{Summa summa summa time*}

Two of 30 or so mature big leaf maples on the property; these are in the sheep pasture.

So those trees I was grumbling about back in April? Yeah, I’m full of gratitude for them right now. In a spring and summer of weird weather in North America, the Pacific Northwest has been unusually hot and dry since early May. We normally have a pretty soggy spring, with June usually being gray, if not wet, and June Gloom, or Juneuary being common descriptors for the wet, and often cold, weather. This year, though, summer arrived a full month early and has been setting records all the way. We’ve been roasting since June, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. And, yes, the shade from the trees has been welcome. My roast chicken fetish has suffered a bit (hard to muster the resolve to fire up the oven to 400 degrees for 90 minutes—the house is like a little hot box from about 4 p.m. on), but I’m still chowing on the watermelons.

Sheep at dusk.

The beasts are doing well in the heat, what with plenty of shade to hang out in. And even if I didn’t have too much shade (per my lament for grass growing back in April), the property is dried up and the grass has turned brown due to lack of moisture. I’ve been watering some, but it’s a battle lost long ago (the paradox being that within two weeks of no rain, the ground is dried up and rock hard) and I mostly do it to help cool the place in the evenings. I have to be careful with the watering so I don’t run the well tank dry. I accidentally do this a few times every year and it freaks me out every time. The first time I did it, the first summer I was here, I thought the well had run dry (or the pump had broken down) and was cobbling together a plan before I called the well repair guy to come take a look (it was late on a Sunday night). I turned off the faucet to the sprinkler I had going (mostly to cool things off rather than water the dead grass) and within 15 minutes the water was running in the house again. Lesson learned. I’ve done it a few times since, and it’s always a 3-second panic before I remember. Now I set a timer for watering; I time the watering AND the recharging period, so I’m not overtaxing the system.

Bees drinking from the pond. It’s perfect for them; with all the slop and vege growing in it, they can drink safe from drowning.

I keep the little slop pond filled; it’s the main source of water for my bees, and of course the dogs’ constant slopping in there to cool off. Pal will lie down and roll to his side to get good and wet, then go roll in ecstasy in the pile of hog fuel. Nice. I also keep a little kiddie pool scrubbed and filled for the dogs (basically a giant water bowl for them, the chickens, and the sheep—you’d think it was the only water around for miles, given its popularity as a trough). I stepped in when it was clean and full recently and yelped with the cold. It was obvious that this water was fresh from the subterranean Snoqualmie Valley.

A recent day trip took me to the San Juan Islands. This is Mount Baker seen from the ferry on the way home, and had me feeling blessed to live in such a paradise.

Not much is getting done in the way of chores – too hot for housework is one of my favorite excuses – but thankfully, being in a maritime climate, it does cool down at night. I open the doors and windows, and employ a fan, and by midnight or so, the house has cooled nicely. I’m leaving the back door open all night (with a baby gate to keep the dogs in—otherwise they would be out barking at snipes all night long), and do the same with the chicken coop, so the hens have a chance to cool down. But for the most part all the critters are doing well. The sheep stay in the shade, and drink plenty of water, and the chickens take dust baths in the hot sun and go through gallons of water. The dogs and cats lay around all day, for the most part. The Setter boys being a skootch more active than Daisy, who just lounges in one of her many dirt pits. Pal runs after birds, and Farley insists I throw his ball for him, though he paces himself with regards to returning it for another toss.

Eloise complaining about her captivity from my office (behind glass paneled door).

The only problem, honestly, has been the cats. The two youngsters, and especially Madeline, are quite the hunters, and keeping them inside once I open the doors to cool the house requires locking them in my office. For the entire night. That’s not really that big of a deal (Eloise would argue otherwise, and has shredded paperwork I’ve left on my desk), but it does require some management. Now that the birds are no longer singing (sniff – I miss my Swainson’s seranades in the evenings), and the nesting season winding up, I’ve relented and let them outside. Madeline is impossible to get back inside, as her feral nature takes over once she crosses the threshold. She stays out all night, and sometimes for a full 24 or 36 hours. I find dead mice scattered around in the morning (the chickens love these) and a dead bat recently, too. This saddened me even as it gave me the willies. It was a tiny little thing, no bigger than the tip of my thumb, with tiny needles for teeth. And this afternoon I found a dead towhee in the front yard, which upset me nearly to tears, and I cursed myself for not locking Madeleine up permanently. When it rains at night she’ll come in readily, but in that case it will be another month. I will hopefully get her inside tonight (we’re coming up on 36 hours out now) and am locking her up in a dog crate if I have to.

Happy hive.

The bees are happy, and I’m pleased with the front-of-hive activity I’m seeing. I opened it up for an inspection a few weekends ago and was pleased to see plenty of brood in the few frames I looked at. The bees were very docile—unusually so—and I kept it very brief. As soon as I saw the brood, I pretty much stopped. I’m always so paranoid about squishing the queen by accident, and it was hot, so I just plopped on another hive box so they could build up, and will wait for a cooler day to do a more thorough inspection. I want to do a split – start a new hive by moving some frames of brood into a new hive, but am squeamish about it. I don’t trust that they’ll figure out how to make a queen, so will probably buy a queen to put in there. If I do it. I’ll have to feed all winter too, with it being so late in the season (and the drought taking its toll on flowering plants of all kinds). We shall see.

*Summertime

Gratuitous cuteness: Daisy relaxing in one of her more elaborate dirt pits, dug into the hillside. Happy dog. Heart her!

Advertisement

November rains

The Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly known for its Fall colors.  The Northeast part of the US is the reigning champion when it comes to colorful leaves and autumn brilliance, and that’s not likely to change.  With the variety of deciduous hardwoods and reletively few evergreens, the Northeastern forests are a cacaphony of reds, oranges, yellows, and golds, and draw tourists from all over the world just for the fall color display.  The Pacific Northwest in comparison is a slacker, with primarily just varying shades of yellow.  There are some pockets of oaks in different areas, but they don’t seem to get the same brilliant hues as their eastern cousins, whether due to species, weather patterns, or some other factor.  Then there are the firs and cedars–mile after endless, mountainous mile of shades of green.  This is not a complaint, as these miles of forests are magnificent.  But even the forests of mixed fir and deciduous in the lowlands don’t hold the variety of color compared to the East.  It’s mostly shades of yellow.  But oh, what yellow.

The most common native deciduous is the Bigleaf maple.  And as its name implies, it possesses some of the biggest leaves you can imagine outside of the tropics.   The majority of leaves are of normal size, 6 – 12 inches across, in the classic maple leaf shape, but occasionally you’ll see some monsters, dropping from the high canopy in the fall leaf drop, the size of a turkey platter.  The trees are large for maples, and provide the bulk of the fall color (from natives) in the Puget Sound basin.  My commute to work passes through an area of mature maples on the road to get to the freeway.  During the summer they shade the roadway all day long.  During the autumn it’s like driving through a cathedral, the leaves bright with color and seeming to glow in the waning light of sunset.  The color starts out as a vivid, warm yellow early in the season, and matures into the rich  orange yellow of the label on a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, and in its magnificence (a mature Bigleaf maple is a massive tree), leaves you just as high as several glasses of the champagne.

The other trees that turn color are all in shades of yellow – from the lemon yellow of a wild cherry  to the  deer crossing sign-yellow of a mature cottonwood.  Vine maple, another native maple, is considered a shrub rather than a tree, and provides the bright red color missing in our large trees.  Coming across a patch of them in the draw of a mountain stream, or a high mountain rockfall (where their fall colors begin in late August), is a sight to behold during the autumn months.

After our glorious, extended version of summer this year, it seems the fall color has been more spectactular than usual.  And now the rains have begun, and the deciduous trees are becoming devoid of leaves.  The foothills still hold some color, even as the mountains beyond are becoming snow capped, and there are some non-native ornamentals in town still putting on a show (the neighbor’s Japanese maple is one that’s just reaching peak), but the big show is over.  The heavy rains and wind are accelerating the leaf drop, and they swirl through the air like oversized confetti as we head into the dark months, when the evergreens rule.