Leek, bolted

Today I slept in till 9 am.

Heaven!

In the morning I sorted the giant pile of recycling accumulating outside the kitchen, and then I cruised around for hours taking pictures of flowers and fields and farm cats. An exciting development came in the afternoon when I stumbled on a pair of Pacific-Slope Flycatchers nesting just outside the front of the intern house. The lighting conditions were quite low, so no dazzling pictures to offer today. Very exciting though, I can't wait to watch them do interesting things.

While taking pictures this afternoon I spent a good amount of time crawling around in the leek beds, photographing interesting grasses and weeds and insects. The leeks are on their way out; soon we won't have them to sell until the next crop matures in the fall. It's not that they've all been harvested--there are still quite a few growing in the beds. However, the general rise in temperature has sent a signal to many of them that it's time to reproduce. This means they're beginning to bolt, a horticultural term for a plant shifting its energy into flowering and consequently seed production. A bolted leek is not for eating--the stalk becomes fibrous, bitter, basically unpalatable. The same holds true for many other crops, including lettuce, greens, and herbs.

That being so a leek produces a fascinatingly shaped flowering body, distinctly allium-like.


Backblipped--flycatcher Saturday; pepper Friday; hummer Saturday.