The rain had stopped. I opened the door out to the back patio so that I could hear the birds sing their joyful morning songs. The sun (yes, the sun!) was just beginning to move past the grove of large Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) delivering its warming rays of life to my garden. It was a beautiful morning.

Then I saw the weeds.

Back in February, we had a dry stretch and I was able to weed the entire garden. It looked great. The rains returned and like guests overstaying their welcome, it settled in for weeks and weeks. Weeds love a constant supply of moisture and mild temperatures so new seeds germinated and now I have quite a job ahead of me.

I sat, drinking my morning tea, admiring my wife’s ability to make a delightful bran muffin, trying to come up with a way to enjoy this very positive change in the weather without crawling around on the ground pulling weeds. I thought about hiring a young helper, but the budget is still a little tight and youngsters seem to have much more expensive goals these days than they did when I was a kid. Stalling as long as I could, I finally got out of the chair, put on my boots, my vest and my hat when my phone rang.

“Ed here”

“Ed, I’m heading out to the fields today to see if I can get some new shots – wanna ride along?”

It was my photographer friend at Iseli Nursery – and he was asking me to join him on a photo shoot? Sounds better than weeding!

“I’ll be there in 30 minutes.” I said while calculating in my head that I was sure I could get there in at least 20. I kissed my wife and was off.

Mr. Smith met me at the door of the office and out we went.

“I’m looking for cones today, Ed. With all this rain, it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve been out there. I’m sure we’ll find some new developments.” He said with a big grin.

Over the next three or four hours we found dozens of treasures. We both got excited every time we spotted something we hadn’t seen before. 2010 appears to be a fantastic year for cones in the Pacific Northwest. We found cones so tiny that their details could only be seen with a magnifying lens (or my friend’s macro lens on his camera). Some cones were large and fat and were easy to spot from some distance. Others were camouflaged with nearly the same colors as their surrounding foliage. Some were green or pink or purple or combinations of all three. Some appeared like fat swollen nodules stacked one upon the other. Others had many long wings protruding from their textured outer skin. Some had openings as if to allow the pollen to enter, others were tight and solid looking making me wonder how the pollen entered at all.

It was an exhilarating experience and I was almost giddy. Near the end of our journey, we came across a small crop of Pinus leucodermis ‘Indigo Eyes’. These wonderful small trees were covered with cones. Old, dry, brown cones were the lowest on these three to four foot trees. Large, dark purplish blue cones adorned the whorls where this year’s new growth had emerged and tiny, indigo colored cones sat in clusters of two or three or even as many as seven surrounding the developing apical buds. This was a cone lover’s tree if I had ever seen one.

I told my host that I thought I was about to have cone-gasm. My friend glanced over at me with a combination of question and surprise on his face and then we both burst out laughing. It was one of those rare laughs that seems uncontrollable and goes on and on. I haven’t had an experience like that in quite a number of years. Finally the laughter subsided; we wiped the tears from our eyes and swapped Jean Iseli stories as we drove back to my car.

I didn’t get any weeding done in my garden, but I’ve got memories of a great cone hunting adventure in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Ed-
Conifer Lover

Ps, I’ll ask Mr. Smith to post some of the other cone shots at our Facebook group – join us there to see more pictures from our great cone-hunting adventure (click the link in the right side menu).