Relay race champs

 

Maya (bottom left) and her friends are having a really successful middle school track season. Good for them! So many benefits, both physical and mental, for girls participating in team sports. 

It wasn't always that way. Nova and Maya look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this:

Title 9, the 1972 federal civil rights law, prohibited sex-based discrimination in school sponsored sports. Now taken totally for granted by this young generation, that requirement for equal treatment in high school sports was an earth shattering change at the time. 

At our small Colorado high school, the boys played intramural basketball and the girls had segregated gym class and joined "pep club." That was our only participation in sports. 

Few families had money to spare, and the dorky, old fashioned pep club uniform (remember this was the mini skirt 60's) was quite an investment: stitched down, below the knee wool pleated skirt in ugly kelly green, formal blazer, and, yes, white gloves and Keds. Wool fabric was cheap then and the clever girls tried to sew those complicated skirts in Home Ec class, with varying success. 

It wasn't like we were entirely excluded-- the pep club trouped along with the basketball team to away games, hours on the road late at night in a dark bus. Trust me, we had fun as teenagers do, but the sexist roles were sharply defined: the boys played, and the girls cheered them on from the sidelines. As Nova and Maya say, "Nana, that's CRAZY." 

I have a tendency to bemoan change, but who would ever want to go back to those days?

A little slice

 

Here's our answer to the "affordable housing crisis" in Seattle. Take a tiny lot, tear down the bungalow, and build three or four wildly expensive townhouses looming over their modest neighbors. Street parking, because everyone takes public transportation here. Ha ha ha.

Single family homes are considered politically incorrect (even selfish) in our socialist leaning city. There's yet another of these housing complexes going up near us, so more bang, bang, bang and our street blocked with construction. 

 

 

The way of the future, and glad I won't be around when entire neighborhoods look like rows of lunch boxes. 

Anyway! What's the point of complaining about things you have no control over. Despite the steady loss of backyard habitat, West Seattle is still beautiful and our backyard nature preserve is gorgeous in May and June. 

Is there a flower more perfect than an Calla Lily? 

 

Georgia O’Keeffe 

If springtime were a painting... 

 

Our resident bunny, who decided our yard is a fine place for low income housing. He lives under the hedge, and comes out to sun himself on nice days.

Donburi means bowl

 

Donburi is a rice bowl dish, an everyday staple of Japanese cooking, consisting of vegetables and meat simmered together and served over rice. 

The secret, as they say, is in the sauce. On the internet, where you can easily find recipes for anything, they were all wildly different. There's about as many kinds of donburi as Cambell's soup.

But the basic sauce ingredients are pretty much the same: soy sauce, saki, sugar and mirin. I just cobbled something together by taste. The good news is, it was good. The bad news is, I couldn't  make it the same again. (If you're too lazy to write down a recipe, just call it creative cookery.)

A steak and caramelized onion donburi is called "gyudon." And a perfect way to stretch a small piece of quality steak I had stashed in the freezer. 

 Good weather for donburi-- chilly, breezy and wet for the next few days in Seattle. 

After the rain

 

 

This dramatic beauty is called "Starring." It does remind me of  glamorous movie stars from the olden days. That black part of a bearded iris is called a "fall" and the white part is a "standard." 

Hopefully Penny Lane, Easter Candy, Champagne Elegance bloom before we go on vacation.  You miss it; you wait another year. We bought them from the Brecks Catalog years ago. Growing iris requires patience in so many ways. 

 

The breeders have gone nuts, and there are over 300 species of iris in every color of the rainbow. The name comes from the Greek goddess Iris, the divine personification of the rainbow. Her job was to glide along the rainbow to the ends of the earth, swiftly carrying messages to gods and men. 

D. H Lawrence wrote a poem called "The Scent of Iris" in which he described it as "faint and sickening." It is the most distinctive flower smell when you bring them inside, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and especially noticeable walking by the vase at night. 

Lovely rain

 

 

Looking out the window on a lush and drenched garden this morning-- it has been quite dry for the last few weeks. And if a person is going to lie awake in the middle of the night, there's nothing nicer than the sound of rain pattering down on leaves. 

I've started on a new medication that is causing some side effects and anxiety. Of course, the worst thing for your blood pressure is worrying about it. I'm optimistic it will be resolved in good time, since I've made it this far in robust good health. Now a few tweaks are in order. Welcome to the human race. 

National Nurses Day

 

 

Hats off to all the hardworking nurses, including our Amanda! 

“Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” Dag Hammarskjold