Refinishing the Doors and an Experiment

Eric spent long days over the whole last week sanding and re-spar-varnishing the exterior doors, mostly glass but with wood frames and jambs.  Many of the hours that he worked, I read aloud to him from Michael Pollan's Cooked. 

And the experiment: today we returned to thinking about the now-much-closer trip to Banff, Jasper, and Robson Parks.  This felt like the day to try a hike with loaded--today half-loaded anyway--backpacks.  We're testing our backs, knees, and hips.  Can we still do this?  It's been 14 years since our monumental backpack to Dusy Basin and beyond in the Sierra Nevada.  Today we each put a sleeping bag in the bottom of the pack and then added filled water bottles and canned juice up to about 20-25 pounds.  Things seem to be working so far, and, to add to the fun, right at Jumbo Saddle we ran into the weed-eating sheep and their guard dog. 

We'll try heavier and more realistic packs tomorrow.  

Rain at Last

Missoula last had measurable precipitation on July 12, when we got .02 inches.  In the whole month of July there were only .09 inches of rain.  Normal for the month is 1.06", and we are very nearly 3 inches behind the year-to-date normal precipitation total of 8.86".  The ground has been cracking, and the wildfires have started, so the sound of rain on the roof today thrills us.  Here is rain on the rain chain that drains the roof gutter near the front door:
 
 








And here--at last--is rain on the serviceberry, lavender, and driveway:




"The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me."  Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden

Real Grass

Eric is starting to water less now that we have real grass.  At first he watered twice a day; now he has progressed to twice a week.  Here is the back yard, first on May 15
during the patio-building project:


Next on May 23 with the new patio and fresh topsoil ready for seeds:


And finally with real grass on July 22:

And in the front yard, we had a sand pile for five years--sand waiting for more patio building. Here is that sand pile during the project on May 15:

After Bob Johnson and his crew finished building the back patio, we moved the remaining sand down the slope and over to the edge of our lot (a bit of it shows in the upper right corner of the photo).  We also used a hand truck to move the boulders near the middle right side of the photo into place.  Then we weeded, spread Eko Compost, and planted fescue and blue grama.  Here's the old sand pile area on June 29:

And here's the same area on July 29:

Now we're on to other adventures, like trying to take a short hike every other day to get in shape for hiking in Banff, Jasper, and Robson Parks in a few weeks.  On yesterday's walk we saw the just-arrived-for-the-summer weed-eating sheep at Jumbo Saddle.  Here's a link to a 2010 Missoulian article about the sheep and Enrique Marquez Banda, the shepherd: Weeding-Eating Sheep in Missoula's Open Space. 

Butte

"If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there."

--Henry David Thoreau, Friday, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

 
We had a wonderful weekend in Butte at the Montana Folk Festival.  On Saturday, sitting in the grass and watching the skies around the Original Headframe change, we heard musicians from Ireland, Portugal, Louisiana, and Italy--right there under the skies of Butte.  The music of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino still soars in my head.  Click on their name for an eye and earful!

June Flowers on the New Trail

This is the new trail that leads north from Jumbo Saddle.  Today we saw fields of lupine 

 

and some gaillardia

(Gaillardia aristata)

 

and bitterroot

(Lewisia rediviva), 

the Montana state flower.

Planting Grass

makes us remember words from "Solitude," in Walden:



















We needed to replant blue grama, sheep fescue, prairie junegrass, and some taller bunchgrasses in various places around the yard, so we repeated our process from four years ago: weed, re-seed, spread Eko Compost, roll to press in the seed, and cover steep sections with jute netting.

Meanwhile, the dicentra that first emerged from the ground around
April 3 have grown to be shrub-sized.

Balsamroot Extravaganza and the New Trail

The big balsamroot show has begun with fields and fields of flowers near the Jumbo Saddle.  Another development up there is a new trail that takes off switchbacking north from the saddle and replacing a straight-up trail-of-use.  Here is a bit of that trail with Mt. Jumbo and Lolo Peak farther off.  Wild hyacinth, woodland stars, death camas, and paintbrush are blooming, too.  The notable rain recently has greened things up.

 





Here are wild hyacinth (Brodiaea douglasii) above left and woodland star (Lithophragma parviflora), a member of the saxifrage family, on the right.  Saxifrage! 

William Carlos Williams 
 "A Sort of a Song"

Let the snake wait under

his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
— through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

Meadow death camas (Zigadenus venenosus) and paintbrush (Castilleja) are blooming now, too.  Jose Celestino Mutis named this species after his teacher in Cadiz, Spain, Domingo Castillejo (1744-1793).  
 




And balsamroot everywhere.

The new trail leads to new perspectives.  Through the ponderosas, off to the left of the trail in the photo below, you can see Cha-paa-qn (elevation 7996 feet), with a Salish name meaning, according to the Ninemile Ranger District of the Forest Service anyway, "shining peak."