From Krummholz to the Pygmy Forest

We began at the sea, on a cliff dotted with seaside daisies. We walked along the cliff, skirting a prairie of sweet vernal grass and velvet grass.  Thence we traveled to Krummholz, called The Goblin Fortress by the wee people.  From Krummholz we climbed the Ecological Staircase to the Pygmy Forest, stuffing ourselves with blue and red huckleberries on the way.

It sounds like a passage from a fantasy novel, but it was the first and longest hike we took.  And the most varied and exciting.  A little over five miles round trip.  The hike begins in Jug Handle State Park.

The Ecological Staircase is a series of 5 terraces uplifted from the sea.  As you climb, each terrace is 100,000 years older than the one before.

We began at the headlands, on the first terrace, or rather, the second, as the first is now being formed just beneath the sea, where the water is lighter and greener.

Just beyond the coastal prairie you find trees twisted and bent by salt winds, giving them a quality known as krummholz, German for bentwood.  Our kids dubbed these trees The Goblin Fortress.  It was the best natural playground I have ever seen.

On the next step of the staircase you find the same Grand firs and Douglas firs growing tall and true.

Or fallen over and hollowed by fire, making an irresistible, if sooty, tunnel.

Greta found this mushroom, with the volva, the remains of the universal veil, still visible at its base.  The volva is evidence that this mushroom is in the Amanita family and may be deadly poisonous.

If there are mushroom experts among my readers, tell us what you know about this mushroom.

The trees also fell between other trees, great for climbing.  See Evelyn leaning against the trunk.

Anyone know what this powdery yellow stuff is?

These are red huckleberries.

And these are our old friends, blue huckleberries.

We picked enough to make huckleberry syrup to drizzle over our breakfast crepes.

The trail rose up through a grove of coastal redwoods and on up again to the pygmy forest.

Evelyn looked like a giant walking among these trees bonsaied by too much water and soil depleted of minerals.

Greta caught a snake on the way down.

But we saw no mammals, not so much as a squirrel, on the Ecological Staircase.

A Dozen

Happy Birthday Evelyn!


Only one year till she's a teenager.  We've got a project for this year.  It is going to require a lot of travel.  We embarked on it yesterday in a big, big way.  The biggest way.

I'm keeping it secret until I can get a post together.

Off Path Paradise

Last week while tramping around in the woods with her nature class Evelyn forgot her backpack at Off Path Paradise, her backpack with her knives in it, the ones she uses for whittling, the ones she treasures.  Off Path Paradise lies off the Ridge Trail which is a mile long hike straight uphill (which is only a wee exaggeration) from Canyon Meadow. I'm not given to whining about one mile hikes of any verticality, but every single one of us was sick.

Since burglars (which Greta calls "gurglers") got into our house last fall...during the day, minutes after we left the house...I worry about leaving the kids home alone.  So, oh poor me, I had to strap on the Ergo baby carrier I haven't used in a year and carry Greta up the mile long hill while sick.  You can pin my medal right over my heart, thanks.

Off Path Paradise is a true child's paradise.  It is marked by a forked branch leaned up against a tree.  Its chief appeal is that few know it is there.  The kids found it by searching a topo map for flat areas.

It is home to dented and rusted and broken things dating from my childhood.

Nearby lies "Glass Valley". 

The kids have made it their own in ways that are familiar to me from my own, much more free, childhood.

Sweet-smelling, medicinal yerba buena grows there.

And Ev's backpack was there, safe and sound if slightly damp and covered by a few windblown leaves.

On the way up I didn't look past my own two trudging feet.  On the way down I saw the sluggish me had missed a few things.

Down was such easy going that the kids even broke into a run.

Here's where I'm supposed to say we were all invigorated and even healed by our foray into nature.  But it just wasn't so.  Still I was glad to have had a glimpse at the kids' Off Path Paradise.

The DANGER of TV

We had my whole family here for Thanksgiving. My parents, my sister and her family, my brother and his girlfriend. It was fab.

But we had a visitor that was both strange and unwelcome in our household by some: football on TV all day. At some point the comic below got taped to the TV. Actually right over the TV. Do you see that big pair of linebacker thighs in uniform on the bottom? And the title? The DANGER of T.V.

Here it is, so you can see it:

The DANGER of TV by Evelyn

Son: Mom, can I watch T.V.?

Mom: Sure

T.V.: And Super Guy saves the day!

Mom: All my son's done for three days is watch T.V., doctor. No, he didn't eat. All he's said to me is "turn another video on." No sleeping even. I'll bring him in today. And his mouth hangs wide open.

Doctor: He may have a serious case of T.V. induced brain rot. We'll have to saw his head open to check.

Son: T.V. T.V. T.V......

Doctor: See, his brain is mush.

Son: T.V. T.V. T.V.....
Mother: What should I do with him?

Doctor: All you can do is let him watch T.V. for the rest of his life.
Mother: Oh.

Quite a cautionary tale. I think we're safe though.

A Fish Story

Naturally it was right at bedtime when Greta came running to us saying, "Evelyn's guppy has given birth! There's babies in the tank!"

The big guppies ate most of the babies, but two are now in the breeding net, safe from their hungry parents.
I am amazed at their tiny transparent fins.

And huge eyes.

This is not two, it is one looking at its reflection.

Can you see it in this jar? It is the little thing on the left near the bottom.

We wonder if they'll grow up to look like their mother:

Or their father:

Evelyn plans to breed them for traits she'll select. She got a 50 gallon tank for her birthday from her aunt and uncle and grandparents. Which is large enough that one guy claims to have kept more than 17,000 guppies in such a tank.

That doesn't seem quite humane, so thank goodness the parents eat so many of the babies.

In other Evelyn news...a long time ago the kids entered the Doodle4Googler contest. Evelyn was a finalist and got a Nintendo DS and what is much more exciting, her own logo printed on a shirt.
Here she is sporting the logo she designed. The theme was "What I Want for the World."

"I want the world to get bigger. My doodle shows people leaving earth to colonize other planets. We need to go to other planets so that we have enough room to expand while preserving and even restoring habitat for the animals that we have been pushing out of their homes."

Crafty

Evelyn took up knitting earlier this year and has been knitting away like crazy. She knits in bed, in the car, on the couch while reading. She's knitted two hats for Clem, one for Greta and one for herself, a bag for her knitting, a bag for my cell phone and two stuffed lambs for Clem and Greta.

And now she is well into a fine looking sweater. She is trying it on at left. Ev's made a lot of progress on the sleeves since I took this photo.

A friend was giving away a pottery kick wheel and, not knowing what I'd do with it or where I'd put it, I took it.

We had some friends over to try it out, including my friend over at Reading While Knitting (from whom Evelyn learned to knit and to read while knitting. Though she enjoyed the help of other knitting moms at park day, too, including my friend at Wonder Farm).

I'd like to get a few more days in on the wheel before we leave for our history trip. One of my memories of Colonial Williamsburg is watching the potters effortlessly form inkwells.

Soup, Salad, Sorbet

We started what I hope will be a new tradition this week. Soup, salad and sorbet night. Each child gets to choose one of the three and we rotate who chooses what. We got off to an uneven start. Poor Clem has been out of commission for a week. Fever, pain, no appetite, and the insult added to the injury: long bouts of hiccups.

So Ev chose all three this week. I tried to give Greta choice of sorbet, but she enthusiastically agreed to the raspberry sorbet Ev had chosen.

I love how kids surprise you when you let them choose. On the menu: Onion panade (similar to French Onion Soup) and smoked trout and avocado salad. They've surprised me before by choosing quail eggs and alligator.

What food choices have your kids surprised you with?

Onion Panade and Avocado and Smoked Trout Salad from Chez Panisse Vegetables (my favorite cookbook). Look up the vegetable you have in alphabetical order and find a myriad of ways to cook it, some simple and elegant, some complex.

Raspberry Sherbet from Chez Panisse Desserts

Treasure Hunt

The stars aligned and told us it was time to collect mushrooms and make spore prints. On our backyard hunt we found more treasures than we anticipated. Two banana slugs, deer vertebrae, and Ev's find: a sodden $20 bill.

Later a slender salamander turned up beneath a rock in the side yard. He was playing dead but when I gently turned him into my other hand to look at his belly he quick turned over. He did it so fast that we couldn't see him turn. I'd flip him from hand to hand but he was always right side up and unmoving as a stick. We laughed and laughed and Evelyn called him a double sided salamander.

Greta cut the stems off the mushrooms and set them on a piece of paper. We left them over the weekend. Only two made good prints. A third made a cream print on white paper, visible only in the right light. I'm glad I took pictures as Greta, in an attempt to make notecards, chopped them all into tiny bits with her scissors. We meant to bury the bits in the yard to plant more mushrooms, but the bits have vanished. Greta said she dreamed that mushrooms were growing on the walls of our house.

I hope that particular dream does not come true.

Studies in Yellow

After looking at lovley photos in yellow on Wonderfarm and House at Hill Road I thought I'd give it a try.

The kids were making Dark Chocolate Covered Candied Citrus Peels. Evelyn taste tested orange peels and declared the ones fresh from our tree to be superior.

From the top we have denuded grapefruit (the kids did not follow the directions about juicing the fruit). Then you see them dipping the candied peels in chocolate. On the bottom left are candied peels, and on the bottom right is candied Clementine.




I sent the girls out for an hour of fresh air. Clem was inspired by my yellow photos and asked for the camera. Here she captures evidence of men and nature at work. I like the saw hiding from the rain beneath the plastic. Evelyn took the one of the capped wires looking like electric daffodils.

The Library is Fun Again

The year was 1998. It was July. I had a big belly. I had a hot mile-long walk. At the end was a library.

Heaven. It might as well be a spa.

Cool. Quiet. Welcoming. So much magic folded between enticingly dusty covers. Big soft chairs. Windows with a vista on a green hill.

And then, on August 4th, Evelyn was born. And libraries were no fun anymore.


Whether in sling or stroller, she did not like me to stop walking long enough to pick a book. The quiet was no longer peaceful and welcoming. It was demanding and judgmental. Flash forward a year and libraries were still no fun. For me.

Evelyn thought pulling the books off the shelves and climbing in and lying on the the empty shelf was great. Flash forward another year. Evelyn likes the library!

But Clementine, in the sling, does not want me to stop walking long enough to pick out books.

A year later Clem is pulling books off the shelf. Another year later she has honed her grab and run. Grab the book Evelyn is looking at and run! Oh the howling! At age 4 when Greta arrived Clem had just outgrown a love of running away and hiding.


But now we had a new baby.
Who didn't want me to stop walking long enough to pick out books.

Well, Greta is now four!

For 10 years I've been treating library trips as high-precision military strikes. Plan your targets: if possible reserve them so they are waiting for you on the hold shelf. Fly in, drop a few bombs in the form of overdue materials, take your hostages from the hold shelf, and get out of there.

And now, like magic, a trip to the library is a mini vacation. An oasis on a rainy day. A place to linger. And stop long enough to pick out books.