Eugene Parnell

Sculptor. Garden designer and educator. Tech industry veteran. Bigfoot stan.

Location: Duwamish Land, PNW
Website: https://www.eugeneparnell.com

Last Notes

2026-10-25 04:45:16 UTC

Well our dry season is over, rain is setting for good tomorrow. Time to cover these wooden sculptures in my garden. They're sealed with an oil based finish that has UV protection and anti-fungal ingredients but our climate in the #pnw is hard on wood. So I cover them with garbage bags for the winter. Needs to be done after a spate of dry days like we had this week, so it doesn't trap moisture under the plastic. #sculpture #Gardening #fall
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2026-08-13 14:06:36 UTC

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I was there in January. Yes they are bigleaf rhododendrons, our state flower. There are quite a lot of them in that area.

2026-07-21 06:07:39 UTC

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Hiking Stiletto Park part 11. Nearing the old fire lookout that is the end of the trail, elev 7660 feet. Once there was a little hut here and someone would spend the summer in it with a telescope keeping an eye out for forest fires. It was taken down in the 50s and there are only some rocks left. You can see the neighboring mountain is almost completely burned. It's impossible to travel through the Cascades now without encountering massive areas like this.
#PNW #hiking #getoutside #mountains
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2026-07-21 05:54:02 UTC

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Hiking Stiletto Park part 10. I had no idea what this little purple thing was--turns out it's a Delphinium! Plant ID app says maybe it's Sutherland's larkspur (Delphinium sutherlandii). BONAP says that species is only found in far Northeast Washington, not here, but it's still the most likely ID based on flower size and color. For sure a Delphinium, but it's a far cry from the gigantic double-flowered cultivars you see at the nursery.
#PNW #hiking #getoutside #mountains
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2026-06-21 06:37:55 UTC

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Hiking Gothic Basin part 6. We're nearing the tree line now. The trail is getting gnarly. And can I say this is a *hard* trail. It's steep and rocky and in quite a few places you have to use your hands to pull yourself up.
#hiking #nativeplants #PNW #getoutside
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2026-06-21 06:24:21 UTC

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Hiking Gothic Basin part 5. Look at the absolutely stunning little tableau of plant life on this stump. Looks like it consists of more Primula jeffreyi, a wee little deer fern, and a kind of club moss called Lycopodium clavatum (which apparently some people call elk moss?). It's a living fossil--club mosses are primitive plants that were amongst the first to colonize land almost half a billion years ago. #hiking #nativeplants #PNW #getoutside
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2026-06-21 06:18:23 UTC

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Hiking Gothic Basin part 4. Dodecatheon jeffreyi/Primula jeffreyi. Shooting star is the common name for these. I see the white ones pretty regularly but I seldom see the purple ones. This one is growing by a mossy seep in the rock.
#hiking #nativeplants #PNW #getoutside
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2026-06-21 05:23:29 UTC

Here's another hiking thread with plants--my trip yesterday trip to Gothic Basin, in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, 2 hours' drive NE of Seattle. It's right near the old mining ghost town of Monte Cristo which has its own crazy history. That's for another day. Today we're going up, up, up past the snow line. A short thread.
#hiking #nativeplants #PNW #getoutside
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2026-06-09 06:09:27 UTC

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Thank you for the link, these photos are very helpful. It may well be botrytis. That seems the closest match. We had almost no frost last winter it was be if the warmest on record so I'm sure it's not frost damage. The clue for me is the "disparate" photo. Some clusters affected and others not. Which is how mine are. Tough luck then I think this bush may have to go.

2025-04-15 00:58:56 UTC

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Wow, those are some beautiful shoots. I haven't heard of them getting out of hand the way bamboo does--I'd guess they are easier to control? I have another cultivar of Disporum longistylum ('Night Heron' I believe) and it's
nowhere near that size and it actually struggles a bit where I've got it. But from your photo I am guessing you have a more persistently moist location than I do and that makes a big difference.