August delights

If you're a long-time reader of my blog, you know that every year at this time, I tell you all about how I used to hate August, but I don't hate it anymore. Some of my best memories are from August. And not only is August not the worst month, it's a pretty fantastic month in its own right. (Really, I like every month except January and February.)

This is the time of year of fields of wild sunflowers, the last weeks of shaved ice shacks, food trucks, fresh home-grown produce, and monsoonal thunderstorms. I'm not a fan of the heat, but at least there's enough good things to counter it.

My day off this week was Thursday, and since it was cooler and overcast, I ran up my favorite trail of North Canyon. It wasn't raining when I started, but it rained most of the run. Sometimes it made it hard to see because of my glasses, but mostly it was fine. Except running in a wet shirt can be painful.

I don't recall a more wildflowery August, and there were many wildflowers I don't recall seeing before, including fireweed. I didn't get very good pictures, but let me tell you, few things are more striking than a massive patch of blue chicory flowers on a cloudy morning. They almost glow.

Richardson's geraniums are in full bloom.

They put up a new sign! There are no longer X's through the undesirable trailmates.  

I found a wild thimbleberry and had to taste it.

August is nice, but I will forever be a fall-ophile, so red leaves are always meaningful to me.

Here's some fireweed towering over thimbleberry plants.

 In the last few weeks, we have accumulated zucchini from a few different places. For Christmas, I got an herb garden, and most of the herbs died, but I have more basil than I know what to do with. So I used ingredients to make tomato zucchini cobbler, one of my favorite summertime dishes, but I added basil to the topping, and it was wonderful as usual.

 When we have abundant plum crops, I enjoy making plum rosemary upside-down cake. Our plum crop is bad this year, but we have lots of apricots, so instead I made apricot basil upside-down cake. The apricots weren't very prominent, but it was still a delightful cake.

I have been running on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail for five years now (not continuously, obviously!), and occasionally I have noticed a strange fenced area on top of one of the hills. It's not prominent, and you can only see it from certain perspectives. Three years ago, I tried to find it, but I missed it. I figured they must have removed it. But more recently I spotted it again, so on Friday night I tried to find it.

 I found it. I don't know what it is. It appears somewhat old, as much of the fence is rusted over. It wasn't locked, so I went inside, but I don't know what it's for. There was barbed wire on the ground, so I didn't want to do much exploring. The tall grass and weeds were itchy enough; I didn't need any barbs!

 I decided to proceed to a random fenced area in a hidden meadow, which I discovered three years ago when I was looking for the fenced area I just found. These fence posts surround a small grove of trees that don't look like native trees, and the wiring has fallen off the posts.

 I also found some kind of trough or something in the ground.

 I have no idea what that was for either. Are these part of North Salt Lake's agricultural past?

One of the best parts of August is picking fruit. A wet spring means that our apricots are later than usual. They are also buggier than usual. We'll have an occasional earwig, but this year lots of the fruits are full of worms and eggs.

I also picked some plums and grapes. (Grape season is just in its beginning stages; plum season is right now, but we don't have many.)

The fruit trees take care of themselves. We are not gardeners; most vegetables we try just end up dying. But we do have some tomatoes!

August might not have any holidays, but I like to live in the moment and appreciate what it does have.