I’ve had my eye on this young lady for a couple of weeks. She’s been hanging out by the steps off of the front terrace. Although I checked on her every day, her adolescence took forever. But this morning, when I stepped out with a cup of hot tea, I discovered that she was blossoming! Poppies open quickly, particularly when …
Our lows are in the forties now—great sleeping weather!—and the first yellow lines lace the leaves like veins in a body. In two weeks gigantic splashes of yellow (aspens) and persimmon (serviceberry) will splash the hillsides as if a greater power had a temper tantrum with a handful of crayons. Random groves of flame-tipped aspens will flambouyantly overshadow everything. While …
In a few months I’ll be cross-country skiing while humming Christmas carols—a sobering thought. So like everyone else in my valley I’m madly squeezing in every last drop of outdoor activity while the sun shines warmly. That means golf and fly-fishing, gardening and mushrooming. A world of porcinis (boletus) still awaits me on the mountains, but the weather is getting …
If a picture says a thousand words, then the one above is War and Peace by Tolstoy—all 1200-plus pages of it. This is a king boletus, or porcini. He’s enormous. Fully six-inches-plus in diameter at the cap. I stood on the mountainside, my heart beating more quickly as I gazed longinly at the sight of him. Was I hallucinating? Surely …
“The hills are alive . . .” with MUSHROOMS! I thought the harvest was winding down, but I was so wrong! We’re having a banner year, our mountaintops still littered with porcini. (Boletus, if you’re into Latin.) An afternoon of foraging netted a few baby porcinis and two or three fine examples of king (or prince) boletus—the best …
While autumn thinks it’s sneaking up on me, I’m enjoying every day in my garden. After a cool night of steady drizzle, I rushed outside this morning to coat everything in Deer Off again. (I’m not anti-deer, but they have plenty to eat without feasting on the bounty of my hard work. And they are very unresponsive to shouted abuse, …
Ranchman the Superhero (my husband), inspired by my raving about ‘shrooming, decided to take a break from his other athletic endeavors (never marry an ex-rancher; they’ll run you into the ground) so that I could introduce him to the fine art of mushroom foraging. I also suspect that he had pinned his hopes on another fine mushroom savory tart. Foraging is …
Some clocks tick. Others chime. This time of year, mine bleats. One of the largest sheep ranches in the US is downvalley from me, and the owners import Peruvian gauchos every summer to herd flocks over vast swaths of BLM land that roll right up to the back of my property. The sheep eat noxious weeds and keep the grasses …
foodeditI couldn’t create a less-appealing title, but this one makes me laugh, so enjoy it with me, please. I want to rave about what I did with the wild mushrooms I foraged last week, especially since late summer is a time of bounty, and autumn (which will sweep across my mountain top too soon, in only weeks) is harvest in so many …
Summer is finally in full swing on my mountaintop, and we’re squeezing every ray of sunshine from every beautiful day. Fishing and hiking, golfing and gardening fill the calendar as my literary agent shops the first book in my latest mystery series. And although epic days are normal here this time of year, and this summer—with late snows and heavy rains, …
