A Day of Sky

Saturday was one of those days where the sky was crazy with light and clouds. It was endlessly changing and beautiful at every turn. (As always with our photographs, please click for the enlarged version.)



The colors here and the flow and shape of these clouds were some of the most unusual I've ever seen. It's the eastern sky with the late sun lighting it from the west.

Ten Ways to Tell if Your Cat is in College

Bonsai, considering whether to wake up or not

We started to pay close attention to our cat's behavior and realized that it reminded us of something: College Students. We think Bonsai is in college. What do you think?

1. He runs around the house and parties all night long.

2. He sleeps all day, and actually moans and complains if we try to waken him.

3. When he does awaken at 3:00 he wants to be fed.

4. He never cleans up after himself.

5. He never actually goes to class, but insists that he knows absolutely everything about eveything.

6. He seems to be on the 10-year plan to graduation, and hasn't yet declared a major.

7. He eats catnip whenever he wants to, pretending that the clock always says 4:20 pm.

8. He never gets a job.

9. Everytime he leaves the house, he acts like he's going to be lucky and get laid.

10. He always looks at us as if we are idiots.

Tell us this doesn't sound like a college student.

Bonsai, appalled by something we just said

The Greenhouse Project: Denouement

the title of this post may give any of you who are new here a clue that this is the end of a story. (well, it is very unlikely, but there could be notes, a bibliography, and an index.) in any case the project was moving a greenhouse to a better location, sunwise. the greenhouse has reached its new place. any of you who would like to review the move may check part one, deux, tres, or IV. it is solidly on the ground and spiked in place (see me below cutting rebar into 2 foot spikes, tres dramatique!). it wants some dirt fill to raise the floor level a bit and then the gravel, which will be the floor again, can be moved from its old place to the new. we are looking south, in the photo below, at the north wall of the greenhouse. oh yeah, i will rebuild growing beds inside too.


these are the tools used for the move. i think this is all. wood blocks, screw jacks, chains, come-alongs, shovels, sawsall, pipes (rollers), pipe wrench, various hammers, pry bars, cordless drill/screwdriver, kneepads. you may notice the small speakers and the ipod in the middle of the mechanical stuff. music keeps me going, and i like the surprise of the shuffle.


i was cutting rebar with a metal cutting blade in an old skilsaw and it struck me that the shower of sparks must be a sight from the outside, from a point of view other than mine. RD took this picture. there is more light than heat. yes, i do wear safety goggles.

Hurray! A Sunny Day

I almost didn't see the sun rise on Wednesday morning. I kept those butterflies curtains closed. I didn't want to see one more grey morning. The pirate said, "Oh, I think you are going to want to see this."

The day was spectacular even before the sun peeked above the horizon.

We went for our favorite walk and were warmed by sun reflected on Port Townsend Bay.

This heron was out hunting in the sunlight.

There was even a rainbow right by Gus. (Notice Gus is in the sunlight)

And finally the sun headed towards the western horizon.

Wednesday evening, at dusk, our kitty cat Bonsai came out of the bedroom slinking along the floor the way he does when he is afraid. DPR and I looked at each other and wondered what could have provoked such a response. Bonsai has been known to stare at imaginary ghosts in the corner of rooms, but there was something about his behavior, the way he slunk toward the sliding glass door that faces the yard, and then stared, that made us run to the window to see. What was it? Bobcat? Coyote? We're not sure how Bonsai knew, in a house with the windows closed and the heat on, but there it was a small bobcat walking past the pond toward the back flower bed, where it pounced on something and carried it away behind the trees. I tried to photograph it but there was simply not enough light, and my hands were shaking with the excitement of having this wild creature in our yard again. It was such a beautiful little hunter. The perfect ending to a sunny day.

What do you think? Did Bonsai smell it, or did he hear it?

Whole House Filter

i like whole-house water filters. those big cartridge things. i can drink from any faucet. the shower doesn't smell like a high school gym shower right after the janitor has mopped with some industrial strength bleach product. an activated charcoal filter removes the chlorine taste and smell. how is that charcoal activated anyway?

the house we owned in santa cruz needed to have its galvanized water plumbing replaced. many pinhole leaks. i redid it in copper and changed the arrangement so that the outside taps and toilets got unfiltered water. everything else got filtered water. i put the filter in the cabinet with the water heater so it was easy to change. preparing for our big move to the northwest, we sold that house and rented for our last 10 months in santa cruz. our rental had a non-functioning water softener and i was able to plumb a filter into the softener plumbing. it was in the garage and easy to change the filter.

the public utility water we get here in the great northwest is way better from the tap, in terms of chlorine smell, than water from the tap in santa cruz. even so, there is a bit of smell and taste. i had intended to investigate the plumbing to see where i could put a filter. on a separate mission under the house, running a cat5 ethernet cable from here to there, i noticed a filter cartridge waaay over in a far corner. so i turned off the water supply, opened an outside tap, and crawled under with a bucket for the spillage. there was no filter cartridge in the casing. i put in a new one. aaahhh. no chlorine smell. not even when the toilet flushes.

this house has the most civilized crawl space i have ever worked in. flat ground covered with thick black plastic. three feet of clearance. no wires hanging down. water supply pipes right up against the floor joists and insulated. drain plumbing i can easily go over or under. (the santa cruz house had a place where i had to wriggle under a drain pipe to access some plumbing. i mean turn my head sideways wriggle). but really. what a place to put a filter! c'mon, i'll show ya.


but first, ya gotta dress for success
















then ya gotta crawl through this little doorway














see now. this isn't so bad. the filter is back there somewhere. let's go.

well, another foundation wall to clamber over. i see the blue filter casing waaay back there.

aahh. there it is. that wasn't so bad. well yes, i do have to bring a bucket to catch the water and haul it and the old, waterlogged, heavy filter back out. the blue line in the foreground is the aforementioned ethernet cable.

good for another 6 months.

Bird Lore

It's been very cloudy. We heard the Seattle weather reporter say there's been 21 days of cloudiness. I hadn't realized that it's been that sun-less for so long. I am noticing, though, that it's hard to get motivated to go out and photograph anything. So, we've taken to just watching the birds in the yard. Noticed a yellow House Finch, such an interesting variation to the red. The red or yellow color of a male House Finch comes from pigments that it gets in its food during molt. The more pigment in the food, the redder the male. Females prefer to mate with the reddest male they can find, perhaps assuring that they get a capable male who can find enough food to feed the nestlings.

If I had any energy whatsoever I would write something about sexual and reproductive preference based on greater access to resources not being solely limited to bird behaviors. Or how the whole concept of race and pigmentation permeates every aspect of our society, even though it's genetically insignificant. But that would require thinking, and it's been too cloudy to think. No variation in the shades of grey.

The juvenile Cooper's hawk has been cruising the yard for a meal. It makes me wonder how the hawk came to represent militancy. Why not the shark? Or any other predator. I understand how the dove came to represent peace, but when I google "hawk symbolism" there are so many other interpretations of this creature: its hunting prowess; its wisdom in action; its diligent observation of its surroundings; or as the Egyptians saw it as a royal bird and a symbol of the soul.

If it weren't so cloudy, I would ponder these things and bring more light to them. But alas, the pacific northwest is as shrouded as fable and myth. In fact, I'm not convinced that even we are here beneath the endless grey.

It's Curtains For Sure

I broke my own cardinal rules. I only buy household things that have solid colors, or if patterned are Asian, Indian or Middle Eastern. Those are the rules. In our bedroom we have mirrors from Bali and a Japanese wall hanging made from from a pre-World War II kimono. We needed curtains, so I went and bought fabric with a very busy pattern, and not Asian in any way. AAGGHHH. What was I thinking? I wasn't thinking, that has to be the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this.

Kimono wall-hanging

When the pirate moved the greenhouse (Gus), it opened up a fairly significant space in the yard beyond our bedroom window where we have an unobstructed view of our neighbors. They are probably very nice people, but I didn't really want to have to look at the back of their house every time I looked out our bedroom window. So, now that I am retired and have all this free time and creative energy, I thought I should make curtains.

We went to the fabric store. For some reason I was drawn to this fabric. Those beautiful butterflies just caught my eye. The fabric is 100% cotton, and the colors are really dazzling. I just had to have it. It's winter. We haven't seen butterflies in months, and we haven't seen the sun for 21 days. How could I not be drawn to the this? It was like I didn't have any cardinal rules at all. If I had checked in with my inner control freak self, she would have said, "Go with a deep burgundy fabric. You like dark reds. It's the color of everything else in the house." But I was dreaming of butterflies above our bed. The soft caress of delicate wings, the magnificent iridescents, and playfulness of simple beauty. The promise of sun and spring.

I made the curtains. It's just a busy pattern of butterflies above our bed. I think I'll have to buy a new burgundy duvet to cover the quilt. That should make everything better, right? Or, I could make another set of curtains, and put these in the guest house.