Eugene Parnell

The lithodora is blooming
#gardening #bloomscrolling @npub1nw7…g0ek
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2026-04-27 20:36:41 UTC

This weekend I took a trip up to the top of Baker Lake, in the Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in Washington, fed by snow and glacier melt of one of our 4 active volcanoes, Kulshan or Mt Baker (just look at the color of that water!) It's a fantastic time to hike along the river and lakeshore, the trees haven't fully leafed out and there's a lot of life happening on the forest floor. Plant-heavy thread ahead.
1/9
#PNW #nativeplants #hiking #getoutside #mountains
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2026-04-04 04:58:42 UTC

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Oh my goodness I had one of these plants for years! And I had completely forgotten about it. I absolutely loved the berries. Really unique kind of floral flavor. In my climate they only ripened at the very end of autumn. I think I lost it in a cold snap a few years ago--they're very hard to find here in the US, my reliable source may not be cultivating starts anymore. I'll have to check. Thanks for jogging my memory!

2026-01-17 06:42:49 UTC

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What I live about this book's illustrations is that they have such an obvious Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe... 140 years before Lucas & Spielberg. They're definitely in the set of primary source material that'd been fictionalized and imitated for a century before George and Steven were even born.

2026-01-13 18:37:50 UTC

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so in my day job I am a software product designer. People ask me to give an example of good UX and I point them to Scrivener. Not because the UI is elegant (it's decidedly cheesy) but because they've understood that the activity of creative writing and the activity of formatting and structuring a document are separate, and better when done independently at the author's discretion. Scrivener gives writers a tool to do both very well, without them getting in each other's way.

2025-12-07 05:26:00 UTC

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it's definitely an issue in wildfire-prone areas. There's a whole different set of calculations that come into play. I've attended a few training seminars on fire mitigation strategies for landscape design. There's ways to accommodate wildlife and mitigate fire risk but there's a lot to consider and some serious trade offs that need to happen. For the curious, your county or state Master Gardener program (in the USA) will probably have more information. Sorry that happened to you all.

2025-12-02 22:48:54 UTC

Along with #leavetheleaves, another way you can help wildlife in your garden is not to cut everything down right away. Standing dead vegetation provides overwintering habitat for pollinators and other insects (some even nest in the hollow plant stems) and foraging opportunities for birds. Here I'm channeling my inner Piet Oudolf a bit but I always leave these plants standing in my garden--they will look great with a dusting of snow. #gardening #autumn #WildLife #birds #pollinators
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2025-10-02 05:50:03 UTC

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Hiking Lake Ann, part 7. Photo 1: Most hikers stop at Lake Ann and turn around. The trail beyond it is very steep and rocky and is the beginning of the climbing route to the peak. Autumn foliage here is in full swing. Photo 2: Partridge foot (Luetkea pectinata) is a common alpine plant up here. It's in the rose family even though its foliage looks like parsley. Those brown wands were ivory-colored flowers earlier in the year.
#PacificNorthwest #PNW #hiking #getoutside #mountains #nativeplants
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2025-09-20 15:40:49 UTC

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I think what made it doubly intense for me was that NO ONE TOLD ME WHAT TO EXPECT. I just wandered in. Of course to be fair I'm not sure I could adequately explain it either so.... if you visit Wisconsin, just go. Don't look it up first. It's more fun that way.

2025-09-18 05:25:29 UTC

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Cascade Pass part 2. Some plant life: photo 1-2: Parnassia fimbriata, new to me. Growing off a mossy rock, it's watered by the constant drip of water off the bluff above it. Sorry I missed the flowering stage. Photo 3: A saxifrage called Leptarrhena pyrolifolia, a favorite that I spot in cool damp rocky places all the time.
2/6
#hiking #PNW #mountain #getoutside #nativeplants
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2025-08-14 16:23:26 UTC

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Plant hiking Trappers Peak part 3. Photo 1:Creeping dogwood (Cornus canadensis).You see lots of photos of it in bloom but less often with its bunch of berries intact. Photo 2: Pearly everlasting (the white one), is native right across North America and a host plant for butterflies. The purple plant is an aster, which I thought was Douglas aster but my app is telling me is Great Northern aster (Canadanthus modestus) which is new, to me anyway.
3/7
#PNW #nativeplants #hiking #mountains
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2025-06-13 05:09:13 UTC

Evening in the garden. We all need a timeline cleanse right now I think.
#gardening #bloomScrolling #PNW
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2025-04-30 04:10:27 UTC

Beautiful ight in the garden this evening.
#gardening #GardeningMastodon #Bloomscrolling #PNW #Spring
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2025-04-03 01:30:33 UTC

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Flowerpalooza in my hood part 3. This is a shrub you seldom notice, until it flowers. Osmanthus delavayi, or tea olive, so called because it is actually in the olive family. Typically it's just a little shrub, but this specimen is so old it's grown legs. It grows these whips, and then if you don't trim them before flowering the whole thing looks like a flowering octopus doing hula.
#gardening #Bloomscrolling #PNW
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2025-04-03 01:19:45 UTC

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Flowerpalooza in my hood part 2. Flowering quince. These typically come in a gorgeous salmon pink color that's pretty unique. This one is a deeper, redder tone but it still has that color pinkish orange undertone that's so unique to this plant.
#gardening #Bloomscrolling #PNW
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2025-04-03 01:12:34 UTC

It's bloom season in my neighborhood. You never realize just how many people have magnolias in their yards until they bloom. I much prefer the darker pink versions but they're all great.
#gardening #Bloomscrolling #PNW
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2025-04-02 23:43:28 UTC

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In other plants, like around where I live, elevation definitely makes a difference in flowering time. Plants that flower in May in my garden at 500 feet elevation don't flower until August up in the meadows at 5000. Of course those meadows are actually snowed in till June, so I don't know if that holds true at your latitude.

2025-03-25 23:33:07 UTC

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I have these in my garden-- they came with the house. Used to be a lot of them. Then I noticed fewer and fewer. I looked and looked at plant nurseries but couldn't find any more for sale. Finally I found some. I was talking to the seller and she told me that they suffer from a stem canker (bacteria) that eventually kills them, and that's why you see so few any more. Not sure if that's true where you live but I thought it was interesting.

2025-03-25 23:19:17 UTC

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wow what a long way they flowed. Wikipedia says 15 to 17 million years ago. I wonder if the Vantage petrified forest dates to the same period?

2025-03-25 06:16:31 UTC

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Hiking Ancient Lakes part 7. You can't go wrong with waterfalls and columnar basalt. Orange lichen on rabbit brush. Also does anyone recognize these giant reeds? Is this invasive pampas grass or something native? I don't know many of the plants here at all. 7/8
#PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-25 06:05:25 UTC

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Hiking Ancient Lakes part 6. Small video: turn the sound up. It's frog breeding season in the still water of the coulee lakes, and they're going crazy. Some spring birds there too. 6/8
#PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-25 06:03:07 UTC

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Hiking Ancient Lakes part 5. Here's some closeups of the main rock attraction here: columnar basalt, a result of ancient lava flows (way more ancient than the lakes). I keep wondering where all this lava came from-- the nearest existant volcano is probably Mt Rainier, over 130km away. 5/8
#PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-25 05:53:44 UTC

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Hiking Ancient Lakes part 4. This is a state park. Strangely, the trails aren't very well marked and in order to see all the good parts you have to drive round the outside to a couple different trailheads. But on a weekday in March, it's blissfully quiet and empty. I saw only maybe 6 people all day. 4/8 #PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-25 05:43:41 UTC

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Hiking Ancient Lakes part 3. This place is called "Ancient Lakes" and it's right by "The Gorge" amphitheater (WA people will know this place for its outdoor concerts). Ironically this system of coulees (canyon like flood channels) was formed by post-Ice Age glacial runoff, which in geological time isn't ancient at all-- it's like the day before yesterday. 3/8 #PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-25 05:34:41 UTC

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Hiking Ancient Lakes part 2. The Columbia Gorge (which has the Columbia River running through it) is kind of unimaginably huge. The snow capped ridges in the distance are like 50km away and the river itself is beyond the nearer cliffs and lakes, but before the snowy ridges, hidden in a literal gorge some 500(?) meters below any of the ground you see here. 2/8
#PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-25 05:24:09 UTC

First hiking thread of 2025. This is the time of year that those of us in the Puget Sound region get tired of the rain, and after a very waterlogged weekend, I struck out East, across the Cascades, to the Columbia Gorge. 1/8
#PNW #Washington #hiking #geology #iceage #getoutside #outdoors
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2025-03-19 05:09:31 UTC

Spring cleaning this weekend to get ready for new gardening season. First, the compost needs to be turned. The first thing to know about compost is that there are a lot of ways to do it, and a lot of people are convinced that theirs is the only right way. I ignore them. I am a lazy composter. I don't balance my greens and browns, I don't take temperature readings, I don't turn the piles more than a few times a year. I use the three bay system.
1/x
#gardening
#compost
#spring
#PNW
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2025-02-11 22:55:04 UTC

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Yes the color key is awful. These folks are botanists not UX designers :-) The light green means it's been found in the county and considered native and common. The yellow means the same but it's not considered common. The dark green means it's NOT found in that county but it IS present in other counties in the state. And of course the tan color is not found in state.

2025-02-10 02:34:46 UTC

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You probably know about this, but for anyone who wants to check if your #nativeplants are native, you can get a quick range map for just about any species native to or naturalized into North America here: https://bonap.net/NAPA/Genus/Traditional/County The only catch is you need to know the botanical name. In the US it shows county-level presence, but in Canada it seems to only be at the province level. Still, it's pretty cool.

2025-02-09 04:14:44 UTC

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Great photos of that place! I don't remember seeing the view looking back at them from out on the mudflats, that's really cool. Did you take these recently? Are there a lot of birds out there now?

2025-01-30 01:22:19 UTC

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I do not believe I have ever eaten an elderberry, or seen one in the wild, even though I grew up up in the Midwest. Do you make jam from them? Or wine? Homemade St. Germain?

2024-12-30 02:21:11 UTC

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They do well in cardboard boxes, I hear.

2024-12-28 03:48:01 UTC

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I want that fiberglass pig for out front of my house. No particular reason, I just know it's going to give people nightmares