Category: Plants

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When Pumpkins Become Boats

Pumpkin on Center Street - Daybreak UT Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Pumpkin on Center Street – Daybreak UT
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
The Ginormous Pumpkin Regatta began in Daybreak, Utah on Oct 18 with eight 600 lb pumpkins lined up on the edge of the community’s lake. The action began at 8:30 am when a forklift driver picked up Pumpkin #1 and eased it into the water. The pumpkin slid off its pallet and floated away from the shore.

Lying in wait was a small motorboat. The woman in the front of the boat leaned way out over the bow and put her hands on the pumpkin.

“Got it!” she called. This was the cue for the man in the back of the boat to fire up the outboard motor. Together they pushed the giant pumpkin around the nearby pier and into a shallow holding area.

Here, three people in hip waders were waiting in the water. Two steadied the pumpkin while the third cut a big square hole out of the top of the pumpkin. The cut-out square was tossed aside and all three reached down into the pumpkin to pull out handfuls of seeds and stringy pulp.

This is how they turned the giant pumpkin into a boat.

By now Pumpkin #2 had been delivered, and the work continued.

It wasn’t long before the announcer called the youth racers to come forward. Three brave competitors under the age of seventeen stepped up. They each chose a pumpkin and climbed in. Someone handed each of them a kayak paddle and pointed to the start line. Just how unwieldy these boats were was immediately obvious as two veered off in opposite directions while the third turned round in circles. But with a little practice, the teens were able to get the “boats” going in a straight line –more or less.

By then some serious new competitors were beginning to gather on the pier in elaborate costumes – a long haired mermaid, an Indian with a feathered headdress, King Neptune with his trident.

The day’s Grand Finale would include all eight giant pumpkins in a hundred yard all out sprint for the golden pumpkin trophy and the title of Gourd’s Man of the Year. I didn’t get to see this race. I had to get back to Logan.

But I had gotten to see Logan’s Giant Pumpkin festival a few weeks earlier. Here, giant pumpkins lined both sides of Center Street. One by one they were brought to the stage and weighed on a giant scale. The last six all weighed over 1,000 pounds. The big winner that day weighed in at 1,917 pounds.

I went home that day with a packet of giant pumpkin seeds in my pocket. I was warned that they were hard to grow.

But why not give it a try?

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild about all things bright and beautiful in Utah.

Pumpkin Regatta - Daybreak UT Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Pumpkin Regatta – Daybreak UT
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Vince Guaraldi’s Great Pumpkin Waltz, Courtesy & Copyright Concord/Craft Recordings https://craftrecordings.com/
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Ginormous Pumpkin Regatta, LiveDAYBREAK, Daybreak Master Planned Community, https://www.mydaybreak.com/live_news_detail_T16_R550

Upcoming Events, Utah Giant Pumpkin Growers, https://www.utahpumpkingrowers.com/events.html

How Giant Pumpkins Grow so Big, The Associated Press, https://youtu.be/gRUNB3YA2FI Duration: 2:19 minutes

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May Day in Mendon

May Day in Mendon: Mendon May Pole Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Mendon May Pole
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

Mendon Glacier Lilly Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Mendon Glacier Lilly
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

Mendon Glacier Lilly Close Up Courtesy & © Mary Heers, PhotographerMendon Glacier Lilly Close Up
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

Mary's Neighbor's May Queen Crown Courtesy & &copy' Mary Heers, PhotographerMary’s Neighbor’s May Queen Crown
Courtesy & &copy’ Mary Heers, Photographer

Never have I seen the coming of spring celebrated with more flair than Mendon’s May Day.

On the first Saturday in May, Maypoles with 20 foot long ribbons appear in the Mendon town square. By ten o’clock a couple hundred residents have gathered around the poles. A piano in the gazebo strikes the first chords and the May Queen and her entourage step around the corner of the church and onto the green. Suddenly everybody gathered in the square begins to sing. “Come to the woodlands, away, away”. Most people know the whole song by heart.

The queen is crowned and the real showstopper, the braiding of the Maypoles, begins. Mendon’s young girls, grades 1-5, pick up the ribbons. Braiding the poles is complicated. The girls have been practicing after school three times a week since the beginning of April. Last week I dropped in on one of the practices and counted: 3 Maypoles, 64 girls, and a little bit of chaos. There’s a march, a minuet. More songs. Stepping in, stepping out, kneeling, skipping. The girls bob up and down as they sing ”Apples blossoms swing and sway..”

Mendon is one of Cache Valley’s oldest pioneer towns, tucked up against the Wellsville Mountains. Winters were long and hard, and the coming of spring eagerly awaited. The beginnings of May Day can be traced back to the days when the young girls in the pioneer settlement raced up the hillsides to gather spring wildflowers to put in their hair.

The first May Queen, Seny Sorenson, was crowned with a hand woven wreath of flowers in 1863. Since then, every year, rain or shine, a queen has been crowned in the town square, and the maypoles have been braided with the same songs and dance steps. 160 years, with only a few changes.

The queen’s name is now drawn out of a hat from a pool of the town’s high school juniors. And this year, for the first time ever, the young girls will be getting store bought dresses. In the past, the mothers were expected to sew the matching dresses for their daughters. Not knowing about this tradition, you can imagine how bewildered I was when I had just moved to Mendon and answered a knock on my door. A woman I didn’t know handed me a dress pattern and proceed to say something about altering the interfacing. I was pretty sure she was speaking English, but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Luckily my good friend and neighbor quickly brought me up to speed. This wonderful neighbor had actually been Mendon’s May Queen over 50 years ago. “Do you want to see my crown?” she asked as she opened the door to her hall closet. And there it was, a tight ring of pink and white flowers, secured to a tiny satin pillow with a fading ribbon.

I had one more stop to make. I hopped in my car and drove up to the Deep Canyon trailhead high above Mendon. A short way up the trail I found it– a whole hillside covered with curly yellow Glacier Lilies, the “early blooming flowers” from the May Day song “Maying and Straying…” And believe me, this was a sight worth singing about.

This is Mary Heers, and I’m Wild about Springtime in Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright © Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers AND Courtesy & Copyright © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Mendon May Day, https://www.mendonutah.net/may_day.htm

May Day Celebration, Mendon City, Utah, https://mendoncity.org/may-day-celebration/

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Ute Ladies’ Tresses – Utah Orchids

Ute Ladies' Tresses at the Mendon Meadow Preserve, Bear River Land Conservancy, Courtesy & © Mark Brunson, Photographer
Ute Ladies’ Tresses, Spiranthes diluvialis, at the Mendon Meadow Preserve
Bear River Land Conservancy
Courtesy & © Mark Brunson, Photographer

The Mendon Meadow Preserve, Bear River Land Conservancy Courtesy & © Mark Brunson, Photographer The Mendon Meadow Preserve
Bear River Land Conservancy
Courtesy & © Mark Brunson, Photographer

Bumblebee on Ute Ladies' Tresses at the Mendon Meadow Preserve, Bear River Land Conservancy Courtesy & © Mark Brunson, Photographer Bumblebee on Ute Ladies’ Tresses at the Mendon Meadow Preserve
Bear River Land Conservancy
Courtesy & © Mark Brunson, Photographer

It’s a warm summer evening on the west side of Cache Valley, where a small group of volunteers has gathered beside a green pasture. We hear the rattling bugle calls of sandhill cranes in the distance. A Swainson’s hawk scolds us as it circles overhead. As we walk into the field, our steps disturb dragonflies and leopard frogs. But we’re not here for the wildlife. We’re after something rarer: orchids!

Wait, what? Orchids? You mean those delicate tropical plants with colorful blossoms that city folks grow in humid greenhouses? Well, yes actually. It turns out that orchids grow on almost every type of land surface across the globe, including some in Utah.

The orchid we’re seeking has drawn the attention of the federal government. You see, while the orchid family has nearly 28,000 species worldwide, many of those are rare. The one we’re looking for, called Ute Ladies’-tresses, is on the federal Threatened Species list, which gives it legal protection from human impacts until it’s no longer at risk of disappearing.

In Cache County, Ute Ladies’-tresses are guarded by the Bear River Land Conservancy, a nonprofit whose mission is to protect open space and working farms and ranches in northern Utah. After orchids were found in a pasture near the small town of Mendon, the Conservancy received funding to purchase and manage the land in ways that could help the orchids to thrive, and to provide data to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about how the population is doing.

That’s why we volunteers are gathered in a pasture on a Friday evening. Our job is to carefully walk the property, looking for blossoms. When one of us sees an orchid in bloom, we mark the spot with a bamboo plant stake. Then someone trails along behind them – usually that’s me – and records the location using a global positioning system. By taking these GPS measurements, we not only count how many plants have flowered that year, but we also map their locations to learn where we might be losing or gaining orchids over time.

Ute Ladies’-tresses has narrow leaves, hard to distinguish from the surrounding grasses and sedges and rushes. But then it sends up 1-5 flower stalks, up to a foot high. Each stalk has numerous small white flowers arranged in a graceful spiral. The plant likes to grow on solid ground that floods at some point in the year – a streambed that’s dry except during spring runoff, or a flood-irrigated pasture like the one in Mendon. At our site, the first flowers emerge around Pioneer Day, and new ones continue to appear till about Labor Day.

Monitoring this population since 2013, we’ve learned a lot about Ute Ladies’-tresses. One key finding is that flower numbers fluctuate widely from year to year. Our highest count was nearly 2,000 flowering specimens in 2017. But in the very dry summer of 2021, we counted fewer than 30. That year was scary if you’re trying to protect a rare plant, But these orchids live for several years, flowering only when conditions are right, and last year we found more than 1,400.

You see, even if a plant is rare, that doesn’t have to mean it’s fragile. Some rare plants are, to be sure, but Ute Ladies’-tresses is resilient. In fact, last fall the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing the species from the Threatened list. One reason they feel they can do so is the continued protection it gets from groups like Bear River Land Conservancy. And so I look forward to many more August evenings in a Mendon meadow, sharing time with this lovely orchid.

I’m Mark Brunson, and I’m wild about Utah’s rare plants.

Credits:

Images Courtesy & Copyright Mark Brunson, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections and J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin. https://upr.org/
Text: Mark Brunson,
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah pieces authored by Mark Brunson

Ute Ladies’ Tresses in Wet Pasture, Bear River Land Conservancy, https://www.bearriverlandconservancy.org/mendon-meadows

Ute Ladies’ Tresses, Utah Species, Fieldguide, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, State of Utah, https://fieldguide.wildlife.utah.gov/?species=spiranthes%20diluvialis

Species Profile for Ute ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes diluvialis), US Fish & Wildlife Service, https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/species/2159

Delmatier, Charmaine, Ute Lady’s Tresses (Spiranthes diluvialis), Plant of the Week, USDA Forest Service, 2016, US Department of Agriculture(USDA), https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/spiranthes_diluvialis.shtml

St. John, Loren, Ogle, Dan, USDA NRCS, Ute Lady’s Tresses Spiranthes diluvialis Sheviak, Natural Resources Conservation Service, US Department of Agriculture(USDA), https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_spdi6.pdf

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Cattail and Teasel

Cattail and Teasel: Josie's Nature Log Page. Used by Permission. Photo Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Josie’s Nature Log Page
Used by Permission
Photo Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Teasel in Bloom with Bumble Bee Photo Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer Teasel in Bloom with Bumble Bee
Photo Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Cattail and Teasel in Bloom Photo Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer Cattail and Teasel in Bloom
Photo Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Dried Teasel Photo Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer Dried Teasel
Photo Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

For many, this is the season transition between summer and back to school. This month, along with the generous gifts of caramel apples, whiteboard markers, and number 2 pencils, a child handed me a green notebook and a request. One of the greatest compliments a teacher could possibly receive, in my opinion, from a student having never been on any of my class lists, is an invitation to make a writing dialogue journal, a pen pal exchange with no grades or due dates attached. Today her entry concludes with, “Also I drew a picture of you and me in pencil.” I withdraw from the notebook’s back flap a flattering illustration of flowers, smiles, and sun rays, grab my colored pencils, and head outside to write.

Terry Tempest Williams honors a similar marshy invitation, begging us to enter the wonders of the wetlands, in her book “Between Cattails” with exquisite Peter Parnall illustrations. Amid snails and scuds, damselflies and waterlilies, red-winged blackbirds and mosquito tumblers, I am drawn to the familiar cattails. Having just spent some lazy summer days reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants,” I now know that one can appreciate a cattail for its cucumber-tasting pith and protein-packed pollen, its gel that can soothe sunburns, and its fluff that can be used as tinder to light a fire or as soft yet absorbent layers in bedding. She taught me that “one of the words for cattail in the Potawatomi language …. means ‘we wrap the baby in it.’” When she takes students outside, she lets the plants teach them.

Many children I teach can identify cattails, but as I take my Josie journal out to the marsh to compose my writing response, I find another familiar plant that I cannot name. Quickly I realize that it has pale purple flowers; I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in any color other than brown. Once again I find how unaware I have been, and a simple plant guide check reveals the name Dipsacus fullonum, or common teasel. It is an invasive tall plant with a spiky thistle-like flower head and more spiky spears growing up around it. Small dense flowers, from 250 to over a thousand of them, each blossom for only one day. I had only ever noticed it after its biennial life cycle: flowering, dying, then persisting as a dried stem and flower head the next season. Dipsacus comes from a Greek word meaning “thirst,” referring to the leaf cups at the stalk that collect rainwater and catch insects. Sometimes listed as noxious species, this non-native plant was brought from Europe and valued for teasing wool. Today I see bees are drawn to them, and next year finches and other seed-loving birds will visit.

Turning her drawing into my nature journal for this day’s outing, I add my plant perspective. I add some silver to the brown in my teasel-y hair and purple flowers to her shirt. She wrote that “writing makes me feel in my element” and when I take writing outside and really take time to notice the details, I couldn’t agree more.

I’m Shannon Rhodes, and I am wild about Utah.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Nature journal entry used with permission from Josie Dorsch and her parent Breanna Studenka, All Rights Reserved
Audio: Crickets Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://upr.org/
    Birds: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Shannon Rhodes, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Wild About Utah Pieces by Shannon Rhodes, https://wildaboututah.org/author/shannon-rhodes/

iNaturalist. Wild Teasel. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/56002-Dipsacus-fullonum

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. 2013. https://www.robinwallkimmerer.com/

National Park Service. Exotic Species: Common Teasel. https://www.nps.gov/articles/common-teasel.htm

Tilley, Derek. Commonly Occurring Wetland Plant Species for Idaho and Utah NRCS Wetlands Delineators. March 2019. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/plantmaterials/idpmctn13441.pdf

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Common Teasel. https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/plants/common-teasel

Williams, Terry Tempest. Between Cattails. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1985. https://www.terrytempestwilliams.com/