Sit For A Spell w/SunTiger

My body feels so very tired and the longer I sit at this computer the stiffer it gets. I spent all day digging up native plants from a forested site that’s soon to be bulldozed. Most of the plants will go to a nursery – and be sold for new landscaping. After digging for that effort for more than three hours, I was allowed to glean native plants for my own yard as well – so I spent another three hours laboring behind my shovel -- which means I had a very physically grueling day.

Interestingly, I came across some witches butter (see left photo) on a broken and rotting portion of tree and brought it home. Reportedly, people from days of old thought these buttery-colored mushrooms fell from witches brooms as they flew overhead (or so a Native Plant Rescue Steward told me).

I also rescued some red flowering currant (see second image; right) among many different ferns, salal, Oregon grape, salmon berry and a variety of lichen and mosses that I've already placed in my shade garden. By the end of the day, I had also rescued a red huckleberry (actually pulled apart a rotting log and brought the wood home to nurse that plant.

I love participating in native plant rescue because I'm able to landscape my yard with the kind of sensitive foliage that does not transplant well enough for nurseries to sell to the general public. I mean, WHO wants to purchase plants that might die on them the minute they transplant them? (Such a philosophy is all the better for me because it means my yard looks all the less ORDINARY? {Wink.})

Doug and Skye have both gone on plant-rescue missions with me before but today I could not convince either one of them that they needed to tag along. (It's interesting how the people I love most dearly do not always share my same passions.)