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.

Into the woods...

                Beginning of a fall hike up Canyon Creek (we're getting outside and away from new-house chores!).  Our own garden at home should look this good!

Mosses on trees -- very peaceful, attractive scenes.

Leafy liverworts along the trail.

A spectacular fall rock garden (with St. Louis Cardinal red the predominant color, to my eye, anyway!!)

A look upward from the rock garden, through remnants of wildfire to bare granite up top.

Me, bundled up against fall chill, with my tiny camera in hand (photo by Alex).

Bitterroot Tastings...

Eating in and around Hamilton, MT, over the last two weeks has been a treat! And being foodies, we were curious about how a small town would hold up to eating in the big city. Just fine, thank you very much! Mornings are best with a stop for great coffee at River Rising (http://www.riverrisingbakery.com/).

In the home-cooking department, there is the from-scratch cornbread and white chicken/chili -- made with extra-hot chilies -- at Mary Barton's house on a hill above Hamilton. It is some of the best chili I've ever tasted.

In our new home, there are still the pristine, end-of-summer spicy organic greens plus heirloom tomatoes that we purchased at the last Hamilton Farmers' Market (http://hamiltonfarmersmarket.webs.com/).

A few of those Hamilton organic greens.

While at the farmers' market, we have a breakfast burrito from a fantastic local food truck, owned by the restaurant La Mas Fina Mexican Food Taqueria (http://www.yelp.com/biz/la-mas-fina-mexican-food-taqueria-inc-victor) just north of Hamilton. The truck must be a new addition, if you read the Yelp review.

Farmers' market menu for La Mas Fina Taqueria.

And for dinners at home so far, we've paired the farmers' market salads with pasta and the pesto that we made from my garden, froze and hauled 1,600 miles to Hamilton. We also brought bouquets of fresh basil cuttings -- to spare them from a St. Louis frost. They all made it here in Zip lock bags in an inch or so of water, bags sealed as tightly as possible around stems and sunk into a sturdy box that wedged nicely between driver and passenger seats. Not a single spill, and the car had a heady licorice smell every time we brushed the basil.

Basil cuttings, transported from St. Louis.

Yeehaw!! One celebratory night, we go to The Signal Grill on Main Street (http://www.thesignalgrill.com/) where a bar/eating establishment has been in "the same location since 1898." I had an exquisite mesquite grilled House-cut Rib Eye. Alex ordered the Montana Mountain High Steak smothered in mushrooms. YUM. 

Part of The Signal Grill menu.

And one luminous late Sunday afternoon in nearby Victor, we dined on homemade 40-garlic-clove chicken, organic beet salad and fresh peach galette at Marie Anne Hasenkrug's dinner party.  I didn't take pictures and, in hindsight, I think I know why: The food was a work of art, and I was mesmerized!

Then there are all of the quick local bites. 

We like Tuesday-night Thai carry-out via the food truck, Buddha Belly, when it comes down from Missoula (http://thaispicy.net/BuddhaBelly.htm). The curry chicken is superb!

We grab tasty sandwiches for lunch from The Loft, on the second-floor of a Main Street building (http://theloftdeli.com/).

Lunch at The Loft.

And then, there is The Wild Mare. It's a wonderful, rough-hewn place (http://www.thewildmare.com/Home.php) with very little signage in the valley town that is Corvallis (mountain views to die for). Recently, we got great pub grub there, but there also is an extensive menu for the restaurant side of things, with dancing some evenings. We met up with Mel and Mary Alice Holloway for dinner. And after that, they took us to a meeting of the Bitterroot Cross-Country Ski Club. We joined! And in a raffle-type system, we won a free night to ourselves in January,  in a cabin ( http://www.bitterrootxcskiclub.net/photos.htm ) that's a 1/2-mile into a beautiful ski-trail system on the Continental Divide!! We can invite friends (have done so), cook a communal meal with ingredients that we bring in on skis, and also serve as hosts/caretakers of the cabin that night and the next day. What fun and what an honor.


One more foodie/gardening event: Yesterday, I helped put up and distribute posters in Hamilton for a community garden planting Oct. 22, organized in Victor by the group SLS (Sustainable Living Systems -- http://www.sustainablelivingsystems.org/).

The planting poster.

We plan to go and help plant the natives donated by a Hamilton business that I still need to visit -- Great Bear Restoration (http://www.great-bear.biz/). We'll also eat lunch at the Victor Community Garden and take our own kitchen tools to make salsa from their harvest.

And we haven't even begun to plow through the list of great restaurants and cafés in Missoula, provided to us by a new contact, our architect Angie Lipski. What an adventure!

Da Bears...

It is a quiet day at home, just the screech of an electrician's cable pulling wires through the walls, a fruitful -- if daunting -- interview with an architect from Missoula and, eventually, the whir of my own hair dryer, when Eric calls from his home high on a hill above Hamilton.

"Are you interested in bears?" he asks dryly.

And we say, "Are we? Of course!" And he says, "Come on over. I've got two up in a tree." We're there in a flash -- me with damp hair, Alex almost forgetting and then retrieving my camera. And out Eric's back door, down a bit of slope and high up in a Ponderosa pine are the teddiest and furriest of bears -- Ursus americanus -- one cinnamon brown, one densely black (http://fieldguide.mt.gov/detail_AMAJB01010.aspx).

Brown Bear is highest in the tree...

...and intent on something on the ground? Or asleep?

Oh, that's right, now he/she is looking at us!

Meanwhile, some 50 feet below Brown Bear but still high above our heads, Black Bear looks very, very sleepy.

He/she bestirs, but just a bit. Look at those claws!!

And then, making an editorial comment? or beginning to groom? a bear-sized tongue appears.

We walk back to Eric's deck, drink local beer and enjoy a sunny afternoon. Eric knows the bears are mostly interested in fruit, nuts, and some vegetation this time of year -- apples falling from his trees, bird food on his deck. They may be back. They may move on. Not a problem. Just another day in the Bitterroot!

A dark beginning...

It was a dark and stormy morning. Clouds loomed gray and ominous outside our hotel window. We were about to rise and drive five hours for a first day in our Montana home. And we felt a little uncertain. But an owl just outside our open window whoot-whoo-ed. And we marveled at the nearness of this wonderful, wild Montana creature. We considered it an omen of good things to come.

Yellowing cottonwoods, steel-blue skies.

Likewise, when sun hit the top of yellowing cottonwood trees as we sat waiting to move forward in a road-construction zone, the dim sky behind it wasn't scary at all. Sure, it was nearly as dark a blue as the mountains below. But the yellow leaves seemed to thumb their noses at the gloom. I took a quick, fuzzy picture (think pointillism). This was going to be a good day.

Further along Interstate 90 West (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_90_in_Montana), we hit light rain and hill-clinging clouds that turned to fog in some of  the valleys. One cloud in particular had the look of a dragon with jagged tail slashing at sagebrush and pines.

Dragon-tail cloud, near Bozeman.

I-90 lightens up a bit, farther west.

Rock outcroppings, a geologist's dream in Montana.

More brown hills and low clouds, but also more "sunny breaks"!

Finally, green pastures on a valley floor.

But we slouch toward Hamilton (apologies, W.B Yeats) through strip-mall sections of Missoula (a town we need to find the best of -- and will) until we hit Highway 93 south. Just 40 pristine miles to go!!

Low clouds settle in again, on either side of the road. "This is very discouraging," says Alex, laughing at himself. "We came for the mountains and you can't even see them!"

We drive on. We see a guy preparing for winter sports on roller skis, along an impressive walking/cycling path that will eventually stretch from Missoula south to Hamilton.

Rain pelts us. I'm getting a little anxious. Do we have to go all winter with clouds and not a mountain top in sight?

As it turns out, no! We do have two more rainy days as we "camp out" in our new home -- mattress, box springs and frame purchased at Bitterroot Furniture (www.bitterrootfurniture.com), owned by a guy named Mark, originally from Florissant, MO, no less. Then the sun emerges!! And everything is glorious. A dusting of snow on the mountain tops gives the valley an alpine look. We take brisk walks -- to the Hamilton farmers' market for great end-of-summer tomatoes and spicy greens; to River Rising for the best latte west of, well, St. Louis; to the Coffee Cup for hearty breakfasts; to the IGA for groceries; even to the temporary-employment agency to hire guys for some tear-outs in the basement.

We currently are awash in contractors, and we are very pleased with their promptness and quality of work. Not sure what to do yet with kitchen: cabinets are solid cherry; appliances will serve for now; walls need a taupe or white paint; countertop needs replacing; but one of my favorite views in the house is the scene of walkers, joggers, etc., on Baker Street, just outside the big window over the kitchen sink.

A kitchen in transition.

We start cleaning up the yard -- a quite cute small space, complete with raised vegetable bed along the alley side and many old-fashioned hollyhocks, irises and poppies along the garage. Even raspberry canes populate the southern fence line.

End-of-season raspberries, in need of pruning!

Our breakfast nook, before old folding chairs get replaced; a little vintage table's on the way.

Evenings have been full of dinners at friends' houses -- principally hosted by the lovely Mary Barton and her husband Kelsey Milner. But one, above, was a feast at the log house of Marie Anne Hasenkrug, with Baroque music as appetizer.

The next day, Kels and Vinny the dog stop by to show off Kelsey's new, Italian-made, Maggiolina roof top tent!  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHd77e7PbIE). It rolls up and down, has a cushy mattress and pillows plus a sturdy, fold-up ladder -- all perfect for Montana bear country as well as Kels and Mary's Baja vacation this winter! Could there be a Maggiolina in our future?? Ciao!

On the Road Again

At first I wanted to call this new post "Lost and Found."  I'd received an email from my St. Louis friend Dianne O'Connell that summed up the second part of that concept.

"I thought you would find something," she wrote, "...one usually does when you look for it."

Yes, she's right. We're on our way back to Montana, to start refurbishing the bungalow that we "found" on an earlier trip. We purchased it just last week!

But we haven't really "lost" anything yet, certainly not St. Louis. Not yet. We're keeping the big old duplex that we spent years converting to a lovely single-family home and garden there. We will be to-ing and fro-ing this fall, winter and next spring. I want to make sure that my St. Louis garden gets properly put to bed for cold weather. And I need to plant the bags of great bulbs that I ordered from my favorite not-for-profit group, Brightside St. Louis (brightsidestl.org). I also must be in STL in spring, when the  perennial beds surrounding my backyard patio and lawn look their best -- all manicured, mulched, with foliage in a sweet spring green. Family and friends also need to be seen, of course, and their trips to visit us in the mountainous West scheduled and planned!!

For now, however -- today, on highways that are decidedly westward in direction -- I am obsessed with fall and its color and the wild "gardens" that we see along highways. 

First, there is color starting to show in northern Missouri.

An egg-yolk-yellow Compass Plant catches my attention at a rest stop.

Longer view of Compass, following the sun.

Native purple asters shine among grasses at the side of the road.

A hickory tree explodes with color against a clear fall sky.

Fall color of another sort, yellow cables, make good time on the Interstate.

So do ones of a bright pumpkin orange.

Salvia 'West Texas Form'

And as we're rolling along, I get an email from a favorite St. Louis area garden center, Cottage Garden in Piasa, Ill. (www.cottgardens.com). "We have some special autumn blooming plants," writes owner Chris Kelley, "chief among them Salvia 'West Texas Form' offering its lovely cobalt and sky blue flowers on wispy three foot stems throughout fall." Yet another stunning hue to add to my fall palette.

But our stop for the night -- Mitchell, S.D. -- brings with it an astonishing interpretation of the colors found in the fall staple that is Indian corn. A local farmer grows and hybridizes various types especially for Mitchell's famous Corn Palace (www.cornpalace.org). We had to take a look.

Workers nail newly harvested ears of corn (cut in half lengthwise) in patterns drawn by a S.D. artist.

All feature sports themes -- tennis, soccer, hockey, basketball.

But the closer you get to the tennis girl, the more stunning are the yellows, reds, rusts and black colors of fall!