The weather did an abrupt swing yesterday afternoon and with the blowing snow and wind chill down to 4 today, the sheep around the countryside are making good use of their wool coat although they might need a scarf for the nose and ears.
Wool Coats
Picture of the Day for November 22, 2012
The history of Thanksgiving began when Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered together to celebrate a successful harvest. The first Thanksgiving was held in the fall of 1621, sometime between September 21 and November 11, and was a three-day feast. The Pilgrims were joined by approximately 90 of the local Wampanoag tribe, including Chief Massasoit, in celebration. They ate fowl and deer for certain and most likely also ate berries, fish, clams, plums, and boiled pumpkin.
It is not certain that wild turkey was part of their feast. But it is unlikely that the first feast included pumpkin pie. The supply of flour had been long diminished, so there was no bread or pastries of any kind. However, they did eat boiled pumpkin, and they produced a type of fried bread from their corn crop. There was also no milk, cider, potatoes, or butter. There was no domestic cattle for dairy products, and the newly-discovered potato was still considered by many Europeans to be poisonous.
For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.
Edward Winslow’s account of the 1621 Thanksgiving in a letter dated December 12, 1621. Our corn [i.e. wheat] did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Picture of the Day for November 21, 2012
The last couple of evenings I have wanted to take some photographs of the setting sun, but since deer gun hunting season is open and I didn’t have enough blaze orange clothing to safely hike to the position that I would need to be to take the picture without a chance of a flying bullet, I picked a sunset from earlier this year; one that has plenty of orange to protect itself.
Blaze Orange Sunset
Picture of the Day for November 20, 2012
The sun is shining bright but there are no Lupines or bees collecting pollen to be found this late into the fall. There are approximately 280 species of Lupinus, commonly known as Lupin or Lupine.
Lupins make good companion plants for crops that need significant amounts of nitrogen in their soil since lupins can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and this allows lupins to be tolerant of infertile soils and capable of pioneering change in barren and poor quality soils.
The yellow legume seeds of lupins, commonly called lupin beans, were popular with the Romans, who spread the plant’s cultivation throughout the Roman Empire.
Colorful Lupine
Picture of the Day for November 19, 2012
The sun was out early this morning and with the continued above average temperatures this week, the image of summer popped in my head. An image of a warm summer evening with cattle grazing in the pasture, the moon rising as the sun was setting and swallows chasing bugs above the barns roof.
Cattle Grazing on Summer Evening
Picture of the Day for November 18, 2012
With the above average temperature for this November day, it has me thinking of heading to a lake to enjoy the sun and sticking my feet in water on a warm, lazy summer day. ‘Thinking’ is the key word, since it is not summer and the water wouldn’t be that warm today so dreaming of a warm Sunday afternoon at the lake is all I can do today.
Summer Day at Lake O’ the Dalles
Picture of the Day for November 17, 2012
To close out this week’s ‘hunting for spring’ theme, I figured I needed a picture of the robin since they say that it’s not officially spring until ‘it has snowed on the Robins’ tail three times.
Robin Bringing in Spring
Picture of the Day for November 16, 2012
Another flower that I would ‘hunt for in the spring’, is the Glory-of-the-snow (Chinodoxa), originating in the alpine regions of Turkey, Crete and Cyprus, where each year it transforms the landscape from snowy white to blue. It’s therefore fitting that its botanical name comes from the Greek chion, meaning “snow,” and doxa, meaning “glory.”
I suppose one would be in glory seeing the snow melt and the flowers blooming after a long winter.
Glory-of-the-snow
Picture of the Day for November 15, 2012
Looking out at the flower bed this morning, the purple asters have turned mostly brown after several nights in the low teens. So the purple I’m thinking of as part of this week’s ‘the hunt for spring’ theme, is the tiny crocus which can often appear through the snow in the spring. According to legend the Greek Gods Zeus & Hura loved each other so passionately that the land where they lived burst open with crocuses.
The crocus was not native to North America, but instead came on ships by settlers who planted them around their cabins. But while not native here, the crocus has been cultivated since at least 1550 BC in the Mediterranean area. The lavender-flowered, fall-blooming crocus (C. sativus) has been grown for saffron the flower produces which was used as a spice, a dye, a medicine, and also in perfumes.
Saffron has always been expensive, even during its use in the Minoan culture, where the same weights used to measure gold were used for saffron. The reason for the expense is the labor-intensive nature of the production process of crushing the dried stigmas of the flower for the powder. During the brief blooming, the stigmas of C. sativus are painstakingly separated from the petals and stamens and then dried, a procedure best carried out on the day of the collection. Each crocus has three stigmas, and it takes about 160,000 flowers to produce 11 lbs of wet stigmas, which converts to 2 lbs of dried spice.
I might have to start growing the fall crocus instead of the spring crocuses since that 2 lbs of dried spice is approximately worth $10,000. Course growing 160,000 flowers to get that two pounds might be difficult with my chipmunks digging up my flower bed all the time!
Colorful Crocus
Picture of the Day for November 14, 2012
Melting snow normally means the pond will fill up with water again, but that only works in the spring as the dusting of snow yesterday that melted didn’t help fill the extremely low pond level caused by the dry summer and fall. So today’s ‘hunt for spring’ picture is a full pond, ready for the visiting ducks on their spring travels.
Full Pond
