Bunch Berry none are ripe yet

The berries are bright orange red when ripe. They are juicy and good. These are dusty from the heavy trail traffic. Remember you don't want to collect berries from the road sides, or too close to the trail! Leave some for the animals too! We always share.

salmon berries, Always a suprise

Salmon berries grow all over the Pacific Northwest. My neighborhood is full of them if you want to see them. The surprise is that each bush can produce a different colored berry. Some bushes are salmon colored, some red, some even darker red, some are orange. They are all still the same berry. Maybe it has to do with the soil they grow in. You can eat these. Some find them too dry. In Alaska they make a good jam from them.

Twin Berries Not tasty, don't eat

Grammie changes her mind

One of the great pleasures in being a girl is that everyone expects us and allows us to change our mind. So I did that very thing, I changed my mind and didn't bike today. I chose to walk and am I glad I did. All the smells of the forest are better when walking. You see the dragonflys, you hear the little sounds the birds make as they warn each other you are walking there. It is also easier to eat the berries you find when not zooming by on a bike!

Bleach Boy took his bike and came and went as he pleased. Mostly he stayed very close. I stopped and took my last photos up here in Coastal British Columbia. Lots and lots of photos.

I want to give you a useful idea of berries you can eat. If you have some space even small bits of space you can plant your favorites. I got mine from Raintree. It is good to have a bit of Vitamin C growing near by. After all here in the Northwest we are above the citrus line so you can't grow oranges really.

If you want to go on a hike to find some yourself go up to the mountain loop just out of Granite falls. You will need a hiking pass and can pick them up in town at set locations. I'll put the website below so you can see ahead where to go. My favorite trail for berries and for the shear pleasure is Lake Twenty-two, but there are many nice trails and if you have the kids and don't mind the 15 mile drive the big four hike to the ice-caves (a 1 mile hike with lots of wooden walkways perfect for kids, ice-cave or not) will give you some berries to look at if it's this time of year.

This is the icy water I'm standing in. It helped very much to take my ankle swelling down. I tried to get my feet all dry but guess one foot bottom was still damp and the next 4 miles gave me a nasty blister on the bottom of my foot. I carry a day pack full of stuff to fix such mistakes! As I was standing in the river people passing by began to warn us of a baby bear near by on the trail eating berries. Yes today many more berries were ripe and appearing. A very late year indeed!

Today my nose keeps finding cones, pine cones, fur cones. All kinds, the air was full of the smell. I kept seeing the little chipmunks running all over and figured out it was time to collect the nuts of the cones. I found miles of cones along the trail. They give off a pitch sort of smell mixed with a wooden smell. A nice rich smell This is one of the busiest bends in the river. Bleach boy and I sat at a table in the shade and read our books and passed a couple of nice hours. The wind began to blow some not so friendly looking clouds over head and we began the hike back. A perfectly lovely day.

Now I will give you the berry photos and a touch of information. I can add more information when I get home and have more time, yes this vacation thing is very busy!

Be back in the States tomorrow!

http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/producttype.cfm?producttype=APRI

http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/mbs/recreation/activities/trails/mtnloop.shtml

hiking in the mountain loop area

Another amazingly beautiful day in BC Canada

Today was another day of blue skies and sunshine. Bleach Boy and I made our journey on Bicycles. He has a nice gold Kikapu dirt bike, it has shocks and front and rear suspension.

I have my original 18 speed dirt bike I bought in the early 1980's. Heavy, loose slow shifting but I love this bike, it is perfect for me, blue and small. We found a nice over hang around the other side of the lake and spent the day there reading and munching cheesy bread. The local grocery bakery is famous for this chewy bread.

You may think that sitting each day at a different lake and reading all day would be a lazy life. I earn every bit of it on the ride over. This trail was full of big deep long hills. A pleasure one direction a hard job the other!

Bleach Boy isn't really into his book this time around. He was enjoying watching the different little boats going up and down the lake.

What will tomorrow bring? It is our last day here, I'm sad. I think I'll bike every trail I can in one day. My ankle is not taking the hiking this year, maybe a soak in the blue gray glacier creek would bring the swelling down. But until then I'm good for a bunch of biking! Maybe this time I can stop less for photos and spare bleach boy all that delay!

Smiles

The Berry of the day

Today's berry is the highbush cranberry. I knew well the low bush cranberry. It took a trip to the Whistler library and getting a library card to find this berry out! The library is new and right outside my door. How handy is that! The highbush cranberry is also called squashberry and Mooseberry up here in BC. There are important ways to be sure you know what a berry plant is. One is the form of its leaves. The very best thing to add to the leave knowledge is the flower it bears. With the leaves and flowers I can tell quickly most berries. But this time there was only some green berries with a touch of red coming on. Once the berries are ripe they are juicy and sweet. If we had been around for flowering this plant would have had a close cluster of tiny white flowers. Your raspberries etc have med to large flowers.

I checked out a book on the local native tribes eating history in the pacific northwest. Rich with berry eating. When peoples have eaten something for long generations you learn wisdom in how to use the Berry's. The Highbush cranberry is getting hard to find. I was delighted that I had.

Most Berries are fine to eat on the trail. Go hiking with someone who knows what is there and learn one at a time. Berries like elderberries can be very bad for you unless you cook them. They are famous for wine and jam. The native peoples like to soak the highbush cranberries for long periods and then in winter eat them like pudding.

On the trail I eat raspberries, black berries, Salal, wintergreen, Oregon grape, some gooseberries, service berries, salmon berries, blue berries, currents, wild strawberries (tasty but a lot of seeds), and huckleberries and thimbleberries (not my favorite).

What you never want to eat is Devils club, twin berries, bitter cherry, all the lily's,and honey suckle. There is more but the berries on these plants look good and ARE NOT.

Do you have questions? Do ask. You can get Vitamin C and some other great Vitamins in wild berries. Now is the time of year to enjoy them.

varying from Berry-ing

Today was my daughter (child #4) last day here with us. Before she left I got a really yummy cake recipe from her. She made this up herself. Took a basic idea and did wonderful things with it. This cake is cool and refreshing. You must make this for summer eating. We have been really enjoying piece after piece of her cake this week. I took a photo of all that was left. It's a pretty cake but she told me you can do anything that you like. So thank you Cheryl for this yummy recipe!

Cheryl's Island Paradise Cake (so good it will feel like a trip to Hawaii)

You must make this a day ahead so it will soak in the coconut milk. It looks like tons of milk but it does all soak in!

1 box of Betty Crocker Cherry chip cake mix ( and what ever the box calls for also)

1 can Sweetened condensed milk like Eagle brand milk

1 can of coconut milk (not fat reduced please)

1 can of crushed pineapple

cool whip for frosting

coconut for toasting

Maraschino cherry's for cake top

Bake cake using directions and ingredients on box Bake in 9X13 glass pan (it only works in glass)

Mix Eagle Brand milk with coconut milk and 1/2 the juice from the crushed pineapple. It helps to put this in a measuring cup for easy pouring. If too thick to soak into cake add more pineapple juice but not too much.

Once the cake comes from the oven let it cool for about 10 minutes. Then poke holes in the cake. These need to be a good size or the stuff in that measuring cup won't soak into the cake. Cheryl used a chop stick with the thick end as the poker. When she made it here in Whistler she found a wooden spoon with the right size handle and poked holes with that.

Pour syrup of milks and juice over the cake. Move across slowly to let it seep into the cake. If you made your poke holes big enough and chill this over night it will soak in all most all the coconut milk mixture.

How the cake looks when the milk is first poured on.

Cool completely

stir crushed pineapple into the cool whip and frost the cake with it.

Top with the cherries

Toast coconut in your oven. Safest to do it with a hot 450 degree oven and stir and watch. But you can do it under the broiler is you watch it and never look away.

Put toasted coconut on the cake just as you serve each piece. The crunch is wonderful with the smooth frosting and the sweet cake.

Enjoy and adjust this cake to make it your own kind of Paradise.

Beautiful weather, lots of hiking and biking... nothing like a vacation

Here is today's berry. It was a great find! I had to hike back to get the photo as when we first passed it the sun was so bright you couldn't enjoy the rich colors of this bush.

No guessing this time, this is a gray blueberry. It tastes wonderful and is larger than most wild blueberries.

YUM YUM.

This is the lake I was hiking to when I found the blueberry bush. Lost lake a popular busy place but so beautiful and even peaceful in a big crowd.

When we vacation here in Whistler anyone can join us but the rules are meal cooking is shared and we each get to do what we want to do. I put a pad of sticky notes out and everyone leaves times and places they are off to if they know. Well bleach boy and I had no idea where we were off to and when Lilly and her parents found us at lost lake we were very surprised! With 5 lakes within walking distance to our condominium we could have been any where.

On Monday the crowds of the week-end go away and you have the kids working the summer here and the families that live here and the summer camps. It's a different group on Monday. I did a tiny bit of hiking over rocks on Sunday and it swelled my injured ankle too much to walk on Monday. We ended up riding our bikes to rainbow park. I drive bleach boy crazy I'm sure, as I kept stopping to take photos of berries! Seems the bears were liking these berries too. Found lots of bear skat on the trails.

We spent all day at Rainbow park and one point I thought bleach boy was going to have to take off his shoes and go into the lake after a girl who had gone too far trying to retrieve her inter- tube that had blown away. Finally when she was much too tired she turned back to land. Lucky for bleach boy. I've always hoped he would be around if I was drownging. He is such a really great strong swimmer!

We spent the day reading. I read aloud the good articles in this months Foreign Policy magazine and then went to work on reading Goose Girl. We were going to baby sit Lilly that evening so around 4:30 we rode back into town, stopping for Photos all long the trail.

This is a fitting end to the day. Took this out of our deck.

Berry Berry where are the Berries

This is today's berry can you tell me what it is?

It was hard finding berries to show you this year. Everything is just past the flower and not yet the berry. Late because of the long winter. If you want a hiking snack don't look in the deep forest. No berries here. This is a nature trail along the Blackcomb creek.

When hiking I look for berries by the forest fragrance's. NONE this year. Just the heady smell of clover. Awe here it is.

I'm not sure why this is called Skunk cabbage. My Girl Scout troop loved to make jokes about this plant when we camped. Every time I run into this massive plant on the trail I think I have stepped back into a Jurassic era. I love the giant leaves and the odd lily like bloom and the light looks so pretty coming through the leaves.

I hope these berry blogs will help those of you new to the northwest gain some confidence to pick and eat the safe berries of the forest. The native Americans of this region lived well on the berries and seafood here in the Northwest. It is one of the great things about living here.

Maybe this will help you figure out the above berry

www.wnps.org/landscaping/plantselect.html

http://www.turtlepuddle.org/alaskan/wild/berries.html

Happy Birthday Eden

Happy Birthday Eden

She is the last of the family born in 1978. It’s not polite to state a ladies age so you will have to figure out what birthday Eden is celebrating today.

She’s the only daughter-in-law in the family. When she married our son she had to meet not only me but the four daughters. Now that would un-nerve any young lady. How brave she was.

Eden fits in perfect; we love all she has brought to our family.

So there we have it the far away daughter, a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law all born In 1978. If you are wondering about that year see my blog for Jared’s birthday.

I loved my 30’s. So if you are reading this and are in your 20’s heading fast toward the 30’s don’t worry about it. It’s lovely. The 20’s are full of choices that stress you. Where to go to school, what to major in, what to do when you change your major, how to please your parents, who to marry, where to live, how to support yourself, when to start your family, etc.. But when you get to the 30’s so much of that is behind you. You have gained some skills for what you are now doing. And the best of all you can visit your home town and people treat you less like a kid!

So dear Eden, enjoy these years to come. You are very special and we love you!

Domestic red currents

Last daughter guessed this one correctly. The berries are domestic red currents and they grow on my Northern fences. We love these tiny juicy berries. Frozen they are wonderful. Many long years ago my love of wild life convinced me to make sure all I planted on my property would feed something. So the currents feed the children who pass by and the birds enjoy them and if Gracie, my Cashgora Goat had her way she would enjoy the whole bush, all the way to the ground!

I'm on the search for some berry's to take photos of. Today, first day of vacation was a day of rest. No matter how beautiful the weather I just couldn't get myself off and onto a trail! You can smell berries in the heat of the day so I look forward to this search. It's a sweet smell, I'm sure the bears find the berries this way. I've seen the bears go from bush to bush just gobbling up those sweet treats. The village is a buzz with plans for the 2010 winter Olympics. But talk this year is that the long winter made the crops very late and strawberries are just now on. So I cross my fingers that this July isn't too early for some wild berries to enjoy.

wish me luck.

Berry Berry quite contrary

So we can have you guess each day with answers the following day

What berry is this? Can you eat it? just give me a comment below.

I'm off for my week of hiking in Canada. I'm hoping for lots of cool perfect weather. Last year I was rained out, sad. I wait all year for this. I have my favorite hiking sandals, my camera, and my day pack. Because I hike home to a lovely condominium every night I hope to send you a daily berry report. Yes it is berry season and my camera and I will go in hunt of all those wild beauty's Watch for photos of my hunt for the Berry Berry quite contrary. And as it goes in the Canadian Alps we don't want to run into any bears while hunting berries! Smiles, grammie person

Twins in a blanket

Natalie Elise

A lot of the family got together this week-end. We blessed Natalie,who is no longer very tiny, in church Sunday. I had 9 of my 10 grandchildren all together and forgot to take a photo can you believe that? I eavesdropped on my daughters talking and heard them sharing rhyming games to play with baby. There was Natalie at 2 plus months and Logan at 2 years and max and Lilly at 1 year. All the other children at 4 and older were outside playing the kinds of things bigger, little kids do.

So this is for the babies who can still be bounced on your knee or are about to be big enough to be bounced on your knee.

Trot Trot to Boston

In a lively singsong, with child on your knee of leg as if to ride a horse. Hold onto their hands.

Trot, trot to Boston

Trot, trot to Lynn

Trot, trot home again

And don't fall in. (down goes the child into the Ditch (space between your knees) and gently onto the floor)

Rag Dolls

You can do all the floppy parts easily

Let's floppy our fingers

Let's floppy our hands

Let's floppy our arms like rubber bands

Now floppy our heads, floppy your legs too

Like floppy rag dolls

I'll flop down with you

And now at request of Natalie's mommy here are the handkerchief dolls I made for you in church. I memorized them from this old book. Practice and you can amaze your kiddos.

This came from The Everything Book, printed in 1974. I learned the twins in a blanket from my mother who did them for me as a child in the early 1950's.

A dragon that snaps

Mouth open

Mouth closed

Did your mom or a favorite aunt teach you how to make those pretty little snap dragon flowers talk? Well here is how to delight a child.

Snap dragon flowers grow easily and can be found many places. No one has ever complained that I stopped at their bush to show a child how they talk.

Just take your thumb and pointer finger and pinch gently at the back of the flower. That moves its mouth and all you have to do is say something clever for that dragon flower! My grand daughter Lilly just looked puzzled the first time, the 2nd time she laughed. Worth it!

Enjoy those talking Snap Dragons.

What a big accomplishment!

It has been so busy I can't but help plan and prepared one event and then think about the next. Ever been that busy? When you can only think about the moment you are in? So in this mess I missed congratulating far away daughter on her graduation. The fastest, hardest MBA program on the planet. She studied and presented and worked hard day and night, week-day and week-end and on Saturday she graduated from the University of Geneva in Switzerland with an IOMBA. We are so excited for her. She will travel now to a far away country to do three months of volunteer work for UNICEF. If any one wants to hire a really hard working, experienced third child of mine you'd get a great deal.

So congratulations middle child and good luck!

You did what you set out to do!

Chocolate scratch n' sniff

just scratch n' sniff like those old stickers the kids used to have in the 80's. I buy these to dip holiday centers in, but this year with bleach boy working in California, and being on crutches, I didn't do my normal baking. That's a quarter on it to show you how big this is.

Didn't the scratch n' sniff work? Guess you have to turn off your virus protection

he he he he he he he he he he he he I can smell it....awe......

A flag what's a county to do?

Celebrating July 4th our Independence day is filled with symbols of what this country means to us. The flag is one of my very favorite of symbols. My heart pounds and I feel gratitude when ever I see it. Did you know the flag as we know it, one flag for all events, didn't come into being until after WWII.

That's right, it was a flag free for all. Right from the first declaration in 1776 people have designed different flags hoping to make it a symbol of our county

The process of our countries flag was helped by only three Flag acts. Freedom in flag designs abounded.

FLAG ACT I "Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation." 1777

FLAG ACT II provided for 15 stripes and 15 stars after May 1795. 1794

FLAG ACT III provided for 13 stripes and one star for each state, to be added to the flag on the 4th of July following the admission of each new state, signed by President Monroe. 1818

So those are the rules go for it! And these new U.S citizens did. So many flags for so many reasons. We loved and honored each for their intended use. No county has had more flags under one government. We use our flag, it follows us into battle, hangs in our public places, honors our dead, and brings us pause.

In 1892 the first pledge to our flag was started. This has taken many forms and was taught in schools to a fledgling generation of children. The pledge as I learned it in school, standing and saying it daily, wasn't in use until 1954. Before that point a similar pledge was used but it didn't have 'One nation under God' in it and it wasn't recognized by the Congress until 1942

.

The Pledge of Allegiance I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands,one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

After the "One nation under God" was added

Then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower said "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war."

As a great leader of WWII he clearly knew the reason we needed to add the phrase.

Bleach Boy proposed to me on flag day, June 14th, 1972. We love to remember this day and hang our flag to celebrate the two great reasons for the day. This day for the flag began in 1885. Flag Day - the anniversary of the Flag Resolution of 1777 - was officially established by the Proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson on May 30th, 1916.

August 3rd, 1949, President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.

The flag which belongs to the people has progressed in interesting ways and I hope you will check this web site. http://www.usflag.org/index.html It is one of my favorites on the flag. PBS stations all over are also showing a history of the flag where I got most of this information for this blog. Watch it, it's very good.

Be sure and stand tall with respect when your Flag passes by today. It is a symbol of freedom,a symbol of E PLURIBUS UNUM, Out of many into one. One great nation from 13 colonies, one great nation out of many immigrants.

Happy 4th of July American's all over, from all over!

July 4th 1776

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

My grandmothers family left Sweden in the 1800's because they were not allowed to change their place of worship. Every member of my family there left at that time.

My grandfathers family came from Germany during that same time

My mothers father came from England for religious freedom

My grandmothers family searched for freedom until they found it in the Great Salt Lake Valley

It is because of them I was born in a free place.

Why are you here? Some came of their own free will, some were here already, some were forced because of slavery. The real Gift, of the founding Fathers, is that they left us with documents that allow us, all of us, to live together, to solve our problems, prefect our freedoms. It's not that The United States is a perfect package. No it's the right we have to make it better, to protect what makes us free.

As women we didn't have the right to vote until the Nineteenth amendment passed in 1920. Don't ever think that your one vote doesn't' have enough power! When you cast that vote you will do it freely and not under force. Start in the most important place, right in your city or county.

Today we will celebrate, we will join friends and family and have a good time. Put your flags out. Remember how fragile, how precious, how vital your freedom is. Remember to say a prayer of thanks. We have so much.

Happy Birthday to The United States Of American

Gardening Question

What do all those numbers mean in the gardening section?

I got a call from my gardening daughter. If she has fertilizer for Roddies, and one for flowers and one for grass which can she use on her veggie garden?

So here is the answer-fertilizers come with three numbers

1st number Nitrogen

2nd number Phosphate

3rd number Potash

When you look on a box, or bottle of food for your plants you will see three numbers sometimes they will be 0's. They go in the order you see above. The idea is to know what your plant needs and get the percent correct.

My violet food says 7-7-7 (7% of that bottle is Nitrogen, 7% is phosphate

etc)

Bloom boost says 10-50-10

Rose food says 18-24-16 (My rose food, which they love, is high in Nitrogen)

Cheryl’s Azalea, Roddie food 4-4-2

Cheryl’s Rose, flower bloom food 4-6-2

Are you beginning to see a pattern. Different combinations of the Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potash is different for each plant. BUT in reality plants need a variety of minerals and organic matter so the three numbers is only a beginning. Especially If you are going to be planning on doing sustainable gardening. You need to be able to start producing on your land what you will need to care for your plants. Before we go further I must say this is a simple view at a complex subject and I personally prefer using an organic approach which I can cover in a another blog. Right now we are seeing if my daughter can feed her veggies with the mixtures she has.

To begin with she is putting in her beans. They are well on their way now and need transplanting. Vegetables are heavy feeders. That means you will need to feed them more than once in this process. Cheryl will need to keep her veggie garden fed with an equal group Of N,P,K If the first number is larger than the rest I would avoid it for vegetable as it will cause overgrowth of the green and there will be little bloom.

So the Rose and Flower food looks ok

4- low on the N that’s not bad less is better for legumes

6-good

2-low on K would be better to be up at 6 also. We discounted the grass food as it had a weed killer we felt concern over.

One again this is a simple look. If we look at each plant Cheryl will plant they will have different requirements. Actually if I were gardening I’d say that Legume crop could be tilled in for a good burst of N. Guess she’d rather eat them!

Other factors are soil you start with, where you live, how you water, etc. Do you want to talk about gardening? It is my favorite subject!

A walk through my neighborhood

The weather has cooled back down and so we are walking again Lilly and I. My neighborhood is beautiful this time of year. Let me take you on a walk through my wonderland! Maybe you are one of my kids and you will be home sick looking up and down the road you once explored on. But if this is your first time on my street, listen for the chickadees, the sound of the horses, the smell of berries that are ripe, listen to the russle of the fir trees, and look up through the maple leaves as the sun glows through them. Now you know why I live here and NO where else.

Smiles

For full impact click on a photo to enlarge

This is just as you come off the main road onto my road, it was once just a dirt road

This is midas my cat following along

The 2 photos above are of a vine maple in my neighbors yard

My grand daughter Lilly was with me so we took photos of forest growing lillys

This is heading back the other way and yes they do trash pick-up on picture day!

Happy Anniversary Clint and Eden

July 1st 2000

Today is my oldest child, only son's anniversary. Seems like yesterday we gathered the family as it was, (one grandchild in the family) and got on a southwestern flight to Oakland. It was nice they got married in the place they both had loved as children. I remember when we took the 3 1/2 hour drive south, to the Oakland temple, with all the primary children. They never forgot the temple president telling them some day they would be back to the temple to be married for all eternity. How touching it was to have Clint take his love to the Oakland temple. (Her family was in Idaho, ours in the Northwest, Clint and Eden outside of L.A. so everyone had to travel)

I have some fun photos of the event it will be hard to choose which to use. We all felt so pretty in the blue Eden choose for the girls to wear and that California sun did it all justice. So Happy 8th Anniversary kids. Hope it has been the best 8 years of your lives. Hugs Grammie/mom