Amaze the children!

Show them a flower head larger than their own!

Fee fi fo fum.

On the way up.

Blue bounty.

Big Blue, my towering blue elderberry, has produced its most abundant crop yet. Its long branches are bowed by the weight. I never do anything with the berries, which are more seed than flesh. I leave them to the birds, who clear them away by the end of October.

This month's Festival of the Trees, presented by Peg at Orchards Forever, is a fall fruit edition, and includes links to fruits of many kinds, most of which are much more delectable than elderberries. Go pick some.

===>Salmon==>

An unprecedented return of Sockeye Salmon to the Fraser River, estimated at 34 million fish, has led to the best fishery in decades. Newscasts show fish leaping from the water like those crazy Asian carp in the Illinois River. The gill-netters, many of which have been dock-bound for years, have been out on the river round the clock, hauling in the catch.

Many sell fish fresh off the boats at the wharf in Steveston. The fisheries have been strictly defined, one or two days at a time with breaks in between, but still, thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of fish have been caught.

As fresh as it gets. About $20 a fish.

There are lineups at the boats, and people stroll through town with big fish in plastic bags. Estimating fish stocks, present and future, seems a difficult task. It will be four years, the length of the sockeye lifecycle, before we know if too many were taken, or if more could have been.

But look here, something different. Moving spines poking through plastic, pop pop pop.

These bags contain live, softball-sized sea urchins. I wonder how much bag will be left by the time they get to where they're going.

A frenzy of carp.

About carp:

1)Originally from Asia.

2) Get large.

3) Introduced lots of places, including here.

4) Edible, hence 3.

4) During spawning, skitter through shallow water like torpedoes and ram canoeists, who then beach canoe, run panic-stricken to nearby nature house and claim to have been attacked by lake monster. (Really.)

5) Drop bird seed in water, frenzy ensues.

Mysterious meadow mounds.

If there are bustles in your meadow, don't be alarmed now,

It's just a Sandhill and an offspring.

(Or perhaps two adults, but I went for the phrasing.)