Where is summer?

Another day with brief sunshine and very cool temperatures leads me to wonder where summer is.


I went to Home Depot to see if they had any, and after the clerk looked at me quizzically, he laughed and said, "Oh, it must be on back order."

My garden doesn't seem to care that the daytime temps don't get above 58 degrees lately.

Bees are pollinating my raspberries - looks like it will be a
big crop if all the blooms stay on.

The raspberries are in bloom and the bees are busy cross-pollinating. I wonder a little about where their hive is and what their honey might taste like.

I discovered that eating a 1/2 teaspoon of raw local honey this year helped me to avoid the congestion of allergies. Nice.

Peonies bloomed and passed, the dogwood blossoms draw in the hummingbirds and the clematis that Beloved gave me last year is in a glorious state of color.

Interesting to think that he is now with a new girlfriend and couldn't care much about how his gift is still being appreciated. But I am grateful for the color and the present joy it brings.

The dogwood blossoms are quite pink and lovely this year.

I have been out and done some weeding and assessing what really will need to come out this summer and be replaced with something new and healthier.

It really is delightful to go out in my own yard and around the area when the sun is out and the colors are rich in so many gardens. But the rain or blustery winds have kept it cool enough that even a short walk is not that enjoyable.

I think the hot weather we had in April was too much of a tease and now I am impatient for the next season. And really, each day has it's own joy, it's own moment of delight... and I expect if it bolted into the 80's I would be no happier than I am right now.

The solstice will be upon us soon, Mercury will go direct, and everything is in order.

Patience... everything is working out for me, and when I truly allow that concept to sink in, I'm doing just fine where I am.

Clematis, a gift from Beloved last year, blooms with a more
intense color than it did when gifted to me.

Childhood stories

When I was about 9 or 10, I lived in a small town in New Hampshire. It was one of those places where no one locked their doors, the car keys were left in the ignition, and pretty much everyone trusted everyone else.

I had a couple of pals, (who are still living, so I won't use their names) that I hung around with after school. And we used to go to a small store that served ice cream sodas, coffee, hamburgers and also had all the elements of a small town "drug store."

The owner, Mike, has made his transition and he was one of the kindest men. He was always doing nice things for others, and I never knew what his religion was.

My pals, in their misguided desire for getting something they wanted, asked me to join them in what turned out to be a lawless afternoon and caused me to be put in jail - for a few hours. They, however, escaped, and I never snitched on them, knowing early on that that alone could make my life miserable forever onward.

The plan was that I would distract Mike, by talking to him, while the other three went to the candy bar section and helped themselves. My reward would be that I could have some of the 'take.'

Ten year olds are so sure they know how the world works, and in discussing the plan I am sure we all thought Mike would be deceived by my blather. He wasn't, and he grabbed my arm, held me in place and yelled to the others to stop. They took off running. I am sure he knew who they were.

As he held on to my arm, he told his wife to call the police.

I about fainted.

And soon Chief Picard showed up in his uniform, gun on his hip, baton on the other side, all his buttons and badge glistening through the tears in my eyes.

Mike let go of me and after telling him what had happened, Chief put handcuffs on one hand and led me out of the store.

We had to cross the main intersection to get to City Hall and to the jail. I was so humiliated that anyone might see me, my head was very low. I wished to be invisible.

No words were spoken until we arrived at the jail. I was ushered in to a small cell and Chief said he was going to call my mother. I would be waiting inside the bars until she came.

It stank in there. And I cried and cried at what had happened.

I could hear the Chief calling my mother. I knew she would be coming downtown, but however long it was going to take, it felt like forever. Then he came back into the jail area and asked me some questions (this could never happen today, could it, questioning a minor without an adult guardian present?) about who else was there with me, what was I doing, etc.

He knew I had not done this dastardly act alone. He knew I was part of a 'gang.' And my just talking to Mike was not in itself a crime, but I was an 'accomplice' to the theft, because those other girls did get away with some candy - worth about 30 cents back then.

My mother did show up and I was released to her but the net effect of this overwhelming experience was that for years, literally, I could not go into Mike's store. I was so ashamed of my performance and treatment of this nice man that I could not even face him.

Perhaps it was an act that was precipitated by my parents' discord (a divorce was looming), but when I was about 16, I was with my father on a Sunday in October and he wanted to stop in and get something at Mike's and he asked me to come in and have something to eat with him. I sat in the car and told him the whole story, which he apparently never knew, and he then insisted I come in with him and talk to Mike.

We went in and sat in a back booth and I wept as I apologized to Mike for what had been my only criminal undertaking and as he took my hands in his big ones, he forgave me. He said to me, with tears in his eyes, "You have deprived me of your presence by staying away. You have punished yourself and me by not sharing this burden. Please accept my apology for allowing you to be treated as a criminal when you clearly were not."

Then he told me the story of Yom Kippur and how it is a day when all your sins are forgiven, when a person can be purified, and how in his religion he could 'start over' and essentially have a clean slate.

I really liked that concept and it felt good to have him absolve me, to verbally wash me clean.

The net effect of this event was probably a good thing in that I have never stolen anything from anyone. For years I could not even go into a store and walk out without buying something and not feel as if I was being watched. My anxiety about being 'good' was constantly present.

When my own daughter was caught stuffing candy into her pants as we were waiting in a checkout line in Ketchum, Idaho, I took appropriate action... she was forced to go and speak to the owner of the store right then and there and to hear from him how stealing affected his business.

In reflection all these decades later, I think putting a ten-year old in cuffs and hauling her off to a smelly jail was a little over the top. I think the humiliation effect was enormous and not necessarily beneficial.

But I have forgiven Mike and the Chief and my mother and even my best friend and the others for the culmination of events that brought me to that moment. And I have remembered the feelings of being absolved and have returned that to those who asked for it from me.

I know there were other things I did as an adult of which I am not proud, mistakes I made in parenting and in relationships, things I wished later I could change. I tried hard to be good enough and fell short enough to keep me humble.

In many religions there are ways to receive absolution, a cleansing of the soul. If thoughts are 'things' that never go away, then I choose to convert this earlier thought of humiliation into a glorious flower of growth, to give it as a gift to parents who have children needing guidance to not 'overdo' the correction, to offer it up as a way to review all of life's path events, and to cleanse it totally as Mike so graciously did for me decades ago.

Spring is a time for renewal...

Absence makes the heart...

Solmar reservoir is full right now; source of my water.

Have you missed me?

I've missed you, my dear readers. But my life has been significantly challenged with a car that needed a new transmission. Which, once it was fixed, needed to go back in again because the frammis was rubbing up against the jixmas and causing the gears to wobble and they needed to replace the flabgesty so that didn't happen anymore.

(If you didn't understand that, it's because I didn't either... all I know now is that it is finally fixed right.)

These two segments of four-day repairs had me living somewhere other than in my own house with good internet access, so I didn't even try to write here.

Spring has come early to the Olympics and bees are buzzing around all kinds of flowering flowers, shrubs and trees. But our water situation is not good. The mountains only received about 20 percent of the snow required. (It must have all been shipped east to Boston and points north!)

I continue to enjoy the delights of a loving relationship with F and the challenges of it as well.

But if there is anything I am significantly grateful for it is hearing news that my 17-year old grandson is OK after totaling his vehicle yesterday.

Deer are boldly coming into neighborhoods to feed on
new plant growth; they are fearless for the most part.

As I listen to the birds and watch the bees, I realize how precariously we are connected to life and how if this accident had happened in any other way I might be grieving deeply.

And I completely understood how my daughter was feeling, because my own 17-year old son did just that same thing years ago, causing his angels to work overtime as well.

Perhaps boys of 17 should not be driving because they do not appear to have the same abilities to multi-task that girls of that age do. A glance away at something else, just long enough to distract and require over-correction can be the instant of change.

It is a reminder that when we are behind the wheel, whether alone or driving with others, we have a huge responsibility to pay attention to the task at hand - driving. No texting, no getting directions, no passing toys to toddlers, no turning around to see where something is in the back seat, etc.

Bus drivers are not allowed to even have music on their busses because of the potential distraction, and they are carrying upwards of 40 people to their destinations.

There are so many things to pull our attention away... personal concerns, business issues, weather challenges and global news to suggest a few areas. As parents and grandparents we have the obligation to add to our instruction repertoire the importance of staying focused.

"Be here now," not be partly here and partly there... because your absence from my life will make my heart very heavy.

Hooray, hooray for the First of May

As a little girl, we celebrated the first day of May with a maypole and both boys and girls threaded the ribbons during P.E. (aka physical exercise).

This year I watched the tulips go past their prime and tilt over, the candytuft is striving to stay in bloom until my birthday, and the other spring flowers were just undone by the sudden (and welcome) heat of the past few days.

So now we are in May and all my laziness about the garden will have to be put aside as I plan for a summer show of some kind in a semi-shade, semi-arid plot. Although I live in the Northwest, I also live at the edge of a prairie and in the shadow of the Olympics, so during the summer we do not actually get a lot of rain.

Tiptoeing through the tilting tulips...

I went to a gallery yesterday to talk about hanging some of my work. Next week I will be presenting what I have done so far to see if it will be approved. And now that it's warmed up, I can get out into my little studio cabin and do some new work.

There is a trip to Arizona in my future, so I will take a couple of cameras and see what inspiration I can find. Their springtime is long gone and summer is in full swing down there. But there is beauty in every season in every locale and I'm sure I can find it.

April in Sequim

The annual Robin Hop is going on in my front yard.

Perhaps because I am identified as a 'spring baby,' it is one of my favorite seasons. I love seeing the first Robin with their puffed up red-colored feathers on their breasts hopping along and cocking their heads, listening for the movement of something they can eat.

Where I used to live in Florida, the house was right under the Flyway and robins and cousins were dropping out of the sky right into my back yard. I had an organic yard (used no pesticides) with spring water oozing up in it, so they had all they needed for water and nourishment whether heading north or south.

The place where I am staying now has plenty of evergreens nearby so there are eagles of all ages hanging out, and that may be a deterrent to the smaller robins, but it was a pleasure to see one bouncing around near the dandelions.

Main Street, Sequim, WA

A neighbor offered to drive me around with her dog in the back seat to see the various local parks and to get better acquainted with the area around Sequim, here on the Olympic Peninsula. I also made notes about back routes to get past the center of town because in a couple of weeks the 118th Irrigation Festival will be starting (runs May 3-14 - over Mother's Day weekend, too) and it will be extremely difficult to access certain parts of town quickly. (If you go to the link, you will see specifically what the festival is all about and understand why water is so critical for this part of the peninsula.) In summary, a fellow called D.R. "Crazy" Callum designed and installed the irrigation ditches that turned prairie into paradise with water and the water started flowing on May 1, 1895 for the first time. The very next year the festival was started with a celebration at Callum's farm and it evolved into what is now the longest, continuously operating festival in Washington state.

This is also the Centennial year for Sequim, so the duration of the festival is being celebrated along with the founding of what was - all those many years ago - a village.

It is hard to see the city of Sequim due to the slight rise in the topography
here, but it is just on the other side of the evergreens. The very symmetric
peaks of the Olympics are getting more snow; much needed.

It turns out there is a community pot-luck dinner followed by a barn dance on Saturday, May 4, and I think I am going to take advantage of that event and do a little celebrating myself that night.

Driving around this portion of the peninsula, I was motivated to take a few photos to share with y'all...

This is a very tiny park with a huge shoreline but the sandstone cliffs
are daunting as you can see a man walking below them in this shot.
You are looking toward the Olympics, over part of Discovery Bay.

The weather was sunny one minute and rain came pouring down in others, so it was just by luck that I got some decent shots at all.

If you look at the blue sky in this photo to your left, you can see just a bit of what is called the "blue hole" that seems to open up over Sequim when everything else is grey or wet. Apparently due to the rainshadow effect from the Olympic range, the height of the mountains is enough to disturb the air flow and creates an opening to the sun and blue sky once in awhile. Where Seattle gets upwards of 35 inches of rain a year, Sequim is closer to 20, thus the prairies and the need for irrigation water. Mt. Olympus, on the other hand, gets something like 220 inches (!!!) of rain per year... barely 60 miles to the west of Sequim! (If you go to the link, you can see the map and a more scientific explanation than the one I've given.)

Looking west over the Strait of San Juan de Fuca and B.C.

So that's why I like to spend time here... and why houses are so expensive here and in Port Townsend, Coupeville, Gig Harbor, Whidbey Island, and in Vancouver, B.C. People long ago figured out the benefits of living in the NW and finding the sunny spots to settle in.

Plum trees on Sequim Ave.

This has been a wetter spring than normal, according to local information and much cooler as well. I wonder if we're getting all the wet that should have been going to Colombia, because my sources there tell me the rain has been slow in arriving for them.

Nevertheless, the rhododendrons are blooming as are the daffodils, crocuses (croci?) and other signs of spring in this part of the world. The shifty weather is just another part of the seasonal timing.

Cat-O-Nine Tails shedding their seeds for another season.
In the distance the Olympics collect water for later...

Sequim Ave., looking west (I think)

My Easter Bunny

When I was very young, I had a stuffed rabbit that I received as an Easter gift along with some candy in that green straw that turned up everywhere even weeks after Easter was over. I don't know whatever happened to that critter, or to any of the others I had. They seemed to disappear, even though my younger brother's stuffed puppy with the fur rubbed off was around for a long, long time.

When I arrived on the Olympic Peninsula, I went to a craft show and found this very large girly bunny who just called out to come home with me. I have to add that I am not a stuffed creature collector so I was just as surprised as my girlfriend was when I said "I think I am going to buy this bunny..." and did.

Now it is Easter week and it is time for this bunny to get a good name. Her creator gave her a name, but I don't like it. Here is the challenge for my readers. I need some suggestions for this creature that is a kind of muse for me.

Even if you opt out of that exercise, I hope you have a wonderful week leading up to Easter or whatever portion of the calendar that means 'rebirth, renewal, and light' for you...

Spring is sprung...

and the rest of the poem goes like this:

the grass is riz,

I wonder where the birdies is...

But I've actually seen a few of the birdies... a chickadee, some sparrows, a woodpecker. But I wonder if I'm just preoccupied or if the bird count is down, because there do not seem to be as many birds in the yard just now.

But the apple tree (see top and close up to the left) and the plum tree and the neighbor's magnolia are fairly screaming to be noticed. "Look at me! Look at me! Smell me!" they are all yelling at me when I go outside. And according to the various reports on pollen counts, it is the worst year ever recorded for pollen. But so far I'm not much affected by it. Jey-hu has had a miserable reaction, however - coughing, sneezing, sniffling, stuffy, etc.

He is ready to leave right now and return to Colombia where he never had any kind of reaction to their blooming things. And this coming from a Northwest native! He is stupified by his body's negative response to spring. I think the two and half months away just gave his body a chance to reconfigure - go figger!

Still, the bursting forth of new life is always such a hopeful sign and with all the peculiar activities on the national and global front, stopping and smelling the apple blossoms is comforting.

Arizona has spring, too

This morning I woke up to hear new bird sounds and a different smell in the air... it's the smell of the Sonoran desert warming up and in the spring the air here is also loaded with pollen as bees fly from flower to flower doing their work. My current eating program doesn't include any honey or I'd be down to the local health food store buying up some cactus honey to keep my allergies from acting up. But I don't live here anymore, so it's not worth the time it takes to overcome them. I'm just here for a seminar and will spend most of the time inside - unfortunately - poking my head out now and then to change the inside air for brief whiffs of the delicate aromas from outside.

Spring in my yard

   Look what just has blossomed in my yard this week! I didn't know what it was, but some Internet searching led me to the Trumpet Vine (Red) which has the potential to climb 35 ft. without a trellis. If you look closely you can see the pollen it's created as well as the pine pollen which is showing up everywhere - achoooo!

   Although this is supposed to be 'sweet-scented,' I was unable to discern much scent at all. To be fair, it is about 60 degrees outside and perhaps the flower needs to have some warmth and sunshine to be smelly. And it's kind of drizzly as well. 

   According to the description it can bloom all summer, so I'm curious why I didn't see it last year... not old enough? Some descriptions say it takes seven years to establish itself. Master Gardeners are invited to comment.