BY DAVID WELTON Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor October 12, 2016
October, always my favorite month, brings Fall to life, quickening the senses with color, scents, and sudden winds.
The sculptural, angled light at sunrise establishes the color palette for autumn leaves.As the days grow shorter and nights stretch longer and cooler, we are comforted by orange and black as we sit beside the fire.Within our broad swaths of deep evergreen forests, Whidbey Island presents pockets of intense color.Within our broad swaths of deep evergreen forests, Whidbey Island presents pockets of intense color.A weathered, worn fire hydrant is magically transformed by the glow of a burning bush (euonymus alatus) at South Whidbey High School.Sherman Farm pumpkins and jeweled spider webs set the stage for Halloween.Yellow grape leaves at Whidbey Island Winery contrast with the blue and green windsock and a 12th Man scarecrow.A Seahawk supporter struts his mutt at Bayview Farm and Garden.Puppies, forever youngA child frolics in treefall from the bigleaf maple.But childhood ends, and we transition from entertained to entertainer, and pursue adult pastimes.
October winds stir up a favorite pastime: to windsurf with migratory birds at Double Bluff.Fall richness provides time for harvesting Pinot Noir at Spoiled Dog Winery.An early snowfall calls for a brisk walk with the dogs and announces the coming of a joyous Winter.
David Welton, a retired physician, is a Whidbey Island photographer who credits his grandmother’s travel slide shows and her gift to him of a Kodak Starflash camera for his interest in photographic art. His goal is to use his photographs to inspire others to realize their unrecognized potential. To learn more about Welton, visit his Web site www.davidweltonphoto.com.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
This article was originally printed in Whidbey Life Magazine’s Spring/Summer 2016 print issue. The Fall/Winter 2016-17 print issue of Whidbey Life Magazine will be out in a couple of weeks! Look for it in your mailbox {subscribe here} or grab it at one of our local distributors. To whet your appetite, we thought you’d like to read an article from the Spring/Summer 2016 print issue.
BY DIANNA MACLEOD
Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
October 5, 2016
Have you ever pulled dandelions from a city lot to make a childhood bouquet? Broken off blooming branches from an untended shrub to display on a windowsill? Wandered along the side of a country road picking Queen Anne’s lace and foxglove, butterfly weed and yarrow?
Tobey Nelson of Vases Wild selects flowers for an arrangement. Photo by Marsha Morgan
Have you ever grown a row of flowers between your vegetables? Left a couple of dollars in a neighbor’s honesty box for a Mason jar full of blooms? Gathered a handful, or an armload, of something beautiful that grew right beneath your feet?
If you did, count yourself a slow flower enthusiast—an admirer of flowers that are seasonally available, suited to local conditions and free of chemicals.
Such pullers and pickers count themselves among the increasing number of Americans who love the simple elegance and admirable hardiness of blooms grown in their own part of the world. They are less well known, and a little bit behind, those who have joined together to form the movement known as Slow Food—those advocates who promote local food grown with taste, nutritional value and sustainable agriculture in mind. But the movement known as Slow Flowers, is…well…steadily growing. Locavores, move over and make room for locaflores.
Some might ask whether it really matters if our flowers come from far away or from our own backyards. Whether it matters if our blooms take their time coming to maturity under the open sky or are sped along by fertilizers applied in precise doses at precise times in the confines of a greenhouse that operates like a factory.
To Amy Stewart, author of “Flower Confidential,” it matters very much. She claims that once you understand the difference between imported and homegrown, “you’ll never look at a cut flower the same way again.”
Three Whidbey Island flower growers agree. With shovels, secateurs and seeds, they make both a living and a life raising and selling blooms that are sustainable, artistic, ethical and breathtakingly gorgeous. They are our very own, homegrown Slow Flower farmers.
Wedding centerpieces created by Vases Wild. Photo by Molly Landreth Weddings, Lightworks360
Vases Wild
This marks the fifth summer that gardener, horticulturist and wedding planner Tobey Nelson has been making flower art under the name Vases Wild.
It all started at a wedding show in Seattle when she asked herself why nuptials were not being exchanged more often on Whidbey, an island within easy reach of the city that offers the perfect backdrop for one of life’s most important rituals. As she researched the situation, Nelson found that Whidbey was something of a secret. “I talked to people who didn’t know about the island, attended a wedding here, and then fell in love with the place.”
That realization coincided with her innate pride of place. “I feel strongly about promoting Whidbey Island as a destination and as a community. Events in general, and weddings in particular, provide jobs.”
Hellebore and black pussy willow oral jewelry created by Vases Wild. Photo by Suzanne Rothmeyer
As she began promoting Whidbey as a wedding destination among her clients and peers, Nelson also polished her social media skills in order to market to the betrothed. And, since brides are bombarded with imagery and information, she had to find ways to make her creations stand out. Fresh and dried floral jewelry, botanical headpieces and arrangements using succulents are some of the ways she distinguished herself from other floral designers. Her jewelry and headpieces, delicate yet durable, can be worn for a wedding or for any special event—a date, a prom, a night at the theatre.
Five years later, Nelson continues to take every opportunity to recommend local hair salons, stylists, dressmakers, musicians, chefs, caterers, vintners, brewers, hoteliers, venues, photographers, officiants. She also employs local artisans—metal workers and carpenters—to make custom forms, including floral chandeliers, cylinders to support flowers in vases and arbors. A collaborator by nature, Nelson values the synergistic spirit present among Whidbey Island flower growers, who refer clients back and forth, lend and borrow equipment and sell flowers to each other.
But for a floral artist to locate on Whidbey, far from the lucrative urban wedding trade, other factors must be at work. So it is with Nelson, who has a passion for pastoral landscape, farmland preservation and healthy soil.
As a long-time landscape designer, Nelson is keenly aware of the effect of pesticides on water quality and soils. “Many of the local farms I work with achieve fertility by building soil with manures and compost rather than by applying chemical or synthetic fertilizers, resulting in less runoff,” she said. “Spraying is reduced or eliminated in fields that are planted for diversity. And many flower farms are bush-based, so those fields are not regularly plowed, which means fewer carbon emissions.”
Nelson reported that 80 to 90 percent of all flowers in America come from beyond our borders, where pesticide regulation is lax to nonexistent. Plants are sprayed with pesticides while still growing in the ground or in the greenhouse. Many flower heads—especially roses—are dipped in a fungicide before being packaged. When a box of flowers arrives in a port, it is likely to be fumigated. These are the ingredients in the bouquets into which we bury our faces—seeking fragrance—and then place on our tables, right next to our lovingly-prepared organic food.
Mass-produced flowers also put workers at risk, Nelson noted, whether they are spraying pesticides on rows of identical plants or inhaling fumes over open vats of fungicide. And commercial blooms just don’t deliver what Nelson always takes care to include in a Vases Wild bouquet: scent. A flower bred for traveling is not a flower bred for sniffing. When it comes to commercially grown flowers, looking “fresh as a daisy” is all important; scent is sacrificed in favor of longevity. That’s why Nelson grows her own fragrant beauties: roses (the shrub rose “Golden Celebration” is a favorite), peonies and sweet peas. In addition to scented flowers in her bouquets, she also includes cedar, salal, fern, alder branches, filbert catkins and white poplar (foraged on the beach, after obtaining permission). “When I sell a bouquet, I love it most when I can say ‘this bouquet is island grown’. But I’m always proud of my commitment to using all American-grown flowers, even when I can’t source all my blooms from Whidbey.”
Hairpiece created from sedum by Vases Wild. Photo by Shonda Hilton Photography
In her own garden, Nelson has something blooming all year long, both for her own pleasure and for the survival of pollinators. “When it’s warm enough for bees to wake up, I have something for them to eat. Once we get into summer, the garden is bursting with lush floral color and fragrance.” She likes to “stack” her plantings to “keep the soil covered and busy so nature doesn’t introduce her own agenda.” The governing principle for both her garden and her floral arranging is diversity of leaf and bloom.
As a grower and arranger, Nelson’s passion for slow flowers is deeply rooted. “To support my local economy. To keep from exposing myself or my customers to pesticides. To preserve American farmland. To encourage bees by providing bee habitat. And because local flowers lend themselves to a romantic, naturalistic kind of styling. There are so many reasons to love slow flowers!”
Melissa Brown of Flying Bear Farm inside her greenhouse. Photo by Marsha Morgan
Flying Bear Farm
Melissa Brown first discovered Whidbey Island as a child when her mother’s art was being shown in a Langley gallery. After that, her visits to the island were occasional, but the place was never too far from her mind or heart. As a young woman, she learned about plants by working at Seattle’s Tilth Garden, which is where she met her future husband, Benjamin Courteau. After they married, the couple teamed up with her parents to launch an experiment in intergenerational living. The four set about to find a property on Whidbey large enough to accommodate a homestead for two families and land enough to farm. When that land and homestead appeared near Langley, Flying Bear Farm was born.
“We’re interested in supplying ourselves and our community with things you don’t normally get,” said Brown, who grows flowers for her floral arrangements, sold under the name Flying Bear Design. Brown sees a cultural shift away from conventional floral arrangements to slow flowers. “There’s a desire for local flowers with a ‘gardeny’ look and natural fragrance.”
Weddding reception centerpiece by Melissa Brown, Flying Bear Farm. Photo by Krista Welch, Love Song Photo
That cultural shift is coming at a good time for Brown, because opening a flower shop is an expensive enterprise with an uncertain future. Overhead and the need for a large and diverse inventory make it difficult to make a go of it. And flowers, considered luxuries by most of us, are one of the first items to be sacrificed when money is tight. The 2008 recession forced many flower shops out of business, and in the years since the domestic trade hasn’t fully recovered.
What’s a flower grower, designer and seller to do?
One of Brown’s solutions is the “pop-up”—a temporary stand in front of, or inside, an existing retail business. A one-off, one-time farmer’s market stall. Flying Bear’s latest pop-up—held outside the Langley restaurant Kalakala over Valentine’s Day weekend—was a perfect example of what happens when young entrepreneurs join together to attract customers. Cooperation. Collaboration. Synergy.
“We brought everything: table, chairs, umbrella. We had a square reader for taking credit cards and tracking things. We had rustic buckets and wonky crates, and we used them to tell our story. I brought things to build our brand: galvanized French flower buckets and chalk boards,” she recounted. “I try to think of what people are going to expect when they buy flowers and then incorporate it into my ethos.”
Brown is convinced that part of the appeal of slow flowers is their authenticity. “Young people had grandparents who grew sweet peas, and those memories inform desire. There’s also the desire for the story—the story of where something comes from. We’ve grown up in a culture of obsolescence, everything fake and cheap and anonymous. People are rediscovering the importance of the story that’s attached to what they buy. Who grew it? Who made it? Where does it come from?”
As much as Brown enjoys creating a rustic ambience, she enjoys surprising her customers. She enjoys being the woman behind the accidental find. “There’s pleasure in discovery. People like coming upon something unexpected,” she said. “And then taking it home with them.”
Although Brown grows a variety of flowers, she also sources blooms from places like MilePost 19, Sonshine Flower Farm and Full Cycle Farm. Like Tobey Nelson, Brown appreciates the cooperative spirit among Whidbey Island flower farmers and envisions a future in which they intentionally coordinate their crops to help fill gaps in each other’s inventory.
Bridal bouquet by Melissa Brown, Flying Bear Farm. Photo by Krista Welch, Love Song Photo
Another of Brown’s workarounds to the lack of a bricks-and-mortar flower shop is to attract customers to the farm. This summer she plans to offer a CSA subscription for a weekly bouquet (recycled vase included) or a bucket of flowers (for those who like to arrange their own).
Although the farm and floral business is both a team effort and a family affair, Brown finds she has many more ideas than hours in the day to realize them. For someone so enterprising and inventive, the life of a slow flower farmer offers balance and the opportunity to…well, slow down.
“The best part is being around beauty all the time, having the opportunity see beauty wherever it is,” she said with a smile. “Even if I’m just weeding, I’m seeing the beauty of the soil.”
Kelly and Pam Uhlig of Sonshine Flower Farm at the Bayview Farmers’ Market. Photo by Dianna MacLeod
Sonshine Flower Farm
Three years ago, Pam and Kelly Uhlig sold off their goats and alpacas, plowed up the fenced pasture that fronted on their farmhouse, and began creating what would become a giant flower garden. Over time, they erected two large greenhouses, a poly-tunnel and a seed house. Downed cedars were milled into doors for the greenhouses and planks for the sides of raised beds. A hemlock tree became a potting table. Last spring, they added a long-awaited cooler—a 10′ x 12′ refrigerated space—that holds buckets of cut flowers along with the promise of a more flexible planting and harvesting timetable.
The Uhligs—a mother-daughter team—have remained true to their original intention to create a production flower farm that is gentle on the earth. To preserve water, they installed a drip irrigation system. To build soil fertility, they mulched with aged goat and alpaca manure. To keep hard rains from compacting the soil, they placed layers of cardboard over bare earth, allowing the cardboard to break down over the winter and add to the humus.
Bird’s-eye view of a portion of Sonshine Flower Farm, early spring. Photo by arborist Kyle Rapp, taken from 40 feet up a tree.
“I believe in being a good steward of the land,” said Pam. “If I spray, it’s certified to harm neither people nor the land.” Pam relies on the Organic Material Review Institute to guide her toward benign products. When arranging flowers, she rejects the spongy green material known as Oasis in favor of chicken wire and sphagnum moss, coconut husk fiber and biodegradable “floral soil.”
“I grow flowers to be used locally and sustainably. No fossil fuels for shipping, no dipping in chemicals,” Pam said. To her, Amy Stewart’s “Flower Confidential” is the revelatory book that should spawn a revolt against fast—and foreign—flowers.
The Uhligs plant their crops on a scale most of us can barely imagine: 10,000 bulbs, including tulips, ranunculus and anemones, were planted during the fall of 2015 while dahlia tubers were being dug up and stored in bulb crates for separating and replanting the following spring. This kind of mass planting requires massive planning, from the first day of the year (January for sweet peas) to the last (December for ordering annual seeds).
Pompon ranunculus. Photo by Kelly UhligSweet peas / Photo by Kelly Uhlig
But no amount of planning can account for the vagaries of weather and temperature. Sweet peas can finish by July 1 or last right through the month. Tulips can arrive on time or three weeks early, before flower buyers are prepared—emotionally and psychologically—for them. Early or late arrivals can pose a problem or offer an advantage, depending on the kind of bloom and the season’s progress. Because the price of flowers, like any commodity, is governed by supply and demand, some early arrivals are welcome. “Flowers are a mind game,” said Pam. “You can’t anticipate everything; you do try to get your product to market first.”
But no matter what the weather throws at her, planting is Pam Uhlig’s great passion. “A snapdragon seed is practically microscopic,” she observed. “Yet months later I’m cutting stalks of flowers from that plant for baby showers, weddings, memorial services.”
Although 10,000 bulbs may sound like an impossibly large amount, the Uhligs know that not all of those flowers will make it to market. “Birds, bugs, weather, predators…you lose a lot and you have to accept that,” said Kelly. “Bugs are attracted to white flowers, so they get chewed more than other colors.”
Of the flowers that survive, a portion are destined for the Bayview Farmers Market, where the Uhligs arrange and sell glorious bouquets under a tent that draws customers from all four corners. Another portion is meant for the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market, which means loading a van with buckets of tightly-bunched blooms and catching the first ferry to be on site shortly after dawn, when florists are shopping. Another portion ends up in the flower-arranging hands of Melissa Brown and Tobey Nelson.
Kelly Uhlig composes a bridal bouquet. Photo by Pam Uhlig
As much as the Uhligs enjoy bringing their flowers to the wholesale market in Seattle, they love the contact with customers that the Bayview Farmers Market provides. “Generally, guys want bright colors: orange, yellow, red. Women like the jewel tones and the muted colors,” Kelly observed. “But in the fall, as the days grow shorter and darker, everyone wants bright colors,” Pam added.
Pam, a graduate of the Edmonds Community College horticulture program, understands the importance of offering “leafy greens” with her flowers. Foliage provides a contrast in color, texture and shape to the flowers in a bouquet. Accordingly, she grows the sturdy and handsome ninebark and other deer-proof shrubs around the perimeter of the garden while interplanting purple cardinal basil and other striking foliage plants between rows of flowers.
The talent for growing flowers extends to knowing how to cut them to preserve their freshness and make them last. Pam offers bouquets that will, if treated correctly, hold for at least a week. “The trick is knowing when to cut…and using clean implements. Containers and clippers need to be sterile. Clip the leaves off a flower stalk, because foliage quickly rots when submerged in water.”
Just like the other slow flower growers on Whidbey, the Uhligs alternate between shears and social media. Kelly regularly posts photos and videos on Instagram to market what’s in season and to include admirers in the daily life of the farm, with all its tribulations and triumphs.
Despite either, mother and daughter look forward to each and every day, come rain or shine, deer or slugs, late frost or early warmth. They enthusiastically agree that slow flower farming—the cultivation of beauty and commitment to earth’s ecology—comes pretty close to a life lived in the Garden of Eden:
“Slow flowers express emotions, appeal to the senses, touch the soul.”
Cultivated, harvested and designed by the likes of Tobey Nelson, Melissa Brown and the Uhligs, how could it be otherwise?
RESOURCES “Flower Confidential,” Amy Stewart, Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill NC, 2007 “The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers,” Debra Prinzing, St. Lynn’s Press, Pittsburgh PA, 2012 “Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow and Farm,” Debra Prinzing, St. Lynn’s Press, Pittsburgh PA, 2013
Dianna MacLeod wore out her knees, bent her back and learned a little Latin in her own garden for 25 years before moving to Whidbey Island in 2011, and when she came she brought 300 of her green friends with her. Dianna has managed an organic demonstration garden, written grants for gardening nonprofits and opened her Seattle garden to Tilth and Northwest Perennial Alliance tours. She looks forward to wearing out her knees and bending her back on her own five acres sometime this year.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
BY KATE POSS Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor September 28, 2016
These are the days of cool and crisp weather, yellow-orange leaves, and apples red and green. Autumn calls some birds to travel south while others remain and prepare for winter weather.
Frances Wood’s book “Brushed by Feathers” commemorates a season of birds in the West (watercolor image by Frances Wood)
Naturalist Frances Wood observes bird migration to track the seasons. To mark the shift from summer to fall, Wood and her like-minded friend Linda Beeman waxed poetic to friends and admirers two days after the autumn equinox. Beeman read excerpts from her chapbook “Our Whidbey Year,” and Wood read from her book “Brushed by Feathers: A Year of Birdwatching in the West.”
“When I read her poetry, I thought she was a kindred spirit,” Woods said of Beeman’s way with words. “We’re both observers.”
“We thought we would begin in this most golden current season, the brink between late summer and early fall, when Gravensteins get turned into cider,” Beeman said.
During September, Wood notes, songbirds stop singing. “During the non-breeding season the section of a songbirds’ brain actually shrinks, making it impossible to sing, even if the urge arose,” she wrote. Swallows and warblers quietly fly south.
Swallows have already left for warmer climates (watercolor image by Frances Wood)
Wood noted that this time of year our regal great blue heron’s loose flight feathers show “gaps in its outstretched wings reminding me of a five-year-old’s toothless grin.”
Meanwhile, loons are arriving from Alaska and western Canada. They were sighted in Useless Bay and at Doublebluff Beach on the Equinox, according to Whidbey Audubon reports. In “Brushed by Feathers,” Wood notes that many of these large diving ducks known for their haunting calls stay through November before heading further south and that some remain all winter.
“For Thoreau, the loon’s call made ‘the woods ring with its wild laughter,’” Woods wrote in an October entry of her book. “Hearing the loon’s call makes me feel that all is right with the world, at least for the day. Like an overture setting the tone for an opera, the loon’s call announces the fall arrival of hundreds of ducks and seabirds into our bay.”
American robins enjoy autumn apples and pyracantha berries (watercolor image by Frances Wood)
For Beeman, autumn means that “banana slug trails reflected/in afternoon sunlight/track to their underground hibernations.” She writes of a robin that met its sudden end: “late season robin that mistook/my front door for sky/fatal error that rendered/an elegiac offering.”
Wood noted that the autumn apples attract robins, Steller’s jays, dark-eyed juncos, white-crowned sparrows, northern flickers, and even pileated woodpeckers to her backyard trees, where deer also arrive to stand on their hind legs to pick higher fruit. Quail forage under her Nootka rose bushes.
Since Whidbey Island is located in the Pacific Flyway, migrant visitors arriving in late September from the north include wigeons, ducks, coots, and “forty species of waterfowl,” along with red-tailed hawks, which join our resident birds.
As the cool, wet, windy weather moves in, we take comfort in warm soups, Beeman observes in her poem “Wind Storm”:
“lichen-furred alder limbs/hit the roof shot sounds/startle soup makers within/who stir wind moans/into their vegetable broths.”
In addition to her books, Wood has designed Collectable Bird Cards, newly printed and packaged. She said that her husband’s baseball card collection featuring a photo of the player on one side and statistics about the player on the reverse side had triggered the idea for her cards. As a former elementary teacher and now grandmother, Wood said she is on the lookout for ways to connect kids with nature, and her Collectable Bird Cards meet that need. One side features her watercolor drawings; the reverse contains bird facts with boxes to check if the bird is seen or heard. One of the birds depicted is an American goldfinch, Washington’s state bird. While a bright yellow during breeding season, it molts and morphs to a dull olive color during fall and winter. Wood’s goal is to create cards for the top sixty of our area’s common birds.
The American goldfinch is our state bird. It loses its bright plumage in the fall (watercolor image by Frances Wood)
When asked about her favorite bird, Wood said, “it’s whichever one is in front of my binoculars.” But the truth is she is really into the island’s pigeon guillemot population.
“They are the only seabird that regularly breeds in the Puget Sound,” she said. “We have 26 colonies of about 1,000 birds. They are noted for their bright fire-engine red feet and mouth lining. They are entertaining to watch. Their eggs are laid in bluff burrows.”
Wood has organized a cadre of citizen scientists who regularly observe the black sea birds and complete weekly surveys of their observations. For more information visit www.pigeonguillemot.org.
Artist and Naturalist Frances Wood (photo courtesy of Frances Wood Web page)
To learn more about the many hats of Frances Wood, visit her Web page at www.franceswood.net. Her growing collection of bird portraits can be viewed at the Rob Schouten Gallery in Freeland and at www.robschoutengallery.com/frances-wood.
Poet Linda Beeman (photo by Lorraine Healy)
Besides her work as a realtor at Windermere Real Estate/South Whidbey, Linda Beeman is an award-winning poet and author of “Wallace, Idaho,” a chapbook describing the gritty life in the small silver-mining town where she grew up. For more about her, visit her amazon page here.
Image at the top: Pigeon guillemots have bright red feet and nest in bluff hollows (watercolor image by Frances Wood)
Kate Poss worked as a library assistant at the Langley Library until last June. She was thrilled to work for three summers as a chef aboard a small Alaskan tour boat from 2008 to 2010. She was a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles for many years before moving to Whidbey Island where she likes “talking story,” hiking, hosting salons, and writing her novel.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
BY JUDY FELDMAN Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
September 21, 2016
If you aren’t listening closely, a conversation with Johnny Palka, neurobiologist, retired professor, former board member of the Whidbey Institute and numerous other Whidbey Island non-profits, might lead to you believe he’s a bundle of walking contradictions.
He loves living in the Pacific Northwest, but he lives half the time in Minnesota.
He was drawn to become a neurobiologist to understand the building blocks of life. And, yet, as he dug below the surface of the parts, he developed a passion for the interconnectedness that makes everything work.
He taught at the University of Washington for 35 years. There he made a practice of tightly following his syllabus for each course out of respect for his students. At the same time, he regularly tasked them with reading emerging original research that became accessible along an unplanned timeline; he wanted them to embrace new information as part of their learning experience.
Though a biologist, he wrote an intensely researched book about his home country of Slovakia. (Johnny is a two-time refugee, arriving in the United States in 1941 after escaping from Hitler, and again in 1949 after escaping from Stalin.) In this book he explored Slovakia’s social, cultural and political history while telling a deeply personal story about his own family and the major contributions they made to Slovak history. (The American edition came out in 2012. You can find out about it at http://www.jpalka.com.)
A Rhododrendron in the aptly-named Rhododendron State Park on Whidbey (photo by Johnny Palka)
Now Johnny is returning to biology and writing a blog called Nature’s Depths (http://www.naturesdepths.com). The goal of the blog is to inspire people to use personal experience coupled with scientific understanding to connect ever more deeply with the fullness of the natural world. This blog might turn into another book— but maybe not.
If you listen to Palka over the course of a full conversation, you begin to see that the seemingly antithetical pairs reflect how his approach to understanding life is deeply integrated, and why a blog is part of his reality for the time being.
“My career as a neurobiologist and a professor led me to believe that a thoughtful focus on the building blocks of nature, and on their functions, can lead individuals to an awareness of connections,” he said. “I want to communicate the interplay between reductionism (a study of parts) and holism (a study of systems). But most of all, I want my photos and writing to offer a bridge—a means for a non-scientific audience to actively experience the science of the world in which they live.
“When I launched Nature’s Depths last November, my plan was to do a post every two weeks for a year and then assess whether to try to convert the collected pieces into a book,” Palka continued. “At this point, more than halfway through the timeline, I’m still thinking about it. There might be a book if a publisher is interested in it. Otherwise I am finding that writing a blog is very satisfying, and the feedback has been very encouraging.”
The wording of his posts consistently reflects his philosophy:
“Each living being is an individual at the same time that it is a member of a species, a population, and an ecosystem.”
A Wilbert Swamp Lantern found in South Whidbey State Park (photo by Johnny Palka)
“Flowers are what they are. Humanity breeds many varieties of flowers to make them…more affecting to us, but they are nature’s creation, not our own. It seems only right that we should examine them closely on their own terms.”
“How is it that the shoot of a plant typically grows upward, the root grows downward, and the branches grow sideways?”
Examples of topics he has addressed include: what is the origin of the colors of flowers, leaves and the blue sky; how photosynthesis transforms the energy of sunlight into sugars; why trees in northern climates don’t freeze to death in bitter winters; and even such broad questions as what is life.
Palka’s word choices accentuate his approach. If you read multiple posts that he’s written, including those in the archives, you’ll see a pattern of very open language. He asks his readers to “visualize.” He walks them through explanations of complex biological processes and then asks them to reflect on their own experiences in nature. His writing is not spiritual in focus, but it might have you examining your understanding of life and spirit.
Possibly, as yet another example of a contradiction that is not one, he sets a gentle, yet rigorous tone of observation and research before judgment. He asks humans to not anthropomorphize plants but, instead, to look deeply at them as a way to appreciate the attributes we share and the many differences between us, as a way to recognize and respect the full spectrum of life.
Johnny Palka (photo courtesy of the author)
Palka’s blog is such a consistent reflection of the man that, as you read it, you can hear him speaking to you. You can imagine sitting across from him; his chin is tucked slightly down toward his chest so his eyes look up at you, as if you’re positioned higher than him—classic body language to put you at ease. And yet the resulting gaze implores you to set aside your assumptions, observe and THINK.
We, here on Whidbey, are surrounded, more noticeably than most, by a gorgeous and relatively healthy ecosystem. In offering us his blog, Johnny Palka reminds us that we are not only a beneficiary of that ecosystem. We are an inseparable part of it.
Judy Feldman, E.D. of the Organic Farm School, is an observer of systems, a weaver of complexity, and a huge fan of farms and farmers.She also enjoys looking for beauty in unexpected places.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
BY DAVID WELTON Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor October 21, 2015
The Whidbey Camano Land Trust sponsored a “Walk & Talk with Fungi” along the forest trails at the Whidbey Institute on Saturday, Oct. 17. Ida Gianopulos, Land Protection Assistant at the Land Trust, emphasized the ecology of Fungi.
The Whidbey Institute is one of many organizations and individuals that have established conservation easements in partnership with the Land Trust to preserve the environment. Similar Whidbey Camano Land Trust’s guided tours involve the community, fostering appreciation and protection for our natural surroundings.
“The first ground-rule of mushroom hunting is keep your eyes on the ground,” said Ida Gianopulos, Land Protection Assistant at Whidbey Camano Land Trust, as she guided 20 or more curious souls through the forest at the Whidbey Institute.
Gianopulos bantered with her students while communicating her knowledge of the biology and “lifestyles” of the fungal “Kingdom.”
Despite a lifelong interest in Mycology, wild edibles and a degree in Ecology from Humboldt State University, Gianopulos professed not to be expert at identifying the thousands of mushroom species and relies on a field book. Incorrect identification can result in disaster. “If you don’t know what it is,” she said, “kick it; don’t pick it.”
A student shared her discovery of a mushroom cap just as it was bursting through the soil. It may be the immature fruit of the deadly Amanita, Gianopulos noted, which can develop beautiful red and white coloration.
“Don’t eat this,” Gianopulos advised. Toxins are not absorbed through the skin, but it’s important to wash your hands before handling food.
“Deadman’s Fingers” contribute to the decay of fallen branches, restoring nutrients to the soil. Some mushrooms feed on cellulose, others on lignin, the chemical that imparts stiffness and rigidity to trees.
Georgia Edwards tapped a puffball, prompting the release of a cloud of spores.
Nick Lyle got a close-up of Jean Whitesavage’s orange mushroom, with a “baby” at the base of the stem.
“Sometimes if you look up from the ground, you’ll see shelf mushrooms on trees,” Gianopulos said. Some are specific to spruce and others to Douglas firs.
Paloma examined a pretty mushroom under the watchful eye of her mother, Jennifer Schiavone-Ruthensteiner. Paloma was the youngest participant and was most excited by the “puffballs.”
Image at top: Ida Gianopulos, Land Protection Assistant at the Land Trust (all photos by David Welton).
David Welton is a retired physician and staff photographer for Whidbey Life magazine.
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