More Wildflowers: Joe's Run

This patch of green doesn't really catch the eye, does it, when you're just driving past?




But just look closer and this is what you might find:

Bellwort drooping its lovely flowers above barely visible woods betony...

and wild phlox, mouse-ear chickweed and violets, along with...

bluets and wood betony...

that look quite pretty together, and with cinquefoil too (the little yellow flower below).

Hiding beneath the others you might find henbit (the little purple flower below)...

and if you look on the other side of the road, you'll discover golden ragwort and wild geranium running riot in a field.

All to be seen by just stopping the car for a moment, getting out, and looking closely at what is all around. It just doesn't pay to be in a hurry at this time of year, does it?

About wood betony: the plant goes by many other names, including lousewort because Europeans believed that cattle that went near the plant would get covered in lice. One legend about a variety of betony says that when Veronica saw Jesus carrying the cross, she wiped the sweat from his face with a cloth that was scented with betony. The cloth later bore the imprint of his face and was considered a miracle.

Veronica was the confirmation name I took as a child, because I admired her bravery in facing the scorn of the crowd to do an act of mercy and compassion. But until recently I did not know the connection to betony, and the story makes me want this little wildling in my gardens at home.

Jordan Run and Knobley Road

These pictures are from two weeks ago when we visited my oldest son in Grant county, West Virginia. The trip is too pretty to describe in words, and it doesn't matter what time of year you travel along these country roads.
Old, well-kept farmhouses abound; there is a lot of good farmland in this area and many farms have remained in the same families for many years.

Apple trees are everywhere, probably in testament to the many orchards that once dotted these mountains. Many are wild seedlings; all bloom prolifically and make the air sweet with their scent.

The woods were just coming alive with green and hints of red as the redbuds were just coming into bloom.

And lilacs! This area must be the lilac capital of the state. The bushes seem to thrive on the climate and soil; I saw many that were probably over 15 feet tall, and as far across.

Redbuds! Can you tell I like them?

Around each curve, a new vista offered glimpses of mountains in the distance just beginning to don their green coats.

And sometimes, there was something surprising in the view--like these faraway giant windmills. can you see them on the ridge at the back of the photo?

What's that high on the mountain to the right? Snow, still hanging on to the rocks in the Dolly Sods wilderness area.

The many shades of green are breathtaking at this time of year. I am glad we've been able to get out and travel a bit this month. Often in April we're so busy with gardens we miss what's going on over on this eastern side of West Virginia.

Wordless Wednesday: Rocks and Water, Left Fork of the Holly River

Singing at the BrazenHead Inn

After the triathlon, the family returned to the BrazenHead Inn for an evening of music and fun. The inn's owners, Will and Jill Fanning, incorporate music into the inn's offerings as often as possible, and frequently provide it themselves since they are both gifted musicians.

Saturday night, however, Three Degrees of Hair was on stage. This diverse group from Beckley plays a wide range of music and we enjoyed all of it. They also did something pretty nice: they let some of us sing.

I was first, before even the band took to the stage. Since the tragedy at the Big Branch mine three weeks ago, the song by Jean Ritchie called West Virginia Mine Disaster was on my mind, and that is what I sang. It's powerful and moving, and I sang it in tribute to those miners and their families.

An hour or so later, we convinced Cassidy, Jon and Jennifer's daughter, to take the stage and sing one of her favorite songs, Free Falling. You can listen to her performance here thanks to cousin Emily's forethought to record Cassidy. Thank you, Emily!


Amy sang later on, a lovely ballad of love and longing.

What a group of guys, to allow us to be part of the evening's music. Special thanks to the Three Degrees of Hair for sharing the stage with us.

And still later, everyone in the place joined in on Country Roads. In this picture: James in front, then clockwise Aaron, Cassidy, Haley, Jennifer and Jared, with Emily in the far background.

The relaxed atmosphere and camaraderie made it feel like we were at home instead of 150 miles away in a log cabin tucked into a valley in the Randolph county mountains. That's what true mountain hospitality is, and it's what Will and Jill give to their customers in plenty.

(Do you see that orb floating over Amy's head? If I believed in such things, I might almost be convinced that Jon was there listening to the fun. Actually, I am convinced that he was with us in spirit, for an evening in which his name was much spoken and his life remembered with love. It doesn't take an orb to tell me so.)

The Triathlon

The kayaks were ready to go on the banks of the Greenbrier River in Marlinton, WV.



The runners were lined up for the take-off. Aaron gave us a wave as he prepared for the first leg of the trip, a 3 mile run.

The runners take off. There were 425 registered for the race, I heard.

George and Derek were the first two of our five family members to make it to the kayaks after the three mile run. The next leg was a 4-mile kayak run down the river to where their bikes were waiting for them. George is in the upper center in white shirt and yellow cap; Derek is to the right by the tree, in black.

Aaron crosses the finish line at the end of the race!

Jared and Haley, Derek's children competed too, and finished not far behind their Dad and uncles. Haley placed second in the youth solo division overall and was first in female solo youth--and she beat out 5 teams! (Teams could have different people doing each leg of the race. Haley did all three legs of it by herself.) What a girl. The guys did respectably, no prizes except the satisfaction of finishing the race.

It was a beautiful day racing, cool and cloudy. It must have been a beautiful feeling for our five competitors at the end, to know they had actually finished their first-ever triathlon. I know I was excited! What a day.

Poke, and Redbud Jelly; or, How to Make Use of a Cold, Rainy Evening

It rained all day. Just what we needed, really, because it's been so dry it was beginning to be worrying. The rain settled in the plants that I transplanted in the flowerbeds last night. You know the ones--they seed themselves in the cracks of the sidewalks and other unlikely places and then sit there waiting for you or me to come along and save their little lives. So a perennial salvia, coreopsis, and a few others are now safe in their new homes. (And that plant I dug up on the roadside and brought home is called Dutchman's Breeches--it is also snug in its new place. I found its name accidentally today online and immediately recognized its leaves.)


Last week on the way home I spotted a beautiful sight--a big patch of pokeweed growing just off the road on the site where a house trailer once was located. I meant to stop and pick some but every evening on the way home from work I'd forget until I was too far past the patch to go back.


It was raining and cold on my way home and I remembered! My shoes got muddy, my pants got streaked with mud, but I have two quart bags of poke in the freezer. A person needs to be careful when preparing poke and I'm not going to give instructions here. It can be poisonous of not properly prepared. If you want to learn to cook poke, consult a reliable wild foods cookbook. There is some good advice on cooking poke on this website.


I had another project on hold and it was a good night to finish it too. Remember the redbud jelly I wanted to make? Time ran out on me the weekend we collected the flowers. I completed the steeping process, then strained and froze the resulting liquid. Now I had time to make the jelly.


I had a little more than two cups of the deep purple liquid from the flowers. After looking online for a recipe, I made mine this way: I added two tablespoons of lemon juice to the purple liquid along with one box of pectin. Then I brought the resulting mix to a boil, added 2 1/2 cups of sugar and brought to a full rolling boil for about 2 minutes. I removed the jelly from the stove and stirred and skimmed the whitish foam off the top for about 5 minutes. Then I poured the jelly into jars, and that it was done.




The jelly is beautiful! How does it taste? Very good actually. I believe it would taste even better made immediately into jelly after steeping the blossoms, but this jelly has a superb sweet-sour tang similar to red currant jelly. I think I will be making more of it next year because it's very good.

Wildwood Flowers

High atop Point Mountain in Randolph county, West Virginia, a sprinkling of white along the roadside attracted my attention as we traveled through this weekend. We allowed time this trip for me to take some photos as we were on our way home. Here are a few of them:

The white mingled with yellow on closer inspection.

A little blue and hints of purple mixed into the palette.

Trout lilies, golden ragwort not yet in bloom, tiny violets and a white flower I have not yet found a name for mingled in the mountain meadow to create a picture worthy of Monet.

Trout lily is what I call this shy yellow flower, but I have also saw one website refer to it as dogtooth violet. Its leaves are speckled and more lily-like than they are like those of violets to my mind.

So pretty! I found them once or twice on Joe's Run, but on this mountain their abundance feels like gluttony for the wildflower seeker.

I do not know this flower; I want to call it celandine for some reason, but I am not at sure why. It spread in carpets through the woods. Do you know its name?

I found another favorite, bloodroot, in large patches too, comfortably mingling with the other small plants in the mountain's thin rocky soil.

Along a rocky roadside by a stream, much further down the mountain, I noticed this blue-green fern. I not only took a photo but also dug my fingers into the loose soil and took a couple home. I think they're bleeding heart, but I'm not sure. Do you think I just transplanted a pernicious weed? It's lovely and I hope it's something worth keeping in my garden.

In the streambed between river-smoothed rocks, I noticed a tiny seedling. Mary-cut-her-thumb! My friend John Mullins told me about this edible wild green, but I had never seen it in real life until now. I left this one alone--it does not grow in my area, apparently, so I left it in its native habitat and hoped the next flood would not carry it away.

At home, this little guy is long gone, but in the higher mountains they are about one month behind us seasonally so coltsfoot was still in full bloom. I wanted to stop and pick some of the raspberry leaves to dry for winter teas, but time was getting on so I passed them by.

Home again

The triathlon is finished, we had an awesome weekend with family. We talked, sang, laughed a lot and cried maybe just a little. All five of our race entrants finished the race with respectable times. It was amazing to watch them and to see their faces when the scope of their accomplishment hit home.

As mother and granny, I was bursting with pride and so touched to see them stand for a group picture with the bike that belonged to Jon, the missing member of their team. His loss did not stop them from completing what he had suggested months ago as a possibility. Jon's wife and daughters were there to cheer our guys--and gal (Haley also competed)--to the finish line.

Next year I think we'll have more family members in the race. I hope so. This was something we needed, time together to bind tighter the cords that hold us, to remember and to know that what we were doing was good for all of us.

Marker

Each time I pass a roadside shrine

that marks the place where someone loved

lost his life, I offer a prayer

to one who also lost her Son;

she knows a mother's heart.

Today the small cross bore a name,

three letters, my son's name.

It was not his marker;

his death was far away

in a place I have never been

and do not wish to see,

at least not yet.

But I wondered as I prayed to Mary

if someone has marked

the place of my son's passing

with a simple cross,

or if some other mother says a prayer

each time she travels past,

and even at a distance knows

my heart's breaking.

Weekend with the Family: Run, Run!

This weekend we'll be at the Great Greenbrier River Race, cheering on sons Derek, Aaron and George, granddaughter Haley and grandson Jared as they compete in their first-ever triathlon.

The race includes three legs: kayak, biking and running. the weather calls for cool and cloudy with possible showers and thunderstorms. We've packed umbrellas, boots, warm clothes and coats because Pocahontas county is pretty high in the West Virginia mountains and a lot cooler than our home county.

We'll be staying at the Brazen Head Inn in Mingo, WV, where we stayed last October. The hospitality of owners Will and Jill makes the Brazen Head as welcoming as a family home. Several other family members will be there too, including Jon's wife and three of his daughters. We were disappointed that his daughter Jordan and her daughter Cadyn could not join us to celebrate Cadyn's first birthday. We had the party all planned! But such is life.

Jon had planned to be part of this race too. But George will be riding Jon's bike, so in some way I think Jon will be with us.

Wish the ones competing luck tomorrow! I will have pictures to post when we return home.

Gardens, and that Frantic Feeling

Garden shots:

I haven't written much about the gardens lately but they are doing pretty well. Here's where we are with them at the moment:

*potatoes are up! We planted around March 10 and they just poked their little sprouts up last week. They're coming on strong, though, so that's encouraging.

*lettuce and radishes have been eating size for the past two weeks, but the green onions have been less that fantastic. I think the white onion sets I bought from Green's Feed in Charleston must have had too much sprout inhibitor or whatever it is they do to seeds and sets to keep them from sprouting too soon, because the white onions are doing poorly while the yellow onions forge ahead.

*beans are up! We usually plant a row really early, and if they come up, we sell them and make a nice amount on them. These are half-runners, not my favorite but certainly on top of most local people's lists. So we plant them. Larry also planted a row of my top bean, the Royal Burgundy bush bean that has luscious purple beans that turn green when cooked. This year I bought a pack of Rattlesnake beans just to try them. The beans are supposedly very long and twisted. These are pole beans, and I don't usually have much luck with them, but it's worth another try. I might plant them in the new ground Larry plowed this week. What is new ground, you ask? It's a patch of ground not used previously for a garden or crop. This patch was used about 20 years ago so technically it's not "new" but new enough. New ground is usually nutrient, root and rock rich, making it a challenge to grow in, but worth the effort.

*the new strawberry plants are coming along and the old ones survived better than we anticipated so the bed is slowly filling in.

*the asparagus continues to insist that it likes growing in the gravel beside my parking place, and we've had several meals already to prove that the asparagus might just be right. I think it's the lime from the gravel that is making this a good spot for the asparagus; whatever the reason, I'm grateful. I continue to watch the place we planted new asparagus plants last year, but so far only one has surfaced through the deep hay mulch. Maybe I should have planted them in the gravel.

*one row of corn is planted, the Early Sunglow. Again, we aim early and if it gets frosted, we just replant.

*in the greenhouse, everything is looking good. Except I'm way overcrowded and thinking about adding another greenhouse next year. Some tomato plants are about two weeks away from planting size, and the broccoli and cabbage might go out next week.

*Larry has the electric fence working around the garden I consider my "spring" garden so it is fairly safe from the beasties that like my young plants.

*I'm mulching, mulching, mulching in the flower beds. About 40% complete.

*the new herb garden is dug and seedlings await the tilling and soil prep. I'm not in a hurry since the soil could be warmer for herbs.

*the fruit trees dodged the frost bullet this week. Whew! It was a close one but the frost here on the ridge was spotty and burned off before the sun came up so our blossoms were safe. I'm not sure people in the deeper, colder hollows fared as well. We should have a good apple crop this year and I'm looking forward to making cider and apple butter again. Last year was a bust for apples.

Now, about that frantic feeling: do any of you get that feeling when the days pass too quickly and there is too much to get done before summer is here? That's how I'm feeling. I know that the next few weekends are going to be busy and I'll have little time for my gardens--at the exact time they need so much attention. Will I be able to keep up? Will gill-over-the-ground succeed in its attempt to take over my little world? Will tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn, squash, etc etc all get planted on time and will they survive if I can't be here to water them? Will it ever rain again?

The questions are endless, and only time can answer them. And all I can do is to keep plodding onward, doing what I can to keep the rampant greenness under control.