Adventures in the Wilderness

Most of our property is wooded, but the top of the bluff was clear-cut illegally by the previous tenant. What this means is that just beyond the house, garden, and outbuildings, the whole area is dry and relatively barren, with large piles of logging debris placed randomly about. Of course, there's also lots of regular garbage left behind as well, including these large piles of rusty chicken wire and brush and bagged garbage right in front of the house.

 Lovely. This will all have to go somewhere eventually; we may reuse some of the chicken wire for fencing, but most of it is going to the dump.

Here's some pictures of the bluff:

 

 

You can see that the bare ground has become covered with the sorts of plants that first colonize the lunar-like surface of clearcut areas. Dandelions, vetch, thistles, stinging nettle, all sorts of grasses and vines and weeds. Our landlord is going to replant hundreds of trees to try to replace what was lost, and eventually it will look like the rest of the property again! Which you can see, as you travel down the steep part of the driveway away from the house, is a lot more verdant and beautiful.

This plant with the roundish leaves is called miner's lettuce and tastes like Boston bibb.

I ventured down into the valley on this particular occasion to take a walk along the creek. The water is stagnant all around the bridge where the driveway crosses it, therefore I needed to try to figure out which direction the water is coming from so I could know on which side of the bridge the dam or other blockage is located.

I chose to walk westward from the bridge, where the small (three to five feet wide, no deeper than my knee) creek winds through this reedy area. The dammed water has covered the entire flood plain, so reeds are everywhere. The dogs and I would be struggling through the five-foot-tall plants, supported on their sturdy root system (rhizome) and all of a sudden one of us would drop into the water. Thankfully it was usually Emmylou, our pit bull who loves to swim!

All I know is, if I knew how to weave baskets I would be set for LIFE.

As we continued west it became clear that the water is flowing from west to east, which makes sense as the Nisqually River is east of us. This means that the beaver dam or other blockage is also east of the bridge.

Eventually the reeds gave way to a real forest creek, and a very nice one at that:

At this point I didn't know where our property ended, so I turned back and forced my way back through the reeds. I did see something interesting though: a rotted-out stump covered in brambles with a small cache of empty shells sitting in it. So there are freshwater shellfish living in the creek, and someone - probably a raccoon - is eating them!

I didn't walk eastward from the bridge, but it's more of the same: reeds, reeds, rotten logs, reeds. The water is much deeper over there too, so we have a little rowboat, but what would be really useful is some fishing waders. We will have to walk or boat around in there until we find the blockage, and then we'll be able to work on unblocking it!

My other task that day was picking Oregon grapes, because I'm super stoked to make jelly but I need like four pints! I made an Oregon grape/blueberry/balsamic reduction for pork recently and I fell in love with those grapes. They are sour and have many big seeds, so you have to cook and strain them, and add some sort of sweetener or other fruits, but then they taste magical. 

I also found many other berry plants while foraging for grapes, which is very exciting!

 I think this is a bog blueberry. I also spotted raspberries, huckleberries, blackberries, and salal berries. They're everywhere, especially in the swamp and on the bluff. There's even a rotting stump in our garden with a big huckleberry bush and salal berries growing on it as epiphytes. I'm sure I'll take pictures of all of them as their fruit ripens.

I also took a few seed pods from a columbine with unusual red flowers. There are many growing along the driveway, as well as some cute little wild lilies, so I'm going to try to get seeds from both and grow them in the garden near the house.

Well that's all for now. I'll close with this toad: