Cat's feet...

The fog comes 

on little cat feet. 

It sits looking 

over harbor and city 

on silent haunches 

and then moves on.

... Carl Sandburg

I chased the fog this morning, through river valleys and pastures, all the way to my favorite farm. I've photographed it in all seasons, but never on a foggy morning. The best view is from the east, but the fog was so thick this morning. I couldn't even see the barn.

So I had to be content with this view, with the fog rising up out of the Green River Valley spreading south to envelope the buildings, and the pre-dawn light sucking all the color out of the landscape.

Beach treasures...

So, I'll come right out and admit that this part of the Washington coast isn't my favorite. I grew up exploring beaches full of tide pools and sea stacks, with gravel beds full of rocks (and occasionally, an agate. With wild stacks of driftwood tossed up by wild surf. With streams making furrows in the sand from cliffs to the surf.

Beaches you couldn't drive on. Beaches where the only sounds were the crashing of the waves, the cries of the sea birds, and the scritch of rocks being pulled by the waves. Not the sound of vehicles being driven up and down, engines racing.

I prefer my kind of beach.

That said, there is a certain appeal to walking on the hard-packed sand, the waves curling over my feet, looking for treasure. On this beach, there wasn't much to find. But the looking was still fun.

A rather large jellyfish (which I almost walked on).




A pool of water and sand washing over a sand dollar.




A lot of wary seagulls. I had to work hard to herd this one exactly where I wanted it in my composition, and got a single photo before it flew away.




Lots of broken clam shells. In spite of not a single rock anywhere on this beach, shells still don't survive.



And that was it. I walked more than a mile north on the beach, barefoot, squishing the sand and water between my toes, and had great fun. My bare legs and feet didn't even get cold, which is not a common thing on a Pacific beach. But I found no treasures to bring home.

Pacific Beach...

We're at the ocean with my husband's family for a few days of down time... walking on the beach, flying kites, eating (of course), drinking good wine, and lots and lots of talking. We've done this the past few years, sort of a mini family reunion that we take turns planning. This year was our turn, and we decided the beach was calling our name.

This morning we had a lot of rain, and a hunt for glass floats. Not on the sand, but rather in the deserted campground. Kids and adults searched, and at the end of the morning, DW and I had found ten, including an inscribed globe of blue, one of only a dozen like this.


In the afternoon, once the rain stopped (and we'd changed to dry clothes), we headed for the beach. We set up chairs and snacks, settled down with books to read, and DW and Bruce got out their stunt kites.






























Then home to our side-by-side houses to cook dinner, play games, and work on a puzzle. And at the end of the day, we watched a perfect sunrise from the back porch of our rental house.

Granite and ivy...

There are a lot of old headstones in the Hoquiam cemetery... and a lot of ivy. And sometimes, they come together.

Madison, reflected...

Madison found a sunbeam to sleep in this afternoon, but it meant snoozing on top of her cardboard scratching box. She didn't seem to mind.



I spotted her when I walked out of the downstairs hallway, reflected in the shiny front of the roll-around a/c unit.

Finishing touch...

The deck was sadly gray and black at the beginning of summer; better after being pressure washed. Not bad, actually, considering its age... near as we can remember, we built it the summer of 1988 with the help of a friend and his 3-year-old son. Riley's little handprint and the date are still visible on one of the concrete footings.

DWs new orbital sander did a great job of taking off the worst of the rough wood, and I cleaned up underneath the drip edge and the edges of all the boards using the leftover 60- and 80-grit sanding disks (by hand!).

And then we waited for the weather to cooperate. We needed three solid days of dry weather: a day for the deck to dry after a couple of days of rain, 6 hours to stain the deck, and two days of drying time.

The weather cooperated, thank goodness. We had enough time to get the deck stained and dry, finishing just before nightfall. To keep it dry in case of  heavy dew, we spread tarps and let it dry another day. We finished up the stairs the next morning, and I took pictures so we'd remember how light the wood was when the stain went down.

We had to cross our fingers with the stain color, because it wasn't available at the lumber store. They ordered it for us, and it was exactly what we wanted.

Foraging...

It rained all day, and all I could do was stare outside and wonder when Indian Summer was going to get here. I have pots of perennials all over my patio, and would really like to get them in the ground before the first frost. And weeding in the rain isn't my idea of fun.



Two bucks spent the afternoon in the orchard, snoozing under the trees, and nibbling the leaves off the lowest branches. Maybe they're waiting for the pears and apples to fall from the trees... they weren't at all interested in the Italian plums.

By hand...

Once in a while, I see examples of hand quilting that make me want to pick up a needle, right then. The accomplished quilter who spoke to my guild tonight brought some of her work to show us, and even let us touch. For someone who loves fabric and quilts, that's a very big deal!



This small quilt is made from hand-dyed Japanese fabrics, pieced in random circles and squares, then quilted using colored perle cotton. I love the double lines of quilting, and the slightly big stitches to make sure the stitching shows. When you use beautiful thread like this, it needs to show.



The border squares are ever so slightly wonky, made by framing colored squares with black and white print strips, then cutting them to size. A quick and clever way to make framed squares.

Looking down...

We were on the road at 4:45 this morning, heading north to Snohomish County for a day of exploring and hiking and geocaching. We walked along the slough trails on Spencer Island and saw a family of river otters, and chatted with a man and his dog who were out for a morning walk. The man had a tripod and a huge wildlife lens on a Nikon camera, but hadn't seen anything more exciting that a lone heron.

We spent the rest of the day driving deeper and deeper into the mountains above Darrington, rewarded from time to time with a creek or river crossing, the occasional deer, and even more infrequent car or truck.

There was a cache near a bridge over a narrow granite canyon, and looking over the edge at a pair of waterfalls, I was looking straight down at the top of a fir tree that grew on a rocky ledge far below.  Without leaning way out over the railing and holding on tight, I never would have known that this was a single tree, and it was the top I was seeing, not just some branches.

Not the usual sort of lone tree I look for, and a good reminder to never take any view for granted, to always look closer.

Dead weeds...

Another beautiful day to work in the garden. We were gone during most of a hot August, which killed most of the weeds in my flower gardens. How lucky was that! The flowers were a bit stressed, but are coming back nicely. I've been steadily working through the beds, clearing out dead weeds and deadheading, moving perennials to better spots, and cutting back the sod to give me more room to plant next spring.

The big flowerbed outside our studio apartment is slowly taking shape. I've started to rebuild the rockery we dismantled when we had a big fir tree taken out a few years ago. John and Dave moved the rocks back to the garden for me, and I'm shoving them her and there as I can, and building a new run of stone to form a curvy walkway through the bed. This area is 3 feet deep in bark and wood chips (thanks to grinding the stump), and I'm gradually moving chips to other parts of the garden. When I get down to dirt, I can plant new perennials here.

As I cut down old flower stalks, I've been harvesting seeds from my favorites: rose campion, white foxglove, veronica spicata, campanula. I hope to start these indoors at the end of winter, and have plants to set out in April.

Before setting the sprinkler, I crawled under the hellebores and transplanted a bunch of babies. They'll live in pots on the patio and next summer I'll be able to plant them in the garden (or give them away).

One step at a time...

It was Williamsburg blue when we bought our little farmhouse in 1985, after searching for the perfect property for 16 months. It had a home for us, a barn and pastures for my horse, lots of space for gardening, two orchards, a big pond with a duck house, a miniature of the house to protect the original well, and a chicken coop. The farm also came with a family of Toulouse geese.

A few years later the gardens were thriving, we'd grown a flock of Rhode Island Red chickens, the flock of geese had grown to fifteen, and we'd replaced the roofs on all the buildings. It was time to bring in a painter. We chose teal, with bright white trim and dark blue-green for all the fancy molding.



Colors
For years, we talked off and on about how to paint the buildings the next time around. We hashed it out so much, that when it came time to make a decision, it was pretty easy. Both of us wanted barn red for the outbuildings. And I wanted dark gray for the house and garage, something that would be a neutral background for the green grass and trees, and the flower gardens. In the end, after much research, we chose a medium gray for the house and garage with dark gray for the gable ends, and ebony for the fancy trim. We thought the perfect barn red would be tough to find, but the grays were much harder. We drove around nearby farm country, holding up paint chips and making notes, and we're completely happy with our choices.




New doors
Once the paint colors were settled and John (our builder/painter) started in on repairs, we went shopping for doors. The old front door (which is now the unused back door) was in poor shape and needed to be replaced. Plus, I wanted a door with a window to let in more light. We were lucky and found fiberglass Shaker doors for half price, because the leaded glass windows were put in slightly crooked. We decided we could fix them easily, and decided to replace both of our doors. I love how the window reflects the trees around the patio, and love the extra light that streams inside in the afternoon.




Garage
The biggest construction part of the job was updating the garage. We wanted it to match our 1923 farmhouse, so added a belly band and replaced the cedar siding above the trim with shingles. We also added a pair of corbels to the ones at each end and at the top. This was DWs brilliant idea. There was always something out of place about this long stretch of roof, and the corbels brought the whole building into scale.

John used gray-tinted oil-based primer on all the buildings as he finished each one, not just the new wood. This made sure that the new paint would hide in one coat.





The end of the garage near the house has a mother-in-law apartment, with a classy beveled glass door. Once the building was painted, it was clear that we needed to replace the old light fixtures. Something in dark metal or black, and Mission style I think.



John drove in one morning and said he thought the garage doors were too plain. What would we think of using the dark gray to highlight them? I thought it would look too modern; doors just like these with frosted glass panels are all the rage right now. But he was sure it would be perfect, so he painted one row. We stood back and looked, still not sure. So he painted another, then another, saying if we didn't like it, he'd painted it medium gray again. But when one door was done, we loved it. He also painted the foundation, the perfect touch.




Barn
The machine shed forms an "L" with the garage, and houses lumber and the John Deere tractor and the farm truck, and always stored hay and grain when I had horses. I've always called it the barn, because a farm isn't complete without one. It was never anything but plain jane. But John had the perfect idea: add a belly band to make it match the other buildings, and battens to break up the long expanses of plywood.










Chicken coop
Our little chicken coop changed the most of any of the structures, because it was never really finished. It sits on concrete pier blocks, has a wall of windows, and a door at one end. It was sheathed in scraps of plywood. A few hours with wood and a nail gun, and John added a belly band to each end, battens all the way around, trim around the door, and a sill. The old door has a coat of ebony paint, and even the chicken's door is painted in ebony. All it needs is a ramp... and chickens!










Well house
The original hand-dug well is protected inside a tiny replica of the farmhouse. One of the windows was missing, replaced by a sheet of plywood. But we found the window in the barn and re-installed it. John repaired damaged siding, and DW and I pulled out the rotten boards over the 3-foot-diameter well casing and replaced them with ground-contact boards. There's a perfect little wedge-shaped flower bed in the corner, and come spring I will plant something there. Something suited to a farmhouse in the country, like rudbeckia or purple coneflowers, or maybe a hosta.



We couldn't decide what color to paint this little building, so we painted all three colors on one side and took our time making up our minds. The lighter gray was out right away. I loved the dark gray, and thought it would look perfect, separated from the big house by a smooth green lawn.

But I couldn't get the image of a tiny red house out of my mind, surrounded by cedar trees, the red a beautiful contrast to the green, a jewel nestled in the snow of winter. So it became red.




The farmhouse
We saved the best (and the most work) for last:  our classic farmhouse.

Like the garage, the farmhouse will be painted in two colors of gray: dark gray in the gable ends, and medium gray for the rest. The belly band and window trim and barge rafters will be white, and the fancy moldings will be ebony. This turned out to be a very cool color... in the right light, it has a purple cast, which I love. The front door will be barn red, and the other doors will be ebony.

While John worked on the other buildings, I scraped paint on the south side. It was kind of addicting. The last week before vacation we both worked on it, scraping and sanding. And it was hot, many days in the 90s. Great for drying out the wood, not so great for the humans out in it.



When we got home from vacation, everything was done and perfect.





The rest is up to us: new light fixtures and door hardware, and refinishing the deck. And building a back porch.

Next year.