Pitted Cherries Fresh Off the Tree

Cherries are an on and off again fruit. Some years there are hardly any and some years there are bushels. I love cherry pies and ice cream but picking the cherries off your own tree and then pitting them is a tedious job. I like to pick grapefruit because the box or bag fills up really quickly. I have only picked a few cherries in my life but I have picked a LOT of grapefruit. 

Flowers for Summer

From Wikipedia: Clematis:

Clematis is a genus of about 300 species within the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. Their garden hybrids have been popular among gardeners, beginning with Clematis × jackmanii, a garden standby since 1862; more hybrid cultivars are being produced constantly. They are mainly of Chinese and Japanese origin. Most species are known as clematis in English, while some are also known as traveller's joy, a name invented for the sole British native, C. vitalba, by the herbalist John Gerard; virgin's bower for C. terniflora, C. virginiana, and C. viticella; old man's beard, applied to several with prominent seedheads; leather flower for those with fleshy petals; or vase vine for the North American Clematis viorna.

I am unable to tell exactly what species this is but the flowers are very pretty now that we are in the Summer of 2020 and having to stay home more than was ever imagined. 

A Day of Fire and Clouds

There are two huge fires in the Utah Valley today. One on the west side of Utah Lake and one at Point of the Mountain in the north end of the valley. About two hours before sunset, the sky was so dark that it looked like night. My wife went outside for a while and came in with ash in her hair and on her blouse. We are nowhere near the fire but some people are being evacuated. 26 June 2020. 

Mouth of Rock Canyon in Late Spring

It was an exceptionally clear day for a walk along the Shoreline Trail and I took this opportunity to take this very nice photo of the mouth of Rock Canyon on the east side of Provo, Utah. The grass that grew during the Spring is just starting to turn golden brown. The detail in the rocks that is usually muted by the dust and pollution of the air stand out in stark relief. This is a very rare photo. 

Walking up the Shoreline Trail

The Bonneville Shoreline Trail follows the actual shore of huge Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric lake. Here is an explanation from Wikipedia: Lake Bonneville:

Shorelines of Lake Bonneville are visible above Salt Lake City along the western front of the Wasatch Mountains and on other mountains throughout the Bonneville basin. These shorelines appear as shelves or benches that protrude from the mountainside above the valley floor, are visible on the ground from long distances and on satellite images, and have both depositional and erosional segments along their lengths. Three shorelines of Lake Bonneville that can be traced throughout the basin, have been given names: Stansbury, Bonneville, and Provo.

This segment of the trail starts at the mouth of Rock Canyon in Provo, Utah travels north and south for a total of about 305 miles.  We usually walk the segments just a few miles north and south from Rock Canyon. 

Grow Boxes

I was first introduced into grow-box gardening back in the 1980s, through the books of Jacob Mittlieder. Hre is a citation to his first book that caught my interest. 

Mittleider, Jacob R. 1975. More food from your garden. Santa Barbara, Calif: Woodbridge Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=nVAjAQAAMAA

During this time I lived in Mesa, Arizona and had a large backyard and so I used the backyard to grow a yearly garden and put the idea of grow boxes on the back burner. Now I am back with a growing interest in grow boxes. Some of my children have improved on my original gardens. The image above is one of those gardens. I began my "writing career" writing a newsletter about gardening and I am thinking of going back to my original interest. 

Sagebrush, an icon of the West

There are more than forty different species of plants like the one above in the genus of Artemisia and all of them are called "sagebrush." In addition, many of the sagebrush species have subspecies. One of the most common here in Utah is Artemisia tridentata. The challenge with identifying any particular species or subspecies is that there is some disagreement over the classification. Many of the species called sagebrush are in different plant families. This particular plant has been identified as of the subfamily Asteroideae and a member of the Sunflowers, Daisies, Asters, and allies in the Asteraceae Family. I guess I will still keep calling it sagebrush unless I am told otherwise by competent authority.