Day’s End, June 5, 2013

A photograph taken from my deck just as the last of daylight smoldered atop the mountains northwest of where I live.  A single fishing boat rests on the lake.

--Mitchell Hegman

It’s not just a Flower, It’s an Annual Event

Every year I tell myself that I will not take more photographs of the bitterroot when they bloom in June.  I have—without exaggeration—many dozens of quite lovely photographs of them from previous years.  If you shuffled though the photographs, you might even successfully argue that most of them look alike.

I tend to photograph the bitterroot in pairs.  I usually do not center them in the frame.

Well, the bitterroot bloom is at its peak all around my home right now.  For the last week or so I have successfully fought the urge to photograph them; with the exception of a few random cell phone pictures I snapped and sent to my dearest.

Yesterday, I caved-in to my impulse to photograph the flowers in earnest.  Is it possible to have too many beautiful flowers, I asked myself?   I streaked out into the prairie on the south side of my home (with my digital SLR) and began taking pictures.  The bitterroot are too conspicuous to ignore.  They became the State flower of Montana for good reason.

Posted today is an off-center pair of bitterroot blossoms.

 

--Mitchell Hegman

Last Words

“Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.”

--Voltaire (when asked to renounce Satan by a priest)

“Now comes the mystery.”

--Henry Ward Beecher

“I am about to—or I am going to—die; either expression is used.”

--Dominique Bouhours (French grammarian)

Five Things Not to Say in a Quiet Elevator Filled with Strangers

—Guess what?  I just committed my first murder.

—I was called here to work on this elevator…please tell me that nobody punched any buttons that go beyond the third floor.

—Well, I hope all of you are immune to contagious diseases?

—My family has this curse where we perish in freakish elevator accidents.

—Is this the petting zoo?

--Mitchell Hegman

We, the Eaters of Culls

Secretly, we whittle away our days in your closets, under your boxes, in corn meal, at the edge of your burlap sacks, and within book-backs.  Wee-intentioned and practical, our sort happily noses through your bread crumbs and wriggle through corner-caught lint.

What might be more perfect than to cohabit without the smallest tap or clatter to annoy you?

We, the eaters of culls.

We, that bloom in disrepair. 

We, clawing up the backside of your stairs.

We’ve no lovers or dearest mothers or even a common word to spare.

But we are quick when you find us.  We are raw nerve endings and vaulters-away.

We, the silver.

We, quick as a shadow-crossed fish

 

--Mitchell Hegman

From the Fire and into the Sun

Iliamna rivularis, more commonly known as streambank wild hollyhock or streambank globe mallow, disperses seeds that can lie dormant in the soil for several hundred years, waiting for ideal growth conditions before germinating and growing.  The plant might grow to a height of six feet.

Similar in habit to lodgepole pine, wild hollyhock flourishes following forest fires in the mountains of Western Montana.  The intense heat of fire is key to germination.  The tough outer shell of the seed is broken down by the heat of the fire.  Some horticulturists actually drop hollyhock seeds into water after it has been brought to a boil and then allow the water and seeds to stand overnight as a way to soften the seed shell prior to planting.

Streambank wild hollyhock has seen great declines in population in the eastern half of the United States as result of decades of fire suppression.  Additionally, hollyhock thrives in the open sunlight provided after forest fires clear the canopy.  The plant, however, is not drought tolerant.

I know of only one place in the nearby Big Belt Mountains where I am able to find streambank hollyhock every season.  As their name has it, this population thrives along a small stream that flounces down through a narrow limestone canyon. 

Photo: U.S. Forest Service

--Mitchell Hegman

Twenty Pounds of Housecat

I am posting a picture of Splash, twenty pounds of domestic housecat.  I snapped this picture about fifteen minutes ago after I let him out back.  Yesterday, Splash brought me a mouse he captured out back.  The day before that, he kicked Carmel’s ass out there.  Carmel is my other twenty pounds of housecat.  Carmel’s belly very nearly drags on the ground.

Carmel did not deserve to get his ass kicked.

That’s about all I have for today.

 

--Mitchell Hegman