The Longest Day

How did you spend "the longest day"? From here on out, each day will just get shorter and shorter, until the cycle starts all over again, of course. Yesterday we had 15 hours, 22 minutes, and 7 seconds of daylight. 

It was a perfect day to spend in nature. Lunch was complete with fresh foods of the season: blueberries, strawberries, Rainier cherries, and sweet onions. Fresh and local food is such a delight!

Sudo enjoyed the longest day too. She experienced her first visit to "the woods". She did quite well for a city dog. She loved attacking the pillows on the cabin sofas and took naps on a plaid, wool blanket. Actually, she took her naps burrowed under the wool blanket. She loves to be covered up! Later, she took a very long walk and actually wore herself out and begged to be carried for awhile.

There was a chill in the air and a campfire was welcoming and warming.

The wildflowers of the woods are transitioning into summer flowers. It seems like those plants that bloom with red blossoms don't show up until June. The Indian Paintbrush is lining "Paintbrush Lane" aka the winding road from gate to cabin.

Yesterday there were 24 hours of daylight at the North Pole. We didn't get close to that here, but the day was amazing anyway. How did you spend your longest day?

Happy summer!

Today I am linking up to Bernideen's Tea in the Garden

Mountain Meadow

mead·ow

  [med-oh]

noun

1.

a tract of grassland used for pasture or serving as a hayfield.

2.

a tract of grassland in an upland area near the timberline.

The soft, golden light will make a meadow of wildflowers glow.

The road from gate to cabin leads through a mountain meadow. It's a short walk from the shelter of the cabin each morning to the meadow where we go to enjoy the view and appreciate the little treasures found there. May and June are the most beautiful months in our meadow.

The sky is always expressive. Clouds puff overhead and sometimes move swiftly across the sky. Other times we are in the clouds as they create a fog that wafts about us as we walk. The distant mountain ridge is blue with beauty, often showing patches of white snow on ridges and peaks.

Blue lupines dot the landscape as the meadow opens before our eyes. The seeds of this blossom can be soaked in running water to remove the bitter alkaloids and then cooked or toasted to make the seeds edible. While not a common food for most of us, it's fascinating to discover all the plants on the mountain that are good to eat if desired or required. 

The golden pea, rightly called Thermopsis montana adds color and cheer as it dots the meadow. A bumble bee ignores me and keeps feasting on the floral nectar. The flowers in the pea family of plants are known for five petals that form a distinctive "banner, wings, and keel". Can you see them? Although this plant is of the pea family, it is poisonous and should never be ingested.

The Prairie Star also dots the hillside meadow. Although tiny, their flowers are intricate and exhibit such fine perfection. This flower is sometimes called smallflower woodland star. If you look closely at the grasses behind this flower you'll see that something has "chomped" the blades of grass at some point in time. Rest assured that it was not a lawn mower, but more likely an elk or deer that bed down in the meadow. They keep the ground churned up with their hoof prints. It is amazing that anything can grow at all!

Altogether the flowers created a haze of color. Notice how the section of meadow in the back is mostly yellow, whereas the front area is blue. Nature creates the most amazing landscapes! Although there is some "mixing" of colors, each mostly stays with its own kind.

The animals that live here year around keep a trail "open" along the top ridge of the meadow. It's interesting how animals, like humans, prefer ease of passage through the forest. Have you taken time to notice animal trails on mountain hillsides? We appreciate their trails and use them too! 

Can you see what our trail cam saw on the trail last week? Look closely! It was 2:39 AM, so this is a night shot. Mr. Bobcat seems to enjoy the trail too! Click on the photo, if you'd like, to enlarge the view. We saw several tiger swallowtail butterflies on our walk through the meadow as well, but I was not quick enough with my camera to get a picture. They are flighty creatures!

After a walk through the woods and meadow, it's always a delight to return to the comfort of the cabin where we can enjoy a hot cup of tea and the cozy comfort of a warm wood fire.

Today I am linking to Bernideen's Tea Time Blog.

cab·in

  [kab-in] 

noun 1. a small house or cottage, usually of simple design and construction.

He was born in a cabin built of rough logs.

Respite

"I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”  

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The earth laughs in flowers.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I must have flowers, always, and always.” 
Claude Monet

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”  

Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.”  
Milan Kundera

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor. 
Laurence Sterne

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” 
C.S. Lewis

Respite.
Me

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost ~

Crimson Light on Autumn Forest

The seasons are changing. Autumn gives poets so much to write about. Descriptive words, colorful phrases, and imagined pictures of autumn work together so well in poetry and prose. I enjoy reading a poem quickly at first, and then re-reading it once or twice more so I can savor the words and the word-pictures that enter my mind as the repeat takes place. Take a moment to enjoy this autumn poem and see what pictures it paints in your mind.

"Summer's glory lies in ruins --- for the forest is afire --- Richly glows the crimson light on burnished dome and golden spire. Towers of jade collapse and rumble: walls of amber crack and crash. Leafy cities of the woodland fall in clouds of dust and ash.

Rafters of the green cathedrals --- roofs of beechen colonnades --- Hang in charred and burning beams across the blue and smoky glades. . . But Nature's unseen architects will work in silence day and night --- to build the mansions of the Spring upon this red and ruined site."

~ Poem ~ Patience Strong ~

~ Photo ~ Our cabin-neighbor's grandsons ~

A Long Time Ago

“When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods,…

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.” 

Quote by Laura Ingalls Wilder