Timing is everything.
Greetings,
I hope you are doing well. The seed collecting season is here. Thanks to those of you who have placed your orders. A smile to those who wrote some time ago saying they would soon be sending their orders and still haven't done so. I understand because there are numerous things I intended to do during the off season that didn't happen.
Timing is everything with many seed species. Yesterday I got a good amount of Camassia quamash (common camas) harvested in a large field. One of my customers, Jennifer, from the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Indians told me about the field last year. I was too late getting to the pods last year and the field was cut and baled by the time I got to it. Two days ago I harvested Salix lucida (Pacific willow) catkins for the second time. I was just a little too early with the first harvest and the catkins didn't "cotton" out soon enough to get them cleaned before I headed south for a hiking/collecting trip.
My timing was good and I was able collect a good amount of seed of a number of species on the trip. On the attached seed list you will see a number of species in bold. The bolded species are new to the list this year. Most of those are yet to be cleaned and have Dr (drying) in the Amount cell. I will have prices listed once they are cleaned and I know what the seed yield is. I also saw a number of "new to me" species flowering that I hope to be able to harvest on future trips. One very beautiful one was Calochortus concolor (golden-bowl mariposa lily). It is on the list with NYH (not yet harvested) in the Amount cell.
I don't have the photo album done yet for the recent hike which was 67.5 miles over 5 days. Four of us were on the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) in the San Jacinto Mountains where I worked for 15 seasons as a ranger. I'll send the album with the next update. Here is the link to the photo album of the 3 day hike in March when we found the wing tip fuel tank from the 1948 Shooting Star crash. I mentioned in the last JNS update this album wasn't quite done. https://photos.app.goo.gl/YM6Ui5anUzDWGkua8 Recently contact was made with the daughters and a grandson of the pilot who was killed in the crash 71 years ago. Their appreciative and grateful responses to news and photos of the crash was a wonderful affirmation the effort to find the crash was a worthy mission.
On the recent hike I was with three guys who are, over a number of years, hiking the entire PCT in sections. One of the guys got to his halfway point of the PCT. With small sticks we spelled out "1/2" in the snow and got his photo laying on the snow. I sang him the first two verse of the Climb the Mountains song to mark the occasion. As I sang the second verse, just as I got to the line, "And wild birds will...", two ravens suddenly appeared above us. The timing was amazing! (If you looked at the Ashes photo album in the last update you have an idea how special this raven connection was.)
I will be taking one of my customers, Ryan Dawes, of Alpine Gardens and his wife down to southern Oregon towards the end of the month to get them to where they will start a multi-week hike on the PCT. That should get me in the area at a good time to harvest Erythronium citrinum (pale fawn-lily), Fritillaria recurva (scarlet fritillary), Ceanothus cuneatus (narrow-leaved buck brush) and other species. Let me know if you will want any of those or anything else.
The time is now,
Jon