just thinking about....

Remembering Marie

2012-01-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

No pictures today. I just want to remember a special person. I only met Marie a few years ago. Her life had been reduced to a few possessions and a shared room in an adult care home. I was there because I had been assigned. I will admit that my first response at receiving my assignment was reluctance. It seems that I have often had an elderly sister on my visiting teaching route. Often it has been an elderly sister to whom I become a attached and then they pass away. I find my self missing them. I miss Rachel, Roma, Elise, and now Marie

Her few possesions represented love. The flowers, the pictures, the cards - she loved to see them. It meant someone loved her and she loved them. She would often write down the names of people who came to see her. She wanted to remember their kindness to her. She would tell me with a joyful heart about her visitors. When she couldn't remember who it was she could look it up and then we had mutual friends.

She knew how to be so positive. I met her shortly after her husband passed away and she often talked about how wonderful it was that she had been able to see him again. They had been separated by the needs of aging bodies. His kids brought him and her kids brought her to a meeting place, some town in the mountains, and she was so happy to have seen him again. She remembered the good times and didn't dwell on the separation.

She did sometimes feel useless and frustrated in her situation. Her mind was still sharp but her hands were crippled by arthritis so she was in this care home. But she was not useless. One of her roommates was a little disoriented to be in a care facilty and would wander around. Marie gave her a small shawl that had been given to her. She wanted her to feel loved and more comfortable. She watched for ways to make life easier for others in the facilty. I occasionally found myself there at lunch time and she was always helping someone open their napkin or peel a lid off of something or ask for something they needed. She soothed the spirits of a rather agitated resident more than once.

I took her to the dentist a couple of times and she acted like it was a miracle that someone could do that. We went for a drive one autumn to get her out. She remembered that day with gratitude, not just once, but many times. She was good at being grateful for the smallest thing. I was very touched at Christmas time. I had been at home putting up the Christmas tree for our household with it's trimmings filled with memories and then stopped to see her. She was delighted that the home was putting up a tree with a few ornaments. None of those ornaments were memory filled for her, but she could rejoice in the season without regretting the past.

She gave when she had so little to give. She gave appreciation, kindness, encouragement, love and chocolates. She had her children keep her supplied with chocolates so that she had something to offer in thanks to the caregivers that helped her in and out of bed and pushed her wheelchair and checked her pulse. I would visit and she would offer a chocolate. I would decline and say, "I'm really fine and don't need anything" She would reply, "well, I want one. So you have to have one with me." We would eat a chocolate together and tell stories. She could always tell when I was worried about something. She gave me a listening heart.

She would tell me stories about her family. Stories about rattlesnakes and moving across the country and lush plants by the doorstep that turned out to be illegal.

Marie was excited to give something she had painted in the ceramics room to her daughter-in-law. She knew that it was not to the standard she would have had for herself when she was younger and painting lovely watercolors. She accepted that her hands couldn't do what they had once done. But she was excited to give something that represented not her hands, but her heart.

She didn't have a home of her own anymore, but she welcomed me into her beautiful heart furnished with a focus on the positive, loving kindness, thoughtfulness and gratitude. It was a privilege to know Marie.

The Newly Weds

2012-01-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

We have had two pairs of newlyweds in this family this year. We love it! Our sons have been blessed with good women to be their companions in life and eternity.
In April we had Mike and Monica marry in Manti. Their photographer took much better pictures of them than we took. It was a cold day especially for the end of April. There was snow!

Our second set of newlyweds got married on a windy 60 degree day in Dallas in December. Go figure.

It was great to have the whole family together. I appreciate everyone's travel and energy. I know a couple people didn't feel to great and would have most liked to be in their own beds.

There we all are, but we should have found a better place for DER to stand. It is sort of like where's Waldo.
It was a good day also to celebrate the 4th anniversary of our other married couple.

The swamp drive

2012-01-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

Our swamp tour got rained out so we took a swamp drive where one snowy egret braved the rain so we could see it.

the weather outside was....

2012-01-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

.... not what we hoped for, but the kids were so delightful! And the food was pretty good too. We ate out, missed the live music that was supposed to be at the restaurant, oh well... But Katie made yummmy blackbean and sweet potato burritos. Monica made quiche and I got the easy ham for Christmas day.

We went to a living history museum nearby called Vermillionville. Vermillionville is situated on the Vermillion Bayou and features plants and natural history as well as the craftsman and building styles of Louisiana settlement.

These are the "knees" of the cypress trees that grow along the waterways.

A certain little boy thought the tornado model was worth chasing.

A certain little girl loved the natural history hands on table with her uncle Seth.

This is the Spanish moss that hangs from the trees. It is soaked for a few weeks to dissolve the outer layer. What is left is called bousillage. It is mixed with clay and hung over rough lathe to build the homes. It then has thermal mass and is cool in the hot weather and warmer in the cold weather. The next photo is of a bale of bousillage (boo see auge)

The sticks poking out of the chimney are so the chimney can be pulled off the wall in case of a chimney fire. The chimney is bousillage and so is the house. The house has siding. I wonder if the siding is Oak or sweet gum or cypress? All of those are large timber trees that seem native to the area.

I enjoyed the textile area. The warping frame was about as big as one of the walls of a bedroom in this house. They were able to warp about 100 yards on that frame. They had cotton of various colors

The loom was impressive. It was roughly made overall, but smooth where it needed to be smooth. The reed was most impressive to me. The reed is the part of the loom that space the warp yards and keeps them lined up. It was made with small strips of cane threaded on the support structure and spaced by winding the same thread around the support. It was amazingly accurate.

T tasted the cotton.

His sister liked spinning the wheel.

It was fun to be somewhere new while everything was decorated for Christmas. This little vignette was in the school house.

French was outlawed in public schools until 1968. Yet is survives in families and ...

This fiddle player (in his nineties) had a nice soft French voice.

Some building details are shown in the above picture and the next several pictures. Homes are built up about 18 inches above the ground.

Doors were almost all double doors like this.

The front porches were broad and roofed

a water tank

a shutter holder

Don't know why they built the roof like this. I loved the soft blue, green and red paints

Many homes had exterior stairs from the porch on the back to the upper sleeping rooms. A way of providing for travelers and still having privacy I think.

This is a close up of the door hardware.

The last pictures of Vermillionville illustrate ways of living not common today.

Mosquito netting and trundle beds

hand dipped candles

An inspiring era

2012-01-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

We traveled to and from Dallas the long way. So the "space men" in our family could gawk at a Saturn Rocket in Houston. Worth the trip perhaps for those of us who grew up in the space era. For whom the "space race" might have inspired career choices.

It was also a good chance to play with the capabilities of the new zoom lens.
I won't be able to tell you much about the pictures but the zoom gets close pictures of things that were really too far away for my eyes to see this well. Enhanced eyesight!

My Miss Brooks

2011-10-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Surely there is a character in a book named Miss Brooks. She would be thin, gray haired, wear wire rim glasses and be quietly unassuming. She would work in a library. She would be those things because she was in my young life just those things. My brother and I would arrive at the limestone Carnegie Library across the street from the courthouse and hike up the stairs to the room with a linoleum compass rose over which my Miss Brooks presided. She was the librarian who led me to the orange bound biographies that I so loved. I don't recall library cards or details like checking out. I suspect she and Mom just took care of it. I just recall that she knew her books and she knew me. Years after she retired, my brother and I ran across her at one of those club bake sales that JC Penneys always allowed near the stairs that went to the basement. There in the blue tiled building, ten years or more since we frequented the room with the compass rose, she still knew us.

Miss Brooks was the beginning of my love of books and libraries. We lived in another place for a couple of years and our family economy only included trips to the library in the summer when the school library was closed. The school librarian refused to let me check out The Secret Garden when I was in second grade. I suppose she thought I would not be able to read and make sense of words like; mystified, brilliant, contrary and sentiment. I suppose that she wanted to keep a small supply of books appropriately apportioned so that older students would have something that would appeal to them. But I had heard about this story and wanted to read it. I tried twice at school and when it came to the check out line that librarian whose name I have forgotten turned me away. I could not understand why I couldn't check out any book I wanted to check out and persuaded my mother to take me to the big downtown public library in the middle of the school year so I could check out this coveted book. I read it and learned the meaning of words by reading sentences in which those words that seemed beyond the abilities of a seven year old had a meaning. I don't remember the reading being hard. I had heard some of those words even if I hadn't read them before.

We moved back to the town with the limestone library and behold the school now had a library. It was wonderful to go listen to the warm rich black voice of Mrs. DeGrate (sorry Mrs. D - I don't know how to spell it) read to us. I felt a little out of step with other kids because I had not read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series in 3rd grade. So back I went to the linoleum compass room and Miss Brooks to find them. I don't remember when Miss Brooks retired. During Jr High and High School, the library became a convenient place for my parents to pick me up if I walked downtown after school. The room with the compass rose had been replaced with another limestone building. One summer while waiting for a parent the tornado sirens went off and the library staff rounded everyone up and took us about three stories down to a civil defense shelter that I had not known was there. I read late into the night in those summer months, books by James Michner, Victor Hugo, Harper Lee....

The Library always had an art exhibit and I began to want to do creative things because of what I saw there. I loved the linsey woolsey coverlets and learned to weave. I planned a trip to Turkey with the help of a library and shopped for a new washer with the help of a library. I have watched movies and listened to music. I have driven the highways of the west listening to PG Wodehouse - checked out from the library. I have planned hikes, designed quilts, grown vegetables and painted watercolors with the help of a library. Because the library has digitial subscriptions I have researched my ancestors while sitting in my living room, warmed by my laptop. I have relaxed at the end of many days over many years with a library book in my hand.

I have read countless books from the library to my own children and peeked in the door as one of them acted out at bedtime the songs from a library CD. We sang along with Charlotte Diamond on a tape cassette as we traveled; "I am a pizza," "Four Hugs a Day".... on long car trips; I have enjoyed the sharing of the great story or doing the fun science experiment that we found in a library book. We came to love Raven, Anansi and Brier Rabbit as the characters of many cultures became our friends. We went to community events that we saw advertised and posted in the library. We touched pythons and played didgereedoos at special library events.

I have browsed art books and poetry and read books that were healing as I read someone else's words. I have learned some things to avoid from the characters in books. Characters in books made some mistakes so I didn't have to try that. I learned about racism and bigotry. I learned about greed and infidelity. I also learned admirable ways to behave. I learned about generosity and forgiveness about courage and curiousity. I registered to vote at the library.

In my college years, I was fortunate to work in the campus library. So libraries even got me through college, both financially and emotionally. I found quiet places to study in the library and places that had upholstered furniture. My student apartments were often lacking in that luxury. I liked to find the quiet places on campus to sit in a comfortable chair and just read. I could pretend my life was not always surrounded by thousands of other young adults. I made friends in the library, met fellows that I dated and even the man that I married all in the library.

I now live with that man in a place with one of the best library systems I can imagine. I never walk in the door without finding several things that I would like to read. Things that I didn't know I wanted to read or had an interest in before I walked in the door past that "Explore More" shelf. We are looking at retirement and as we consider places to live. I'm always asking "What is the library system like?" "Is there a system?" "Is that community part of the system?" "How far away would the house be from the library?" "How does the library feel?" "What kind of books do they buy?" "do they exhibit art?" "What is their programming like?" "Will I find that place where the community comes together there?"

Libraries have become the measure by which I measure a healthy community. Libraries are the place where someone knows my name and where I have become who I am.. Thank you, Miss Brooks.

Perry Creek Trail & the Mountain Loop

2011-09-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

OK, we have lived here nearly thirty years and we have never taken the Mountain Loop Highway. Oft touted as one of the great things to do in this county. To be clear, in our defense for missing this wonderland - there have been several years when the road was closed because of sinkholes and landslides. It always closes for snow. We have gone as far as Barlow Pass and the Monte Cristo trailhead, but there the road turns to dust and we have turned around in the past. Yesterday was the day.

We started with a stop to get a National Forest Day pass at a gas station in Granite Falls then a stop at the Verlot Ranger Station to ascertain that the road was indeed open this year. It was.

We reminised as we drove along about the first camping trip we took in this area. Red Bridge in June. We got rained out and I didn't sleep worrying about Nathan crawling of the edge of the campground into the river. This is where Mike found a freezing snowmelt filled side channel irresistable. Camping in the rain with a crawling child was not great - that trip slowed our camping aspirations down considerably for quite a few years.

We remembered the hikes up the Lake Twenty-two trail, the Heather Lake trail, Mt. Pilchuck. Tales of scout camps at Wiley Creek and Coal Lake were called to mind. David remembered a backpacking trip to Monte Cristo with Katie. But we stopped at Perry Creek. Three years ago we did this hike with Nathan - we got rained out that day and thought we would do it again. The next five pictures come from that hike.

This Landslide pretty much closed the trailhead. This first group of pictures is from the hike in July of 2008

Because there were tree limbs down (in 2008) we were able to see this Lobaria (the lettuce like plant), a tree top dweller that as it gets knocked out of the trees by the wind supplies the better part of soil nitrogen in the wet forests of the Northwest.

Mosses and Big Leaf Maples like and help each other. The maple trees will actually send out root fibers into the mosses growing on their branches and trunks.

We missed the May lily in the woods behind us this year, they have been closed to the public.

The Northwest always has moss along the trail.

The Mt. Dickerman parking lot is the new trail head and adds a mile to the trail. It was a good trail to take on a busy weekend. It is not as popular as the trails that end at lakes. It was a quiet hike. We didn't make it to the falls because we wanted to do the whole loop road, but we enjoyed the new part of the trail and a small part of the old trail. We saw a few plants we have never seen before - one of them a small flowered orchid.

DER counting the rings - about two hundred for this cedar before it fell. The nice clean cut was because it fell across the trail. This tree would have been a seedling when Lewis and Clark came west.

We love seeing the Canadian Dogwood along the trail.

Can you guess what this is?

The much touted loop, well was mostly a dusty tree lined forest road, but it did have a few really beautiful pull-outs along the Sauk River.
Most of them were not much beyond Barlow Pass. There were many small primitive campsites along the river. They would probably be really nice sometime other than a holiday weekend.

A comment on Disability

2011-08-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who is "disabled" who has taught me to think "differently abled"

Perhaps because of this I was struck by this comment of Jennifer Culkin in A Final Arch of Sky. The book is memoirs of a critical care nurse whose career was ended by MS. "We tend, as a culture and even as health-care providers, to think of disability in terms of either/or, black or white, can or can't. When it's largely invisible, when some days you can do things easily, and some days you can do them with a big effort and some days, in spite of bringing every personal resource to bear, you can't do anything at all, what then? It doesn't feel like disability. It just feels like failure."

I thought of my friend, whose disability is not always obvious, and how she has wrapped her mind around the idea that she can do whatever her body allows for that day and counts that as an accomplishment. She seems to feel no failure.

How does she do it? How do we keep from labeling our own unsuccessful efforts "failure" when they maybe took all our personal resources in that moment. Is that failure? What is failure really? What is success?

Then there is the Gorge

2011-06-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

The final dawdle - before getting that horse heading to the barn feeling - was a visit to some of the water falls on the scenic Columbia River Gorge. We headed up to the Gorge along highway 197 and had a 10+ volcano moment. there is a place near where 197 takes off from 97 where you can see at least 10 volcanic mountains from one place. Try to drive this highway on a clear day! It was amazing and would have taken an amazing camera to try to picture it. We will settle for a picture of Mt. Hood taken a little further north.

The Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge has this amazing highway built in the 1930's to attact tourists to the area. The old highway parallels the interstate, is slower,charming, cool and shady.

We took a hike up above one of the roadside falls to another little falls. The second falls changes its name as you go up the trail. At the bottom of the trail it is called upper horsetail falls. About half way up it becomes ponytail falls.

Along the trail we enjoyed several varieties of small wildflowers and ferns.

At the falls we found that we could walk behind the falls. They were not like a curtain of water, but still it is super cool to walk on the back side of a water fall.

We stopped further on the road at LaTourelle Falls. They come out of the top of these wonderful columnar basalt cliffs. The top edge is very square.

The trail beyond the falls takes you closer to the bridge. It is a concrete bridge which impressed David with it's beauty and engineering. Concrete apparently is strong in compression, but not so strong in tension, thus the bridge supports had to be designed to put the parts in compression.

Our final stop along the route was a view point called Crown Vista, which has great views both up and down stream on the River. The river itself was somewhat swollen, like many American Rivers this year, but was probably not technically in flood stage. It is pretty hard to have a flood plain with these basalt cliffs as it's boundary unlike the Missouri, which is ten miles wide in the Omaha area.

Better than the pictures

2011-06-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

The second unit of the John Day Fossil Beds is called the Painted Hills Unit. I have seen photographs and paintings of this area before. It is better than the pictures.

One short trail takes you an a board walk around one of the colorful mounds.

They ask people to stay off of the mounds. Up close they look like this and do seem that they would crumble if walked on.

The colors come from different minerals in the soil. Some formations of this type have a lot of clay in them and are used for commercial applications for things like kitty litter.

There was a great overview spot where the light changed several times as clouds moved through. It was stunningly beautiful.

Shortly after this last picture was taken, we picked up a guy who was having car trouble and took him to the next town 60 or so miles away. It must have been good karma, given that our tire didn't go flat until after we had dropped him off and gone on to the next town, found a motel and eaten dinner. No we don't normally do that, but you can't leave someone with gray hair on the roadside 60 miles from civilization. He turned out to be a retired Forest Service Biologist, who pays for his travels by selling his photographs. None of these pictures are his. :-)

John Day Fossil Beds

2011-06-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

This little spot in the center or Oregon has had an interesting geology and is known for it's fossils. Coming in from the east the first of three areas we came to was the Sheep Rock Unit. It is named for this rock formation.

You enter the area through the canyon you can kind of see in this picture if you follow the roadway to sheep rock in the background.

I suppose if you know someone who has private land in the area, you could see fossils in situ, At the National Monument, you see them in a museum and some fake ones along the trail.

We didn't make it to Leaf Hill in the Painted Hills Unit of John Day, but we saw many fossils in the museum that represented plants that we are even familiar with like beeches, maples and oaks.

It is tempting to bring home a rock from the Blue Basin where we walked in a short trail to see this interesting geology. The pictures don't show quite how blue it is - it is a pale swimming pool aqua.

The picture on the right shows one of those fake fossils, and possibly shows excavation sites in the Blue Basin.

Cathedral Rock (below) is a formation that dropped from a higher elevation and is unique in the area. I'm going to have to read more about this one.

The surrounding hills show many layers of lava flows. This view of Sheep Rock (on the right of the picture) shows those many lava flows and some of the same formation as the Blue Basin on the side of Sheep Rock.

More Dawdling

2011-06-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

Instead of speeding along at 65 miles per hour through Oregon we left the freeway and followed a slower road.
Before I inspire you with the beauty of the journey, I should mention that many of the small communities shown on a map do not have gas stations. At one point there was a sign that said no fuel for 80 miles. I think it had been about 40 since we had last seen a gas station. So if you go, stop and get gas when you see it. We were fine, but we like to drive from the top of the tank when we are traveling. I should also mention that we were decidedly blessed. We got up the next morning after our drive in the middle of the "service free zone" and found we had a flat tire in the motel parking lot - 1/2 mile from Les Schwab. It could have happened out and about miles from any service. We often seem to have tire adventures when on vacations.

Horses in a roadside meadow of irises


wild irises in meadows and pastureland alongside swollen streams and creeks and rivers

Larches intermingled with the pine forests, Larches are a deciduous conifer, whose needles turn gold and fall in the autumn.


The forest trees are more spread out than our dense forests west of the Cascade Range.


Big mountain views in relatively narrow valleys. This is the Strawberry Mountains.


Just a sample of one of the many wild flowers


Then there was being behind a cattle drive for a mile or so.

Out and About

2011-06-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

We made an unexpected trip to Utah for a funeral. A sad and a happy occasion, an opportunity to express love and remember a dear soul. On the way home we decided that we needed to take a couple more days. We realized that anything resembling "time off" was going to be hard to come by this year so we dawdled on the way home. It was a beautiful dawdle.

Our first dawdling stop was Shoshone Falls in Idaho. We had stopped there for the first time about a year ago and were chagrined that we had never stopped here before. The top two pictures are from this year, showing the snow melt of a record year finding its way downstream along the Snake River. This is one of the stops for the same water that flooded the Hancock cabin.
This picture was from mid-July in 2010, Quite a difference. Last year there were kayaks down below the falls. This year you couldn't see the bottom of the falls for the mist. Last year many rocks were bare; this year water covered the extent of the roaring falls.

Living a Good Story

2011-05-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

It may be beside the point that it takes me two weeks to read a book these days. And then only if they are fairly light reading or compelling story lines. But maybe I'm living a good story.

But first the reading.

Yep, I finally did it. I read the Hunger Games series. As a friend said it may be the only idea that could ever make me appreciate reality television. Compelling story of finding and understanding compassion and humanity in cruel circumstances. It still took me about six weeks to read the series, even if I would have liked to stay up til 4:00 a.m. reading them.

The Big Burn, another Tim Egan history book is the story of a massive forest fire in the Northern Idaho Panhandle and Montana. Google Pulaski and you will find a tool named after one of the main characters in the book. It is in part the story of the beginnings of the Forest Service during the presidential administration of Teddy Roosevelt. When a congress controlled by timber barons decided to but some brakes on presidential authority to set aside public land they passed a law whose inplementation date got TR and his friend Gifford Pinchot to speed up their plans to gradually set aside lands for all Americans to profit from and enjoy. They added much of what is now National Forest in the American west in a few weeks prior to the restrictive law taking effect. We often drive through Wallace, Idaho on our way to see the family currently living in "the burg". We stop at a small park dedicated to the mining industry and have our lunch. Wallace was almost completely burned to the ground. Other towns along that Montana route also experienced this great fire some of them never came to life again. The fire also had an effect on the fledgling forest service and perhaps led to their long campaign to prevent forest fires.

Lastest book read was A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - How I Learned to Live a Better Story I think this book is autobiographical. The Author, Donald Miller, was approached by two movie people who wanted to make a previous autobiographical book into a movie. They wanted to work with him to help him make his story better. -- it wasn't movie material because the protagonist's story was not interesting enough.
So this author begins to learn more about "story". He realizes that the elements that make a story more meaningful also make a life more meaningful. He tells the story of him changing from being a writer to someone who hiked the Inca Trail, Biked across the United States and started a non-profit organization for mentoring kids without fathers and finding his own lost father in the process.

He tells aspects of his changing story by explaining and interweaving his life with ideas about what makes a good story. For example, the book is divided into sections labled; exposition, a character, a character who wants something, a character who wants something and overcomes conflict, a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

The thing I will remember the longest is an interaction he had with a friend. They were talking about personal growth in the context of "living a good story" when the friend explained that he was worried about his teenage daughters choices. His response was that the daughter "wasn't living a good story." The dad went home thought about that and decided he wanted to provide a better role for his daughter to play. They decided to support an orphanage in Mexico and raised money, wrote letters, visited....The daughter has a new role and abandons the old one. She begins living a different story - a better story. I have long thought that even when we see people making significant "mistakes" in their lives that they are trying to find some happiness in the best way they know how. Sometimes maybe we need help to find a different role for ourselves.

So I've been thinking about what it means to live a good story in an eternal perspective. Probably not the same as living a good story in terms of a movie perspective, but perhaps there are some similarities. Things like not being afraid to take a risk, like trying even when it seems hard or impossible or we are afraid, inviting people into our lives to share the moments, to make the moments memorable, conflict as part of the good story, trying to follow that inner voice that knows more about us than we consciously know about ourselves, not quiting when it seems like we are so far from the goal ...

Just Finished Reading....

2011-04-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

Tim Egan's, The Worst Hard Time, a chronical of the American Dust Bowl of the 30's. About 30 years ago I had an elderly visiting teaching companion who had lived through those days on the high plains. I appreciated Egan's efforts to tell the story through the eyes and voices of people who lived this nightmare. When I complain about gray skies, at least my gray skies dropped rain, not silt. My gray skies nourish the plants, instead of killing them.

The story begins with a grassland that was home to 470 native species. "In the spring, the carpet flowered amid the green, and as wind blew, it looked like music on the ground." (p. 19) My part of Kansas was not plowed so heavily as the dustbowl of western Kansas, Eastern Colorado, and the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. Still I grew up loving the way the wheat moves in the wind, the shape of the hills formed by great seas and plenty of sky with blue days and milky way nights. Today some conservation efforts aim at the native grass lands and they are a pleasure to roam.

All that empty land looked like a great way to make money to speculators and dreamers. It looked like a great place to make a home to displaced Germans from Russia. It became a place where only the truly tenacious survived the near decade of wind and drought. Those who stayed remember dusters filled with more than just dust. They were cold in the winter, they were charged with static electricity, they weighed down roofs to the point of collapse and filled lungs and stomachs of animals and people with grit. People died of "dust pneumonia." They lived for years without income and bottled Russian Thistle (aka tumbleweed) so they would have something to put in their bellies. They tried to entice animals into eating the thistle by salting it.

"They knew black dust came from Kansas, red from eastern Oklahoma, a yellow-orange from Texas" (p. 175) No one wanted to go outside, to get lost, to get scoured, perhaps blinded by the grit. They were warned not to go out, but inside wasn't much better. The wind sifted the dust through the smallest of cracks. Wet towels placed at the doors soon became muddied. It could be dark at mid-day.

The grass wasn't the only thing disturbed by the effects of men plowing the earth. Rabbits and grasshoppers thrived and became pests. The human population nose-dived as people abandoned the farms the banks and the drought were claiming. A feeling of hopelessness blanketed those who stayed. Some stayed because they had no means of going anywhere else. All for them seemed lost. Even strong men and women would cry behind the barns hoping for privacy in their despair.

It was worth reading.

The Waters of March

2011-04-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

It has been a dark and wet month. In spite of the extra three inches of rain this month, we have managed to get out in a few sunny moments. But I have to admit it is getting to me. I've done a lot of yard clean up, but there was not much sun to do it in. Even the dry days were mostly cloudy with a few of those classic Northwest "sun breaks." Mid month we went to the annual quilt show in Monroe, with a stop at a near by wildlife refuge that is reported to be the habitat of swans. The white in the water is only the reflection of the clouds in the sky. I think you have to be there at dusk to enjoy the swans coming in from the farm fields for the evening. We did drive through the river valley and maybe saw some out in the fields. They were large white birds with long necks and I think the necks were longer than the snow geese we so often see, but it was one of those narrow, but busy roads with not place to stop. I think it was the best day of the month so it was a good day to be out.

The trees were heavy with moss and ferns.

But it was spring and the salmon berries knew it.

                          The quilt show featured many styles of quilts, including this modern sun design.
You gotta get your sun somewhere.

It is fun to go a quilt show with other people. They notice things you don't. I have a friend whose husband also quilts. DER was a good sport and went with us too. I was focused on the quilting itself. I'm kind of looking at the ones that are not the big all over designs and the ones that don't require too much curving fluidity to emulate on my home machine. Thinking about how to start small with that aspect of quilting.

DER and his hiking buddies have missed a couple of months, but they hit the trails again on the fourth Saturday in March. Here he is in those dark months thinking about the trails he has yet to explore. They went on the Whitehorse trail between Arlington and Trafton. I'm thinking that I might like to get in on this hiking thing, but I don't want to mess up the guy time - and they tend to go a little farther than I might go. And then there is me always wanting to stop to take pictures. Maybe DER needs two hikes per month.....

Still young

2011-02-26T21:46:00.000-08:00

Early January, she turned eighty. My mother doesn't really look eighty. She has said it is because she has spent her life around young people. Dad died when she was relatively young, 45. She didn't have anyone to grow old with, So in many ways she didn't grow old. Her friends were younger. Her family was younger and her co-workers were younger. When we were both younger, she was mistaken for my sister.

I often say that I am 23 on the inside. I wonder how old she is on the inside. Is she 21, the age she was when she married Dad ? Is she 23, the age she was when she had her first child? Is she 26, the age she was when she moved to Kansas? Or 19, the age she was when working on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon? The passage of time only marks the length of our mortal lives, not the age of our spirits. I've heard some people called "old souls" in recognition of their innate maturity. Mom is a "young soul," with sympathy for the boy who left a trail through her yard as he found a short cut to his girl friend's house. She is a young soul in her sense of style - well maybe middle aged, but not old. She is a young soul in her desire for creativity and her sense of adventure. Her laughter is young.

So we got together and laughed and ate for her eightieth birthday. (by the way do you know how many incorrect ways I can think of to spell "eightieth") We ate oatmeal pancakes and cinnamon rolls and fruit for breakfast,lasagna, salad, oatmeal bread and lots of sweets by a warm fire for lunch. We ate like young people without concern for calories or sugar or salt or fat. We also got a tour of the lab where S works.

It seems too soon to plan for old age, to think ahead and yet she is eighty. We need to think about things like living wills and possible living arrangements and how to help if needed. I begin by getting information about the place she thinks will be a good place to live. I have the info. Now I need to read it. I went to the hospital and got some paperwork on living wills. We will go through it and figure out how she can do it in Kansas. All the while hoping that those plans and preparations will not really be necessary, that she can live the remainder of her life relatively healthy in her own home, still young.

Where the road ends

2010-10-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

The road east of Bellingham ends at a place called "Artist's Point" with views of Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker. We spent the morning of yesterday's beautiful day doing church stuff and came home and thought just maybe we could make it up to the end of the road before dark. We had promised our friends R&B a trip up in the mountains on a good day and this was the good day. They were available, so off we went. I think we wore R out, but I hope it did him good to see some beauty in the world. Ron is all bundled up in his chair; we tried to drive it for him, but weren't that good of drivers, so he stuck his hand out and drove himself. We stayed on paved trails for obvious reasons.

that is Mt. Shuksan in the background. Mt. Baker was visible too. Often one or the other is blanketed with clouds. We have never been up there when Mt. Baker was visible before.

Even from the paved trail there are lovely details and grand views. The talus slopes are gold and red with green accents on more stable ground.

The rocks previously covered with snow, show the marks of glacial movement or are capped with moss and dotted with small tough plants.

Recent snowfall still lay in the shadows.

Mt. Shuksan is probably the most photographed mountain in the state. It was beautiful in the last light of day reflected in the lake. The blue of it's glaciers does not show in the picture, but added to the beauty of this lovely spot.

Faith and Art

2010-10-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

I suspect any readers I might have are tired of my travel blogs. They are sort of a delayed journal for me. Frankly the month since we have been home is not nearly so interesting as the travel. The tomatoes fell to the blight - kind of a tomato famine. The wet spring weather meant no beans or peas. The abundance of slugs got the basil. The zuchinni was not so productive when it didn't have a partner (- like me.) The raccoons are digging up the lawn and competing with the squirrels for the apples and prune plums. The flickers are pecking on the attic vents. We have had way too few days of sunshine and I applied for an open position on the school board. The screening committee passed me through to the interviews. They are Monday night. We have a new bishop and David is a counselor. That pretty much summarizes September at home. So you see the title of this blog and it's eventual topic could be much more interesting.

While we traveled, I mused on the nature of "church art." Our churches are relatively unadorned and I found myself a little overwhelmed by many altars and tombs and paintings and windows and ...... I found it disconcerting to go into churches as a tourist and be surrounded by other tourists. It disturbed me that in some places I didn't feel like an intruder, because it seemed everyone was an intruder. Other places had a more worshipful feel. But I started thinking about the art that I was seeing. I suppose that most of it was commissioned by wealthy men. Though at least one statue on the Charles Bridge in Prague was created as a punishment. I wondered how much of it was an expression of faith; how much was an expression of pride. I wondered if the artist was lost in art for art's sake or if he felt some measure of faith as he worked on these projects. I thought about how little role religious art plays in the world today.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a few with you. Even ordinary seemed ornamented as this door shows.

Sometimes the meaning is not clear to the casual observer. These crosses commemorate 27 martyrs in Prague.

Exteriors were not as ornate as interiors, but still....

Out door statuary honors the saints who brought Christianity early to Ukraine. St. Olga was a royal family member who embrassed Christianity. St. Andrew prophesied that the "the light of the gospel would come to these hills." Cyril and Methodius were instrumental in making the Bible available in Cyrillic.

Doors ...

And floors.....

Compete with windows.....



And ceilings.....

And glowing spaces for attention....

Walls have their share of ornamentation... The walls of St Francis in Krakow were painted in an art nouveau style with daffodils, pansies and lilies. This picture was from St. Michael's in Kyiv. It was pretty dark in there - this was about as good as I good do.

The walls tell stories too. One church (no pictures) had the story of the creation on the ceiling in the outer area of the larger space, which became more holy as you went further into the space.

One of the stars in most churches were the altar piece paintings or carvings or icons.

Some were carved wood as is this one in St. Mary's in Krakow, some gold work, some iconic paintings. They depict saints or scriptural scenes. They are not always true to the scriptural era. King David is depicted as a more medieval war hero in this sculpture from Wawel Hill in Krakow.

Many churches had some small macabre feature.

some of the art was auditory/musical as we heard the sounds of evensong in this small church and the ringing of bells across the cities.

You feel as you travel that Christianity was a significant part of community life. Statuary in wood ...

and marble....

... depict Christ. This kindly looking Christ with an infant near St. Mary's in Krakow was one of my favorites.

My favorite painting looked like it could have been painted by Norman Rockwell. It was in an Armenian church in Lviv. Notice the recognition of this church man's heavenly friends as well as his earthly friends at the end of his life as his ghostly friends carry candles.

Lastly I will share a description of the picture I didn't take. Lots of these churches charge a fee to take pictures. We only paid the fee a couple of times. A couple of times I regret not paying the fee. St. Vlodymyrs church in Kyiv was one of these. It was too dark on the interior to do any photo justice, but the picture I wish I had taken was of a young woman blue eyed woman with reddish blonde hair. She was dressed in two shades of blue. The darker shade was pretty much the Ukrainian flag blue. Her kerchief and pinafore were this color with the plain unornamented underdress a lighter shade. She was working with a long handled tool with a flat blade to scrape the warm golden beeswax drips from the white and black marble floor into a black metal bucket. I think her work was art. I think we create art in the way we live, if we live with honest work and do it well. Maybe I haven't been seeing the art all around me.

Then there was this simple church in Lviv, with Linoleum floors and stacking chairs and simple lines. It is the home to two branches. All the art was simple reproductions from the church catalog. It seemed quiet and reverent and worshipful in a way that all those ornamented churches did not. There were no tourists, just a young man cleaning the building before he left for town for the temple dedication. Cleaning it for the people who would be unable to leave town who would watch from Lviv. Not unlike the beautiful young woman cleaning beeswax - living life as an art devoted to Christ.

Auschwitz

2010-09-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

We did go there. I had mixed feelings about being a tourist in such a tragic place. It seemed painful to be in a place were people suffered so much because of one man's mania and many men's fears. It seemed painful to be truely free in so many ways under the ironic sign, "Arbeit Macht Frei"

I don't know if you will be able to see it in the blog picture, but I also thought this tuft of dandelion seed caught in the barbed wire spoke of freedoms curtailed.

Rows of brick buildings or wooden buildings seemed maybe "not so bad" until you saw inside the bunks about the size of a queen size bed and used for eight or more people. "Not so bad" until you imagine the grassy areas being only muck and mud. Not so bad until you imagine winter and almost no food and forced labor and separation from loved ones and fear...

"Not so bad" until you see the trees where the overflow of imprisoned people waited for days without shelter.

"Not so bad until you see guard houses and

rows of barbed wired and imagine the machine guns directed at those wearing striped clothing and colored stars on their arms to identify the "crime" of their nationality or ethnicity.

until you see the train tracks where people were unloaded like cattle or the pile of prosthetic arms and legs and feet, crutches and back braces or the portrait after portrait of shaved heads. ... until you recall the names filling the walls of the Pinkus Synagogue in Prague.

"Not so bad" until you see pits filled with ash...

The Jews remember.... but they were not only Jews. They was Roma and Sinti and Poles and Russian prisoners of war.

They were People... Human... Men.... Women... Children... Babies

Remember

Kyiv, Ukraine Temple Dedication and Cultural Celebration

2010-09-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

Someone told David that this was the best place to take a picture from. He may have been right. The reason for this Eastern European trip was to attend with Nathan the temple dedication of the Kyiv, Ukraine Temple. Because we are not official members of the temple district we were invited to attend a session in the stake center in central Kyiv. We did that and then found our way out to the temple for the afternoon. The mashrutka driver dropped us off at the corner of the temple. He saw us and asked if that was where we were going. I suspect he had many passengers that day. It was a kindness on his part to drive a little further down the road before stopping. I don't know what the people waiting at the regular stop thought. We had a great meal with Ann & JD who have been called as full-time temple worker missionaries, watched from their window overlooking the temple for a while, then joined the many people who came out between dedicatory sessions. I think many of the local people attended multiple sessions. They certainly were not eager to leave the temple grounds when it was all over. JD says that people come and walk around and sit on the benches until it is dark most days. It is a place of beauty and peace in a chaotic city. The day, the weather, the occasion and the people were all beautiful.

The Landscape even is designed to appeal the Ukrainian people. They apparently love all types of sunflower and the crab apple tree is the "tree of paradise" if I recall rightly.

Nathan enjoyed meeting many old friends and making some new acquaintances in the between times and at the cultural celebration the night before. This picture was taken on the metro - an old friend. Even on the metro after the Saturday night program he met old friends. It took a long time for people to leave the event, they were so glad to see each other and to meet each other. President Monson promised the young people participating that they would see blessings come from their participation. Just the new friendships would be one of those blessings.

The Cultural Celebration featured regional dances from the several nations that are part of the temple district and told the story of Christianity in the Slavic lands. Without language skills I was pretty much on my own to understand the narrative portions, but the dancing and music was beautiful. It needed no interpretation. I was moved as the story unfolded to learn that the Slavic people were the first to be able to read the Bible in their own language. When the story unfolded to the point that the LDS missionaries came to Slavic lands the entire mission came up through the audience the the strains of "Hark, all ye Nations" and a standing ovation from the audience. People living in foreign lands only vaguely know that missionaries make a sacrifice to serve. After all the missionary lives like they do, so it is a common thing for them. They may recognize the time it takes to serve a mission, but they KNOW that what was brought was so valuable. The missionaries are heroes to those who have accepted the gospel. It was a new perspective on missionary work for me.

I was flattered when someone assumed that I might speak Russian or Ukrainian and asked me to take their picture. Here we are checking out the picture. Than meant that at least I didn't stick out as "too American"
- well at least until it was clear that I could only respond to them in English.

Immediately after the dedication the crew began working to get the temple ready for Monday. Temples are not normally open on Mondays, but this one was full to the brim and overflowing, with many who were coming for the first time. Many of those had no escorts to guide them so you know the temple workers were busy. We were able to attend a temple session on Wednesday. We had waited until they were not quite so busy. We didn't want to take anyone's place that might have come from far away with a need to return home.
Again in the temple we met people Nathan knew and were able to see Ann & JD one last time before going home. It is a beautiful temple.

Nathan took the picture that follows. I love it for the contrast of the Lord's house with those Soviet style apartment building in the background. The apartments are just across the freeway. The Lord has such good things in mind for us - better than we can think of for ourselves.

Amsterdam

2010-09-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

An over night stop - with 10:00 kebab for dinner and an early morning walk before walking to the train station was our quick taste of Amsterdam.

We stayed in a beautiful neighborhood, the Jordaan, near the Anne Frank House. Anne heard the bells of Westerkerk sing the hours from her hiding place just a couple of doors down the street.

Rembrandt knew this neighborhood with it's canals and tall narrow buildings.

You can't see it very well, but each house has an apparatus at the center top to help move things to the upper floors. Bringing things in through the window is much better than going up those small stairways. Some of the houses are a little tipped out at the top. I suppose to protect the windows as things are hoisted up.

Rembrandt lived before Amsterdam became a bicycle haven. We saw people in those early morning hours heading to work on their bikes along the narrow lanes that are only wide enough for one car. There were cars parked along the way, but many more bikes than cars. We saw into a downstairs bike garage

The train station had a double decker bike garage with hardly a car insight. And the train ride to and from the airport was amazingly smooth and easy. This three wheeled truck was about the right size for the streets

Street Markets

2010-09-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

We found a little street market for fresh produce one day in Prague. There was a little street fountain to wash the pears we bought and we enjoyed them with the bread and cheese we had purchased in a metro stop store.

They had charming wooden toys.

It would be a happy kid with an indulgent mother if these were purchased- they were huge gummy candies.

And visited a regular open air market in Lviv. They sell coins, Soviet memorabilia...., door knobs....

crafts.....

traditional embroidery....

The bored jewelry sellers play chess.

Street Scenes

2010-09-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

This post will be a collection of street scenes. I didn't take very many pictures of people. It feels instrusive and most of the people we saw in Prague and Cracow were also probably tourists - not local color.

The squares and the main pedestrian streets were home to people trying to entertain and earn a little money. Guitar players and breakdancers. These two guys were my favorites. The first delighted the children with his ability to keep the ball moving with various parts of his body, but no hands.

This one kept the children happy with enormous bubbles that they chased and popped. It was fun to watch the moms come up with their kids and put some coins in his urn and let their kids go. One rather tall momma helped her "smaller than the other kids" daughter pop a few bubbles before taking her away.

Of course there were plenty of pigeons. Nate calls them flying rats. Some are pretty bold. We were having our granola bars (aka emergency food to get you to the end of the exhibit) and some tried to land in our laps. The little boy in the picture below was feeding them with the crumbs from a pretzel stand until his momma pulled him away. You can see that he wasn't quite ready to go. In Lviv there was a lady the pigeons seemed to know. They flocked around her as she walked past us and when she was a little ways away she released the bag of crumbs she carried. The pigeons left little evidence of her passage.

There were plenty of charming windows fitted with white lace curtains and or flower boxes.

As well as some creative displays of flowers

Advertising wasn't always what you would expect - as these women of "substance" illustrate...

But there were celebrity endorsements, even in Poland.

In Lviv, the notables of ancient times were recast in traditional dress

In Everett this year, they have artist painted working pianos on the streets. In Prague they have painted non-working pianos honor a Chopin anniversary.

This is a Polish style street sign.

Open air cafes were everywhere. I wonder if they have to rent their sidewalk space? Although the cafes allow for smoking diners, they also allow for fresh air on a hot day.

Art shows up in surprising places, cement trucks, manhole covers and the inside shutters of market stalls.

The old and the new find themselves at home together.

Wawell Hill Castle - Cracow

2010-09-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

Beautiful details everywhere.

The foundations of a church that formerly stood in this spot. There were several churches built on Wawell Hill over a span of centuries.

Stone Carving of King David

This beautiful renaissance courtyard was one of the most beautiful spaces we saw.

The Horse Chestnut is loved by Slavic people. This one is ironwork at Wawell Hill. We saw them on the street, suffering from either a blight or the record breaking heat of earlier weeks this summer. We also saw the motif on plastic bags at the airport in Kyiv.

If you can't get them to church because of religious feeling, maybe curiosity will draw them in. These large bones from an unknown source have hung outside this cathedral for many years.

The Lavra

2010-09-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

One of the big sites in Kyiv is the Lavra. Part of the Lavra is owned by the government and part by the church. It is a complex of many churches. We did not begin to see it all. You pay to enter the part owned by the government. Some of the parts owned by the church are open to visitors, but they expect you to remember that they are a place of worship. Women need to wear a headscarf to visit the interiors of the churches. Old women sell them on the street outside, if you don't have one. One part of the Lavra called "the caves" women are required to wear skirts. They will rent you one for about $1 if you aren't wearing one. This area is where the original monks lived and died. They have some underground churches and burial chambers. Many devout women visit these caves and churches.

The gate is itself a church. You can see the archway of the gate at the bottom of the picture.
The church you see straight ahead of you as you walk in the gate is a reconstruction.

Inside it you also find another church - a church within a church.

Both churches were orginially build with layers of bricks and mortar and fieldstone.

This large bell is topped by four figures. Depicted are the head of the eagle, the head of the ox and the head of the lion. Can you figure out what the fourth head is?

St. Michael's with the striped gold and green domes allows, for a fee, photographs. It is dark and the photos don't really do it justice. It was beautiful. Every surface, save one was decorated or painted. Some of the painting is more decorative, some symbolic and some is pictoral. I wish I had tried to take pictures of every motif. They were all so beautiful.

This is Peter having swum to shore to great the resurrected Lord.

The caves were originally founded near a source of water, some springs. People still come to get water from these springs.

Olesko Castle

2010-09-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

About 1 and one half hours outside of Lviv by bus is a small castle on a hill with a commanding view of the countryside. We rode out there on a mini-bus. This is one of those things that would have been impossible without Nate because we had to find the correct bus, change buses and know when to get off the bus. Many people in Ukraine speak English, but not often and not eagerly. Ukrainians will watch out for you if they know you need it, but tend to not look at you until you make the effort to engage them. I wonder if this is part of the Soviet legacy or just what people do in crowded conditions. The mini buses are called mashrutkas. The streets are full of them and they each have a sign on the front that tell where they are going. If you want to get on one you hold out your arm and they stop for you. If you get on at the back you pass your payment up to the driver. They get full to crowded standing room and you have to be a bit politely assertive to get off.

We met an economics professor on the train who said that the system was pretty chaotic, but what was necessary to get private enterprise helping with the transporation system.

We got of the bus in Olesko and walked along a country road for about 15 minutes to get to the castle.

The first room told the story of Olesko through the centuries of building, rebuilding, change, disrepair and restoration. At one point in time a resident had found some valuables in a wall and had pretty much destroyed the castle looking for other goodies. The story is told in Ukrainian or Russian - not English. Nate worked hard translating for us.

We entered by walking up this ramp road shown in this model. The area spanned by the drawbridge has been filled in.

This is what you see as you approach the door.

The weight of the door runs on these metal tracks.

There is a large firebox just inside the big gate

The well is just beyond that doorway area.

These are tiles from the Russian tile stoves that were the source of heat on winter days.

And this is a view toward the little town of Olesko

The castle is furnished with art and furniture from it's various eras. This table has a beautiful map on the top of it. One of the loveliest things I saw on the trip. The light and circumstances were not good for pictures but the picture to the left shows a bit of the map. On the left side of the table were places in Galicia (includes the area that is now Ukraine and Poland) and the right side shows places in the Middle east like Cairo, Alexandria and shown here Damascus. Jerusalem was at the center.

This is a woman after my own heart. She falls asleep reading.

Some of the sculptures have wood armatures and it looks like plaster over the top. To the left you can see some of the wood in gouged places on the arm of this one. Until you look more closely you think it is marble.

Below you can see what we think are the wood understructure of such sculptures

Angels of Lviv

2010-09-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

The beautiful and amazing cemetery in Lviv was full of beautiful angels.

Not enough time...

2010-09-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

....spent in bakeries and sweet shops. These cakes were delicious though., They were kind of like a rhubarb cake filled with plums and berries.

They had a charming wreath made from their egg shells. The thing Nathan ordered was a cinnamon and sugar coated dough coiled around a hot rod about 3 inches in diameter to bake it just before you bought it. My snitch was yummy and I regret not getting a picture of the making, but it was after dark.

Art Nouveau

2010-09-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Prague was the home of art Nouveau artist Albert Muche. The hotel room was decorated with a print. A Municipal building is home to some of his art

and so is the cathedral at the palace. The Muche window at the Prague Palace Cathedral depicts events important to the introduction of Christianity to the Slavs. It shows St. Cyril and St. Theodocius (sp?) and their stories flanking the story of St. Ludmilla and her posterity accepting Christianity.

Art Nouveau influences showed up in the iron work in various places, this one in Lviv.

In Cracow there was a most beautiful church decorated in an Art Nouveau style with interiors too dark for pictures. The walls flowered and flowed with pansy's and daffodils and lilies. It was incredible. The window below is from that church - St. Francis, I think it was. The window depicts creation and is much better than the picture I took of it. The model for the creator was a beggar from the streets of Cracow. That touched me - to think that even the most beggarly of us have been created in the image of a divine being and in this case the creation was turned upside down to create an image of the divine using the image of man.

On our way into town from the train station on a Sunday morning we were stopped by a beggarly man. He knew who we were - most likely because David and Nathan were wearing their white shirts. He didn't know us but he knew something about us because of how we are dressed. What do we know about one another because we are in the image of God?

Marrionettes

2010-09-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

Prague may be known for marionettes. It rained while we were there, so we didn't see any street performers with puppets. So all we saw were in stores and they were starting to look all alike. But I liked these guys with their stiff springs instead of strings. Children could enjoy not having tangled strings.

One shop had puppets that resembled characters from literature and public figures. I especially liked this combination. Imagine what a story of Jack Sparrow, Don Quixote and Vladimir Putin might be like.

We did manage to get to a Black Light Theatre show in Prague. I nodded off through about half of it, but enjoyed what I was capable of staying awake for. The MC tellings us to keep our cameras off and turn off phones did a great job of imitating Americans and Germans who probably made up most of the audience. Black Light is dance and mime with costumes that light up under black light. One of the dance scenes I liked had a woman dancing through the holes of this big green flexible swiss cheese like costume of another dancer.

Eastern Europe Under Construction

2010-09-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Here a little sidewalk repair is in order. Prague was in good repair, but the renovation work is always happening. It was nice to see this kind of repair that can be done on a small scale because the walks are made with small cobbles. The streets are paved with a larger stone.

One stop we would have enjoyed was closed for renovation with this barrier showing what we would have seen.

Other places have nets over the entire facade of the building to prevent debris from falling into the street. This net has lost some of it's effectiveness.

He must have had a great smile. People kissing were also removed from this net. Dormitory style decor I suppose.

Construction hides inside as interior rooms are dug under to build cellar and vault restaurants and clubs.
This one is inside the B&B we stayed at. They are expanding by going down.

In Lviv the tram tracks were all torn up for part of the route. A significant inconvenience for it's citizens, but they are preparing to host the European Cup in 2012. Lviv has not had the influx of tourism that Prague and Cracow have had and is in need of repair and restoration in many places. The place we stayed was supposed to be 14th century building that had once been part of the church complex and the lowest picture below shows the restoration that was going on just down the alley way.

Red Tile Roofs

2010-09-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

A large part of Prague's charm is it's red tiled roofs.

There were other ways of getting around than our feet, which were hurting. We took the tram up the hill to the Strahovsky Monastery and walked down to the castle and into the old town where our hotel was.

Other people tried these novel ways of seeing Prague.

The Monastery Library was one of my favorite spots of the trip. Again, no interior pictures allowed and I was sorely tempted to cheat on that one. They just had hall monitors everywhere so there wasn't much opportunity. The amazing interior room was in the process of renovation (another theme of the trip), but they let you step into the construction doorway so you could see the extraordinary painted ceiling and the stunning rich redbrown woodwork of the walls and moldings. The inside of the bookcases was painted a sky blue color that coordinated with the ceiling. There was a wide hallway filled with display items collected by the monks over time. that connected another beautiful room full of books. The second room also was not accessible except with your eyes. NER thought a study station created to allow many books to be out and accessible via rotating shelves was just what he needed. It did look pretty useful.

The hallway was more amazing than one would think at first glance. One of the hall monitors provided a guide to the hallway written in English for us to read. Elephant trunks, a Dodo bird, many kinds of apples were among the goodies preserved by the monks. One wall was books, beautiful books, all bound in white or variations of white. Perhaps shaded by the amount of use they got. They were medical and chemistry and law books of their day. The "best" books were at the end. They had a collection of books about trees. Each book was a box made to look like a book and made out of the wood of the tree (with the bark still on it) and containing sample leafs and nuts or fruits of the tree. I suppose thirty or more trees were represented. For those of us that love trees and books.... These were delightful!

Time and Times Past in Prague

2010-09-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

We just returned from an amazing two weeks in Eastern Europe with NER helping us get around. We may have been able to do part of this without his help, but I don't think we could have survived or experienced Ukraine the way we did without his language skills and know how. We visited Prague, Cracow, Lviv and Kyiv with a few hours in Amsterdam on the way home.
It will take several posts to share the fun. I will try to not share the fatigue. There was plenty of that as we adjusted to the time difference and traveled by overnight trains with middle of the night border crossings. These destination cities have also become destinations for parties of young people well into the night. One place we stayed provided ear plugs, a thoughtful and useful gesture.

Prague was beautiful, amazing and overflowing with tired tourists. Some of the pictures do not tell that story as we got up early to avoid crowds. We were well tired by our last day there. The first day and first thing was a trip to see the clock.

I love that the feast days and the zodiac co-exist on this face of the clock.
We got there just as the apostles were coming out of the window for their hourly tour. We went back another early morning to understand the mechanisms and information provided by this beautiful timepiece.

No family vacation in our family is really complete without a stop in a cemetery. In Prague the cemetery was the Jewish Cemetery that is part of the Jewish synagogue tour. This cemetery was used for centuries.

You don't get to take pictures in the synagogues but it is rather interesting and the first one we went into had written on the walls the names of people who were killed in the holocaust of WWII. People still leave tokens on the headstones, perhaps for family but perhaps to remember and honor the victims. This unknown woman was a French speaker.

This building was the building of the burial society and housed artifacts related to burial - not as gruesome as it might seem. As you can see the crowds are increasing.

Enjoying the Family

2010-08-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

July gave us a chance to spend a little time with our out-of-state kids. We didn't take many pictures, but we enjoyed being with them.

We stopped in the "burg" to see Katie, Martell and Sally. We didn't take the camera to the geology museum, but we enjoyed watching Martell give a tour to some cub scouts and seeing the exhibits and the famous fish tank. Before the fish died due to a power outage.

We enjoyed playing with Sally and watching her play. We brought the little grocery cart that has been living in the rafters of the garage for many years and Sally liked pushing that around.

Martell had class, but we talked Katie into going to the water park with Sally. It was a quick visit - just before nap time. But we loved watching her explore firmly attached to her mother's finger. Her hair doesn't look that red indoors or even when it's wet indoors, but a little damp in the sunlight it seems quite red.

David and Mike and Nate enjoyed some good laughs and went to Sacred Harp singing. We went to church in N&M's ward. M played the organ and N taught the priesthood lesson. Good to see them contributing and to meet people in their ward.

Sue and Mom/Grandma went to a quilt show.
We enjoyed taking the grands around to various places including Erin Thomas' marriage to Travis Mumford. It gave us a good idea of their amazing strength and vitality and insight into their limitations in this 10th decade of their lives.

+One the way home we stopped at Shoshone Falls. We've never stopped there before, but would like to see it when the water is high.

The last stop was one or our traditional favorites, Deadman's Pass overlook in Oregon where we ate our cheese sandwiches and drank our V8 juice and stretched our stiff legs.

Rasmussen Family Reunion

2010-08-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

All of the first two generations were there
Many of the next two generations were there.... Sixty-five or more in all.
Some were missed and some are yet to be born...

Gretchen planned generational challenges.

Kathy! Kathy! Kathy! - she gets the cookie from her forehead into her mouth without hands!

Ann was the winner with four cotton balls transported by nose

Shooting pop can pyramids with rubber bands

Three legged races and cherry seed spitting were for the greats

Gary and Mignon Mills Family

JD & Ann Hancock Family

David & Paula Thomas Family

Paul & Leslie Williams Family

David & Sue Rasmussen Family

UMMMMMM.......

2010-08-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

David gave me a chocolate tasting party for my birthday. About nine varieties of Chocolate arranged from light to milk to dark and darker. yummmmmmmmy. A few friends enjoyed the initial party with me and I've taken the leftovers to several other little outings with friends. They were all amazed.

The Birthday Boy and his Day

2010-08-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

My Birthday gift to DER was a day away - it certainly was a selfish gift. It was a good restorative day.
We went to Ebey Landing State Park. Ebey Landing was once one of a series of WWII era gun emplacements intended to protect Puget Sound. It is not the most extensive of them. It is smaller than Fort Casey and Fort Worden.

One of the entrances to the facility used to store ammunition and materials is shown here. In this place all the small rooms are off to the left of this one short hall. We didn't explore much because we hadn't brought more light than DER's keychain flashlight. The exit is shown from the inside below. Obviously some efforts have been made to remove graffiti

When this emplacement was built, they made brick tree wells to allow existing vegetation to thrive as they covered the concrete bunkers with soil.

There are warning signs all around the hillside that caution you about falling into one of these overgrown tree wells.

Along the networks of bike trails you will see this structure that was once support for the water tower, small wild flowers and Rhododendrons in the wild. We were there too soon in the year for a beautiful display of blooms. Another year..... I didn't take pictures of the heavy "tinder" in an area that is just left alone. As most of our hiking is on maintained trails, this was a surprise to me. This was a second growth forest. There were no real tree giants to be seen.

We had a picnic with a view of a shimmering sea.

We didn't cook but I liked the shape of the rusty curlicue on the grill that was available.

A walk in the woods led us to a small lake being fished by a bald eagle.

And we enjoyed walking along a typical rocky Puget Sound beach populated by ribbons of kelp. driftwood, seagulls and....

......the endless fascination of seafoam waves approaching the shore.

Quieter Pleasures

2010-08-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

The "wow" factor may be what we first notice, but there is a quieter beauty.

The beauty of small things,

of small things multplied many times to make a rich carpet of oxalis.

The beauty of changing conditions.

Here a late frost browned one camellia bloom,

but the later bloom is was protected by a slower maturation and is beautiful.

And the beauty that shows us the passage of time in unlikely ways.

There is beauty in the small fresh new growth of red leaves against a sage green trunk and

the irregular shapes of trees against the sky.

One of my favorite small unobtrusive beauties are the textures of
tree bark.

Then there are the weeds....

Who knows what beauty lies unnoticed when all we see is the wow factor.

The "Wow" Factor

2010-08-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the flowering cherry trees and the Rhodies are probably the reason people love the Arboretum.
They have great "wow" factors.

The old Rhodies are tall and impressive with their dancing tree like limbs. One year we saw a small owl camouflaged in this habitat.

We weren't the only ones with our camera out.

The Cherries light up the hillside.

The trees are loaded with lots of bloom.

The blooms are often shades of pink or purple, but they flowers come in many colors and sizes.

The leaves of some of the rhodies hide some special interest on the underneath side.

Skunk Cabbage & Ferns

2010-08-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

We've been taking pictures of Skunk Cabbage for years. The bright yellow seems to call a cheery note in the wetlands in early spring. It signals the change of seasons for us.

Ferns like the same moist habitat as they unroll in the spring.

Wet feet don't bother skunk cabbage.

The details are fascinating. I don't know if you can see the pattern on the yellow part of the skunk cabbage formed by the shape of the central flower.

Magnolias

2010-08-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

I was holding today open for something that has been delayed. So I am playing today with my photos.

Last Spring DER and I spent a lovely day in the arboretum. I think will publish just some picture posts of the beauty of the day.

Magnolias were among the lovely blooms of the season.

Some of the trees in the park are very old.

In Full Bloom


gnarly and loaded with moss and lichens

i Spy with my little eye

2010-07-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

Ok for years I've taken pictures of delightful little things that I can't get very close too. Now it is your turn to see if you can find them in the pictures.

Can you find the baby spiders, the bunny rabbit, the eagle, the seagull, or the whales these generally "not very good" pictures?

Now for a really hard one....

Can you see a crab, a barnacle, a snail? There was a small fish in this tide pool, but I can't see it in the picture.

Recovery

2010-04-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

I've spent most of the winter fighting off a sinus infection. I gave in, got antibiotics, and the follow-up drug that a course of antibiotics always leads me to....

I'm feeling better, but realizing that my fitness level suffered a lot this winter. My first clue was trying to keep up with SDR.... Yeh, I know it is not realistic for a 55 year old to try to keep up with a 22 year old. He came up for a few days to do some work for me during his period of winter unemployment. I worked beside him because I had him doing jobs he had never done. I've slowed down a lot this winter. I'm older than I thought.

I was grateful to have Seth working for me though. Church calling changes meant a drastic cut in my free time and took most of my mind share. He got done the things I would have wanted to be doing when changes hit. He painted my bedroom, I love fresh paint. He pressure washed the patio and freed it from it's winter algae. I love clean concrete. He pruned the current bush. I love currant jelly..... He shredded documents from the last year.... I hate shredding.

David graciously cooked for me for a couple of weeks, so I could just think about all those little details that come with a leadership calling in a ward you barely know after boundary changes. Not only has my body slowed, but my brain is a little sluggish too. Trying to keep who is allergic to cats and who can't "do" stairs, and what face goes with what name sorted out is about all I could handle. One new sister got her hair cut and i didn't know who she was the next week. There were so many who were new to me. Waking up at 3:00 a.m. with ahha moments of understanding was a blessing, but it slowed my motor skills way down.

We had almost finished the transition from one computer to the next one when all this hit and the photos are still all on the old computer - well more like I've forgotten how to access them on the new one..... I'll learn again - I hope! I may have forgotten all the new things I have learned.

I finally see my head bobbing to the surface and hopefully will get the picture problem solved in the next few weeks. Then I will be able to show you arboretum pictures from a truly fabulous spring day. The air was cool, the sun was warm, the camellias and magnolias and cherry trees were blooming. There were no phones :-)

I felt recovered and myself again. I'm grateful to DER for suggesting it. The power of nature and sunshine and a slow walk luxuriously admiring God's handiwork is amazing. I feel my mind once again able to solve problems and understand how I can organize my life so that I can get most of what I need to get done accomplished. I can see my limitations and how to organize to get help from others, without feeling like I'm overburdening them. I should also mention the gift of prayers on my behalf that helped to guide my thoughts to ways or organizing my own life and other things that I would not have have thought of. I have a plan. My plan is flexible but focused and came from a source beyond me. It came in small pieces, but I could feel when it was time for another one to come. For me, order is a powerful tool. I have been given the gift to organize something that at first seemed pretty chaotic.

"Come unto me all ye heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matt 11:28-30

Ahh!

Tuning In and Out

2010-01-28T22:39:00.000-08:00

I love it! I can have a personalized radio station of three or four or five..... don't get me wrong I still love KPLU for the jazz and KUOW for the regionally flavored chat and both for NPR, but I found Pandora Internet Radio.
You can create your stations in two ways that I've tried so far.

The first is to select an artist or a song and they will select music similar in nature to the work you selected. My first selection was Jane Monheit and I got a nice selection of vocal jazz. I created a "Bach" station as well.

Then I tried the second way of creating a station by selecting a genre that I thought I might want to hear. I selected New Age. The first artist the radio played was Enya and I started to relax. I could use a little spa music once in a while. Actually I think one of the genres was "spa" - maybe I misread and it was "Ska" - but I'm thinking it was spa. There were a variety of genres to select from, children's, latin, reggae, R&B, rock with various categories. I loved that the children's section had sleepytime music and I'm thinking of setting up a little latin station - maybe I'll "Zumba" at home. While exploring how to explain this, I just created a Brazilian station - love it! The down side - it's not completely commercial free - but then I'm pretty practiced at tuning those out. If you want to limit the ads more, you can upgrade (which I assume means shell out a little cash.)

Yea, I know Seattle has enough radio stations, but still... It has been a long time since my brother and I spent a summer filling wastebaskets full of weeds for 10 cents each so that we could purchase a portable transistor radio.(the hemp plants that grew on the ditch bank filled a bucket and pulled easily -the "hemp" was iradicated) None of my Pandora stations sound like what we heard then. The local radio station carried the farm report and was an outlet for the State Agricultural College. Saturday mornings the local station had a call in show - people called about to say whatever was on their mind. If they were looking for an apartment, or had something to sell, a recipe to share, or a grievance to air - Saturday at 10:00 a.m. was their chance. We loved the stations from the state capital - more music (the Beatles had only recently had their impact on the music scene) and we felt lucky if we happened upon "Chicken Man!" Growing up in Kansas you almost always had the radio on - listening to the basketball games or football games or in summer the tornado watches interwoven with baseball games. We would even hear our Dad on the radio occasionally when University faculty would come on and have a conversation about things of interest in their area of expertise. For my Father that was Dairy Food Science. A topic for another day.

The New Year should start Next Week

2010-01-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

The New Year should start next week - not last week. I'm behind. I'm finally ready to think about goals for the coming year. I spent this week working on the myriad little things that accumulate when you are ignoring them and enjoying other things like music....

Mar comes with strings attached and it was good to hear his music again.

Seth also brings strings and keeps our toes tappin'

Nathan brought some of his Sacred Harp Music and we enjoyed using it while we sang Christmas carols. We added to our LDS hymnal collection with a Methodist hymnal this year which includes some of those lovely French carols that aren't included in our hymnal because of their Catholic oriented message. Those tunes have such lovely melodies so it was fun to sing them.

Sally had her first piano time with Uncle Seth.

We played with food - in many forms.... you'll have to settle for pictures of our marzipan food. The cheese spread with friends was hidden from the camera - but really yummy. Two of the kid's friends that we love the most came by and visited. It was fun to see them again. K&M made Finnish pulla bread for us. Also yummy were Nathan's cranberry gummy candies and the chocolates send by Grandparents.

Empty pop cans became camp stoves. Pyros live here so ...yes, of course they were given a test to see if they worked. The Wii got used and movies got watched. Walks were taken and Christmas light displays were admired.

As Seth said "We need to plan for time when everyone just reads" Several of us read "The Lost Symbol" - The older boys rummaged around and found books long neglected. Seth found a collection of letters that DER and I had written long ago when the kids were little and enjoyed the tidbits about the older kids when they were little - before he was born. Sally and her mom read "Rain Makes Applesauce"

We had family pictures taken. The photographer came to the house - I think that actually made it easier. Well except that we had to do some clean up afterwards. Mar shaved the day before. Nate and Seth continued to grow their Christmas beards and are showing their sprouts in the pictures. Sally charmed the photographer and was perfectly sweet inspite of being tired.

We laughed and played wtih sweet Sal. The photographer wasn't the only one completely charmed by her. We all were.

We pet Kangaroos and Wallabyes and fed burros and llamas at the Kangaroo Farm. Well some of us were brave enough to feed the llamas and some of us weren't.....

They had you put this compressed alfalfa pellet in our mouth and the llamas came to get it. The zoo is cleaner, but you don't get to feed the animals or hold baby kangaroos at the zoo. The baby kangas were sweet.

It was fun to be together. The Christmas tree came out a little early and it seemed more spacious with the extra room. However it took me most of this past week to get things back together. So not I'm ready for those resolutions - and maybe I'm going to try to make them one month at a time...... This month the goal is to have a better morning routine. Of course it would help if I weren't waking up at 3 and 4 in the morning with "power surges" so maybe I'll roll with the punches and not get too excited about the routines.

The Lost Symbol

2009-12-24T08:38:00.000-08:00

OK, I may not be reading the "Twilight" books, but I do read Dan Brown. Quick reads, page turners...
I don't know how accurate Brown's linguistic and symbolic interpretations are but they are what makes the stories enjoyable. This story starts with a kidnapping and evolves to something more complex. Of course the perpetrator of this is determined that this is an act of revenge and therefore those who have wronged him must suffer significantly...... The hero and heroine are not sure who to trust as they try to rescue their kidnapped brother and friend. They are also unaware of the full purpose of the crime which come to light as they interpret situations and clues.

I am fond of character in literature, Mr. Brown doesn't spend much time on character. But the world could possibly use a few more Peter Solomans. Peter is the target of revenge. His sister and friend are trying to find him before the dastardly dude does him in and we discover the nature of their loyalties as they interact. Peter really has very little plot time, but his is the most fully developed character. He is admirable in his compassion, generosity, restraint and his cultivation of the greatness in others.

Recent Reading

2009-12-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

I've decided to make a record of my reading. I know that I like to know what books others find engaging, just in case I every need an idea for a book to read.

I will forewarn you that my reading is rather random. Our library has this great section the call "Explore More"
"Explore .." is all new books (hence no smoker smell) and they are paper back editions of books that have had good reviews (hence no pulp fiction) I never know what will be on that shelf, but it is a little bit like browsing a small book store. Occasionally I find a book not to my taste, inspite of it's initial appeal, but I don't have to keep reading it.

Recently from the "Explore More" collection I read "The Blue Zone" - by Dan Buettner about extreme longevity and the practices that seem to contribute to it. OK I'm never going to do some of those things - and am not sure that I want to live to be 105, but I am starting to drink more water and eat more nuts and get a little bit more exercise.

The second book from "Explore More" is titled "Islands Apart" by Ken McAlpine. It is the musing of a man who spent a week camping on each of the channel islands of the coast of California. Alternating chapters are about trying to find and understand how people find that kind of peace in other places. He spent time in a monastery, a homeless lunch shelter, a monument to soldiers dying in war,with street performers, and at a preschool. Some charm to his descriptions of the solitude of the islands and perhaps more insight into how people cope with the conflicts of life in other settings. His concluding sentence is, "the world comes in every hue and we are fortunate to dwell in them all."

I often will find an author that I like and try to read everything the library has that they have written. I have loved reading Malcom Gladwell, Tracy Kidder, Michael Pollan, Tony Hillerman, Orson Scott Card, Ellis Peters.... Recently David brought home a couple of Card books that we haven't previously read.

"Ender in Exile" fills in the gaps in the Ender series. Card has become a better writer over the years. The characters are better revealed than in the earlier novels. I love that he has taken a series and retold it from the vantage point of some of the other characters. Ender is the focal point of this book. I can't think that there were any great new story lines, just some connections and exposition to exisitng characters. We see the beginning of the his quest to find a place for the hive.

David also brought home another Card title, "Stonefather." a charming story set again in a world where people have gifts and talents that are foreign to our world. A world where your affinity with water or stone rules how and where and with whom you live. The main character seems to not fit in the world into which he was born and only finds his hidden talent when he leaves home and finds himself in a new setting where his talent comes to light and to good use. So many of Cards stories are tales of children with impressive talents. I wonder if he is exploring this theme because of his own development as a writer or recognizes that perhaps all of us have talents, gifts and abilities we do not ever realize we have. Perhaps there is no "ordinary"

I'd love to hear what you are reading.

Now that I have finished my stack, I can get my library privileges restored and get another load of books. I wonder what is on the "Explore More" shelves today.

Keep the Old....

2009-10-24T18:28:00.001-07:00

.....one is silver and the other is gold.

I have been serving as the secretary in the stake RS presidency. It has been delightful, but my three delightful friends have been released and I have three new delightful people to work with. The old vowed that we were going to get together as friends when the release came. We didn't want to loose that precious aspect of our service. It is harder than we thought it would be as everyone accepts new callings with new schedules. Yesterday afternoon we had our first get together. We just visited and caught up on the things that matter the most to each of us and the challenges and blessings of change. This pesto cheesecake to spread on french bread was my contribution to the goodies. It isn't sweet but is yummy.

All is Safely Gathered In

2009-10-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

... and the winter storms begin.

The apple sauce is a beautiful color this year. The extra warmth of summer this year did good things to those red beauties.

Autumnal Color.

2009-10-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

This is the autumn color on the maple tree we have grown from seed. It's parent is a Japanese Maple named "Bloodgood". Bloodgood has grown in our front yard for about 25 years. It's abundance of seeds have sprouted more than a few times. This one we have kept. It is not true to it's parent. The parent has burgundy red leaves through the year. This one has green leaves tinged with red in the summer and this is the fall coloration. In the fall the parent's leaves are a less dark red color, but don't have the variation in color of the seedling. This tree after 5 years is about 5 feet tall.

These are the leaves of the Solomon's Seal. They change color suddenly and drop quickly leaving the stems bereft.

The cyclamen are not exactly fall color, but they signal fall. During summer you would never know that they were there. The corms swell beneath the ground, sending flowers in mid to late August. The inverted flowers appear before their leaves are out. The leaves are coming now. The ants love the seeds of these plants and we find small flowers growing from the concrete joint between the driveway and the garage. The way they form their seeds is an added bonus. The flower stems curl up like a spring with a round developing seed pod growing where the flower once was. This plant had a mass of little springs that the emerging leaves have now hidden.

There is still plenty of green in the woods behind us. The Cottonwood and Aspen are still green, the big leaf maple is just starting to turn in wonderful yellow. There is more beauty to come.

North Cascades National Park

2009-10-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

We took a 300 mile drive on Thursday. DER took the day off and we did something we have wanted to do for years. We didn't do everything we've wanted to do - so we have an excuse to go again. We going to shoot for another trip in late July next year when the mountain flowers are blooming at Hart's Pass.

Yesterday we took the scenic drive through North Cascades National Park and beyond. Our hopes were to see Larches in their fall glory. We may have been a little early, but they were gold near the tree line. Larches are conifers that drop their needles. We see them as the occasional landscape plant, but wanted to see them in more natural settings. We stopped at lots of little overlooks - the reason we didn't make it to Hart's Pass.
This first photo was taken in deep shade by a shaky hand (mine) but I love it anyway. The rocks on this part of the overlook trail were drenched in moss. I think DER found the only non-mossy spot.

This is Rainy Lake - the destination of a short paved, handicapped accessible trail. At the top rim of the cirque you can see some larches. Along this trail we met two schnauzers named Max and Rainy. Rainy is 17 years old and got piggy backed to the trail for the first time in her annual trip to Rainy Lake. On the trail back down from Rainy Lake some gray jays flew right over our heads so close we could feel the air move from the beat of their wings.

This is the view from Washington Pass. Well it is really only part of the view. You walk out on to this promontory of rock and find yourself almost completely surrounded by mountains. It is stunning.

More views of this area to follow.

At higher elevations the huckleberry had turned it's glorious red. The granite outcrop was easy to walk on - a very grippy surface.

More Washington Pass views with larches. We were a little late in the day to get the best light for this spot, but it was spectacular - even as the mountains cast their shadows over the valley floor. DER did some homework on larches. They are deciduous conifers that don't like competition - hence their propensity for the tree line locations. Losing their needles helps them survive the cold during the winter.

One of the features of this area are a series of lakes formed by damming the Skagit River. Diablo Lake is one of these lakes. Diablo Lake is below Ross Lake which stretches up over the Canadian border. The tourquoise blue color is typical of glacier fed lakes.

Yes, the vine maple was changing color, but the sunlight on the maple was hard to comeby and there were not good picture opportunities. You'll just have to imagine the color licking up the ravines and water ways as if they were aflame.

I find my pictures a rather sorry representation of the beauty of the day. I'm kind of glad to know my eye and my heart can still see more than a camera.

Gnome with a View

2009-09-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

Labor day included a few hours of labor with a promise to ourselves that we would get out and leave by 1:00. We headed to Deception Pass. The mountains looked stormy and Marysville was clouded in. We haven't visited the Tide Pools at Rosario for many years. Now they have a little marked trail to protect the environment. It is marked with stainless steel bolts driven into the rocks. We were there as the tide was coming in so didn't see much in the way of the larger more exotic tide pool inhabitants. David took this good picture of an anemone with some smaller shells (mussels and hermit crabs and limpets) as the water flowed in and out of this small pool. We only saw one small fish waiting out the low tide. Someone out there saw an eel, but we missed it.

This small gnome has occupied the top spot on the head land that separates rocky Rosario Bay from another small bay with a boat dock. This gnome has a fabulous view of rocky shore line, seaside sunsets and forested mountains behind him. Lucky guy.

The headlands are populated with a mixed forest that includes one of our favorites - the Madrone tree. The Madrone with it's peeling orange bark is a delightful contrast with the blue green water of a sunny day.

(I don't know how I get these underlines - or how to get rid of them)

The underbrush included these bright Christmas red rose hips in contrast with the white of the pearl weed.

Seeds

2009-08-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

I have an inexplicable fondness for seeds. The down side of this is that I have a few more weeds than I really want. Their seeds were just so fascinating. I want to catch them just before they let go of their parent plant. I am usually unsuccessful.

These seeds are new to me. David is already asking me where I will put the plants that will result from my wanting to see what they do as they mature. Some seeds fluff up and blow in the wind, some spring away from the plant as if the parent plant is eager to send progeny into the world. Some drop their seeds so gracefully keeping their babies sheltered and close to home. Some stick to the gardeners clothing and piggyback to a new home. Some are beloved by ants and are carried to new locations in the garden far from their origin. What kind of seeds will these veratrum plants be?

This is the fourth year in the garden for this plant. We fell for this plant at our one and only trip to the Heronswood garden before it closed. Since then we have seen this plant in damp soil up in the mountains but have never seen it in bloom until this year in our home garden. I had assumed it propagated by roots spreading, but apparently my assumption was wrong. Will these seed pods be as interesting after the seeds have escaped as nigella or primrose seed pods? Will they fling or drop their offspring? How long will it take for the seeds to sprout? Will I recognize them in the garden or just think they are among the myriad weeds that I pull out every year?

Oh, I love the unknown potential, the small moments of discovery and the generosity of seeds.

She's cute, adorable, sweet, good natured ......

2009-08-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I said the word "cute" way to many times. That's what happens to the first grandchild.

But who wouldn't when she smiles and coos. The best time to get her "talking" is diaper time. She works her little mouth so hard to produce sounds.

She met three of her great grandmothers and was declared "perfect" and the "picture of a healthy baby" - Does being more articulate come with age?

She saved her biggest smiles for her Daddy's dinosaur jokes.

Blueberry Stars

2009-08-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

Some blueberries have five pointed stars in the blossom end.

We came home from our trip to a heavily loaded crop of blueberries.
Kerplink, Kerplank, Kerplunk.

We also came home to some rather muscular zuchinni and some ripe tomatoes. The big guys found their way to the compost pile and the tomatoes found their way immediately to our mouths.

Ruby Jelly

2009-07-12T20:58:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to try those recipes that call for liquifying currant jelly - now I can. My beautiful currant bush produced about 2 gallons of fruit. That fruit made about four batches of jelly. Help me remember to bring some when I come to visit.

Yes, I know I could have tried those lovely tart recipes long ago with store bought jelly. I just don't buy store bought jelly. David makes fabulous marmalade and our raspberries are productive enough for jelly during the first week of July when they bear their heaviest. And blackberries grow wild on the ditch bank and this town used to be known for it's strawberry farms (all houses now) and there are still some great locally grown berries. (If all you've been eating is supermarket berries from California, Mexico, etc.... I am truely sorry) Living in "berry land" makes buying jams and jellies very unnecessary.

I have also learned to layer plants to start new ones. My currant bush has been the parent plant for several clones. I have given most away, but have kept one that just began to bear this year. In a couple of years it too should be mature enough to be loaded with fruit.

Food Dreams

2009-06-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

I don't normally dream about food. I only a "foodie" by marriage and parenthood and I had food dreams the other day. Ahhh this was so good I have to share. No pictures - sorry about that - we ate it all and went back for seconds. Though the recipe calls it a salad we ate it like it was a main dish. This is a meal that won't heat up your kitchen as it takes almost no heat.
The recipe, in it's original form, came from a column in the usaweekly magazine by Pam Anderson. There is room for lots of variation.

Moroccan Couscous & Chickpea Salad.
1 cup couscous
1/2 cup dried cherries (you could substitute, craisins, golden raisins, or cut dried apricots)
1 cup boiling water

Pour boiling water over couscous and dried cherries, cover and let sit for about 5 minutes

2 T olive oil
1 Large orange bell pepper, cut to bite size pieces (we used a red pepper)
1 Large onion, halved and sliced thinly (we used a Walla Walla so it was a sweet flavor, a red Burmuda would be pretty, and notice that the recipe doesn't call for a sweet onion)
1 1/2 tsps. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Heat Olive oil in skillet over medium-high heat. Add peppers and onions. Saute for about 5 minutes. Add spices and salt and pepper as they cook. Add this mixture to the couscous and cherries.

1 16 oz. can chickpeas, drained

Add the chickpeas to the couscous mixture.

3 T olive oil
3 T rice wine vinegar
3 T orange juice concentrate

Whisk these ingredients together and pour over salad. Toss to coat.

Makes six side dish servings.

We ate this at room temperature.
DER took the left overs the next day after they had been in the fridge. He reports that they were OK.

The recipe called for chopped fresh cilantro - we left this for last in order to cater to our individual preferences. DER likes it and I'm not so fond of it.

2000 miles and worth it!

2009-06-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

We returned a couple of days ago from a memorable trip. We went to Rexburg to meet our first granddaughter. K & M had a baby girl they named Sally Elizabeth. She was born on 7 June 2009 and weighed in at 7 lbs. 8 oz. We think she looks like her daddy though her hair doesn't look like it's going to be red - time will tell. As you can see she is a beautiful little girl. What you can't see is that she has a sweet nature.

DER and S stayed a day in the burg then left me to hopefully be useful and went on down the road to see the older sons and "the grands" - I missed seeing the rest of the family but loved the extra time I got with the baby and K & M. K & M are going to be good parents.

We are smitten.

I love summer

2009-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

Reasons to love Summer

1. Eating from the garden. Starting with the Aspargus which doesn't need anything on it if you eat it right after you pick it. It's season is almost over. It is time to let the stalks grow to nuture next years wonderfulness. Please note my well composted bed. Also note that the fennell seeds that sprouted from the compost have been removed. There were probably a couple thousand fennell seedlings. Sigh.... compost just doesn't get hot enough around here to decompose those tough little seeds.

2. Eating from the garden deserves more than one spot. The Rhubarb season starts with DER's birthday pie near the end of April. The Rhubarb is wonderful and doesn't need as much sugar as some varieities. This variety, whose name is long forgotten, gives so generously and is lacking that "green rhubarb" flavor that so many people dislike. We've had a couple of pies and a cobbler and given some away to rhubarb fans in our acquaintance. The plant is still vigourous and does well in this cool summer climate in the Northwest. We'll be eating rhubarb goodies most of the summer and have some put away in the freezer for rhubarb cake through the winter months. Yummmmmy.

3. The bees are energetically buzzing the raspberry and blue berry plants - more wonderfulness to look forward too.

4. Sleeping with the windows open and hearing bird song when I wake up.

5. Western Tanagers have been flitting in the alder tree with their bright orange heads, which are amazingly well camouflaged for orange.

6. The "fluff" of the cottonwood trees drifting down like a warm snow and gathering along the edges of our world.

7. The need to weed seems to slow down.

8. Eating outside

9. and .... best for almost last....Long daylight hours, especially in the morning - and most especially when I am teaching seminary and it is day light instead of dark night.

10. and .... "bestest for lastest"..... Those long road trips to see various family members that this year, for the first time, will include a grand child. Yipppeee!

Changing Traditions - Suiattle River Road Hike

2009-05-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

What Makes these holes in the bark?

Why are these sentences underlined? hmmm?

Our long standing memorial day tradition has been to go to Seattle for the Folk Life Festival. We've enjoyed music and dancing and crafts from around the world - and great street food. Our observation in recent years has been that Folk Life is a great place to be if the weather is a little bad. Too many people come out to the festival if the weather is good. Today was a great weather day for the Northwest - almost hot for a few hours in mid-afternoon. So we didn't go to Folk LIfe. We went hiking instead.

DER found a hike appropriate for our winter conditioning. Along the Suiattle River is a road that is not longer accessible to cars. Because the trail is a former road bed, you don't have to watch where you place your feet, the trail is companionable wide and being near the river there is not much elevation gain.

Inspite of the moss in the pictures, it was not as damp as we would expect for here, but it was nice to be out before the trailside plants get covered with dust. We went about two and half miles up the trail to a campground that is not longer accessible and speculated on what a good beginners backpacking trip this would be with kids. You could even bike in to the campsite with only a few portages. One portage for a cattle guard and one for a large muddy puddle. The river has washed out the road in a few places so parents would want to be sharp eyed and do appropriate shepherding of little ones. The pictures above and below show the first road wash-out and the creek near the campground.
Of course I'm remembering the camping trip with a crawling Nathan near a river. I didn't enjoy it much - too worried that he'd crawl right off the little bluff into the river. And we try to forget the messiness of crawlers in the dusty dirt of your usual campsite. So maybe not a trip for toddlers, but still a possibly good trip for kids.

The rural meadows on the way were yellowed with shining buttercup and the yellow iris that loves wet lands was in bloom. The drive was as good as the hike.

Leading and Following

2009-05-18T15:29:00.001-07:00

David has a friend at work who has started ballroom dancing with his wife. They invited us to a "dance party" - another name for a sales pitch, but it included a group lesson on the fox trot and an evening of dancing. We agreed to sign up for the five dollar intro lessons which included one group lesson (swing) and two individual lessons for us as a couple. We asked them to teach us the rumba and give us some tips on leading and following. The teacher was sweet and helpful. The group lesson in contrast to the first group lesson did not have any men with alcoholic courage, so it was better. Group lessons mean you rotate around to all the possible dance partners in the room. It made me appreciate my husband, who smiles sweetly, smells clean (in more ways than one), looks at you instead of the floor, doesn't step on your toes, and recognizes the beat of the music ...... In spite of the unpleasantries of the first group lesson, we did enjoy ourselves and it was good to have someone help us a little bit.

For years, I've been complaining that DER doesn't lead because he expects all dances to be like folk dances with a set pattern of steps that both dancers know. He counter complains that I cuddle up too close for him to effectively lead. The teacher helped us do better. My cuddling prevented the tension necessary and he often forgot to lead or didn't know when to give the cue. I wonder where else in life tension is necessary.

Of course, after the short series of $5 lessons, they try to lead you into signing up for more lessons at the regular price by making it awkward to decline. We declined - hopefully with enough kindness and sensitivity that the teacher didn't feel like it was about her as a teacher. But we might think about doing a short series of lessons some other time. Now if we could just find a place to dance more often so we develop some kinesthetic memory.

Tourism at Home

2009-04-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

Mom and Barbara came for a visit. I don't think Mom would have come without Barbara so I am grateful for her willingness to travel to see us and to bring Mom. I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that my mother would probably never visit us again.

We did lots of fun things. David took the week off. We went whale watching. Gray whales are not as exciting as orca's but it was still a chance to see whales and it was still pretty cool. We saw cormorants, grebes and bald eagles along with the whales. This picture is of cormorants on top of pilings as we pulled into the dock. The whales are too hard to get a picture of, but we did get to smell whale breath. The gray whales feed on the bottom and have kind of a mucky smelling breath.

We went up to Skagit Valley for the daffodils blooming in the fields. That is the picture that is at the top. It would normally be tulips by this time of year, but it has been a cold winter. The peak bloom will be beautiful in a couple of weeks. This is the largest bulb producing region in the world and is pretty impressive when in bloom. These are some early tulips.

Our outside activities were somewhat limited by the weather, but we did manage a little walk in our nearby woods where the fungus was fascinating and the trillium was in bloom.

We also spent a little time with a stroll in the Arboretum. And I as usual enjoyed the shaggy bark of this tree - whose name I can't recall.

Our Camellia won't be blooming this year because of the cold winter. But there were some beauties in the Arboretum.

We went to Pike's Market where the flower stalls were also beautiful with daffodils. They even air brush some of them an orange color, but the ones in the picture are all natural.

We walked along taking advantage of some of the free tastes along the way. Expensive balsamic vinegar flavored with blackberry could have had us standing around that booth for a long time and then there are the Chukar Cherries (chocolate covered dried cherries), ummmm.

We went to the glass museum in Tacoma. It is pretty cool to watch them blow and shape glass in the hot shop there adn walk across the bridge of glass. I'll have to wait for Barb to send pictures of that one as I didn't bring my camera. Look for Tacoma Museum of Glass on the internet and you can see glass blowing on the internet.

We also took the Boeing tour. Kids - it's much better than it was when you guys were young and we took it on a spring break. It was pretty impressive to see five planes in one building. Again -- no pictures - they will confiscate and not return your camera if you try to take it on the tour.

Lots of fun activities, good food, and a restful round of "Jeeves and Wooster" in the evenings. Almost too much fun for one week.

Conservation

2009-04-02T10:01:00.001-07:00

This pretty white sand on the drive way is the stuff that came from the bottom of our water heater when we drained it. We finally did what the plumber recommended several years ago when we replaced the water heater. He said it extends the life of the appliance and conserves energy. We are now convinced as we estimate that there was about an inch of percipate in our water heater. The good news is that it is nice and white - not rusty.

We've made a few other conservation measures this last winter. We replaced a toilet. Again talked with the plumber to find out what low flow toilets work the best and this one is far better than it's predecessor. We changed the aereators in our faucets to one gallon per minute aereators. I don't notice it anywhere but in the kitchen when I'm filling a pot of water for pasta. We also replaced our shower heads. This one I do notice because the spray pattern is not as wide as the old one. The final thing we did was to turn down the heat on the water heater. We figured with only two of us living here we used less water than when the whole family was here. I notice that my shower water is not as hot, but it doesn't seem to make very much difference in the pace at which we do other things. We have enough hot water for the two of us.

Results are a little hard to quantify, because we also went from having young adults with their "late night - lights on" life style to having just two of us pretty much on the same schedule. However, our heating bill went down $14 a month. Some of it had to be our conservation efforts.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup

2009-04-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

We had this yummy soup at a restaurant a couple of years ago and were eager to make it at home. We've experimented with good flavors and various ways of making it and have come down to a basic plan that is enhanced with whatever herbs you like with these flavors. This is easy, but not specific. Make it how you like it.

Last week WinnCo had red peppers on sale for 68 cents each. That is a great deal around here when the normal winter price is about 2 dollars apiece. So I loaded a big bag and took them out to the grill to roast them. Turn as the skins blacken and blister to get all sides roasted. When they are blistered all around, put in a paper bag and roll it closed. Let them steam in the bag for a 20-30 minutes or so. Scrap the skin off and remove the stem and as many of the seeds as you want to remove. Blend it to a puree. If you do a bunch at once you can freeze the puree in whatever size portions you want. I now have a bunch of red pepper popsicles in my freezer - almost instant soup.

Alternatives to grilling the peppers include oven roasting, roasting on stove top over a gas burner or in a cast iron pan. I just think that I can do a lot more peppers in less time if I roast them outside on the grill.

For the soup combine red pepper puree with chicken broth and potato flakes (or real mashed potatoes if you want) to get the combination of flavor and density of soup that you like. Add herbs that you like. I kind of like thyme and a very little bit of oregano with snipped chives to garnish it - but that is what I have in the garden.
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Hellebores

2009-03-21T11:10:00.001-07:00

The crocus are done but the Hellebores are out. It is the Hellebores natural habit to drop it's head and the petals and the tough sharp edged leaves provide a dry haven for the pollinating insects.

These Hellebores are in the backyard, which is usually a couple of weeks behind the front seasonally because of the shade of the house. The one in the front by the crocus does not flourish.

I am pleased that these plants are reproducing. They seem happy in their home. They were "pound plants" they came from the discount plant rack of distressed plants at the local "we sell everything" store. The moss and the lichen looked beautiful today on the trunk of the Japanese maple.

Lines in the Sand

2009-03-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

=
I was chatting with my mother a few days ago and this memory came up. She didn't remember, but I did - possibly because of the disappointment. When I was about five years old, we traveled by train to San Diego. The train trip was another vivid memory of my childhood, but is not what I want to remember today. My memories of San Diego include it's wonderful zoo and the giant tortises there. Perhaps the tortise was the most memorable animal of the zoo because we would ofen see box turtles on the road side in Kansas. We would occasionally persuade mom to stop and pick them up and we would bring them home and try to feed them. They didn't adapt well to captivity; if all the children of Kansas did what we did, the box turtle population would have been descimated in that baby boom generation... We went to Disneyland and I found it scary. I've never become a rider of carnival rides possibly because of that early experience. None of this has anything to do with lines in the sand however.

We went to the beach. We walked out on the hot dry sand, none of us in beach clothes, filling our shoes with sand. We reached the point where the waves had darkened and hardened the sand. Dad leaned down and drew a line in the sand and said, we'll go when the waves cross this line. I suppose there were many reasons why Dad might not have wanted to spend very much time at the beach. Perhaps he didn't want his kids returning to his sisters house with clothes full of sand. Perhaps there was a plan for something else later that day and he didn't want to get us all cleaned up again. I suspect it was hot; some of us sunburned easily and Barbara was a baby. Perhaps the biggest reason was that he was a non-swimmer (as were we at the time) and wasn't comfortable with water play. Whatever his reasons, the very next wave crossed his line - and he really was ready to go. We persuaded him to wait for a few more waves, but not many. Drawing lines in the sand can be disappointing, waves wash them away sooner than you think.

A Walk in the Woods

2009-03-04T11:36:00.001-08:00

We have been blessed over many years to have a wooded area near our home. The individual who owns the property has maintained trails through his woods. It is a favorite quiet area where we go for oxygen loaded air and to enjoy the changing seasons of a natural area. In years past I would walk alone there- I don't anymore, but it is still beautiful and refreshing. Yesterday was "telecommute day" for David so we went for a mid-day walk. These pictures are some of the beauty that we saw.
Shelf fungus grows readily on dying trees. So does moss. The fungus is almost wood like in it's nature. You can't pull if off. It is not soft like a mushroom. These are hard and woody, but light weight. The moss will peel off, if it is thick.

We looked for the trilliums, but did not see even their first efforts. Trilliums are starting to pierce the ground in our yard, but they have the advantage of being near the house and benefit from it's warmth. We saw, but did not photograph the bright glassy red berries of last year's May Lillies. The May Lillies don't seem to like to be stepped on so they will make the trails easy to find as summer approaches. Right now the trails are invisible, we just follow the routes of memory. Mr. Turk must not be as healthy as in years past. We didn't see him out on this nice day and the areas that he has cared for seem a little run down.

This is the bark of a large old Douglas Fir. These trees are very tall and their wood is very strong. This bark was probably about eight inches thick and it made me think of cork (also a bark) - it didn't seem heavy, it seemed airy inspite of being so thick.

this young Western Red Cedar (think pencils) is growing over the stump of a tree that was previously living in this spot. In a few years when the lower stump is decomposed this tree will look like it rooted in the air. It really rooted on the stump and uses the nutrients it can get from the stump. Sometimes this happens with trees that have fallen on the ground. There will be several trees using the downed tree as a starter/helper. These are called nurse logs because they help the young get a good start.

The bark of a dead tree will separate from the wood of the tree. It kind of curls off. I love the bark of trees.

The picture to the right shows the yellow catkins of the hazel trees. They are one of the earliest signs of spring. Their tassels swing in the light breezes of a cool spring day.

We also found the blue, blue feathers of a Stellars Jayin the leaf mould. We love those birds that spend their winters in this area. They are so beautiful when they spread their blue wings in the sunlight. The larger feathers are blue on one side and black on the other. The only black you really notice on the bird is it's head is black.

Delicate Strength

2009-03-02T14:22:00.001-08:00

How do they do it? These crocus are planted beneath a dense mat of Woolley Thyme to help them survive the culinary intentions of squirrels. Every year they slide through the thyme without damage. They close up on cloudy days so they are not attacked by heavy rains. but even then they seem so fragile and suffer more from the rain than from their effort to get through the thyme. How do they do it?

Spring is here! - at least for today; the crocus are the proof. Spring in the northwest is the longest season of the year. It begins hesitantly in February and remains often through the end of June. So here spring with it's qualities of youthful persistence and exhuberance is joyfully welcomed after the heavy gray skies of winter.

abandoning Sudoku

2009-02-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

We've become bored with Sudoku so now we are trying crossword puzzles. It takes us a few hours together to get the Sunday NY Times puzzle done. Together we are pretty quick with the Monday through Wednesday puzzles. Thursday often stumps us. I wonder if the puzzle writers are different. It is not exactly a daily routine, but a frequent after dinner activity on these dark winter evenings.

Speaking of dark winter days - the sun now sets after 5:00 pm. ahhh the hope of spring ....

Finished!

2009-01-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

One New Years Resolution down - now it is time to make the others.

Between Christmas and New Years we started ripping up the vinyl flooring in our combination laundry/bathroom. We have replaced it with porcelain tile. In the picture you can see the grouting partially done on the right side and undone on the upper left side. Every home renovation job always takes three times longer than you hope it will take. You always find more to be repaired or replaced than you think you will. And you end up grateful for working with your spouse because you keep each other going when either one of you working alone would settle for "less than a good job"

In the end you look at it and know the faults of the job, satisfaction it's completion, pleasure in the results and a sure conviction that you are not really 23 years old any more - your brain has just been teasing your body one more time.

Blueless Days

2009-01-21T07:59:00.000-08:00

After days of rain, snow, flooding, rain, fog and black ice there are indeed signs of spring on these gray days. The sun peeks under the layer of clouds at the magical beginning and end of the day, spotlighting the soft purple catkins of an alder tree. Yellow catkins ring from the branches of the hazels, getting an early start on my favorite season of the year.

The azalea buds are pinking and swelling - defying the gray sky of winter. DR consults his electronic brain to tell me occasionally that these gray days are passing and that this day there will be light seconds sooner than the last day. We have small moments of celebration.

Winter flowers

2009-01-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

These Hydrangeas came from the garden. I've been trying for years to find the perfect stage at which to harvest them for dried flowers. If I harvest too soon they wither. They hold that fabulous sky blue color but they are not pleasant to the eye. If they go late, then they turn a mauve color that I'm not too fond of and don't really want to keep out. But this year I am all smiles. The perfect stage gives me a blue green color that I really love and it lasts all winter.

In Defense of High Heels

2009-01-12T10:46:00.000-08:00

I like being taller
Men talk to me when I wear them - is that just because I'm closer to their eye level?
I feel sexy when I wear them - is that because men talk to me? hmmmm.... or .....
My husband notices my legs when I wear them and that is my best shot at a foot rub.
My husband and I kiss at even lip level when I wear them.
My tummy seems flatter when I wear them - I don't know how that works
They are fun to wear when dancing.

Why do I need to defend high heels? Because I just sprained my ankle while wearing them.
I might have any way - I tripped in the dark while trying to make my way around the yard debris container which was waiting for it's Monday morning appointment. I will also admit that I might not have sprained my ankle if I had been wearing my grandma shoes which are stable, unprovacative, unremarkable and sensible. I like my grandma shoes for what they are - easy to wear when I want to be invisible or ordinary. They are great for wearing while teaching. They just don't have the same effect on my mood as high heels.

I'll be wearing my grandma shoes for a while while my ankle mends, but the high heels will return.

Snow Geese

2009-01-03T22:00:00.001-08:00

Half a mile wide great broad V's of snow geese, V's within V's, flew over yesterday. There were wave after wave of great V's of geese, maybe about a thousand birds with their black tipped wings ossillating against the invisible sea of air in which they move. They winter in the fields around Stanwood. Their summer range is the Arctic region. The flocks must be increasing for us to see them here. The pictures aren't mine - I just enjoyed the sight of these great birds silently swimming in the sky.

If all you see is a rust colored box, click on it to get to a picture. I'm trying to learn to post pictures from a URL. Not sure that I am successful. (2010 I added the picture above of snow geese in a Skagit county field)

Little Blue Plastic Pot

2008-12-28T18:14:00.000-08:00

A totally unromantic post - I've been trying something new - a neti pot. The pictured pot is not blue plastic like my version but is pretty porcelin. Who knew there could be benefits of water up your nose. I've always hated that feeling but I seem willing to do this. It seems to help my constant allergic nasal drip. Basically I lean over a sink, pour lukewarm salted water in one nostril and it drips out the other nostril thereby washing the inside of my nose. You breathe through your mouth while doing this so the water up the nose feeling is not so pronounced as it was when you couldn't quite get the hang of swimming when you were a kid. So why would I write about this? I think it might improve my quality of life. That is worth writing about. Yes, I have tried some of those over the counter allergy medications. I always feel worse the day after I take one of them, though they are very effective at drying me up. This little pot and a bit of water may save a tree because I use far fewer tissues. OK the plastic pot cost some global warming but maybe the tree I save will offset that and I can be more comfortable as a side benefit. Oh, and one more thing - my hips look slimmer if my pockets aren't overflowing with used tissues ;)

Spit and Revelation

2008-12-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

Last week in Relief Society we had the lesson that tells the story of the revelation we know as the Word of Wisdom. I spent a few minutes imagining possible conversations between Emma and Joseph on the topic of the tobacco spit on the floor.

Did Emma say, "I wish they wouldn't do that." Did she say, "Can you get them to stop spitting on the floor." Did she say, "Joseph this is gross" Did she fight back her gag reflex everytime she cleaned it up? How long did she do it before she complained? Did she ask meekly, forcefully? Did she draw "a line in the sand" and say, "This needs to stop or else...."

How did Joseph reply? Did he say, "You know it would be rude to ask them to stop." Did he say, "I'll help you clean it up." Did he say, "I don't know what you expect me to do about it." How long did it take before he thought of praying about it?

Do I take the my own complaints or the complaints of family members to the Lord promptly or do I mutter about or figure there is nothing I can do about this or that. Do I butt my head against the wall when I could have divine help? I feel that I am too often too slow to seek the Lord for help about things that seem pretty temporal. This seems like a little thing but the response of the Lord wasn't just a little thing. He found in the little problem of tobacco spit on the floor an opportunity to teach things that would more than clean up the floor. Following principles of the Word of Wisdom cleans our minds and bodies and prepares us to hear the voice of the Lord and to act with strength upon those promptings.

What opportunities for divine tuition do I miss by trying to do too much by myself?

It Snowed!

2008-12-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

So I guess no one will be weeding! The rosemary is tough and will still be wonderful through the rest of the winter, though the parsley has meet a frozen demise.

Library Cats

2008-12-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

Our local library has recently installed "Library Cats" - a few of the seven cats are pictured here. The cats can only be seen one at a time. As you go through the library you will find them in various areas of the library.

These cats were the culmination of a long process funded by a gift to the Library. The artists are Sarah Ohman-Ybarra Lopez and Mark Stevenson.

This playful cat is located appropriately in the teen area. Teens come to the library for fun as well as for books. This week there is a movie day and a game day. I don't think I would be much good at air guitar or DDR but it sounds like fun.