Herons and Eagles

They're not as abundant as in Alaska, but there's a great place to watch eagles and shore birds that's a lot closer to home. Just up the road from Seabeck, a wonderful tiny village on the shores of Hood Canal, is a small inlet that's a mud flat during low tide. And it's a magnet for birds, who come in at tide change to fish.

We were there last Saturday, out for an afternoon of geocaching. When we spotted two photographers with massive telephoto lenses, we pulled over to see what they were watching.












While I pulled out my camera, two juvenile eagles flew right over Dave's head. There were 6 adults flying the currents, and another half dozen sitting at water's edge. The herons were the bravest, though... one landed right near the bridge, and walked across the stream to look for lunch. These are probably my favorite bird. There's a heron rookery near my home, and I love to watch them build their nests in the spring. And if we're lucky, herons will visit our small pond and fish for frogs.

There's lots of room to pull over on the shoulder on both sides of the road. The bridge is narrow and sits at road level. Still, a fellow geocacher said that he recently stood there to watch eagles, and saw an eagle fly underneath the bridge toward the water, swooped down to grab a fish, and kept right on flying out over the Canal. Wouldn't that be a sight to see!

Delete on closing...

This morning I noticed that Outlook wasn't warning me about emptying my Deleted Items folder when it shut down (the setting was probably reset by a Microsoft update pushed down by IT). When I looked at the folder, there were 1300 files in it!

So I stopped by Greg’s office to tell him I broke my own record for deleted items, and he looked puzzled. When I explained, he turned to his computer and checked his own Deleted Items file. He  said, "Geeez," and just laughed... his folder had more than 8000 deleted files in it!

I appreciate the security and efficiency updates that our IT group is able to do for us these days, but sometimes the oddest things get changed in the process. I shared the story with Davey (he's in California again), saying that I need to go look for the location of that magic toggle switch, and get it reset!

His response was a subject-only message: Tools, Options, Other, check “Empty the Deleted Items folder on exiting.”

That is so very, very Dave!

Speed planting

Twenty-one containers all cleared out and topped off with fresh potting soil, all I need is plants. I went in search of all my favorites this morning: lobelia, geraniums, sweet alyssum, petunias, verbena, nicotiana, sweet William, yellow and pink and red lilies, million bells for hanging baskets, plus new lavendar and rosemary to replace some that died over the winter. And another hollyhock for the new border, still in the planning stage.

Two hours and 134 plants later, all my containers are full and fertilized and watered. Only 65 plants to go... I may have gotten just a little carried away, but the gardens and patio are going to look great this year!

Weed Wars

Today was an amazingly beautiful day in my little piece of Washington heaven. The sun was bright, the skies were blue, and it was 60 degrees by 11:30 am. The perfect day to spend in the yard.

The past few weeks I've been clearing out weeds and pruning and spreading bark a few hours at a time, but today was the first full day we both spent outdoors, cleaning up after winter. Dave mowed our acre+ lawn (with only one hiccup: a broken belt on the riding mower that required a trip to the parts store). While he made repairs, I walked through the orchard & pasture areas that we've incorporated into our lawn, and pruned the low-hanging branches of four massive cedar and fir trees. Their branches had grown to nearly touch the ground, which makes it a challenge to mow.

My own gardening task for the day was to finish a new outdoor sitting area in a former garden near the house. A winter storm brought a huge branch down onto the fence that suppported a 35-year-old wisteria, destroying the fence & posts, and damaging the plant. A couple of weeks ago I removed the fence and cut back the wisteria, and gave it a quirky replacement: a two-rail horse jump, using standards I built myself, and rails from our lake property that I scaled and sanded. I love the look. It reminds me of my years as a horse owner and rider, and the reason we bought this property.

Today I needed to find some large rocks for a rockery, and while pruning the cedar trees, spotted a few granite rocks under one of the trees. As I pulled up the first two, I realized that there was a big pile of them, buried under years of needles and soil buildup. Cool! I loaded up the wheelbarrow and hauled them back to the garden, built the small rockery, then backfilled and leveled the ground. It's ready for mulch.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll tackle a lemon balm hedge that's run amok and crowded out some prize plants: poppies, garden phlox, and peony. These will get a new home in the new border by the sitting area.

Washington's heritage barns

A friend's mother just bought a place in Ellensburg.
Her house is fairly modern, but it’s on an old Ellensburg homestead with two big barns, both dating to pre-1910. We got a tour of the place in January, and I sent Bernie the link to the Washington heritage barn registry. He’s spent the past 5 months clearing out the first barn, and identifying the work that needs to be done. He’d like to make sure the barns are preserved, and hopefully he can convince his mom.

We’ve seen so many historic barns fall into ruin around here, and it’s sad. The huge barn on our road was ignored for years, and it finally started to fall in on itself about 4 years ago. But a lot of the original barns from the Suise Creek settlement (Finnish settlement from 1900-1920 that includes our little farm) still stand. I hope to find the time to research the properties, then photograph the houses and barns. Maybe at least that way, they'll be preserved through photography.

Severe weather alert

When the local news stations say this, I'm skeptical. But when the national weather service says it, I pay attention. The wind is howling, the clouds are blowing east, with bright patches of blue sky quickly covered with dark grey clouds tinged with pink from the sunrise. Beautiful here in the valley, but it's snowing at my house, according to weather.com.

All morning long on Wednesday, we watched the weather stream past the windows, changing all the time. At lunchtime, it was 40 degrees and windy. By 12:05, the wind died down and instantly the clouds settled in. Amy says it's snowing hard in Tacoma, with silver-dollar flakes. Maybe Kent is the eye of the storm, and everything is turning white around us… we'll see when we leave work today and try to get home!

On Thursday, I woke to snow. So I decided to work from home today. When I sent e-mail to my boss, he replied that he was currently sitting behind a spun-out truck, and that I should definitely work from home. It was really cold today; barely above 25 by noon, and only made it to freezing during the day. I didn't venture out all day, didn't even walk down to the mailbox.

All the outlying school districts are closed; many of them are on winter break so it’s not a big deal. I was hoping Flow would close down today, but no luck. It’s beautiful outside, the trees are covered and it looks like Christmas all over again! Forecast is for more snow today, icy cold overnight and clear tomorrow. Rain returns Saturday. Looks like the cabin got a lot of snow; still snowing there.

We’ve got 3-4 inches of snow, and it’s cold so the snow is staying around. It’s supposed to drop to 18 degrees overnight; that’s at the airport, so it will be colder here in the foothills. No new snow today, but there’s been a snow cloud hovering over North Mason county most of the morning. Hope our chimney doesn’t leak like it did last winter.

10 kisses

Dave left for Irvine, CA this morning. It's the first trip of many this year; he'll be part of the flight test team for an aircraft project. He actually sounded pretty happy about doing something different than his normal job; he's especially looking forward to getting his hands dirty, turning wrenches and handling the assemblies.

So while he's turning wrenches, I'll be looking for ways to keep my days full, so I won't miss him so much. I'll be posting an ongoing list of lessons learned, I'm sure. Last weekend, I learned how to charge a car battery; the MX-5 was dead as a doornail.

My litmus test of how excited he is about this trip? I got ten goodbye kisses!

Old car, renewed

Dave's uncle called tonight to chat about his latest project: a complete, from the tires up restoration of a classic 1955 Chevy BelAir. And not just any car--this is the car he bought when he got out of the army in the early 1960's, the car he gave to Dave when he was in high school. It was his first car, and he spent countless hours under the hood and under the chassis, making it run perfectly. When we got together, it was the car he drove in the winter; the rest of the year he drove a 1967 MGB roadster.

When we got married and moved to Tri-Cities, the car came with us. It lived in the garage, and we took it out occasionally. But it wasn't "us" by that time, so when we visited Uncle Tom one fall, we hauled the car to Colorado and gave it back to him.

The car sat in the yard for a few decades, then Tom decided to pour some bucks into it, and restore it back to its original beauty. For the past year, he's torn it down to bare metal, and everything--from sheet metal to upholstery to glass--has been renewed or replaced.

This summer, Dave will fly to Colorado, and he and his uncle will drive it back to the Northwest... the ultimate road trip. I'm going to search out a classic car show for him to take it to... what better way to celebrate all the effort than by showing it off to people who understand what it takes to bring a classic car back to life.

Another funky fabric

Brenda sent a link to the fabrics that will be used in this year's Quilt Shop Hop. Sigh…  another funky fabric. The main fabric is a dark blue, small floral that's OK. But I'm not fond of the border fabric's cartoon-like design. I like the coordinating fabrics, though… might add a few of these to my stash.

Do you think the fabric designers ever thinks about how people might use the quilt? Or (heaven forbid) ask the loyal Shop Hop followers what their preferences are? My take is that after putting in hundreds of hours to make the quilt, I want something I can use on a bed, or hang on my wall. Would you put this quilt on your bed, full of “I’m going to the shop hop!” cartoons? Not me…

2005 Fabric

Fabrics in past years have been all over the map. My favorites (still) are from 2004 and 2005, beautiful florals in completely different color schemes. My least favorite have been the novelty fabrics, with the worst yet from this year. I appreciate the need for variety, so each year's finished quilt is different from the others. But I'll be skipping the event this year.

Cemetery walkers

Through a series of geocaches, I've learned a bit about cemetery walkers. These are folks who have an interest in the old historic cemeteries, and volunteer their time to record information from headstones and post it to an online website. It's something I'd like to look into doing when I retire.

Today I located the Meridian cemetery; it's out Kent-Kangley just east of Lake Meridian, behind the Edline funeral home. I never even knew it was there, but always knew there had to be a community that bore the name—both the Kent-Meridian road and the Kent-Meridian high school took their names from the two communities, but Meridian never became a town in its own right.