Rose hips and herb nerds with brown paper bags

Photo of rose hips by Audreyjm529, Flickr Creative Commons License.
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Today I've been collecting sun-softened, ripe rose hips into a brown paper bag that I begged off a counter-person at Rainbow Naturals, an apothecary that mixes its own herbs on Capitol Hill in Seattle. When I asked her for somewhere to transfer my bristly handful of rose hips, each the beating color of internal organs, she rustled out the bag and said in an undertone, "We're all herb nerds here, so I understand."

It was good. I wonder what Rainbow Naturals does with their rose hips, and I'll have to ask.

Meanwhile, I have a brown lunch bag lined with their rosy rounded forms, each with its autumnal, prickly leaf-stem. Lovely, what a dying rose leaves behind. If this is recycling, then I like it.

I'd always seen the bright orange hips, seemingly in such abundance on bare fall shrubs. But I never knew that they were things that ripened, that grew soft and tore at the edge when unhinged from the stem, so that each tear resembles a gash in a tomato.

So far, I'm just peeping at them proprietarily every so often. Tonight I'll settle on whether to make jelly, puree, chutney -- or even rose hip and vegetable curry.

What do you think?

Hawthorns and clippings of small presses from 2009

Photo of hawthorns (European) by Maura McDonnell, Flickr Creative Commons License
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Lately, hawthorns have been my quarry, though I've only gathered a 2-pound margarine container full of them and left them in the refrigerator, so far. What can I say? I was expecting to have to move this week! I was knee-high in boxes and making decisions about papers and treasured clippings about small presses in New Jersey from 2009.

Why is it that every review of our small items makes me think that a) I should become a hard-core Buddhist and relinquish all material items, going from door to door with a proffered hat and never again thinking about Comcast and (b) that every piece of paper, each wing-nut from a project and each pearlized button is irreplaceable and that I must keep it for all time to remind me of the fall of 2010?

Did I say that I did not move? Not yet, at least. I gave notice, then thought about whether I'm ready to go flying off to another time zone to live on a couch until I am able to find a peaceful share with a like-minded person who (hopefully) does not come in at 2:30 a.m. and cook aromatic soups of chicken and spices, at the very least. Because one of my former roommates in New Jersey did just that, and the scent was tempting enough to get a person out of bed and rubbing her eyes.

It is just the beginning of October, hawthorn and rose-hip season. Our weather here in Seattle is still bright and sunny, and sometimes I swear that we all are living in a waking dream in which we think that it is June. Honestly, I get confused, although on the nippier days (which I love), I notice that the evenings come earlier now as our planet tilts.

The reason for thinking of moving was partly weather. I'm a person who loves sunlight, or at least loves it in its indirect forms: dappled, glowing into a room at the window, emerging through tree branches, on a light and breezy summer day, and in its amber-bright autumnal glory.

Often, in late summer, I can hardly stand to think that the sharp concentrations of color that we see here in Seattle in August and early September might change. That said, I am happiest when I live near (by which I mean, keep aware of) the plants and air changes of season.

That is, knowing which plants are now in season -- hawthorns, rose-hips, the last of the huckleberries at high elevations -- it makes me notice the days better, to walk with a quickness of step.

So, how shall I prepare those hawthorns? I'm thinking of making a kind of apple sauce, having boiled and mashed and strained them, then adding cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

Late summer and fall, free from a tree. Good start!

Cold air and snow brace us

Photo of lobster mushroom, by gabriel amadeus on Flickr Creative Commons license
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Lately my mind has been consumed with foraging. I think of mushrooms and their fluted caps, rose hips swaggering on branches, bull-whip kelp in brash sections on the beach.

I know little about my topic, though. I look at many blogs, and I went chanterelle-hunting for the first time a few weeks ago. My knowledge is nascent, but I'm building on it.

The weather here in the lowlands of the Pacific Northwest is turning unpleasant for me, wet and full of leaf rot. The past few days have been dusk-dark at mid-day. They aren't just shorter since last week’s time change, but full of looming catastrophe in the hanging darkness and just-deferred downpour.

Walking in Seattle in the dim noonday, taking care not to slip on damp leaves piled along the sloping sidewalks, I think of Snoqualmie Pass and the Cascades. As of this morning, they have received fresh snow and an order to don tire chains.

The air at the Pass, I know, is brisk and cleansing to the lungs. Looming mountains lift the eyes into clear air or air hazed by snowfall. One feels the elevation of the barometric pressure, and steps with energy on snowshoes.

Sometimes the air and the snow are the cold water in which we can swim.

I look forward to diving into this land, to finding the rose hips and making a syrup to pour over cake -– to eating that cake and making other starches from chestnuts. 

To gathering. It is endless, the possibilities.

Apple-picking days alternating with dark

Photo by VIUDeepBay on Flickr Creative Commons license.
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Days in fall in Seattle are like an Appaloosa horse’s hide: They can be light -- but often they occur in great muddy dapples that obscure the bright, making their own pattern.
 

That's putting a pretty reading on it, though. What often happens is that I wake either thrilled by sunlight or lulled by gray. And sometimes the gray just makes a day in which it’s hard to be alert or even to have bright and clear eyes.
 

Probably that’s why I like cold water: It jolts me. I rise from the waters bright-featured, clear-headed. Sunlight in a gray place does that, too.
 

When in southern California, I’ve often thought that sunlight was excessive. All Pacific Coast weather is moody in its way, utterly different from the East Coast weather -- which follows its course through various seasons. Colors in the East are often vivid and primary.
 

That said, winter in the Northeast isn’t really a primary color -– it can be midnight dark, or display the furrowed clouds of expected snow. But it’s very often sunny, bright days.
 

I think that’s it: I like the bright, earned days of apple-picking time. I like them sharp as a Honey Crisp apple, with the same tang.

We have had some of those days in Seattle lately. Like the Appaloosa’s hide, they are variegated. Several dark, slogging days in a row precede the bright jewels that seem to last long.

I am glad for the variety, so far.
 

It may be time to swim again. If last year I swam on January 1 – which I did -– it can be done again. We will see. It’s always time to push off into the challenge.

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