Blog Archives

Snowy Christmas Lights

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We leave the Christmas lights on the Korean Fir in our front yard garden through much of January to brighten the long winter nights and in hopes of getting a little snow.

Outside Christmas Tree in the Snow
Outside Christmas Tree in the Snow

This year we had to wait until January 17 to get our first snowfall of the winter. Tonight, the 18th, I took my camera outside in the bitter cold to photograph the tree and its setting. I used my Canon 1Ds Mk II with a 16-35mm lens and photographed at the widest setting. I wanted to emphasize the space and separate the tree from our house and other buildings in the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Snow and Slow: Forest in my Pocket

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This past weekend was the beginning of the first real winter we’ve had this season. I took a couple of hikes to keep my blood circulating and to visit a couple of favorite local haunts. Saturday I zipped up to Pine and Cedar Lakes in the Chuckanuts and on Sunday I ambled along the Whatcom Creek trail to Whatcom Falls Park, returning via the Railroad Trail.

Saturday was the beginning of our current snowfall. There was just a bit of slush at the Pine & Cedar trailhead, but by the time I’d gained the roughly 1500′ to the lakes the snow was 5-6 inches deep, relatively light and fluffy. Continue reading →

Lost Lake: Found in the Chuckanuts

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How can you lose a lake? In the Chuckanut Mountains south of Bellingham you just bury the thing in a deep valley beneath a high sandstone cliff and ring it with lush Douglas-fir, hemlock, and cedar forest with a dense groundcover layer of salal, sword ferns, and low Oregon-grape. Add a muddy trail and you’ve got a perfect place to lose yourself for an afternoon.

That’s just what I did this afternoon under a sodden gray sky and chilly temperatures. Well, I didn’t actually get lost, but I did pay a visit to Lost Lake. Here’s the DNR map of the Chuckanut trail system I carried in my pack. You definitely want a map for the maze of trails up there, but it’s definitely worth it. Continue reading →

Oysters and Hemlocks: Rekindling Old Friendships

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January 1st, New Year’s Day, I donned shorts and boots and headed for Oyster Dome. That’s the prominent rock outcropping rising a couple thousand feet above Chuckanut Drive at the south end of the Chuckanuts or the north end of Blanchard Mountain. It’s a popular hike, despite being steep and muddy. I went for exercise and to rekindle old friendships with the inhabitants of the winter forest.

San Juan Islands view from Oyster Dome

The view from the top out over the San Juan Islands is spectacular. I made this photo handheld with my little Canon G12 pocket camera, planning to stitch the frames together later in Photoshop. Continue reading →

Phlox on the Rocks

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Yreka PhloxThe latest Rock Garden Quarterly arrived in my postal mailbox today with a bunch of my photos from Deception Pass State Park to help promote the upcoming Western Winter Study Weekend. There’s a link to this blog, so I figured I’d better get busy and write something new for the hoards of visitors coming my way.

I’m working on selecting photos for the new Trees and Shrubs of the Northwest book due out in 2013. Today was Polemoneaceae day, or in plain English, a day of selecting pictures of Phlox.

The beauty at right is Yreka Phlox, Phlox hirsuta. It’s a certified rare plant that only grows in a few locations on the outskirts of Yreka, California. I photographed it back in the spring of 2004 when I was working on the wildflowers book with Phyllis Gustafson. It’s one of the plants that ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor and got left out of the first book. Ellen and I plan to include it in the trees & shrubs book. Continue reading →