Went fishing, found bear

Taking a break from house and garden, we went fishing the other afternoon along Skalkaho Creek. It was Mel Holloway's suggestion. He's the friend who drives all over the Bitterroot, shooting great photos of wildlife, both human and animal. He posts at lease one of these pictures a day on Facebook. He thought Skalkaho would be a relatively good, close trip for us.  We'll, Mel, we took in the spectacular pine-scented air, stopped around mile-marker 18 and saw beautiful sparkling water...

Clear water on gorgeous rocks, in Skalkaho Creek.

...and a few small trout (didn't catch any)...

 ... plus random birds and insects...

But the biggest treat was a bear. Driving in an easterly direction, Alex slammed on the breaks as a juvenile cinnamon-colored bear clambered up from a ditch and then started slowly crossing Skalkaho Road. Let me tell the rest in pictures.

Of Gardens and Mountains

They tell us that our valley is the "banana belt" of Montana.  Gardening in this 100-mile-stretch, from Missoula at the north to near Sula at the south (our town of Hamilton, roughly in the middle) is protected by mountains on all sides. They say it is warmer than most other open and Arctic-swept regions of the state.

Mountains are everywhere you look in the Bitterroot Valley. (BTW, so are restaurants, cafés, coffee shops and other merchants, many more than this older map suggests.)

Nevertheless, until the last couple of days, we've had a very cool month of June 2012.  We may be listed in USDA Cold-Hardiness Zone of 5a, same as Illinois and parts of Iowa (for plants surviving lowest winter temps of -15 to -20 degrees). But it just takes one unusual weather event to make a big difference.  Banana belt, shmanana belt. We decide to look for some protection. I've brought five tomato plants -- started from seed in St. Louis. They need help on these 38-degree nights.  I punt.  I did pack three Wall O Water "season extenders" (http://www.wall-o-water.com/). And so, on a sun-warmed south side of our old garage, I plant the five tomatoes and position their cages so that every other one takes one of the plastic tubes designed with walls of empty cylinders. When they are firmly in place, I fill each cylinder with water; sun warms it and keeps plants and soil snug overnight.  I hope that a little residual heat helps the two unprotected plants. So far so good! Two of the five plants are fruiting. The others have flowers. They've been babied for weeks, but they seem not to have missed a beat.

Wall O Water around a tomato plant, against the old garage's south side.  We just took the walls down a few days ago when daytime temps soared into the low 80s and nighttime ones were upper 40s, now 50s.

An article in the local Ravalli Republic (also Lee Enterprises-owned, my fellow Post-Dispatchers) talks about the struggles of local small farms, in this and other years. Says Bitterroot Organic's Mike Duda, "If you're serious about growing in western Montana, then you have to have infrastructure. Hoop-houses, greenhouses and cold frames are essential for even serious kitchen gardening if you want to be successful in this kind of a climate." (More at http://ravallirepublic.com/business/local/article_983d7c2a-bb44-11e1-8372-001a4bcf887a.html.) I think the water-walls count.

And we plan to further bolster our version of micro-climate. First, we pull knee-high weeds out of a little, slightly raised bed just south of the tomatoes and along the alley (believe me, I joined Alex in doing a lot of this work).  Then we buy bags of a local favorite, Boost, from the helpful cows at Huls Dairy (www.hulsdairy.com/products.htm) and spread the aged manure on top of weed-free(?!) soil.  An incredibly nice guy we meet named Wes volunteers to rotor-till it in for us (on Father's Day morning, no less).

Pulling knee-high weeds out of the plot.

And we extend an existing fence to screen the alley and, we hope, protect plants a bit more from cold, west winds. I stain the cedar boards. Alex designs and puts the fence together over a series of days.

Oh, and the fence may help keep deer out of this patch. When we saw them browsing our yard last summer, always they came in from the alley. We're so clever, we'll outwit those critters -- haha! (Did I mention that the north side of the yard is wide open?)

We begin to plant -- peppers, eggplant, zucchini, crook-neck squash and lettuce even though it may be getting daytime hot for tender greens. We also start a small compost bin from old wire fencing that we find in the garage (this view is looking south, at neighbors' Pat and John's sweet little cottage over the fence).

We visit several local garden centers and decide that K & S Greenhouse in nearby Corvallis is our favorite (http://www.ksgreenhouse.com/). It was recommended by our friend Mary Alice Holloway. We love the veggie starts and herbs there, but spectacular containers and hanging baskets of annual flowers steal the show.

Blooms-a-plenty at K & S Greenhouse, Corvallis, Mt.

We also visit other gardens. Our friend Eric Milner is following the tradition of his parents -- mostly his mother Doris  -- with a huge vegetable garden in a clearing on the family hill overlooking the valley.

Eric's ambitious, deer-proofed vegetable garden, watered from snow melt in an adjacent ditch, with tomatoes secured in great old wooden cages.

And on a Saturday in town, we see a garden of a totally different kind. Volunteers with the Ravalli County Museum at the Old Courthouse have installed a Lewis and Clark native-plant garden in shady spots on either side of the museum entrance.

Native shade plants, the likes of which Lewis and Clark saw, even collected.

Shade-living natives on the other side of the museum entrance.

 I sat in on a meeting last year when changes for this and two other sites were being discussed and, having just seen the amazing Lewis and Clark collection inside the museum, I asked if anyone had thought of a native-plant garden outside. Bingo! Museum director Tamar Stanley took that little idea and ran with it, getting natives donated by the local Great Bear Restoration (http://www.great-bear.biz/natives.html).  Western snowberry, golden current, blue elderberry, chokecherry, serviceberry and thimbleberry are the shrubby, berry-producing, back-of-the-border plants; Rocky Mountain maple is there, to grow and hide a utility shed; and among a dozen or so other hardy flowers are the little pale-blue blossoms of wild blue flax (Linum lewisii).

All was unveiled to the public on a recent Saturday as the nearby farmers' market got underway.

Beet greens peek out of Alex's bag, at the Hamilton Farmers' Market (http://hamiltonfarmersmarket.webs.com/) -- now in its 20th year and our new place to shop for freshest vegetables, that is, until our own Montana garden starts producing!

Here, baby, here

We arrived at our little house in Hamilton, Mt., on Sunday night, tired, happy, sad, and a mix of other emotions. We've slept, off and on, for a couple of days. Today, we rise and shine. The morning is a cool, overcast one. We scope out the garden that came with our new place. We are pleasantly surprised.

My car backs up to a tall stand of Oriental poppies. I knew they were there, I just didn't know how big.

Our little, old carport is surrounded by blooming things. We sweep all of winter's last crumbly leaves from a weathered concrete floor and unpack our fold-up camp chairs. With a glass of wine each and a a section of tree trunk to serve as coffee table, we sit and survey the many blooming irises, as well as coral bells, rhubarb, raspberries and the poppies, of course. Someone here gardened, the old-fashioned way. It's lovely.

A humble carport becomes our getaway. The hazy blue color to the rear, left, actually is a mountain. It's called Downing.

To add to the Montana plants, we packed just a few of our own in my 2003 Subaru. Crazy, eh?

But they survived -- all of the hostas, Japanese painted ferns and variegated Solomon's seal packed tightly around a resin planter containing the roots of a six-foot-tall Meyer lemon tree. Had to bring it, swaddled in burlap. It's our favorite. It will live outside this summer and probably in the south-facing window of our bedroom this winter.

Below is part of the small St. Louis yard from which native Solomon's seal, in the foreground, was dug and brought to Montana.

Canna and Solomon's seal in the foreground, herbs in the sunniest spot against the house.

I also started three types of tomatoes from seed indoors in St. Louis -- heirloom Black Cherry and heirloom Green Zebra plus several of the prolific hybrid called Sungold. I had great luck with lettuce, but harvested most, and so-so germination with eggplant. I brought the eggplant and tomatoes, already hardened off by going in and out of the St. Louis back door. We'll see how well they do (and I do) in a garden in Montana. There's a huge raised bed here in need of major weeding, composting and roto-tilling before any Midwest transplants go in the ground.

Tomatoes made the trip pretty well. At least they're upright and have a few tiny flowers. They've gone outside and been brought back in here, as well. With tonight's low of a frosty 33 and upper 30s or low 40s predicted for the rest of this week's evenings, they'll live on a windowsill in the mud room.

But first, the real reason we're here -- the mountains. These are some that we saw along the way.

A first siting of mountains as we head west toward Bozeman.

Near the Big Hole River in a huge valley also called the Big Hole, southeast of where we live.

Mountain men, or man. We dine next to one -- a wary cowboy -- at Bitterroot Brewery.

And now I have to go!! The truck has just arrived!!! Lots of hauling off to be done -- of bicycles (old), harpsichords (2, built by Alex!), clothes, chairs, tables and the like. The one piece I'm worried about is the old Kentucky hutch -- also called a dry sink -- given to me by my mother. Here's what it looked like, blanketed and shrink-wrapped in St. Louis. I am hoping that it made the trip unscathed and unscratched...

The hutch before the big move. After?? For these and other domestic details, stay tuned.

Gone, baby, gone

A card I found while cleaning out drawers -- perfect for our forthcoming trip!

We've rented our St. Louis house for six months, perhaps even a year, and we talk about the wonders of it -- a tenant who loves to garden and keep a clean house. The rent money, too, will help us as we move half of our stuff to Montana!  But for the moment, we're sitting on the St. Louis back deck, sipping Mojitos made from our garden's too-plentiful mint and watching sun tint evening clouds a perfect pink.

I call this Little Sky, just off our back deck in St. Louis and high above last century's brick houses.

We also go at least one more time to nearby Forest Park. It was overgrown, unsafe and nearly a goner when I moved here in 1980. Now, it's been restored (http://www.forestparkforever.org/) and can be quite breathtaking. A recent picnic on benches by the Grand Basin is about as close as we get to big sky here.

Medium Sky -- the Grand Basin, and Saint Louis Art Museum atop the hill.

 We are hungering for mountains.

This was the view from a picnic last year in the Sapphires, looking across the valley to the Bitterroots.

I actually like Big Sky better from the valley floor. It can dwarf you as well as energize you, like no other view.

Rainbow, sun and storm clouds all at once, on the valley floor near Victor, Mt.

One last time, I serve on jury duty in St. Louis; I'd got out of twice before, for other Montana trips.

Juror 241, at your service.

My nephew, Andrew Homan, is manager of civic education for the Indiana Bar Foundation. I write him of my fate, from the jury-assembly room...

We sit, we read, we serve.

...and he emails back that he's probably the only person who'll tell me he hopes that I get picked.  I have served several times before, once as foreman in a criminal trial. Somehow, this time, out of more than 300 potential jurors and six or seven trials, I am among the 15 or so who never get picked by the shuffle of a computer. I read the "Hunger Games" straight through and, on my lunch hour, enjoy parts of a renovated downtown...

A stainless-steel bench in the new Citygarden, downtown St. Louis.

A shadier spot in Citygarden, for lunch of a sandwich and coffee.

A walk to see shiny new buildings next to classic old St. Louis ones of red-on-red brick.

At times I feel as if we're leaving St. Louis just when it's getting good. How funny is that? We're not really leaving. We still have a renovated, recently tuck-pointed, re-roofed and mostly furnished, handsome brick house here, circa 1911, with a tiny, tiny gem of a garden out back. We shall return!

A bowl of salad fixings started from seed (as were the tomatoes and eggplants, in smaller pots on either side, all going to Montana) sits on my St. Louis back deck, above a small circle of lawn, variegated Solomon's seal, ferns, hostas and a pond, with a big stand of what else?  'Becky' shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum) just beginning to bloom. 

Getting Ready to Go

What to do in this last full month in St. Louis, while packing half of our stuff to send to Montana? Well, the choices here are quite varied and some, quite wonderful...

Salad of vegetables, herb aioli and homemade potato chips at Niche.

Having a lovely Monday supper at Niche (http://www.nichestlouis.com). Its chef, Gerard Craft, is a finalist for a coveted James Beard award this year.  Our salad looks like spring on a plate. It is a mix of winter root vegetables and spring asparagus, in a yummy dressing of garlicky herbed aioli plus several, nearly see-through-thin potato chips; the best entrée is thick spaghetti, braised beef, olives and pecorino cheese; and dessert is homemade vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce -- all for $30, a bargain on Mondays, right up there with Farmhaus (http://farmhausrestaurant.com/) another favorite restaurant with great cheap eats at lunchtime: $10 for Wednesday's "Blue Plate: Fried Chicken. Mashed Taters. Mac and Cheese. With salad and tea." Lest you think we're diner diving, Farmhaus' chef Kevin Willmann made Food & Wine magazine's list of Best New Chefs of 2011. Go St. Louis!

Here's more of what I'm doing before heading out West:

Checking in on the portulaca -- some of which I helped start from seed -- in St. Louis' Forest Park greenhouses.
The not-for-profit Brightside St. Louis (http://www.brightsidestl.org/) grows new annual flowers each year, such as this heat-resistant portulaca, to give away to city neighborhoods after Brightside's yearly alley clean-ups. I volunteer, along with hundreds of other folks, as Brightside celebrates it's 30th anniversary this year.

Posting vintage items, for the first time, on Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/).

Thinking that I have way too many bangles. You?

Etsy-licious -- the new Etsy page.

Taking our old backpacking and kayaking equipment, even lanterns and old down jackets, to a new consignment shop called Old Mountains Gear Exchange (https://www.facebook.com/oldmountainsx) in Webster Groves. We're divesting, de-cluttering and dee-lighted to down-size in this manner!

Attending a wind quintet concert of rarely performed music (from left, flute, oboe, French horn, bassoon, clarinet) performed by friends with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (http://www.stlsymphony.org/). This event is free, packed with music buffs and held in a refurbished conservatory in Tower Grove Park.

Getting in a last visit with our favorite neighborhood cat,  Josephine. Think she'll miss us?

The Viewin' of the Green

As a perverse act today, St. Patrick's Day, we (my friend Dianne and I) take to the highways in her van to get away from all things beery and edible and dyed to a false emerald green.  Now, I do like beer these days. The craft ales from small breweries around the country are delicious and a far cry from the weak, pale, no-flavor brews that I gave up in my 30s. I love IPAs sampled recently in St. Louis, Denver, Missoula and at Hamilton's two breweries. But enough about beer!! We're out in the Missouri countryside today, looking at real green!

Just a few of the daffodils at Shaw.

 We go first to Shaw Nature Reserve (http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/visit/family-of-attractions/shaw-nature-reserve.aspx), the Missouri Botanical Garden's country acreage about 40 miles southwest of town. Shaw's focus is on native habitat management and restoration. But this time of year, it also boasts thousands upon thousands of blooming daffodils, and more than a few amateur photographers working the scene.

A photographer gets down (and dirty?) with the blossoms.

Then, a storm that we'd been following online brews to a near boiling point.

Storm clouds, daffs and a bit of a lake view; many more daffodils are blossoming across the water.

We zip over to Hillermann Nursery (http://www.hillermann.com/) in Washington -- through a dense curtain of rain, spiked with lightning -- and find many green plants, and much much more, for sale inside.

"Small is the New Big" at Hillermann's garden center.

Accessories are top items here -- witness the Hillermann family's vintage Chevrolet truck outfitted with many pots, plants and statuettes.

A classy old Chevy among the plants.

We head homeward but not before more rain keeps us inside a coffee shop where my car is parked just outside. Finally, there's a break in the weather. And I get to my car, only to find...

...a snow-like scene, where white petals of a Bradford Pear's blossoms have coated the car from a forceful spring rain! Funny that a wintry look ends a spectacular pre-spring day!