Welcome Back to Packwood

 Welcome to Packwood! Its that time of year again, so here’s your refresher:

 Memorial Day kicks off Visitors’ Season* in our tiny mountain town, high in the Washington Cascades. Please enjoy your visit. For your elucidation, I have put together a list of guidelines that will make your stay more pleasant--for me.

The Rules Governing Elk

1) Elk don’t follow rules.

 

The Rules Governing Visitors and Elk

1) Elk don’t follow rules.

2) Don’t be like Elk.

3) Please enjoy the spontaneous elk parades that will take place at random intervals. Elk will wander out into the highway so that you can stop and enjoy their majesty. Please do.

4) Please watch for elk that will dash out in front of oncoming vehicles. There is almost always more than one. It is not considered a parade.

5) No, the Elk are not trucked in by the Disney Company. They do not talk.

6) No, you should not try to pet them.

7) Or feed them. If you really want to feed elk, I suggest you buy an alfalfa truck and park it, fully loaded, in town. This is the traditional way of feeding elk. Google it.

Saved you the Google search. You're welcome.

 

8) Do not let them have your IPA. Elk are terrible drunks.  

9) Yes, you can take one home with you. In fact, every visitor is allowed to take home six elk, each. Per visit. Did I say allowed? I meant REQUIRED.

10) Please do not allow the elk to drive. Actually, don’t allow them in your vehicle as elk are terrible back seat drivers as well, and have been known to chew on the upholstery.

11) U-Haul trucks are available in town to transport your elk. Yes. That’s why they’re there.

12) Once you take the elk, they are yours. DO NOT TRY TO RETURN YOUR USED ELK.

The Rules Governing Locals, Elk and Visitors 

1) Elk don’t follow rules.

2) Visitors are learning the rules. Please back me up on these rules. Especially the six elk—each, thing. I really think it might work.

3) Deer Season starts early September. Permit required. Limit one.

4) Elk Season starts early November. Permit required. Limit one. Personally, I am campaigning to increase the limit. I’m thinking a half-dozen should be good.

5) Visitors’ Season* starts May 26. Please remember that no permits for visitors will be issued.

Basketball Jones

 The other day, the Sume Family experienced a reunion of epic proportions—we were reunited with a long-lost basketball.

And not just any old basketball— but a Baden Perfection Elite Game Ball. A ball with a pedigree and a lot of happy memories attached. Way back in the day, when Baden joined our happy band, my son’s girlfriend wrote his name on the ball, with his initials and “W.P.” on the top. Today, the girlfriend is now his wife of six years and they have been promoted to the role of parent. Twice.  

The ball traveled a mysterious route on its way back to us...a friend, who works at the local school (shout out to White Pass!) and shall remain nameless (Hi Eileen!) delivered Baden at the request of the Athletic Director (Thank you, Brian Delong!) who inherited Baden from Toledo High Schools athletic program (Go India—er. Uh, I’m not sure what their nickname is now, but at the time Baden was lost they went by—and I say this as respectfully as possible—“Indians.” Go Toledo Representational Mascot!) The point is—Baden went thru a lot of hands to find his way back to our loving embrace. 

When I posted his picture in our family group chat the boys immediately recognized him, wrangled blame assignment over his loss, and filled me in on his back story—when and where he was acquired and for how much. In an interesting side note, the Baden Elite is the same price in Joe Biden’s America that it was in Barack Obama’s America, so invest in sporting goods, they are inflation proof I guess? Either that or Athletes’ Corner (RIP) really saw us coming... I feel like this would be a good time to make a joke about inflation-- and basketball are inflated already-- but I can’t seem to launch one into “She shoots! She Scores!” territory. Clearly, I need to step up my game.

Such a Fun Guy

 You might recall that we experienced that elusive weather phenomenon known as a sunny weekend. So, I set out to do what I had been unable to accomplish so far this year: I mowed my grass. Which in itself is quite an accomplishment. All the necessary criteria were met—I had the proper weather to facilitate mowing AND my schedule allowed for it And my mower had both gas and a fully charged battery. The two previous sunny days we had this season I was far away from my yard or busy with grandchildren. Hooray for me! Mark helped me clear a path to free my mower from the confines of its winter storage, and off I went, earplugs in my ears and a song in my heart.

Since it was the first mow of the season and my grass was moderately overgrown—and by moderately I mean there was no need for the bailer attachment—I was carefully navigating the first pass around the perimeter when an unexpected sight stopped me short. I disengaged the mower blades, dropped the transmission into Park, jumped off of the mower and went tearing around the back of the house to where Mark was quietly enjoying the afternoon.

“Come with me,” I said, and grabbed his hand, towing him out to the abandoned mower. There, just in a head of the front mushroom was a single, baby morel. 

 

We made all the appropriate Ooh-ing and Ahh-ing sounds one makes to a baby mushroom before carefully harvesting it. “Good thing I didn’t run over it,” I said and then blinked. Underneath the mower deck I could see two more mushrooms.

Mark and I froze in our tracks, like two soldiers who had blissfully skipped into the middle of a minefield, only to realize that the next step could mean death and destruction—or at least squishing of the delicious fungi, which would be a gourmand’s tragedy. 

I think it took us about 20 minutes to carefully sweep the area clean of the tender treats before we decided it was safe to move the mower. I returned to my interrupted chore while Mark carefully searched the backyard for more mushrooms.

And that’s the story of how I went mushroom hunting over the weekend, accidently, unintentionally-- but quite successfully. 

They Tell Me It’s Spring

 
It’s spring—or at least that’s what my calendar says. We’ve had rainsnowhailrainsnowhailrainrain 80degreeweather, followed by more rainsnowhail. I, for one, am in favor of unplugging Mother Nature and then plugging her back in to see if that helps.

Snow Skittles

Usually by this time of year I will have already visited a couple of my favorite dealers—I mean local nurseries—for inspiration and supplies. I would have quite the happy little collection of baby plants sitting in the shelter of my back deck, waiting for the first week of May, so they can be safely tucked into their summer homes. My straw bale garden would have been properly conditioned and ready to go.

Alas, spring this year has been super “F”—as in super fickle. I have my straw bales (SBG) in place—conveniently delivered from Overby Hay & Grain by my co-worker Haze and her husband Guy, and currently being watered by the aforementioned Mother Nature. I only have to remember to go out about every other day and sprinkle a half-cup of nitrogen fertilizer on them.

Unfortunately, “Mom” is handling the watering requirements to her specifications and not according to the needs of my SBG. The SBG book clearly states that the bales should ideally be watered with “warm” or “day old” water—water that has been sitting around in buckets. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have water with a top coating of ice in mind when they wrote the book.

At the end of winter this year I thought I’d get a jump on the growing season by starting seeds indoors. I planted green beans, snow peas, and sweet basil. Then I promptly embarked for a three-week trip and left my little sprouts in the loving care of my cat sitter (Hi Eileen!)

Kitchen Table Harvest?

When I came home, not only my cats but my plants had thrived under her green thumb care—to the surprising extent that my green beans were bearing fruit! With the way the weather has been acting, indoor gardening might be my new hobby... 

About Time

I’ve been thinking about time lately—the tick and the tock of it. Sixty seconds turn into a minute, sixty minutes into an hour, sixty hours into a ...pauses to count rapidly...a long weekend? And would you please stop saying sixty already, I’m feeling that personally.

When I was parenting young children, the laws of time seemed more like serving suggestions than anything resembling actual laws. Someone told me that when it comes to parenting “the days are long, but the years are short” and that resonated.

Time flies---and it must fly like a mosquito because it seems we are always trying to kill it. If we think of time as a law of nature, Spring arrives on this day, at that hour. Summer will arrive at her appointed time as well. Then somebody mentions Leap Year and time seems more of a social construct than anything else; a community agreement we’ve all agreed to. 

Take Daylight Savings Time for example—except Arizona opted out of that one. “Nope,” they said, “Just not feeling it. Social contract, smocial contract. Sorry, not sorry, do not agree.”

 

Recently, I traveled across several time zones and back over a three-week period. Living on the edge—as I am wont to do—I made my journey on the eve of daylight savings time. I felt it was a good way to “share the jetlag”—sure, I was now four-instead-of-three hours behind everybody in the Big City, but my thinking was they would all be so blurry-eyed over “springing forward” the next morning that my exhaustion would seem “normal.”

 

During that three-week stretch I went from PST to EST—followed immediately by EDT. Eventually, I

This is NOT my cousin's farmhouse
Her's is livable. But you have to admit
that's a pretty cool house.

ended up in MDT—only to spend the next week dancing back and forth between Mountain Time and Central Time because Kansas is a hot mess when it comes to time. The counties that border Colorado are MT, the rest are CT. We stayed in my cousin’s family farmhouse in Cheyenne County—Mom! Colorado is touching me! —and driving down one of the gravel roads you could experience 5pm on the left-hand side of the car and 4 pm on the right-hand side of the car. 

Thus, proving the old adage it’s always five o’clock somewhere –and that’s undoubtably why the chicken crossed the road.

Bonus Content:

Big City, NYC

Bird City, Kansas

City Food (Peruvian) from Pio Pio

Back: Lomo Saltado Back: Filet mignon strips, stir-fried with soy sauce, spices, red onions, cilantro, tomatoes, served over french fries with white rice.

Front: Ceviche Limeño (Spicy) A Classic Peruvian Seafood Dish (raw) Tossed with a Citrus Juice Marinade. Diced corvina, lime juice, red onions, cilantro, rocoto pepper.

Kansas Food from Big Ed's
where the steak is apparently served by the pound

Kansas: Sunrise in the FlatLands

Mid day in Colorado Springs, looking at Pike's Peak

Garden Gate: The Origin Story

 

What do greedy elk, unhappy gardeners,  a busy editor (and alligators) have to do with creating Over My Garden Gate? A friend asked me the other day how I came to write Over My Garden Gate for the Highway Shopper.

What a good question, I’d be happy to tell you. (Apologies to TikTok content creator Elise Myers, but she lives in my head now. If you don't know her, go google her name and tacos, you'll be glad you did.)

Now where was I?

It all started in 2014, one beautiful July Friday when editor Dave Bunting was up to his elbows in alligators and wasn’t going to have time to write an extra column regarding preventing elk damage to local landscaping. He asked if somebody would be willing to write a couple hundred words on the various elk deterrent sprays.

Sure, I said. How hard could it be, I said. Leave it to me, I said.

30 minutes later I still hadn’t found an opening paragraph that didn’t make me sleepy, or worse—cringey.

I walked back to his office and asked if I could just have fun with it, while still imparting the information he needed. 

“Sure,” he replied, fending off another alligator, “go right ahead.”

When alligators escape the sewers.
Alligators in offices may appear larger.

 

 I wrote 290 words--some words about chasing elk, clad only in a bath towel—me, not the elk. The elk wasn’t wearing anything but a smile, and a cheek full of petunias. Some of the other words I wrote even mentioned the defensive sprays…

While it probably wasn’t what Dave thought he was agreeing to, I enjoyed it. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I campaigned to write a weekly column-- and Over My Garden Gate was born. Seven years and approximately 357 printed columns--slightly fewer blog entries (287) because lazy-- later I still have lots of opinions to share and unsolicited advice to offer. Thank you, Gentle Reader, for coming along on this adventure with me, and happy 46th Anniversary to the Highway Shopper!

March

 We have achieved March! February, with all its extremes, is in the books. Was it just me or did February seem about three months long? Shortest month, my eye.

March is the month in which daylight savings time makes its long-anticipated return—hello more daylight! March is also the month of spring, so even if we get a rogue snowflake or two, we can comfort ourselves that it’s “only a spring snow,” guaranteed not to stick around for weeks on end. That’s what I tell myself anyway, and I believe me.

Some years, March is also the month of Re-Birth and chocolate bunnies, but not this year. In 2022, you’ll have to wait until April to get your egg dye out.

While Easter is sometimes a bonus March event, St. Patrick’s Day is a constant. Green shamrocks! Green beer! Green everything! There’s also something about “coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb”-- or is it “in like a lamb, out like a lion”? Anyway, I think it means that March is unpredictable—but its unpredictability is to be expected—with all that extra daylight you can even see it coming.

March is the month of kites, daffodil parades, Winter Carnival, and Girl Scout cookies. Covid numbers are down, and mask mandates are slated to be lifted. Wouldn’t it be nice if March was the month that saw a return to “normal?” I’m looking forward to it. 

Hello “Normal”!

To keep our “Back to Normal” as safe as possible, free at-home Covid tests are available thru the post office. Go to special.usps.com and fill out the form to get your four free tests. Limit of one order per address. Test results available as early as 30 minutes, no lab needed. You can also call 800-232-0233 if you need help placing your order. And I’m told that these tests do not require tickling your brain with a cotton swab in order to work efficiently.

What’s not to like? Free, fast, and nasal friendly.