whispy cirrus clouds (mare’s tails) over Doran Beach indicate a change in weather Mackerel scales and mare’s tails, make lofty ships carry low sails -Weather Proverb To read more about skygazing please click here.
Tag Archives: phenology
The Week in Bloom
a bounty of foraged hedgehog, pig’s ear, white prince* and cauliflower mushrooms Earlier this week, my friend Josef Szuecs invited me to join him on a late season mushroom foraging expedition. Joe has been writing a seasonal Mushroom Report for DeepCraft, and is deeply steeped in mushroom culture, having collected, cooked and eaten wild mushrooms […]
Hoshigaki
nearly ripe Hachiya Persimmon, ready to be peeled and hung to dry Looking up at the persimmon tree’s wild constellation of fruit still languidly dangling, you’d hardly know we already picked over two bushels for drying. Ene recently discovered the Japanese art of Hoshigaki, a technique of drying fruit by a combination of open-air hanging […]
Joe’s midseason Mushroom Report
This week my friend Josej Szuecs has graciously penned the second installment of his Mushroom Report: Midseason Mushrooms (text and photo by Josef Szeucs) The question is often posed to me: “When do the mushrooms start coming up?” In the western US, I start foraging two or three weeks after the first significant rainfall. This […]
The Week in Bloom
Hachiya persimmon are ripening early this year The raccoons have commenced their furtive nighttime raids on the persimmon tree, whose fruits are prematurely ripe by a few weeks. We’re still trying to figure out how best to use the hundreds of Hachiya persimmon produced by our single tree each winter, and have been picking and […]
The Week in Bloom
Now the sanderling outnumber the dowitcher along the Sonoma Coast, where heaps of kelp remind of the season’s first storms. Last week’s extratropical activity dumped up to ten inches of rain from Typhoon Melor, which blew across the Pacific from Japan. The uncharacteristically humid, warm weather forced some unlikely blossoming, turned the local pastures green, […]
Bioneers
Bioneers was held over the past weekend at the Wright-designed Marin Civic Center Bioneers is an annual, three day forum for cutting edge ideas in the realm of sustainability and ecology. This year’s conference was aptly sited on the campus of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin Civic Center and marks the twentieth anniversary of the […]