You already know it and you’ve heard it a dozen times by now, but this weather is insane. The extended stretch of unseasonably warm weather is wreaking havoc with all manner of botanical timetables. Case in point: our Sargent cherry (Prunus sargentii) that we enjoy so much every year is blooming a full month ahead of schedule. Whatever “schedule” means anymore. Still, it’s welcome beauty.
Last summer the nice Korean family gardening across the path from our community plot grew masses of amazing golden flowers. I asked them what they were and he said that they were Calendula and added that they were good for the skin. This year I grew some and, remembering what my garden neighbor said, looked into the “good for the skin” thing. Calendula, it seems, is used in different healing balms, salves and lotions. After perusing a few recipes on the Internet I decided to take a shot at whipping something up from the dried flowers I’d saved from the garden for this month’s Post Produce.
The lotion would consist of only three ingredients: olive oil, beeswax, and dried Calendula flowers pulled from four or five inflorescences.
I started by adding the flowers to two tablespoons of olive oil and gently warming it on the stove. Taking it off the heat, I let it steep for about an hour and then strained the oil.
To melt the beeswax I first broke it into pieces. Beeswax is less brittle and more sticky than candle wax, I noticed.
I started with six grams from my thirty gram bar. To melt the concoction I put the oil and wax inside a clean can—not a tuna can!—in a small pan of simmering water and stirred with a wooden stick. When it looked like the mixture was still pretty liquidy and not so lotiony I kept adding small amounts of wax.
Eventually I had added the entire bar. The next step I do not recommend. While I was lifting the can out of the pot with tongs I bumped the edge and splattered the oil and wax on the stove, counter, my shoe and the rug. As I was scraping and cleaning up the mess I realized there was too much wax in the mixture making it brittle so I added another tablespoon of oil, carefully placed the can in the oven on a piece of foil and alternately warmed and stirred.
Eventually, after gradually adding small amounts of oil it appeared to be maintaining an acceptable consistency. I scooped it into a small jar and tried rubbing a tiny bit into my hands. There appear to be some small bits of wax yet, but they smoothed out and didn’t remain a problem. This stuff is really waxy, though. After applying it I did have to wipe my palms so I could handle things without gumming them up.
It was an interesting exercise and I ended up with some nice-smelling if odd textured lotion. Were I to do it again I’d definitely use a recipe with exact proportions. The Calendula flowers themselves were ridiculously easy to grow from seed. In fact, I noticed some seedlings springing up around the mature plants late this past summer. Whether or not I make anything with them, I do intend to grow them again.
It's high summer in the garden. Here are some images from the garden in general, not all from our own plot.
No, this isn't another cooking post. I'm embarrassed at how long it's taken me to post about what was the most spectacular North American bird phenomenon I observed this year. Every fall many hundreds of thousands of raptors--birds of prey--pack up and fly far south for the winter. Having such a long way to go, they conserve energy by soaring rather than flapping their wings. When they reach rising air currents either created by winds being deflected upward by land features or thermals generated by warm ground, they circle and circle upward and then break away again to glide southward until they reach another updraft. When a migrating hawk sees another riding the currents upward this way he thinks, "Hey! Looks like Harry got a good lift there. I'm going, too!" and joins in. Soon more birds are joining the party and it ends up looking like this: 
This awesome formation is called a kettle. During an hour or so that there was the most action I conservatively estimate we saw between four and five hundred hawks. In this case they were Broad-winged Hawks (Buteo platypterus), distinguished by a wide white band on the underside of their tails, that were joined by a few Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura.)
The location of this particular show was at Nelson Dewey State Park in the southwest corner of Wisconsin. Located on the bluffs above the Mississippi River the park provides some amazing views of the river valley and is something of a lesser known destination compared to Wyalusing State Park a little farther north. Either location is a great spot to stand around doing this (and having a sore neck for a few days after.)
Much farther north, at Duluth, Minnesota the fall hawk migration is even more spectacular. Raptors don't like crossing large bodies of water. So when the ones flying down from Canada encounter Lake Superior they turn and follow the shoreline west. The birds are concentrated in numbers as they pass by aptly named Hawk Ridge where it's common to see thousands of birds pass by in a single day. I've never witnessed it myself, but I hope to some day.
Not all the action was in the sky that weekend, either. Asters were in bloom everywhere signalling that autumn is truly upon us. 
And this furry little caterpillar was seen several times.
And, finally, on one of the trails at Wyalusing we encountered this sad reminder. Even in the face of so many birds in one spot we know that if we're not careful, they really can all just go away for good. 
Late every April the Sargent Cherry (Prunus sargentii) in my front garden blooms for a few days. Yesterday was unusually hot so the buds that had been slowly opening the day before suddenly burst into full bloom. Sitting under it I could hear the bees buzzing around. Sadly today it is rainy and the blooms may suffer because of it. This seems to happen every year. The unsettled weather of the season gives and also takes away. But I shouldn't complain. I do have pictures of a past year's blooms covered in snow!
My friend, Sunita asked about the photo of emerging buds I posted a while ago. Here they are open and beautiful despite enduring a few inches of wet snow. They are Helleborus niger ssp. Macranthus. I have a few clumps of them planted in the garden and, just like my other Hellebores, now that they've had a couple years to settle in they're starting to flower nicely.
As I mentioned back on the 14th, my Amorphophallus konjac has decided it't going to bloom before I can stick it and all it's putrid beauty outdoors. As of this moment it's gotten 20" inches taller, four of those inches in the last day. I'm scared.
