field work
well, well, well, microdosing
It feels like I’m micro-dosing … on everything. Snippets, samples, traces. No mindful full-on inhalation. Only gasps. Inspiration—bringing the spirit into—precluded by lack of creative airs in the surrounds.
The only thing I’m not microdosing on is apricots and cherry plums. Between, jam, purée, preserves, sun-dried, and a pile of pits to be cracked, I’ve not dealt with such volumes of fruit since helping my mother deal with our surfeit of peaches, Back East in rural Maryland. Macro-dosing. Again, after a similar harvest last year.
Many of the volunteer apricot trees on the property were killed in a hard frost in October of 2020. A couple survived, and the single significant one that remained fully intact was in need of heavy pruning after years of neglect. Two winters ago I started taking out the dead wood, lots of it. Pruning, when done properly will usually revivify a failing fruit tree. This one was well worth the effort, and for the past two years, it showed its thanks in the form of a massive bringing-forth of fruit.
As for microdosing. In a world suffused with over-amplified signals, microdosing has the potential to remind our presence of at least the possibility of psycho-spiritual transcendence. A bowl of vanilla ice cream with some apricot purée anyone? Or just one of those glorious apricots?
Aside: George recommends Bird by Bird.
apricots
But the question is, how much apricot jam or dried apricots can I possibly process? Anyone else need some apricots? They’re delicious, from a volunteer tree rooted in one of the many rock piles that dot the property! Likely ‘planted’ by a rock squirrel (they love the pits!), it grew, surviving the voracious attacks from deer that routinely strip any saplings, making it to a point where it couldn’t be damaged. It receives no irrigation, nor any chemical support, and seems very happy after last winter’s heavy pruning (of vast quantities of dead wood), which is ongoing. A good-looking tree of which the photo includes but a fraction!
Chorispora tenella
Springtime in the Rockies, my all-time favorite season anywhere. Supposedly a noxious weed, there’s too much to eat it away, but, okay, I’ll try some. Chorispora tenella, aka musk or purple mustard. It has blanketed areas that last year were bare soil. It certainly wasn’t this profuse last spring!
field work
field work
portrait, Brad
field work
small cicadas in tree
Agave americana
The beginning of the last hurrah for this particular plant, after living 30-80 years or so — once the bloom stalk peaks, and the plant makes its spectacular blossoming, it’s all over, dead within a month or so.
self-portrait at the alligator juniper
The third trip in the last year to the largest alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana) tree in existence (twenty-six feet in diameter — see Ginny for scale!). It is now a strange and haunting memorial to the nineteen Granite Mountain hotshots who perished in the Yarnell Hill fire — just a few days after cutting a firebreak line that specifically saved this unique tree from the Doce fire.
Went on into the Cedar Spring wash area — it was flowing with copious amounts of snowmelt.
film-still, aspen
sacrifice, botryoidal quartz and Chilopsis linearis
pruning a giant cottonwood
pruning a giant cottonwood
Common Manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita) blooming
portrait, Nick
in the Zone
Tuesday, 07 May, 1963
Listened to Lee Murray, Carl Neilson, JLV, and John Strano talk about their impressions of witnessing the Rex II re-entry. They concluded that considerable data was accumulated. The TTR tracked successfully for once.
Worked on the STV Photo Specs.
38˚F Clear
In office at 0800 for a change. Woody called re: using the closed CRT TV for a $$ teaching demonstration for 16 May from the Sanctuary to the SS Room. Meredith Clark will be in Saturday AM to discuss it.
LCH made an arrangement with the Fawcetts to get the logs from the trees they cut down, so with DCH & CR, I hauled 3 loads with the Willys. They will have to be cut & split, but it is oak & elm wood.
LCH to an AFS meeting in the PM.
Wrote to John Zvara, attaching the bill from Ken O. for $32.34 for 500′ of 9-conductor cable ruined by the fire alarm installers. I suggested that he add $40 for labor costs.
Wrote to Simpson Electric to see if I can put the latest jacks on my Model 250 and on the one we have at PSC.
JCH sick with fever.
field work
domination of landscape 20:28
sacrifice, Thórsmörk
group portrait, under the Peters Valley oak tree
field work
aspen
in the big trees, here comes the sun…
Two days after a close call with death. Almost head-on collision at 60 mph, two completely totaled vehicles, but no major injuries. If we hadn’t been in a lifted Toyota 4runner that essentially launched over the other vehicle, we would not be alive.
