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Wildflower Wednesday | Summer
I thought wildflower season was over. A walk along the Deschutes River last week proved me wrong.
Right along the water’s edge: elegant goldenrod, checker-mallow, true forget-me-not, asters, rabbit brush.
I’m not ready to let go of summer. The days are getting shorter, the temperatures are starting to drop, and it makes me a little melancholy every year. I want to hold onto it as long as I can.
Still noticing.

Wildflower Wednesday | Summer

We backpacked the PCT between Olallie and Timothy Lakes this weekend, about 10 miles a day. Wildflower season is winding down.

The first day took us through a burned area — fireweed and pearly everlasting filling in the open ground. Fireweed is usually the first flower to return after a wildfire. It’s a sign the land is already working on healing itself.

Day two brought explorer’s gentian, still closed up tight in its buds, western mountain aster, and Columbian monkshood — all purple and violet.

We’d been watching smoke from the Grasshopper Fire near Mount Hood all week, checking the trajectory before we committed to the route. Friday the air looked clear enough to go. A new fire, the Austin Fire, started on our second day. Oregon has already burned through more than 2.3 million acres this year — the worst wildfire season on record.

This trip started 22 years ago. Three families, six young kids between us, ages 4 to 9. We’ve known each other 35 years. The kids are grown now, scattered across California, Oregon, and Washington. It’s just the six of us who still go — disconnected from everything else for a weekend, no distractions. We reconnect, laugh, have the kind of longer conversations that don’t happen in text messages. We share memories. We commiserate about being uncomfortable. We test what our bodies can still do for three days and two nights. And somewhere in there, someone always asks how many more years we’ll keep doing this.

This year didn’t have the scenery we usually get. No big views, no alpine lake sunsets. Just three days away from everything, with people who’ve known me a long time.

Still adapting.

Wildflower Wednesday | Summer

Two road trips last week. Two states. Both of them about the same thing: getting to friends.

On the way home from Medford, I took Highway 62 through the Rogue River corridor near Union Creek. I stopped to stretch my legs at Natural Bridge, where the river disappears underground and comes back up downstream. Another stop at a viewpoint for Rabbit Ears — the rock spires visible far off in the distance, above the river winding through the canyon below.

Along that stretch I found pipsissewa, common St. John's wort, fireweed, spreading dogbane, Pacific lupine, and barestem wild buckwheat.

Then Montana. The final stretch of Highway 12 on the way to White Sulfur Springs, for the Red Ants Pants Music Festival. We camped in a cow pasture with hundreds of other people — heat, dust, late nights, three days of live music.

Roadside there: sticky purple geranium, Richardson’s geranium, showy fleabane, scarlet globemallow, and broom snakeweed.

Different states. Different reasons to drive that far. Same pull, both times — toward people I wanted to be near.

Still here.

Last weekend I went back to Medford — my hometown — and sat with four friends I’ve known since first grade and earlier.

We hadn’t all been together since 2002.

We fell into the same easy conversation, in the same familiar places.

The oak trees are what told me I was home. They’re all over the Rogue Valley — the same ones I grew up under. Just seeing them again brought back my childhood.

At this point in life, I know how rare it is to still have friends like these. We didn’t fill the days with plans. We just slowed down and enjoyed being together.

This week’s wildflowers were on the hillside behind our old grade school: thinleaf milkweed, common madia, yellow star-thistle.

The milkweed took me straight back to my grandmother’s garden. I used to search for monarch caterpillars there, watch the chrysalises, and then see them emerge — orange and black wings, flying off.

On my walk I found a painted at the top of the hill. Someone had written across it: “Let everything be as it is.” — Deva Saradaya.

I left it there for the next person to find.

Still becoming
Living with vitality

We almost talked ourselves out of it.

Sixteen miles. 3,300 feet of elevation gain. Paradise Park on Mt. Hood.

We started at the Paradise Park Trailhead in the Mt. Hood Wilderness at 9:15 on the Fourth of July, worked our way up through old growth forest, navigated over more fallen trees than I could count, hit the Pacific Crest Trail, and climbed through open meadows until Hood was right there beside us. We sat on a ridge with the mountain to our left and Mt. Jefferson visible to the south. We ate lunch. We took it in.

Seven hours round trip. Back at the car by 4:15.

It was a long day. It was also exactly what my nervous system needed — the kind of reset that only comes from being fully in it, fully away, and fully present in a place that asks something of you.

I’m grateful we didn’t let the numbers on paper talk us out of going. Distance and elevation are just information. What you do with it is the choice.

This kind of day — being out in wild places, moving through them under my own power — is a big part of why I take care of myself the way I do. So that I can keep saying yes to days like this one.

More of the wildflowers from this hike in this past week’s Wildflower Wednesday post.

Wildflower Wednesday | Summer

On the Fourth of July, Rob and I hiked to Paradise Park on Mt. Hood. Sixteen miles, 3,300 feet of elevation gain, seven hours on the trail. We navigated over fallen trees in the forest, climbed through rhododendron, hit the PCT, and came out into the meadows with Hood right there beside us.

The wildflowers were everywhere.

Washington lily — also known as the Cascade lily — standing tall in the forest understory, white and wide open. Pacific rhododendron lining the trail. Bunchberry carpeting the forest floor. Bear grass in full spike. Pinesap rising from the forest floor in soft peach and orange — no green anywhere on it. Pacific coralroot alongside the trail, that deep reddish-pink orchid that never needs sunlight to bloom. Indian paintbrush in the meadows. Sitka valerian. Broadleaf arnica. California Jacob’s ladder. Subalpine fleabane. Oregon fawn lily nodding in the filtered light. Western pasqueflower already going to seed — all feathery white plumes now. American bistort. Penstemon. Lupine.

And the subalpine mariposa lily.

My mom called them Cat’s Ears when she took me backpacking as a girl. I haven’t forgotten that name. Finding them again on this trail brought her right back.

More about this hike to come.

Still noticing.

Wildflower Wednesday | Summer

And this week — skyrocket, mariposa lily, and a season mid-turn.

Two hikes this week. Shevlin Park and Cline Buttes.

In Shevlin: bedstraw in white clusters. Douglas’ catchfly, delicate and easy to miss. Lupine still going. Clover. Two varieties of penstemon. Skyrocket — that brilliant scarlet — just opening. Fleabane already turning to seed. And buckwheat shifting from yellow to orange-red.

Out on Cline Buttes, the sagebrush mariposa lily has emerged. It doesn’t last long. Lavender petals, golden stamens, low to the ground against dry grass and sage. Worth every step out there to find it.

Some weeks there’s a big reflection. This week there isn’t. Just two hikes, a lot of flowers, and the quiet satisfaction of watching a season move through its paces.

Still noticing.

What are you paying attention to this week?

THE 100 DAY PROJECT — WHERE GROWTH CAME THROUGH

This is the second half of looking back on my 100 Day Project — the Growth half.

If Strength was about returning, Growth was about what actually changed.

Early on I was chasing a looseness I couldn’t quite catch. The Splashing Paint class I took with Sarah B. Hansen gave me language for what I was after — charging colors, lost edges, painting the feeling of a place instead of its exact details. But understanding it and actually doing it are two different things.

By Week 13, I got closer.

I learned that I didn’t have to match my reference photo exactly to create something dynamic and alive. The hint of pink and purple on Mt. Hood wasn’t what it looked like. It was what it felt like.

That distinction changed something in me beyond the painting table.

Most of my life I tried to do things the way I thought they should be done. The way others expected. Somewhere in my fifties, that started to change. These paintings became part of that shift — permission to stop hiding, to stop playing small, to color outside the lines.

I also learned what I like.

The looseness. The suggestion of something rather than the exact thing. Colors bleeding into each other. Splatters, when I remembered to add them. By Day 99, I knew I loved the trees on the left more than the trees on the right.

That might sound small. But knowing what you like — really knowing, without needing anyone else’s approval — is its own kind of growth.

100 paintings taught me to trust my own eye. My own hand. My own pace.

Not as words I chose for the year.

As something I actually lived.

Still learning. Still playing. Still practicing.

Nourish — Eat to Thrive
Chicken fajitas — in a bowl or a tortilla or both, great whatever way you choose.

I started by pounding the chicken breasts between sheets of parchment until they were an even thickness, then sliced them into strips and tossed them in a homemade taco seasoning blend. No garlic in mine.

Avocado oil in the skillet, chicken strips in, three minutes per side. They come out of the pan while the onion goes in — once it’s translucent, the red and green bell peppers go in along with more taco seasoning, and everything cooks until soft. A squeeze of lime over everything while it’s still in the pan. The chicken goes back in to heat through. A meat thermometer takes the guesswork out — 165°F and you’re done.

The corn tortillas went into a separate cast iron skillet while everything else finished up.

To build the bowl: chicken and peppers as the base, then jicama, sliced radishes, avocado, toasted pumpkin seeds, and cilantro. Another squeeze of lime at the end if you want it — I always do.

Roughly speaking, each serving came in around 44–50g protein and 9–11g fiber.

The jicama is worth calling out. It adds crunch and a little sweetness without getting in the way of the other flavors. If you haven’t tried it in a fajita bowl, it’s a good addition.

You can serve this however works for you — tortillas, a bowl, or both.

🙌 Hands up if this goes on your menu this week.

Grounded. Strong. Resilient. Nourished. Vitality in Focus.

Wildflower Wednesday | Summer

And this week — a hairstreak butterfly, a monkey flower the size of my thumbnail, and the first Wednesday of summer.

A flare-up in back pain kept me close to home last weekend. Limited hiking, limited range. So what I have to share this week is small — and I mean that literally.

A Juniper Hairstreak butterfly on wooly groundsel, wings folded, working the yellow blooms. A tiny insect on a tiny flower, going about its business completely unbothered.

Yarrow in white clusters against old weathered wood. Prickly phlox — that small shrubby plant with white to soft peach blooms — still going strong.

And a dwarf monkey flower. Magenta, with a yellow throat, growing right out of bare sandy soil. I put my thumb next to it so you could see the scale. The flower is barely larger than my thumbnail. Remarkable what can emerge from hard circumstances.

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” — The Emperor, Mulan

Summer arrived this week. Not with fanfare, just quietly — the way most meaningful transitions do.

In midlife we know something about that. The seasons shift, and sometimes we’re moving right along with them. And sometimes we’re laid up, watching from the sidelines, letting our bodies remind us who’s in charge.

Both are part of it.

Still noticing.

What does the shift into summer feel like for you this year?