangea to a more prominent position, and I planted 24 fava beans and about that many garlic cloves in the old tomato bed in the back (the best thing about the lack of a tough winter is that we can actually grow some stuff still). I'm smug about the work, because this morning opened with a pouring rain that hasn't stopped in 4 hours, and which is predicted to last as far as the forecasts go. November usually gets twice as much rain as October (over 5 inches), and we have an inch and a half to make up for -- it looks like Mother Nature is starting early.

Central Summer

July 4th. Independence Day (in USA). The middle of summer. We will all be going to a friend's annual party this afternoon, and before that, all of us are out working on the front garden. Ahem. All of them are -- I appear to be writing this entry instead.

It doesn't feel like summer is half over -- the children have been out of school for not quite three weeks. The weather has been "summery" (meaning, not cold and rainy) for fewer than two weeks. It doesn't seem fair that we are marking the halfway point already.

On the other hand, calling July 4th the middle of summer has never been quite fair -- it's a good week early in the calendar to be truly halfway, at least for those of us at the 45° parallel and above. We have another 8 weeks of no-school, and then another 3 weeks after that of warmth (in the Pacific Northwest at least), so we're only just beginning.

The cats are well practiced, however, in spending the long, sun-filled, lazy days doing what they do best -- making sure the furniture on the porch isn't left unused.

Me Me Me and the Mystery Illness

Actually, things are happening at Cattus Dommus, but I haven't been moved to write about them. I have many photos, but few words.

However, Monday afternoon, my eyes started to swell. It was slow, starting on Sunday actually, but the rate of swelling increased significantly that evening, so that despite a night spent regularly applying cold compresses, by dawn yesterday one eye was virtually shut, and the other was not far behind. My whole face burned and itched at the same time, and the swelling was starting to push tissues into my nostrils so I was aware of my breathing. I won't say that I actually experienced troubles breathing, but in good hypochondriac fashion, I imagined a horrific death of allergy-imposed self-asphyxiation by tissue swelling.

To break the suspense, I'll tell you now that I'm fine. A trip to Urgent Care, and two daily doses of prednisone, and I'm almost back to normal, but for a slight puffiness and stretched, dry, somewhat itchy, red eyelids and cheeks.

Me at Starbucks at 11 a.m. yesterday, awaiting the prescription to be filled.

I've been told by One Who Knows that in 95% of cases, we never learn what caused the reaction. I have been taking antihistamines for weeks -- the Portland spring has been long and cold, and last weekend all the oaks and ashes bloomed at once. I don't think that's what caused this reaction alone -- I've never had a reaction as violent as this one before, and I haven't spent much time outdoors in the last few days. It could have been the new skin cream I was using, yet I had applied some on Saturday, with nary a tickle. Or a final critical mass of decomposing camellias, brought by Tasha, and piled outside both my windows and in stacks in my garbage pail, not counting the ones I haven't picked up yet, by her food dish, and on the way to the Favored Napping Chair. It could have been caused by the 15 minutes of sunshine I got on Saturday, although I was heavily sun-screened (but not hatted). It might have been some of the fumes from the water-based paint that HomoDomi is using in the basement, or stray trails of insulation from the attic project (more about that later).

Me at Starbucks, moments after the first photo, still awaiting my medication. Don't I look like I was beaten up? I'm actually trying to smile in the photo -- but I didn't feel much like smiling.

Maybe it was the perfect storm of allergens, all combined against me in one attack on the White Towers of Gondamy. Luckily, the Riders of Prednisohan came to the rescue.

I've had only one similar attack, in 1989 in Los Angeles. One eye swelled up dramatically -- but nothing near as bad as this, just enough to make me feel a pariah as I walked through the shops on Rodeo Drive, after buying a pair of posh eye-masking sunglasses. I've always assumed it was something pernicious in the smog -- the swelling went away naturally a day or two later, after I left the city. Portland can get bad smog -- we're many polluting people and cars surrounded by mountains, but they have air alerts on those windless days, and these tend to happen in baking August.

One of the side effects of prednisone -- which, by the way, must be the origin of the "bitter pill" metaphor, because it tastes horrific -- is "hyperactivity" or "craziness" according to the nurse practitioner who prescribed it to me, and the pharmacist (and, I guess, every commentator about Barry Bonds and other baseball players, despite denials of steroid-use). I have certainly noticed that I have had much more energy the last two days, after my doses, than any time the preceding two weeks. I believe I've been fighting allergies for some time now, which might explain the low word output. Either the hyperness is what I need to bring me back up to about normal levels of activity, or maybe the steroids are reducing the swelling of whatever it is that has been holding me down. I only get to take the drug for one more day, and I hope I can retain the energy level after that.

Me, noon today, 25 hours after the photos above, 2 doses of prednisone later. The camera washes out the red-purpley ness of the swelling, but even with the discoloration, I look much better than I did. There was a moment when I realized I was aware of my blinks -- that my eyes were open enough again, that the eyelid took time to traverse across the eyeball.

Checking In -- it's almost spring!

As usual, returning from a trip takes as much energy as being on one, and I haven't had much time to blog. I will post soon about my trip home, because I saw some wonderful things (rain forest bordering on beach at Second Beach, and beautiful elk grazing in the undergrowth of the true rain forest at Quinault Rain Forest, and last but not least, a Pacific Northwest setting for Rivendell at the Quinault Big Cedar Tree).

In the meantime, some photos of the marvelous spring clematis bloom we are treated with this year. (I took these during one of those Portland breaks in the rain -- you'll note the sunshine and the blue sky; it lasted about 20 minutes.) Note how it's growing up over the weeping birch tree in the neighbor's yard -- a choke-hold that we will probably have to cut back this summer to save the tree, but right now it looks like a wedding decoration.

Putting the gardens to bed

I cleared out the back garden of tomatoes today. At first I was just going to pick any red ones. Then I realized most of the red ones were split and half rotten (I haven't harvested for a week, and the weather has been in the mid-40's (~7 C) every night). So then I planned to just pick all of them, red and green. (Mom has a recipe for Pickalily with green tomatoes that she made years ago and it was delicious on beef pasties.) But in the end, the whole tomato /green-bean /pepper garden was dismantled and put in the yard-debris garbage -- and then the herb garden and a few of the over-the-hill flowers around the yard until the debris bag was full. Once again I wished we had a compost, but we don't.

I planted four tomato plants in April; one started producing large cherry tomatoes in late July, the rest came into full fruiting in mid-August, so we had almost three full months of fresh tomatoes. It is a good thing, a tomato grown in your own backyard.

On the other hand, we had a total of 3 green beans (beans, not plants), and the one pepper fruited so late that the plant died leaving a sorry and rock hard 1-inch proto-pepper clutched in its dry, withered leaves. Apparently one of the few things that the Willamette Valley cannot produce naturally is a good sweet bell pepper. They require temperatures in the upper 70's (21+ C) minimally during both the day and the night, but the temperatures drop here at night, even in summer. Great for summer sleeping, not good for homegrown peppers. (The local farmers who do grow them use heaters.)

By accident I planted one heirloom cannelini plant (I thought it was a green bean), which produced several nice fat pods full of nice fat beans. That is, about 1/4 cup, not enough for a bowl of soup. So I have dried the beans and will plant them next spring -- if each bean produces a plant with as many pods as we had this summer, I should have at least 2-3 cups of beans, and I hope that next fall we can have a pot of homegrown minestrone (with purchased pasta). Actually, the cannelini didn't get planted until August and in a shady northern corner, so I expect I can have a much better harvest next year.

Hope springs even in fall. One of the tomatoes had three new blossoms; the passion flower on the patio is still blooming. Andrew suggested the maniacal grin for the photo.