Fireweed Fluff

Fireweed is fuzzing out

Much as I love fireweed, I have been dreading the great fuzz-out that I know is going to happen.  All those brilliant flowers turn into thin pods, which explode into fuzz.  I'll admit that I still have fuzz on my screens from last fall, and there wasn't very much fireweed last year compared to this year.  So yesterday I was out there pulling up the fireweed directly around my house (below my bedroom window, that would likely attract large quantities of fuzz), much to my kids' amusement.  They don't care about such things as fuzz on the screens.

Last weekend while at a cross-country running race in Soldotna, it looked like it was snowing there was so much fireweed fluff in the air.  People were walking around batting at the fluff balls that were hitting their faces, coming from the field pictured above.  Like one person said, with this many fireweed seeds flying around we'll have even more fireweed next year.  That I cannot even imagine.  It was stunningly prolific this year.  I'll be curious to see how it all turns out.  Meanwhile, it is raining now with more rain on the forecast, so that keeps the fuzz under control!

Yesterday's Pickin's

Onion, cucumbers, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, kohlrabi, yellow zucchini--bounty from the garden!

This is my favorite time of year:  the garden starts offering its bounty and when it is time to prepare dinner I run out and pick stuff and start throwing it together in some yummy way.  Here's some favorite ways we eat our fresh stuff:

Cucumbers end up on our salad, and any leftovers get sliced up and salted lightly.  Keep it simple!

Cooking up the onions in water and eating them with just a bit of butter is a tasty treat we fight over!

Kohlrabi is our before and after dinner snack since we don't have many.  We love the crunch!

Green beans rarely make it out of the greenhouse as we snack on them when we're hungy.

Tomatoes go on salads and eat them plain--more "keep it simple!"

Zucchini we stir fry up, add summer sausage, spaghetti noodles and Velveeta cheese  all mixed together.  Yum!

And berry season is kicking into full swing.  With this bucket of raspberries I picked yesterday, I've picked 4 gallons, and while I picked crowberries and blueberries, the kids ate those right up so they never made it into the freezer.  The watermelon berries I snuck by the kids so those made it into the freezer too.

This has been an awesome year for berries with the warmth and now a week of rain.  No more blogging for me today.  I've got more berries to go pick!

Sandhill Cranes

The local sandhill crane couple

This is a blog post I have been meaning to write ever since the sandhill cranes started migrating through Homer back in May, but I never had my camera (aka my iPhone) on me when I saw them.  What I really wanted was to get a video of the flocks of 50-100 cranes that stalk up our road or descend on open fields or lawns next to it.  But the masses of cranes left in the spring and just a few are left hanging around.

We have 2 cranes that frequent our neighborhood these days.  And every evening I'll hear their distinctive honk as they fly over, though usually when I look up it is a group of 4 or 5 cranes honking by.  It reminds me of when I was a child in Wisconsin and a great blue heron flew over our house each evening.  The day wasn't complete unless we saw it. 

While out walking the other day we ran into a momma moose with a baby that wouldn't budge from the roadside, so we turned and walked a different way and ran into another momma moose with a baby the other direction, also chomping merrily and unwilling to move.  So we walked down our road and saw these cranes, which was a relief because we were feeling pretty hemmed in on our walk that day.  We were worried we'd run into yet another stubborn moose and not be able get enough walk in!  I'm not sure why, but I never think of taking pictures of moose when I see them--probably because I see them so often.  I'll try to fix that and give my blog readers some moose pictures!

Homer Rope Tow: Summer View

For those of you who follow my blog, you may have seen pictures of the Homer Rope Tow over the years.  I needed to run down to the warming hut yesterday and get a jacket out of the lost and found and figured I would give you a summer view of the rope tow.

View of the local rope tow slope from the warming hut:  summer view

The walk down there was a matter of wading through grass and fireweed that towered over our heads.  Normally we have our downhill ski boots on and skis over our shoulder as we make the trek so the weeds were nothing compared to that!  It seemed so quiet and lonely, though, as normally it is just a bustle of people around the warming hut and slopes.  The slope looks so much smaller in the summer....just a little hill! How could I ever be nervous about skiing down that?!  And there is just no getting away from the fireweed, though its fiery glow is now fading as the flowers reach the top of the stems, signalling the imminent onset of winter.

Homestead Summer Trail

An old, abandoned cabin along the Homestead Trail, framed by pushki and fireweed

This is a great, short hike with a bench for resting, a picnic and great conversation at the summit.  The view is delightful and always a treat, though the clouds were hanging low early in the day and we weren't sure we were going to get a view today.

Wood chips and plastic trail retainers
on the Homestead Trail

The Roger's Loop trailhead starts when you're near the overlook coming into Homer.  The trail starts with grass, dips into some boggy areas with plastic trail retainers (whatever they're called--see the picture), then on to boardwalks through the wettest areas and as the trail begins to climb, it whittles down to a single dirt track.  Yesterday the dirt was actually a slippery wet muddy trail instead since it has been a rainy week.

The trail winds through different types of areas:  boggy hummocks, thick forest and then out onto an alpine meadow.
It is only about a mile up to the bench.  When we first moved to Alaska, we never even got to the meadow and bench; the kids were younger and we were more timid.  Now the jaunt up to the bench seems like a quick little hike.

This trail is also the snowshoe trail in the winter, and I hike it more often on snowshoes than I do in the summer.  There is a loop so it wouldn't have to be an out-and-back hike, both for the summer and winter (though they follow different paths in each season). 

The trail up the meadow--final climb to the bench

View of the Kenai Mountains looking towards Homer and Kachemak Bay

View towards Seldovia and Cook Inlet

Our family is not much for sitting around admiring views.  Usually when we're out and about we've got a goal and we're very focused.  This trail has been an exception for us at times.  We've had snowball fights, explored off the trail, picked berries and of course, sat at the bench.  We end up having quality conversations sitting on the bench overlooking the area, swinging our legs, and eating a picnic.  Last year I hiked up there with the kids the day before school started, so it was on my mind to do it again this year since school starts Tuesday and we get into our highly intense school-year life of work, sports, school and berry-picking/harvesting.  The clouds lifted and the rain stopped and it was actually a humid 60 degrees.  It was just what I'd wanted--a very nice hike with family!

Ray Clapp Trail

Beginning of the Ray Clapp Trail

One morning last week I was in town early with an hour to occupy so I decided to walk up the East End Road bike path and hop onto one of my favorite trails in the area by the Stream Hill Creek subdivision.  I don't get up there very often as it is short and usually I want a little meatier hike, and I always feel a little bit like I'm trespassing.  However, a new sign announcing the Ray Clapp Trail greeted me, so I felt a bit more welcomed that day.

The Ray Clapp Trail is a nice little path in town

A cute little flower garden marks the entrance to the subdivision, which is just over a mile out East End Road on the left.  Just a short ways up the road there is a parking area on the left (to me, a clue that the public is welcome) and beyond that a little bridge marks the start of the trail.  It winds its way through the woods, then begins to climb up and up the ridge through a beautiful birch forest.  Eventually a trail hooks off to the right and connects to the road through the subdivision (which only has about 3 houses built so far). 

Watermelon berries--ripe and ready

I continued up the ridge to where the trail heads out of the trees and becomes massively overgrown.  This particular morning the dew was heavy so my shoes and pants were soon soaked.  Watermelon berries were a great feature of this hike, and I promised myself to come back and pick them.  They taste like watery watermelon, but are a great filler in my smoothies and I figure they've got nutrition in them if they are wild and colorful.

I expected to have the place to myself, but there were a couple of other people out walking with their dogs or kids.  It really ends up being a nice loop walk, up the trail and down the road.  The view is delightful too, particularly on this gorgeous, sunny morning.

View from the Stream Hill Creek subdivision

The New Homer Transfer Station

Well, the new $10 million transfer station is open and I got to check it out yesterday.  It's pretty much the same setup as before except there are more areas to back in and dump your trash and for now it is all spiffy and new.

The new though not fancy transfer station

All the bags of trash just get thrown on the concrete floor in this building and then somehow it will probably be compacted and trucked up to the Soldotna dump.  I had an old mattress I was tossing and I threw it on the floor with the trash and a worker said that only the bagged trash goes up the road; the large things are still being buried in Homer and he pointed out the salvage/big stuff dump area past the new building.

The old trash building is now the recycling area for paperboard, cardboard and newspapers, just big piles on the floor.  And the recycling building has been rearranged so now we're just throwing the plastic on the floor in there.

I don't really like the new setup.  Before everything was in the same area so I didn't have to drive much and could just walk the trash and recycling to their places, but now the trash is a ways away from the recycling and even the recycling is spread out so we have to drive from one spot to the next.


But my greatest worry was that they were going to start charging to drop off trash but that is not the case--it is still "free", at least at the spot though I'm sure our taxes cover it.