Gray Days as 2011 Ends...

As an old year fades and a new one dawns, we're greeted by Montana skies that are gray with fog, clouds, snow and rain -- all happening at the same time, some days! What to do? Get out in it!!

Late morning along the Bitterroot River in Lee Metcalf.

So, we walk through the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge (http://www.fws.gov/leemetcalf/) on one of the grayer mornings and see mountains, icy water, ducks, eagles, hawks and an eerie sun through clouds.

Ducks up a Lee Metcalf creek ("crick," as many here pronounce it).

Ice, a hint of blue sky and bird(?) footprints in Lee Metcalf's riverbank snow.

Next, it's off to River Rising (http://www.riverrisingbakery.com/) in Hamilton for a warming drink. AND, as it turns out, warming colors. Because right there, on the walls near the barista, are beautiful, colorful handwoven rugs made from durable, washable fibers by Jenny Harrold of the local Skalkaho Rugs! (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Skalkaho-Rugs/148009561915436) 

Weaver Jenny Harrold pictured over one of her handwoven rugs.

We need rugs!!  We look her up on Facebook, we "Like" her posts, of course, and we contact her for a  meeting in her home/workshop. It's another gray day when we take off for her address, on the legendary Skalkaho Highway (http://dangerousroads.org/north-america/349-skalkaho-highway-usa.html). She, her husband and five children, with one on the way, live on the safe end of that road, just a few miles from Hamilton. More about the dangerous part of the road later.

We begin looking through her wares while she tells us that her Mom, in Nebraska, taught her how to weave and still comes out to Montana for the grandkids and the looms.

Jenny at the loom.

Her raw material: balls of selvage edges of fabric that Jenny sources in the Midwest. 

Flipping open rugs in her workshop.

Jenny's nearly nine months pregnant and yet she flips all recent rugs out onto the floor for us to see.

 

The "Hippie" rug is a local favorite.

She's sure to show us the "Hippie," a rainbow-colored rug that's always a big hit at her booth in summer's Hamilton Farmers' Market (http://hamiltonfarmersmarket.webs.com/). We like it, we admit to being old hippies ourselves, but we move on. We end up buying three gorgeous rugs in muted colors for our kitchen, our mud room and our main entry. Then we leave, turning east toward the "dangerous" end of Skalkaho.

A snowy surface, rain and clouds meet us.

We get to a point where this "seasonal" narrow mountain road closes for the winter

.

Snow mobiles and cross-country skiers take over from here. Alex chats up a couple (on the least-noisy snowmobiles that I can remember).

Alex and the 'mobilers.

Then they take off up the circuitous route to Skalkaho Falls (http://www.waterfallsmontana.com/waterfalls.aspx?id=11), where the road narrows, several unsuspecting drivers of automobiles have been lost off its edges and a constant round of repairs is underway.

Snowmobiles may be safest! Good luck in 2012, we think to ourselves; we may even see you up there with our newly rented cross-country skis!

'Twas the week before Christmas...

...and all through this place, many creatures were stirring...

(red-tailed hawk, sailing)

(mule deer, grazing)

(elk, lazing)

 ...if at a slow pace.  The Bitterroot shone, barely dusted with snow...

...and ice on the river began building its floe.

***********************************************************************

Okay, okay, I'm fresh out of Christmas rhymes!

But all of this is to say what a great time I had, snapping these images on a two-hour drive with the fantastic photographer Mel Holloway of Corvallis.  I've known Mel since my last trip here.  He posts Bitterroot pictures regularly on Facebook. On this particular day, he had an errand to run south of Hamilton and more pictures to take.  He invited me along!

Mel, on a photo safari.

First we went to the ranch and new apple orchard of the aptly named Lee McAlpine.  Mel had Christmas gifts to deliver -- a bottle of bubbly Italian Secco and a plate of home-made cinnamon rolls baked by his wife, Mary Alice.

Mel comes to the McAlpine ranch bearing gifts.

Lee McAlpine is cider master of a hand-crafted hard cider made with fresh Bitterroot apples. Her
business is Montana Cider Works. She shows us her fermentation equipment and soon-to-be tasting room.

Then we drive north and home to Hamilton on the Old Darby Road, high above the valley. Here and there are lonely fence-row trees, cattle grazing and mounds of soft blonde-on-blonde high-country grass.

Happiest of holidays, from the land of velvet hills (and icy peaks)!

Becky's Back in the Bitterroot

Polar bear and coffee

I am sipping coffee on a Delta Skywest regional jet and sitting next to a young hipster dressed all in black, his dark hair messily swept back and up, his vintage black, square eyeglass frames making him look even more grungy and adorable. He's slept the whole way, mouth open, oblivious to mountains peeking through clouds below. If I were a mean person, I would snap his picture against the window's glorious Bitterroot Valley. But, I'm not. I finish my coffee and only then notice a polar bear on my napkin. An omen of colder things to come in my new Montana home?

Not yet, maybe not at all. I step outside the airport door to a balmy 36 degrees and part sun. Alex appears  from a nearby parking lot and I realize how long it's been since we've seen each other -- two full months! We hug and kiss. It's so sweet to see him all Montana-ed up in his leather gloves, jeans, boots, puffy jacket and favorite cap from Fords Department Store in Hamilton.

Freshly grilled Pacific salmon on salad.

When we go grab some lunch in Missoula, I realize that I've had a breakfast of Starbucks coffee at Lambert-St. Louis airport just before 8 a.m. (and a Delta flight to Salt Lake City), and here I am in Montana at 1 p.m. (Mountain Time) some 1,800 flight miles away, eating freshly grilled Pacific salmon and taking in the local Missoula scene. Amazing!

Moisture off of the Bitterroot River gives a smokey look to the valley.

We drive the 40 or so miles south toward home and through glorious scenery, with moisture adding some atmospheric "haze" to the valley. Only a dusting of snow covers the valley floor; even the miles of cycling path to one side of U.S. Highway 93 are clear of ice and snow.  Record temps on this day for the nearby town of Victor are a high of  56 °F (recorded in 1924) and a low of -12 °F (1972), just fyi.

Roses await at home!

Alex has two dozen red roses waiting for me and when we're home in Hamilton, I put them in a stainless steel thermos in lieu of a vase. They sit amid the detritus of construction tools, rags, mops and other cleaning stuff.

We put off some deep cleaning and build a fire. We sit by it to open two boxes and several Christmas cards that have come in the mail. I take a dark little picture with my iPhone...

Fireplace, evening of Dec. 14.

...and it includes not one but two bear-themed candlestick holders found in St. Louis by my friend John Mareing and shipped to us here. We love them, especially considering our recent bear sightings! Cards are from family and friends. And, ahem, the mule deer antlers are a little joke from Victor friends Marie Anne and Kim. I squealed with a mixture of delight, horror and surprise when I saw them. They'll look great in Alex's new study, I'm thinking! By the way, the fireplace brick, grill and wall above all will get a unifying coat of paint, and a new hearth is coming soon. I'll send pictures then. For now...

...I sign off with a shot of me in the relatively clean master bathroom, preparing to go out and help Alex vacuum, dust and inspect all aspects of the house renovation. More about that soon!! Maybe we'll even get ourselves a sofa for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

... just like the ones I used to -- see in pictures of Montana!!
This is a glorious winter photo of Gordon Reese Cabin, located near Chief Joseph Pass
on the Montana-Idaho border (photo, http://bitterrootxcskiclub.net/).

And we get to stay there!!!!! 

Not for Christmas. But we'll ski in for a January overnight as new members of the Bitterroot Cross Country Ski Club.  The cabin was built in 2001 on some 17 miles of cross-country ski trails, south of Hamilton and high up in the national forest (elevation 7,264 feet).  It actually is a U.S. Forest Service property -- a hike-in cabin in summer and a winter warming hut "hosted" by ski-club volunteers who also help maintain it.

Winter-phobic friends here in the Midwest ask the following very first question about living in Montana: "Have you spent a winter there?!"

Snow high up in the Montana mountains (this and all photos, below,
generously lent to me for this post by Corvallis, MT, photographer Mel Holloway.
Mel also does volunteer grooming of ski trails around Gordon Reese Cabin.)

"No," I say, "but we love cold weather."  That doesn't seem to satisfy the questioners. So, I go to the stats!

Down in Hamilton (elevation 3,563 feet), the average temperatures in January, I read, are a high of 34.4 and a low of 16.8 degrees -- not outrageously cold and certainly not like in the wide open Montana prairie towns with winds bearing down on them from Canada: minus 70 is a record low I've read about there. We're on the western side of the Continental Divide.  That, apparently, helps.

And snow in town? There's usually very little (although there's an inch or so right now, leftover from flurries last week). I read that the average precipitation in Hamilton in January is just 1.11 inches. We're not even guaranteed a white Christmas, unless we look out our back windows to mountain tops that tend to get most of the precip moving in from the west. Pretty moderate, if you ask me.

Actually, this shelter of the Bitterroot Mountains (to the west) and the Sapphire Mountains (to the east) also helps give the valley its nickname -- “Banana Belt of Montana.”  Just ask any gardener.

Heavier snow on mountain tops, lighter in the valley.

They look for perennials, trees and shrubs that bear the cold-hardy designation of USDA Zone 5a -- for plants weathering winter lows of from -15 to -20F (the same USDA winter category as for DesMoines, Iowa, or for much of northern Illinois, for that matter).  St. Louis, by way of comparison, is in USDA Zone 6a (for perennials that withstand lows of from -5 to -10). Of course, any single out-sized cold-weather event can eclipse those averages.

What is undeniable is the beauty of these winters.

Hawk in a Bitterroot snow...

...icy stems in the valley.

Western log fence...

...sunset and snow.

Happy holidays to all! (and thanks so much, Mel!!)

"So You Want to Live in Montana"...

Did you know that there are no paved roads in Montana?

That is just one of many themes in a new amateur, computerized video that the Missoulian (owned by Lee Enterprises; please don't hold that against them) says is going viral.

Check it out! http://missoulian.com/so-you-want-to-live-in-montana/youtube_405400fc-01d5-11e1-8e44-001cc4c002e0.html

Alex and I think it's hilarious.

As we back-and-forth between Hamilton and St. Louis, we talk to people who really do voice some of the same odd concerns that video maker Brian Miller put in his dialogue.

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/youtube-video-that-pokes-fun-at-moving-to-montana-goes/article_4a040c1e-01d5-11e1-a5f5-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1cYlab8m1

Tee hee!! (I especially like one Montanan's comment: "This is great!... It will keep people from moving to our beautiful state!")

Our Midwest fall garden

It's been a spectacular weekend back in St. Louis, with cool sunny weather, celebrations of the St. Louis Cardinals' World Series Win (http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=stl, woohoo!!) and the antics of Halloween. But I am in my garden today (Nov.1! -- isn't Oct. 15 our last average frost date here?!). And that ubiquitous Cardinals red that filled my brain for the last week is beginning to fade. Now there's a whole new color palette to enjoy. Under the hues of the turning trees, there are the purply blues of winter-hardy pansies that I purchased and potted up (but plan to put in the ground today or tomorrow for effortless color under daffodils next spring)...

There's a harvest of some of the very last of the pumpkin-orange Sun Gold tomatoes (http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7929-sun-gold-f1.aspx)...

... while yellow-stemmed Swiss chard (okay, plus a few Cardinal-red stemmed ones) wait in another bed (http://www.botanicalinterests.com/products/view/0113/Swiss-Chard-Bright-Lights-Blend-Seed/srch:swiss%20chard)...

...There are herbs out the wazoo (it's November and even the basil still thrives! crazy!)...

I move the last of the tender plants to our basement light-room, now filled with orchids, a few annuals for an experimental over-wintering plus a Meyer lemon tree...

After a meeting in mid-town, I take a walk through the nearby Missouri Botanical Garden (http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/) and see, among other things, bees and butterflies getting the last nectar from fuzzy blossoms of Mexican bush sage...

...while busy Mobot volunteers put in some of the hundreds of thousands of bulbs that they plant each fall, for beauty next spring.

I am inspired (guilted?). I think about the bag-o'-bulbs hanging in my garage -- some of the new Midwest Mix that I purchased via Brightside St. Louis (http://brightsidestl.org/). I go home, sort them out and plant 90 of them.

Here's a favorite from the mix: It's called 'Barrett Browning' in ivory-white with orange coronas. It should look spectacular, blooming above all of those re-emerging pansies! One of many things to look forward to in 2012!!

Bittersweet feelings in the Bitterroot

We've had two days of fall fun in Montana before a trip back to St. Louis to wrangle the house there. But that fun may come at a cost...

A rainbow and low clouds yesterday, at Victor, MT.

...I'm beginning to wonder if we're suffering, in our own different ways, from some psychosomatic illness, such as Stendhal syndrome, wherein dizziness, rapid heartbeat, even fainting may occur when a person is exposed to "particularly beautiful or a large amount of art in a single place," say the Internets. This syndrome has been most frequently attributed to art in Florence, Italy. "The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world."

Could Montana be too beautiful?

Yesterday in Victor, we volunteered on a crew that helped build the small centerpiece -- native plants inside a circle of pathways -- to a huge new community garden for that small town. It was a cold, blustery day, alternately very sunny and very overcast, a storm moving in one moment, sun and an exquisite rainbow (see above) the next. I grew incredibly tired after the first few hours of work, my heart fluttering at times. Alex had some dizziness this morning. We just may be a bit old for all of this house remodeling, volunteering and changing of addresses. Or... we may be getting overwhelmed by the beauty all around us all of the time! The latter should be easiest to treat.

Victor's new start to a community garden, with plants provided by Hamilton's own Great Bear Restoration
310 North 4th Street
Hamilton, Montana 59840
406.363.5410 x 118
http://www.great-bear.biz/

We drive home on back roads to get a real taste of the season and the countryside.

We see a white-peaked barn that mimics white peaks above the turning trees.

We zip past harvested hay in bales, lining the valley floor.

We climb a bit to see the sweet pale yellow of deciduous leaves against evergreens.

Boo! Back in the valley, we stop in at the family-owned Moeller's Nursery. And we peak at a few of many scary pumpkins.

Blue! We see the Hubbard squash at Moeller's, too -- as pale and gnarly as ever.

Orange you glad there's so much yummy orange squash (Kabocha?) this year? We are. Yum.

And we view more pumpkins, acorn squash and other unique varieties that will keep the valley well-supplied all winter long...

From Moeller's Nursery, 946 Eastside Highway in Corvallis I want to visit other garden centers. But we run out of time. Next spring I know I'll go back to Moeller's but also go to Bitterroot Nursery 521 Eastside Highway, Hamilton. And to Cooks' Gardens, 177 Golf Course Road, Hamilton. And to what's already a favorite, Sam's Spade Garden Tools, 111 South 4th Street near downtown Hamilton.

There's so much gardening going on in this part of the country. We head home to plan.

The sun comes out on our little leaf-strewn street in Hamilton.

 "There is a lot going on in Missoula," advises our architect, Angie Lipski. Indeed, there's an Ansel Adams exhibit that we'll catch in December, and loads of interesting bookstores, shops and cafés. "Folks who move from urban areas," she says, "are always pleasantly surprised at the offerings in cultural activities, food, etc." In honor of the St. Louis Cardinals' World Series efforts, we want to try Red Bird Restaurant & Wine Bar on our way to the airport the next day. But our Open Table-Internet search turns up "No availability within 2.5 hours of requested time in next 8 weeks." Wow. We must plan far, far ahead next time (http://www.redbirdrestaurant.com/).  

We do take Angie's suggestion of Caffe Dolce, on Brooks at Beckwith near downtown…"great terrace, weather permitting" (http://www.caffedolcemissoula.com/) and have a superb meal of short-ribs on pappardelle plus a kick-ass fresh salmon-and-spinach omelette and the best lattes we've had in awhile.

Missoula's Caffe Dolce, inside...

Caffe Dolce, out.

In the coming months, we'll sample others of Angie's suggestions, including Scotty’s Table (http://scottystable.net/);  Pearl Café (http://pearlcafe.us/);  Sapore (http://www.missoulasapore.com/) ; and The Silk Road, "wonderful tapas restaurant, on the south end of the Higgins Street Bridge" (http://www.silkroadcatering.com/); and, The Oxford Saloon (http://www.the-oxford.com/) for the "best chicken fried steak," says Liz Milner;  as well as Zimorino's Red Pies Over Montana (http://www.zimorinos.com/Zimorinos/Home.html),  for "the best pie under the big sky," says Pat Corrigan.

And we'll try very hard not to let the beauty of it all get to us.