Ginkgo Watch - May

While playing marmot paparazzi yesterday, I took Beth to meet my very bestest secret tree friend. The ginkgo is getting very green. The little buds that once radiated at regular intervals from their branches are now little fan leaves. It is nice to have a Ginkgo outside of a formal garden. Usually, you can't get close to them in those situations as they form the centerpiece of some garden trickery. Here, Beth could get close enough to show how green it really is.

David Sedaris Loves Marmots

It's true, actually. David Sedaris visited Spokane for the 2005 Get Lit! festival. The morning of his speaking engagement, he went for a walk downtown and encountered the herd of marmots that roams Riverfront Park, grazing and occasionally accosting passers-by for potato chips and cigarettes. Hey, these are urban marmots, baby.

That evening, Mr. Sedaris spoke briefly about the marmots. He explained that he got a haircut before the show, and asked the barber about the weird giant rodents wandering through the downtown park. The barber said that they were marmots, and essentially harmless as long as you didn't bogart the food.

And what do they eat? Sedaris asked.

The barber knew just what marmots eat. Marshmallows, he said. Marmots eat marshmallows.

I'm sure they would eat marshmallows, given the chance. Spokane Parks Department has begun a campaign to discourage feeding park wildlife and make the marmots more skittish around people, though. The marmots were beginning to resemble fuzzy toilet seat covers from all the handouts. It's difficult to pretend that you're maintaining a natural environment when you have a colony of obese marmots sprawled on the warm river rocks, Big Gulps propped up on their stomachs, handfuls of pork rinds stored in their little cheek pouches.

The feeding also had to stop because too many Spokane residents are not born naturalists. People loved to feed the small furry critters who would come right up to the restaurant patio or the picnic blanket and make big beseeching eyes and take the food right out of your hands and clutch it endearingly between little furry paws. Except some of those "marmots" had long, pink, snaky tails. Almost like, I don't know, wharf rats?

Awww. Cute!

The Garbage Goat

The Spokane Department of Parks and Recreation does a pretty good job of keeping Riverfront Park (and the other Spokane parks) clean. But no area of Riverfront Park is as clean as the 50 yards or so around the Garbage Goat.

Built for the '74 World's Fair, the Garbage Goat is a kid magnet. Finding themselves with an empty mini-donuts bag, parents bring their kids to the goat, hit the button and SNORT the bag is sucked up the goat's mouth and nose. Very young kids react with fright. A little older, and it is a frenzy of "What else will it eat!" Leaves? Yep. Stray drink lids found on the ground? Yep. Ticket stubs? Receipts from mom's purse? Dollar bills? Dirt? Small rocks? Timmy! Don't pull that out of the garbage can!? Yep, yep and yep.

And if you hang out around it for any amount of time, don't be surprised when you see a woman in a business suit slip the goat an apple core or a retiree feed the goat a plastic bag or three. There's something about shop-vac technology and a friendly goat that brings out the kid in everyone.

Ginkgo Watch

My favorite kind of tree is the Ginkgo. Someday, I will have one in my backyard. Perhaps with some bamboo friends to keep it company while I am at work (bamboo being my favorite woody perennial evergreen plant in the true grass family (thank you Wikipedia)).

Late last year, I discovered a Ginkgo in Riverfront Park. It is now my very bestest secret tree friend. Or, at the very least, a tree I say hi to whenever I walk by. It is only just starting to show green leaf buds right now, but I'll save that for a later ginkgo update (as none of the pictures I took today were worth publishing).