Snow and Slow: Forest in my Pocket
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
Thick, leathery, glossy, evergreen foliage makes salal (Gaultheria shallon) desirable both in the garden and in the florist’s palette. This time of year you won’t find either flowers or fruit on salal — those will come in the warm months — but the foliage provides a comforting green layer at the edge of woodlands. Salal is particularly common along the Pacific coast from southeast Alaska all the way down to Santa Barbara county, California. It also grows up into the middle elevations of the Cascade and Coast Ranges. 
The 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.
