If I had a boat

 

 

I'm taking the Seattle water taxi this morning to meet my friend Betsy for a fish and chips lunch at Ivar's. A beautiful day for a boat ride, and we want to check out the new Waterfront Park. It opened a few weeks ago with much hoopla and was dubbed Seattle's "new front porch."

 

 From the July 11 Seattle Times:

"No one will believe it was once all but impossible to stroll from Pike Place Market to the waterfront. Elliott Bay — the actual water of the waterfront — was largely invisible even as you walked beside it? The center of downtown was separated from the waterfront by a double decker highway carrying 90,000 cars a day?"

Well, yes we believe it, having spent countless hours stuck in traffic up on the old Viaduct and walking underneath. There was actually a walkway down to the waterfront from the Market used by tourists and brave locals-- an unpleasant warren of connecting concrete staircases (stinky and graffiti covered) called the Pike Place Market Hill Climb. 

Amanda, Tom and the girls are wrapping up their wilderness backpack today, coming out (I think) on the Pacific Crest Trail near Ross Lake, where they left their cars a week ago. We haven't heard from them since last Saturday and looking forward to some pictures.

This is what happens

When you prune hydrangeas too hard in the fall: few flowers. But a dandy bush now, primed and ready for next summer. 

In the not-so-nice-looking category, this overgrown and dying Photinia. These shrubs (trees when unpruned) are prone to fungal disease and all sorts of other pests, so no great loss here, except it somewhat blocked a view of the gosh awful metal garage? the neighbor built smack up against the property line. 

The garden is still beautiful for August but slowly moving into the clean up phase. The mornings are darker and starlings gathering in the fig tree, which means fall is around the corner. 

We've only had a couple days of measurable rain all summer. As the climate changed our plants have evolved naturally with more shrubs and fewer thirsty flowers. 

There was never a master plan for this yard anyway-- more like plant archaeology, one layer on top of the other, survival of the fittest. Everything must adapt, along with our expectations of what is beautiful. 

"Men argue. Nature acts."  Voltaire 

The last dahlia standing

 

Dahlia season quotes: 

"The dahlia's first duty in life is to flaunt and to swagger and to carry gorgeous blooms well above its leaves, and on no account to hang its head."  Gertrude Jekyll, Wood and Garden, 1899.

"Looking at my dahlias one summer day, a friend whose taste runs to the small and impeccable said sadly, "You do like big conspicuous flowers, don't you?" She meant vulgar, and I am used to that." Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts, 1981.

Well, that white dahlia above is the only survivor out of dozens grown in this yard over the decades. It's a beauty. Those perfectly symmetrical ball varieties look almost artificial. 

It is the very same plant towering over Nova in a long ago forest of flowers. 

The others, immortalized on the blog.

 

Cheap treasure

 

This house doesn't need another fancy plate or basket, but my favorite thrift shop, The Discover Store, had a 50% off everything sale this weekend and these items were too unique to pass up. 

The plate has an "Abigail" stamp, which according to Google, is an old southern family business selling high quality pottery. I don't know anything about ceramics, but reduced down to ten bucks, hard to resist. 

I've always wanted to learn pine needle basket making, but the class I signed up for was cancelled. That coil basket has thousands of individual needles-- imagine the work! I wonder who made it, and then who gave it away to the charity shop. If only things could talk. 

Speaking of treasures, how nice to step outside and pick all-you-can eat tomatoes for a few weeks. 

At the West Seattle Sunday Market, the person in front of me paid a shocking $7 for a single heirloom tomato. He didn't even blink. (Same price as the pine needle basket.) 

And the ultimate bargain: free. The house across the street put this perfectly good chair out on the sidewalk and I grabbed it.

 Seattle can be a strange place. 

 

Silver Maple

 

 

Beautiful in every season, the Silver Maple across the street has been a part of our landscape ecology since 1980. In the summer, that huge biomass of leaves filters the hot afternoon sun, keeping our house cooler. I've raked tons of leaves over the years to mulch the garden beds. 

The tree has been struggling for years through a combination of neglect and climate change. Each year, more dead branches in the canopy and more wood falling on the ground. I've been dreading the day they decide it's a hazard and cut it down. 

 

 

But early this morning, a truck showed up, and they appear to be cutting out the dead wood high above. Dangerous work! And hopefully, it means they haven't given up on the old treasure yet. 

 

A pie sort of morning

 

 

The dark clouds are gathering in advance of the atmospheric river moving in tonight. Hopefully the rain extinguishes the stubborn fires burning out on the Olympic Peninsula. 

John is outside now checking the gutters-- the crows use them for a private picnic trough. If they clog up and it rains hard, the basement stairwell is prone to flood. 

I made an apple pie this morning to get us through this "preview of fall" weekend. The temperature has dropped almost 30 degrees in 3 days. Hoodies and jeans today for ukulele group.