First Signs of Fall: Forage 'Ye Fennel Will Ye May

Been eyeing this lovely spot of wild fennel by the edge of the train tracks on my walking route back from the Atherton Library, for a month or more now. I know Californians who forage for this floral treat. The bulb, seeds, flowers and pollen are all fodder for the native gourmet's kitchen. I'm not ready to take the chance on roadside produce. The creek below is sprayed for mosquito larve and there's also the potential that some other, toxic, little plant might creep in with the greenery. I'm better off sticking with the Sunday Farmer's Market downtown.

But I haven't found that sharp anise scent at the agricultural stalls. Last summer I cropped a big bunch and brought it home for a bouquet, which I plumped down outside in a big old aluminum watering pot, a la "Country Living Magazine". My husband, a much more orderly person than I am, was seriously displeased. It was a sticky, messy visitor, and he traded me some favor (not dishes - he already does a good deal of the housework around here!) to get me to pitch the pots contents after a couple of days on our outdoor supper table on the patio.

But this year I'd spied it again. Just as yellow and just as strong-scented. Ever since I first spotted it, I'd been considering the possibility of a bouquet to decorate the driveway. I was returning a stack of well-read books two days ago, when I saw the road crew pull up with shovels and rakes.

"Are you going take out the yellow flowers?" I cried.

They admitted the 'yellow flowers' were indeed their goal. When I returned with my camera in hand, fifteen minutes later, they'd already made inroads on my photo-bouquet. While I snapped my pictures, they were already bundling the branches into shocks, and leaning them against the metal fence for the guy with the truck. Meanwhile the seeds rained down on the heavy, adobe soil.

The fennel, in all it's strong-scented, sticky, yellow glory will be back next summer.

Take a better peek at this altered mass of yellow glory, by clicking on the picture above. If you're a regular reader of this journal, you might recognize some of the visitors I've added.

First Signs of Fall: Sour Grass in my Knish?

My new friend Marcia, from piano class, says she uses sour-grass to flavor her homemade knish recipe. Hummmm... check with somebody who knows more than me first, ok? Your local medical provider, maybe. If you've got one.

And don't use this much-altered picture of sour-grass to identify oxalis. I've altered it to make it arty. While you're looking, why don't you click on the picture to see the lovely details?

A Rose By Any Other Name

Cliff Rose

Grand Canyon

Please click on the picture to see the lovely details

My buddy Sasha always knows a strong character when she meets her. She told me

"Cliff can really hang in there when it is necessary. She's a real strong character."

And I agreed, "She's a stable girl. The kind who's got roots."

Time Portals: The Time Train (an excerpt)

Three years ago, when she’d first graduated and landed the job at McKendricks, Alma had found the idea of working in San Francisco terribly exotic. The noise, bustle and colors of the vibrant metropolis was like working in a living art show. The diverse group of people who’d moved from all over the world, just to live in the city by the bay, made every co-worker, restaurant lunch or overheard conversation a virtual trip to another country. And the job itself represented the heart and soul of new methods and ideas that were building the countrys economy back to what it used to be.

But standing on the overpass, looking down on the old train tracks, Alma realized that she wasn’t really interested in business, no matter how vital a force it was in people’s lives. She’d never be able to muster the kind of passion for it that the people around her seemed to have. And she seemed to feel her creative potential drying up, when she thought about the status report she needed to finish tonight for tomorrows meeting. A lifetime, or at least forty or fifty years, of walking home from the same metro station stop every day after a work day spent in the city, stretched before her as unending as the train tracks below the overpass. Well, at least she’d found that great historical e-novel at the library last weekend. That would be something to look forward to after she got the report done.

Alma peered down through the metal screen that protected walkers on the overpass. The same train was there, that always sat on an old spur track. Other trains swooshed past on their way to and from their peninsula destinations, but the old train had, she supposed, been retired from service. And, for some reason, after three years it hadn’t been worth anybody’s while to collect it and send it on to the scrap yard, or wherever old trains went when they were past their prime. She leaned her head against the mesh and shut her eyes. She already felt past her prime, and she hadn’t even reached her thirtieth birthday.

A gust of unexpectedly frigid wind blew suddenly against the back of her bare neck. She straightened up and opened her eyes in surprise. It was only September, and she hadn’t even brought a light fleece jacket to work. Alma tucked her brief case more firmly under her arm, and began to turn away from the wall. It was at that moment, that she saw that something about the old train below had changed.

For one thing, it was moving towards her. For another, it was now brilliantly, and very strangely, colored. A loud whistle, unlike any train whistle Alma had ever heard before, suddenly split the air and as it did so, she felt herself falling through the mesh screen, straight down onto the tracks below.

Was she falling, or was she flying?

Time Travel: Blast Off From Millbrae

Engaged on an exploratory walk in suburban Millbrae last Friday, I was surprised to find that not all Time Portals sport that vintage look.

Clicking on the picture above, may be useful to you, if there's a short, efficient time-hop in your plans.

Feeling Norwegian: My Grieg Connection

When I was little my older sister used to play this song on the piano for me. According to the "Singing in Harmony"* book that sat on our piano, it was the song that the sphinx sang to Peer when he went to Egypt on his wanderings away from his homeland. The book has lovely line drawings of the whole story behind Peer Gynt, and I still enjoy reading the story and trying out the right hand version of the melodies.

I learned to play a simple version of Morning Song (with both hands!), a couple of years ago, when I first took piano class at the local community college. Shortly after that, I went to visit Oslo and, my father said that he had seen Peer Gynt in the National Theatre in Oslo, at the end of the war (that's WWII, guys).

Up until then I never knew that my father had been to Norway. Turns out he went along as part of Project Norway, or as he said when I asked. "We went to take the Germans home."

That's home, as in the American troops escorted the troops who had been occupying Norway during the war, back to Germany.

Please click on the picture above to see the lovely details.

* The cover of Singing in Harmony appears in an art-journal entry I wrote a few days back.

Signs of Fall: Legumes Setting Seed

My hyacinth beans (Lablab purpurea) are setting pods. It's time to watch for the seeds that will mean springtime resurrection for these delicately flowered purple ladies.

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE above to see the really lovely details of this collage.

The lace I riffed/altered for this Photoshop collage, is from a pattern at Obsidian Dawn,and confirms to the appropriate terms of use, as I understand them from their page