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September is usually the best month for hiking in the Cascades. The trails are free of snow, and both tourist and mosquito levels have diminished. This year has become a down year for hiking, however, with the extended drought bringing on our worst fire season ever. Ever! We all hope that the rainy season will begin soon after the equinox instead of its usual start sometime in October. Continue reading
In flower gardens, there’s not a lot to do in August besides attempting to keep up with watering and deadheading, but the food gardener doesn’t get a break. Just when watering and harvesting chores are peaking, it’s time to think about a fall and winter veggie garden. You are, in fact, a bit behind the eight ball if you like to grow everything from seed. July’s the time to get that going. Nurturing seedlings through July is never easy and this year must have been especially challenging. Continue reading
This year August is set up with a glorious week of stargazing. The Perseid meteor shower will send hundreds, maybe thousands, of shooting stars across the sky during the second week of August. Peak shower activity will be August 11-13. The best meteor watching will be in the hours before dawn, when the constellation Perseus rises from the northeastern horizon. What makes this year’s shower likely to be spectacular is that nearly moonless nights coincide with the peak streaking. Continue reading
Hot weather is great for the bugs. Swallowtails and dragonflies dart around with incredible zip in the morning sun, their warm bodies full of energy. Spiders are getting prominent now, with dozens of little, baby spider webs all around our house. They protect us from mosquitoes. When approached they shake their webs vigorously, supposedly to make themselves appear a blur and not catchable by potential predators. Continue reading
Walking the berggren watershed conservation area. Photo by Trask Bedortha. Take a stroll, brew a beer: That’s the concept behind Beers Made by Walking, a program that uses the beauty of nature to inspire new brews in states around the country. Continue reading
Few things in the plant world are as blue as the flowers on the bluest ceanothus. Otherwise known as wild lilac or California lilac, shrubs of this genus (which are not lilacs at all) are native to the Americas, mostly California and south to Guatemala. The majority are evergreen. That and their often stunning flower color makes the genus popular in gardens. Wild lilacs with the deepest blue flowers mostly come from California species, but Oregon has several species well worth growing. Continue reading
What better way to spend a day of Eugene Beer Week than a little botanical exploration? Continue reading
Nesting season is coming to a close this month, easily noticed with geese and turkey nestlings that leave their nests and swim or run right after hatching. One of the enjoyable sights of early summer is watching a troop of goslings or chicks paddling or scurrying around after their parents. They are out feeding for themselves, learning how to find and handle their food by following their parents. Most songbird babies stay in the nest until they are ready to fly. After they fledge and leave the nest, they are pretty much on their own. Continue reading
It’s no secret that beer has added to Oregon’s economy by billions of dollars — total economic impact from the beer industry is $2.83 billion in 2014, according to the Oregon Brewers Guild — but another local industry is picking up speed, as well. “Oregon is on the cusp of a big expansion in biking,” says Nick Meltzer, project manager for the Community Service Center at the University of Oregon. Continue reading
For most Eugeneans, “foraging” means a trip to Market of Choice or The Kiva. But the ability to forage for food in the wild, a throwback from our hunter-gatherer days, has a certain appeal and lets food-intrepid adventurers connect their nourishment to the outdoors. Pat Patterson, currently a volunteer master gardener with Lane County’s Oregon State University Extension, has been foraging since her grandmother tasked her with gathering stinging nettle and other wild greens when she was young. Foraging is “very in,” Patterson says. Continue reading