Halle’s Smooooth Words o’ Wisdom

Recently a client asked me to scout for a woman’s tattooed hand for a possible shoot. Not a fancy Beverly Hills French nails and all kind of hand. I found this hand today at lunch. The potential hand model was super sweet and is keen to moonlight as a hand model.

Yup, that’s me. Me and the biggest Chanterelle I’ve ever found. The photo’s by ‘Whatia’ Howell. Claudia and I went picking Sunday and were utterly clueless that it was the 2nd day of rifle deer season in Oregon. After meeting several nice fellows with rifles over their shoulders we avoided parking near other vehicles and whistled A LOT. I made Claudia sick of Yellow Submarine in a hurry.

Claudia has editited a lot of photos by your’s truly and has been such a pleasure to work with. She’s retiring in November after 33 years working at The Oregonian. She’s taking their buyout package which sounds like a super sweet deal. Thanks, congratulations and cheers Claudia!

After a surf along the northern Oregon coast Tuesday I found my first Chanterelles of the 2008 mushroom season: 

They were exactly where I found my first patch in 2007 only 2 weeks or so earlier.

I couldn’t pass up this moment:

It was more than a moment actually and definitely more than 6 minutes that these 2 tangoed. As a gardner it’s somewhat reassuring to see these Hemiptera(the order aphids fall into) chow hounds getting busy in your yard. I hope that they were hungry and feasted on aphids after.

Later the same day this moment was hard to miss on the shelf above our kitchen sink:

We keep this Venus Fly Trap near our fruit bowl and it captures many flys. Not until recently did I see the plant snap shut on a spider.

Claudia and I visited a favorite spot recently and came away with many mushrooms!

We saw a fair number of moldy ones:

Autumn in Oregon means many things. One of my favorites is chanterelle hunting. From the Oxford American Dictionary:

“chan•te•relle | noun. an edible woodland mushroom with a yellow funnel-shaped cap and a faint smell of apricots, found in both Eurasia and North America.

ORIGIN late 18th cent.: from French, from modern Latin cantharellus, diminutive of cantharus, from Greek kantharos, denoting a kind of drinking container.”

There’s nothing quite like picking your own chanterelles then frying them up the same day with unsalted butter, shallots plus a touch of soy sauce, sugar and creme before tossing the fresh-from-the-woods golden sauce with some pasta. Yum. I love eating chanterelles although the stumbling through the deep and dark woods might be the best part.

It’s raining hard here and the leaves are turning and beginning to drop.

After 3 years in the ground our espalied pear tree finally bore fruit:

It did actually put a few on last year but, following instructions from a friend, we cut the fruit early in order to focus growth on the roots. Here’s to growing your own and not letting the dogs get to the goods before we do.

This is a fine piece of guerilla gardening.

These 2 pictures were shot in a friend’s Portland garden three days ago with assistance from Mark Clawson. The flowers were lit with sliver and gold reflectors held very close to the flower.