Dennis Moore: Stand and deliver! Your lupins or your life!
Man in Carriage: But… we haven’t got any lupins.
Dennis Moore: Don’t try to fob me off with any of your lupinless trickery! Your lupins, I say!
Woman in Carriage: But we don’t have any lupins!
Dennis Moore: Oh dear… no lupins? You haven’t even got a couple of lupins?
Man: No, no lupins.
Monty Python: The “Dennis Moore” sketch
Full disclosure: The flowers above are not lupins, they’re foxgloves. All parts of the plant are toxic.
But they look enough like lupins to my untrained eye that I had to dig up the Dennis Moore sketch. Do you know the song?
What’s up with the lupins foxgloves, Steve?
We fired up the Zephyr (our dinghy) and motored to the head of Roscoe Bay to revisit our favorite swimming hole on the banks of Black Lake. The first part of the trail was lined with foxglove.
It’s a short walk to the lake along a small stream that drains into Roscoe Bay. There are signs that the stream was “enhanced” at some point, possibly for logging.
After considerable scrambling due to an impressive number of trees that fell across the trail during the winter, we reached the swimmin’ hole.
When last we were here, the water was full of happy bathers. But not today, the water and the air will be warmer in a week or two.
On the way back to Étude we took a closer look at the waterfall.
Bonus! A short discourse on stern tying.
When a boat is at anchor, it will swing in a circle as the wind and water dictate. You have to leave a lot of room between boats because they don’t all swing in the same direction at the same time. You can fit a lot more boats into a given space if everyone ties their stern to something on shore. This prevents swing and lines the vessels up like cars in a parking lot. Which I suppose is what we are.
Depending on conditions, doing a stern tie can be easy or awful. The technique is to get into the dinghy clutching the end of a spool of polypropoline line (it floats). You go to shore, find something to wrap the line around, then return to your boat and tie off the line to both stern cleats. Retrieving the line is easy, just untie the end and haul it in. Of course you wind up with quite a pile of polypropoline in the cockpit that needs to be neatly returned to the spool. Ideally by Michelle or another onboard guest. Be warned.
Michael Barnes
June 18, 2024 — 3:42 am
Dear Steve and Mary Anne!
Thank you for the foxglove close-ups! They were a favorite of children’s book author Tascha Tudor, who, with her many corgis, watered hers with a aged manure ‘tea’ that caused them to grow to be enormous! (She hated African Violets, I’m sad to say,, with “their disgusting hairy leaves!!”)
Scientific name is digitalis, and heart medicine is derived from the Foxglove plant. I carry three nitroglycerin pills with me always–in case of emergency! Such is the life of a gardening heart patient/survivor! Maybe I need to carry some foxglove seeds!
Wolfgang is out somewhere on his sailboat, but will not take me, as he tried me on a bicycle to no avail, and he’s not sure my bailing is fast enough. He is up around Whidbey Island, I think. Friday Harbor? Does that ring a bell? Well back to bed. it’s 3:40 a.m.
Michelle Power
June 18, 2024 — 8:28 am
Looking forward to spooling the pile of polypropylene later this summer Cap’n – also, love love love the foxglove, they are all along the trails of the Camino in Galicia.
Darrell
June 18, 2024 — 2:31 pm
When I was a pre-schooler my mother and I would walk together in our rural home and look for various flowers. She told me that the foxglove were actual gloves warn by a special kind of magical fairy fox. We had plenty of lupin as well, but were never confronted by anyone demanding to take ours nor did anyone perform a related song. Mine was a deprived childhood I guess.
Steve P
June 18, 2024 — 3:26 pm
Until you met me, of course.
Lynne
June 18, 2024 — 5:36 pm
I believe there is a story behind how foxgloves got their name. Something to do with foxes needing mittens/gloves to be more stealth.