Summer 2009 Photos
June 28, Marys Peak
July 3, Freshly-painted trailer
July 10, Marys Peak sunset
Looking out over a layer of clouds is a surreal experience!
The higher peaks appear as islands in the sea of clouds
July 18, Garden
Lilies in bloom!
Ebba with a small part of our garlic harvest
July 25, Garden and wood
My blazing star in bloom - a touch of Minnesota prairie
We bought a cord of ash to have some dry hardwood for winter
August 13, Kelly's fieldwork
My friend Kelly is working on a nutrient-addition study on a remote mountaintop meadow in the Cascades. Perhaps sensing that I would prefer a day on a mountaintop to a day in the lab (quite true!), she invited me along to help with her end-of-season data collection.
Grazer exclusion plots on a mountaintop - all the posts and wires arrived by helicopter.
August 16, Rust removal
There is nothing particularly special about this picture, except that it shows the result of a couple of hours of work with hydrofluoric acid. For comparison, look at the photo below, taken last fall.
As I was scrubbing the siding, our neighbors were stacking wood, and they seemed to be taking greater care than should be necessary, constantly sighting up the pile from a distance and giving orders on where to place pieces. I didn't think much of it until I looked at the pile the next day and saw this - a tree stacked into the pile!
August 23, Mushroom hunring on the coast
All four of us headed to the coast in search of early fall mushrooms, expecting to find mainly lobster mushrooms (left in the photo). We found plenty, but we also found unexpected hedgehogs (right front) and chanterelles (right rear). The big mushroom in the center is a non-edible Leucopaxillus that we collected just for display.
September 11, Onion harvest
Ailsa Craig onions are supposed to be big, but ours just kept growing...and growing...and growing. The largest weighed in at 3.3 pounds, and all four of the ones in the picture were well over 2 pounds each.
September 19, Indoor odd bin and woodpile walls
In order to fit a whole winter's worth of wood in our garage without filling it, we needed a way to make tall piles and to contain the odd wood. The photos below show my solution: An odd bin (3' by 6' by 14') and a second wall (8' by 6') to bound in 5-6 parallel straight-wood stacks (each 7' by 6' by 16"). I probably should have run this project past the landlord first, but it is removable... This much lumber would have been well over $100 in MN, but out here in lumber country it was just under $50.
Two removable door panels are attached with bolts and wingnuts.