One of those days...

Madison woke me with a gentle paw tap on the chin. The Tundra went out for service; we came home with a loaner. Then the Pilot went out for windshield repair; DW got nailed by a rock on the highway yesterday, and came home with a quarter-sized chip. While we waited, we walked on the valley trail and grabbed a couple of geocaches, then home to spread out a tarp on the shed roof. With all the inches of rain the past 10 days, it's sprung a leak. I brought in firewood and built up the fire, then sat down to listen to music and make earrings. I have trees to decorate and laundry to finish, but somehow doing something creative suited my mood.

Madison's current favorite place is the keyboard of DW's laptop

Old doors...

There's an old door in the barn that I'd love to refinish and use in the farmhouse. It was painted an ugly flat brown, and the paint is peeling. Near as I can tell from the old layers of paint, the house was never cream or brown, never a color that would go with a dark brown door. It's a mystery. The door is beautiful, with a solid wood panel in the lower third of the door, and the upper two-thirds of the door has 12 small panes of glass. I've always thought it would make the perfect door for our bedroom, or for the main floor bathroom. Or maybe we could cut it down for the wine cellar door. It must have come out of the house, removed for something more modern, but carefully set aside in case it was ever needed.

The upper floor in our old farmhouse still has the original doors, and they all match. These doors are simple single panel doors, and they have the original hardware: oversized hollow brass doorknobs. So this multi-light door didn't come from the upstairs.

The downstairs was "modernized" in the late 1960s, and the interior doors are now simple hollow-core doors. I suspect the main floor doors once matched the ones upstairs, but unfortunately, the owner didn't save the doors or the hardware.

This fancy door could have been the original front door, but I don't think I'd use it for that. It wouldn't be a very secure main entry door, not with all the glass.

The doors are a mystery, lost, just like the original floorplan of the house.

Reflections...

Today we got a much-needed break from the rain. A small park near my house has a beautiful small lake, and we stopped there for a quick walk on our way to pick up DWs mom for lunch. It's one of my favorite places to photograph reflections, and it was so beautiful today. With all the rain we've had the past week, the lake was overflowing, and absolutely calm. And as we stood on the dock, the sun started to come through the clouds, and the light was amazing.

Near shore, the high water was starting to recede. I love this image of reflected branches over masses of drowned leaves.

Won't be a bridge for long

The trail I've walked for thirty years isn't very walkable today. I came past on my way home late afternoon, just before the sun set. Not that the sun was visible except briefly this morning; the rest of the day it just rained. The light wasn't good, but I could see the bridge was just a few inches from not being a bridge.

The creek has flooded across the trail on one end, blocking the trail (unless I was wearing tall rain boots). I took a few photos, then walked out onto the bridge. It was creepy.



This is the creek that usually flows gently in its channel under the bridges, but that's the only place you see it. It meanders through a flat valley, hidden by trees and bushes.

In the flat part of the valley, where it always floods the road, the creek flows past a heronry with more than a dozen nests. By the end of February, the nests are full of birds, getting ready to raise their families. In the fall, I sometimes see a rogue salmon that managed to get upstream to spawn, slipping past the salmon hatchery a few miles downstream.

I've walked its length thousands of times over the years. And when we first bought our little farm, this is the trail where I rode my Thoroughbred. Back then, the trail was sections of powerline access road connected by narrow pathways, built by the locals. When the county acquired the land and started to build a formal trail system, they built the bridges that finally gave us access to the entire length of the valley.

Sun in the city...

We got a miracle this morning... when we headed north the sun actually came out. A beautiful hole in the rain clouds, right over the city. Blue skies, sun, and howling wind on the city streets, but I'll take it. After our meeting in Belltown, we stayed around for lunch. A window seat and a view of Elliott Bay, fish and chips, and the blue, blue sky. Lovely.

After lunch we wandered over to the Lenora Street pedestrian bridge to check out the view. This overpass and elevator was created to give better access to the waterfront below, with a gorgeous view of the waterfront, and art you can sit on:  a wide circular bench made from art tiles.



We walked down the stairs to the waterfront, and I got my wish: subjects for my camera. I've been stuck indoors for so many days, I felt like I'd been let out of detention for a day.

Finding motivation...

I find it most difficult to stay motivated when the days literally run one into the next, downpours of rain that keep me indoors. I get outside for my daily geocache, rain or shine, but won't subject my Nikon to the torrents of rain.



So I go a little stir crazy.

When we came home from the grocery store, the creek was starting to wash over the shoulder of the county road at the foot of our hill. It hasn't flooded there since the county raised the roadbed a few years ago, so that tells you how much, how long, it's been raining. Storm water ponds are overflowing. Pastures along are flooded. The pond in the corner of our pasture has overflowed its banks, and is crouched right at the edge of our private road.

If this doesn't stop soon, I may need to look for more ways to describe rain.

Missed photographs...

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we shared our Ireland photographs. As I went through our trip, day by day, I thought about the difference between this tour, and how I usually travel. The tour was easy and stress-free, and we saw amazing places. The payoff was not being able to stop wherever I wanted to along the way.



So I did my best. Often when our group was listening to a guide talk about the history of a place, I was listening with one ear while I wandered as far as I could, taking pictures. On this particular day, we spent most of the day driving along the coastline of the Dingle peninsula, and on the narrow Irish roads there were few places where there was room for the coach, and often those places didn't have the best views.













This series of coastline views on the Dingle peninsula will always be a reminder of this tradeoff between a tour and traveling solo. Luckily for me, at the place where the coach pulled over, the view was spectacular. Between the brilliant green fields, the stone walls, the turquoise water, and the distant mountains, I felt like I'd overdose on the sheer beauty of it all.



When we headed down the road, we passed at least a dozen other places where I would have stopped to get a different perspective or a different direction of light. I kept seeing photographs I could have captured, if only I'd been on my own.

An armload of books...

The truck needed a visit to the glass shop today; the windshield has sprung a leak. It will trade places with the tractor (under cover) until we get a sunny day, to give it time to dry out. At this rate, it might be next spring. Hope the tractor won't mind.

On the way home, we stopped at the library to pick up the armload of books I'd reserved. When I walked in the door, I realized why the parking lot was so crowded: a local kids choir was performing, and they were so good I had to stop and listen until they'd finished. Christmas is such a musical time, isn't it? I always look forward to the first of December, to all the Christmas carols on the radio, and playing my favorite holiday music. I especially love the collections of New Age music from Windham Hill.

Plans change...

Funny how a change in the weather can be the perfect excuse to stay home and indulge my nesting instinct. I should start a Christmas list. Catch up on my journal. Work on Christmas cards. Decorate the house for the holidays.

And I should be pruning suckers out of the fruit trees, and collecting kindling, and mulching the flower beds. The monsoon outside the windows? That took care of any guilt about not working outside.

And then friends called about getting together, and just like that, plans changed again. A few hours catching up over beer and burgers with good friends was just what we needed. Especially at Crockett's, one of my favorite places. The rain even quit for a couple of hours, even more perfect.

Dark...

Tucker barn, Christmas 2014

Tonight is Beer Thursday, but neither of us felt like going. It was gloomy and drizzly most of the day, but thankfully warmer... if you can call mid-40's warm. It never really got light today, a hint of the winter that's just around the corner.

I've been into reuse lately... using one thing as raw materials to make something else. Sort of like making a quilt:  cutting perfectly good fabric into small pieces, then stitching them back together. But this time, I'm playing with paper.

Madison snoozed on Dave's chest for a while; he's still getting over a bug he had over Thanksgiving, and she's getting over spay surgery. A perfect match of sleepyheads. We did go out for our daily cache, and bought some new fish for the tank. Then home to polish off the last pieces of pizza, a green salad, and later, the rest of the cheesecake that Jeff & Anna brought to the cabin.

Another rainy, gloomy, dark, and stormy December day.