We have had crazy hot weather for ever, it seems. The air just sucks the moisture out of you. I’ve been drinking a gallon to a gallon and a half of water during the day. One day I felt my nose running and was very surprised to find it was a bloody nose. It’s only the beginning of July! What is August going to be like?? Maybe the entire state of Washington (and beyond) will dry up and burn. We’ve already had several wildfires; the air smells like smoke. My long-awaited backpack trip was cancelled because the trail was closed due to a wildfire. How can anyone deny climate change? (And we are STILL all driving our cars!)

Oh blessed relief! The Rain God took pity and it has been raining since midnight last night. It smells like moist hay outside.

I’ve been busy collecting seed. The plants are desperately finishing their reproducing. However, I think the buckwheats, Eriogonum heracleoides and E. compositum, for example, have suffered from the lack of moisture, because the seed was mostly no good. I’ve recently collected blanket flower, fleabane, and squirrel tail.

My other preoccupation at work is monitoring Silene spaldingii, Spalding’s catchfly. Three Wenatchee BLM interns came to Spokane to help monitor, and also to locate patches of weeds to be eradicated. They were Reed, Justin and Jenny. It was way more fun hiking around with Reed, and for one day, with all three interns, monitoring the catchfly. It’s not a particularly beautiful plant. It has no showy flower, just a tiny white rim of a corolla, but I am fond of it. It’s green when most everything else is senescing or senesced. It’s wonderfully sticky and has little bugs and vegetative debris stuck to it.

This coming week, when I SHOULD have been on an eight-day backpack, I will be collecting seed and monitoring more Silene. I do love it out there, despite the heat, and the entire next week will only be in the 80’s, instead of 90’s or low 100’s.

A white bitterroot, normally pink, found at Swanson Lakes Wildlife Area

Bug at Juniper Dunes, seen while monitoring Cryptantha leucophaea in June.