No salmonberries

 

My potatoes are blooming!

I still have not found a ripe salmonberry to eat. I fear it is an awful year for berries and the bears are going to be hungry. I did find one semi ripe blueberry in the park to eat but that's it. There are just very few berries around. I spent the last week on my hikes looking for a ripe salmonberry to eat and did not see a single one. Wow!

That said the fireweed is in full blossom and seems to be doing fine. The fireweed might actually be blooming a little early.

Patrick

Garden at the bitter end of June

 

Snap peas

It's now July but for the record I took these pictures on the very last day of June. It's always fun to look back and see where your garden was at various moments in time and how it compares with year's past. This year after a very slow start it kicked into over-drive and is now doing very well. I have been eating kale and salad green like crazy. To keep the weeds down I am having Stuey save lawn clippings and I am using them to mulch the potatoes. Last year's clippings and leaves have kept the garlic bed weed free all spring!

Patrick

Carrots and kale

Salad greens and siberian kale

Potatoes and garlic

Garlic

Mulching with lawn clippings in progress

First Salmonberry Blossom 2026

 

I missed the first salmonberry blossom of the year. It happened while I was away on my Aiaktalik survey. While I was away the temperatures soared into the upper 70's and everything turned green. I was only away for parts of 5 days (June 3-7), but it was noticeably greener when we got back. And the salmonberries were finally blooming. This is extremely late for salmonberries to first bloom. Generally they bloom in early to mid June.

Patrick

budding devilsclub

Early Wildflowers and Garden

 

Dwarf Buttercup

Yesterday on my dog ski/walk I took some pictures of the first alpine wildflowers of the year. The wildflowers are popping up and blooming in the wet places that were covered with snow a month ago. Nothing is blooming on the dry tundra yet.

At my house my garden is pretty far behind. My lettuce is tiny and just yesterday I noticed a few carrot sprouts. So few that I am a little worried I'll need to plant the carrots again. The peas just sprouted too. I also noticed the beach lovage is the perfect size to harvest for salads. While it is not technically a part of my garden it is conveniently growing near the house. And Lovage is a better salad green than anything I can get at Safeway.

Yesterday I also mowed part of my lawn - ughhhhh. And so it begins.

Patrick

Snow bed Marigold

Stream Violet

Sitka Alder

beach lovage in my yard

Garlic

lettuce

cottonwood starting to leaf out

Cold Spring

 

It's been a cold spring. This morning there was a hard frost in my yard, the salmonberries have still not bloomed, and the cottonwoods have not leafed out yet either. They barely have buds. And yet we got so little snow the ski season on Pyramid is still ending a few weeks earlier than usual. 

Out of interest I decided to check out just how the Kodiak temperatures this spring compare to that of past years. And I found the table seen above (weather spark - click here for link). The table confirms what I have observed - it has been a colder spring than usual. We also had a very warm February followed by an extremely cold March. 

But what I find amazing is that it is almost June and the warmest temperature so far this year was recorded in late February. It almost hit 60 back in February and has struggled to top 50 degrees ever since. And looking at the weather forecast it is not supposed to get into the high 50's for the foreseeable future either. I love it!

Patrick

Some walks

 

Nora is back from college and brought a friend with her for a visit. During the last few days we went on a few hikes. 

The first day at Buskin Beach the tide was too high for a Long Beach walk. So we went to the bunker and the 'beach glass' beach instead. I had not been into the old bunker behind Boyscout Lake in ages, and I had forgotten how scary it is inside. We did not bring a flashlight and just had Nora and her friend's phones to illuminate the way.  Much of the graffiti is the same as it has always been. All three dogs came inside with us too. I remember that in the old days Tank and Brewster did not like going inside.

These days it is starting to get green, and I finally finished planting my garden. It looks like I might even have to mow the lawn in the next few days!

Patrick

Buskin beach at high tide

Scary bunker graffiti

Nora and friend by an old 'ready' ammunition bunker

Scary grafitti!

On Pyramid it actually flurried a bit!

Bad year for Blueberries

 

Every spring I can not resist taking lots and lots of photos of the blueberry blossoms under the trees in Abercrombie State Park, and this year is no exception. That said, this year most of the bushes do not have blossoms, and even those with blossoms have a lot less than usual. I'm hoping that maybe the bushes without blossoms are just late to bud out. But by this point I think it is just too late. It looks like this year will be a poor year for blueberries.

Patrick

red alder flowers in my yard

Blueberry Flowers

 

On Monday I went for a walk with the dogs in Abercrombie and found that the blueberries are finally blooming. This is another of those spring events that I note and it tells me if spring is early or not. Generally the blueberries first blossom in mid to late April, and they have bloomed as early as February and March. So this year they are late. Normally by this time the salmonberries are getting ready to bloom, but yesterday I checked on them too and they are even budding yet. So it is a late spring this year.  That said, it is a weird spring because on high we barely have any snow left. Yesterday when I went for a ski I could only go to the top of the jibber. Normally I am still skiing to almost the road. The first blueberry blossoms usually coincide with the max snow pack on the mountain. But this year the first blossoms are a month later than the Max snowpack on the mountain.

Patrick