February of 2015 will be remembered, among other things, for the whomping rumble of container ship engines as they idled off our bluff waiting in line for the longshoremen’s ‘slow down’ to resolve. Despite the constant noise, we have rather enjoyed the light show provided from the vessels each evening and early morning.
Yet future reflection on our February of this year, as well as our late December and January, will mostly recall one of the most mild winters I have ever experienced in the PNW. [Read more…]
It was on a walk with the dogs today that I became aware of the beginning of the beginning of the end of summer which is rather odd as the beginning of the end of the end of spring just happened to be about two weeks ago, perhaps even ten days ago if you are a dedicated cynic which I usually am but not today. Today there were deliberately jettisoned leaves of scouler’s willow and bigleaf maple along the trail, not just those that had grown bored of waiting for summer or those struck down in youth by a gust of wind or mandibles of squirrel and slug. These fallen leaves were legitimate and fully sanctioned to lay down where they lie. 
It is quite predictable in the PNW, that after a brief rain event in late August, the sun will reappear in an air that has changed its cloak to that of autumn. Never mind that we actually did not have much of a summer here at all, bathed in a dense marine layer of fog for most of July and August. Yet even in its darkness and coolness, it was within the dress of summer which we lived. Modestly, as anticipated, she slipped into her autumn wardrobe this week as a gentle yet persistent rain fell for two days. 
In September of 1996, I visited the Yulong Shan in NE Yunnan Province in China. It was my debut in botanizing within that remarkable country, accompanied by a talented contingent of like-minded plantspeople, and there is hardly a better place to sample its fantastic flora than in the dramatic mountains northwest of Lichiang. It was there that I collected the seed of Picea likiangensis var purpurea, the Lichiang Spruce, after having previously read titillating tributes to its ornamental appeal.