Where's the rain?

I'm feeling cheated-- it was supposed to rain yesterday, but we didn't get a single drop, at least not in Seattle. I had plans to drive out to North Bend to see my friend Dolly's new horse, but put it off because of the weather.

Anyway, I had plenty at home to keep me busy.  A trip to Costco this time of year usually leads to a bag of impulse bulbs, a bargain too good to pass up. But then, of course, you have 50 tulips bulbs on your hands. It was an awful chore yesterday, because the ground is so dry each hole I dug collapsed like a miniature sand pit.

Anyway, I did a quick sloppy job of it and they're in the ground for better or worse.  All they need now is water. Tulips are not too fussy, but it's better to plant the bulbs while they're still fresh and plump.

Speaking of plump, I picked the rest of the low-hanging fruit, the best of the best, and enough to can 5 pints of plum halves in a light syrup.  Good for topping my yogurt or cottage cheese this winter.  The plum tree is probably 20 feet tall now, so there was no way to safely get the ones at the top.  Now they're rotting and plopping down to the ground, getting caught in the soles of my shoes like you-know-what when I take out the compost.

It looks like a pleasant Labor weekend, with just a chance of rain again on Monday (promises, promises.) Seattle has sweltered through five "hotter-than-normal" summers in a row. July was the hottest on record and August is looking like it could finish in the Top 10.  But we've had relief in the last few days with a touch of fall in the air.

Soon the school buses will be roaring by the house, and harried parents dropping their kids off and picking them up in the afternoon. Our days of easy street parking are over for another 9 months. Few kids actually walk to school these days, I suppose it's considered too dangerous, even neglectful to let them do that alone.

Today is a big day for Maya. Amanda said she spends the morning at "Kinder Camp" at the school in Winthrop. She starts all day kindergarten and Nova, if you can believe it, is in 4th grade this year. Ready or not, off they go...

Idioms of the day

When pigs fly...

The idiom apparently comes from an old Scottish proverb, meaning the unlikeness of some event happening.  

It's a slow news week in Seattle, other than an old mine that was discovered floating in Puget Sound near the Kitsap Naval Base.  Mines dating back to World War II are known to still be out there. Or who knows? This one might have made its way from across the Pacific over the decades.  Brave divers attached a tow line around it, and the Navy towed it off to a safe place tried to detonated it. It was a dud.  

A tempest in a teacup...

 Means a small event that has been exaggerated out of proportion.

Perfect in the dew

Late summer is finally the season of dahlias, when those six months of staking and fussing pay off.  This is our new "Spartacus Burgundy Gold" seen from the bedroom window.  My only complaint is the blooms seem a bit skimpy on the gold flecks, not quite as advertised on eBay, but still a spectacular looking thing.  That plush burgundy color is fit for a king. Or queen.

My neighbor Wendy grows big dahlias, but most people in this neighborhood don't go to the trouble anymore. What a shame. You once saw carefully tended dahlia beds on almost every block, often indicating the residence of an elderly couple with time on their hands. 

With each day, we lose several more minutes of daylight. The night are cool, the mornings dark and damp, the sun at midday noticeably weaker.  It might finally rain tomorrow. I'll pick the last of the plums and tomatoes this weekend.

To the Light of September
by W.S. Merwin

When you are already here

you appear to be only

a name that tells of you

whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though

you are still summer

still the high familiar

endless summer

yet with a glint

of bronze in the chill mornings

and the late yellow petals

of the mullein fluttering

on the stalks that lean

over their broken

shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know

that you have come

the seed heads of the sage

the whispering birds

with nowhere to hide you

to keep you for later

you

who fly with them

you who are neither

before nor after

you who arrive

with blue plums

that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

Waikiki?

Believe it or not, this is the central Oregon coast, where the weather was nicer than Hawaii this past weekend. The kids met up with Tom's family for a big reunion at a rented beach house.

Surfing lessons from Tom's adopted sister, Linda, who really does live in Hawaii. Can you tell?

She also gave the kids cooking and sushi-making lessons. This looks like a traditional Hawaiian breakfast:  Spam, eggs and rice. That's Nova on the left paying rapt attention, next to her cousin Victor, looking slightly less than thrilled spending the weekend with his three little girl cousins. 

Beach bum Nova

Beach bum Maya

And what's with the blue and red hair?  I suspect the fun loving Aunt Linda was behind this.  Amanda says "temporary." 

The relaxed looking parents and Nica.

This is just to say...

The plum tree delivered in the end, despite the aphid infestation and drought.  Our neighbor also shared some from their tree, so I had plenty to can 14 jars chutney and make the annual plum kuchen. I'm a lazy baker, and this is the simplest cake batter-- nothing but butter, flour, sugar, eggs and flavoring beat up all at once and spread in a tart pan.  You could top it (as the Germans do) with just about any kind of fresh fruit in season. I've sure I've posted the recipe on the blog in the past.  Ditto my favorite plum poem, that has apparently now become a Twitter meme.


 This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams
1883-1963

Good reading weather

Jim Harrison, 1937-2016

I love it when I stumble on a famous author I've never read. I picked up "The English Major" on the bargain cart outside my used book store, and now wonder how I managed to miss Jim Harrison all these years?  He was best known for the 1980 novella "Legends of the Fall," made into a movie starring Brad Pitt.

Quite a character himself, Harrison wrote beautifully about nature, food, fishing, teaching, farming and travel.  "The English Major" was one of his last books, about a 60-something protagonist, on a road trip across America on a late life mission to rename all the states and state birds.   The book has everything you want in a novel.  (Dave, I'll send your way.)

Sarah Waters is very different. Again, I found her book "The Paying Guests" on the bargain table. She's a Welsh author, known for her Gothic novels set in Victorian society.  She creates great twisting plots and characters, like a modern day Dickens.  I'm reading "Fingersmith" and can't put it down.  Oh, boy! It was made into a BBC mini series and I just put the DVD on our Netflix queue.

Good reading weather for this weekend.  High temperatures only in the 60's, cloudy skies and even the slightest chance of rain. Our air quality has finally returned to normal.  We don't have much planned for the weekend, other than looking forward to meeting friends for dim sum on Sunday morning.  

Oh, what a relief it is

I couldn't say it any better than Cliff Mass on his blog:

Marine air is now pouring into western Washington, rapidly replacing the warm and smoky air that has been in place since Sunday.
Wind chimes are ringing, leaves on trees are rustling, window shades are banging, the smell of smoke is fading, and there is a feeling of normality and well-being.  The normal balance of nature is being restored.  It is almost a religious experience.
Technically, we are experiencing an onshore or marine push, also known as the Northwest's natural air conditioning, and it it being forced by an approaching upper-level trough.

The air is still in the "very unhealthy" category this morning. It was a mistake sleeping with the bedroom window wide open, but the cool breeze just felt so good.  By the end of today, we should finally be back to clean air. 

Through all of this, the yard has been silent. Even the crows are subdued. Unlike humans, who ride bicycles and jog around in the smoke, I guess they have the sense to lay low.  Yesterday I turned the sprinkler on for the first time in quite a while, and within minutes olive tree was teeming with a flock of ecstatic Bush-tits, taking baths and drinking. Where were they hiding?

One of my favorite birds, Bush-tits make that sweet "tsirping" sound.  John said it looked like they were all out having a fun time at the water park. 

Dry

Dry is an understatement. After a record wet April, it basically stopped raining. The grey bar represents what is typical; the blue bar is the actual precipitation.  So in the last four months, we've had only 1/2 inch of rain, almost all of it in June.

I don't water the poor trees or large shrubs, and the "lawn" of course is dried to a crisp. That happens every summer, and it soon greens up when the fall rain starts. But our climate is becoming more like California: brown in the summer and green in the winter.

This is supposedly the last day of disgusting dirty air before the cool marine layer moves in tonight.  Being on a hill close to Puget Sound, we often get a sweet whiff of it here first.  Where does the evil smoke go?  I don't care, good riddance. Another spooky end-of-the-world sunrise and sunset.

Choking in Seattle

If this trend continues, I'll have to rename the the blog "Complaints and Gripes." Seattle is surrounded on four sides by wildfires (California, Eastern Washington, Olympic Peninsula and British Columbia) and the weather conditions were ideal for another smoke storm.  We have an unprecedented level of air pollution and no relief in sight until the end of the week.

Air quality is measured on a scale of 1-500, and Seattle is at 163 now.  It's even worse in some places, and Amanda said Twisp reached a stunning 400+ at times this week.

Inside and out, everything feels and looks dirty.  I try keeping the windows closed but it's hot, and there's a scrim of ash on every surface, inside and out.  We're advised to stay inside with the air conditioning on, but so few people have it here. 

Help!

Emerald City EDD

I look down on this sorry sight on from the upper floor of the West Seattle Health Club: a string of derelict RV's and campers parked on the street below. A significant percentage of the homeless in Seattle live in their vehicles, so many in fact that the city has almost given up on the problem. That orange "move this vehicle or else" sticker has been in the car's window for a couple of weeks now. 

Some cities on the west coast have created safe parks for the RV homeless, but the City of Seattle doesn't have any at this point. We are still "studying the problem."  A few generous churches and businesses open their parking lots for camping, but most people just move from place to place.

Being Seattle, everything regarding the homeless problem is muddled and mired in controversy. A judge recently ruled that a homeless man's truck was his home, based on an old Washington frontier era homesteading law that declared house walls could be any material, not just wood. The judge ordered the city to reimburse the man for the cost of impounding his illegally parked vehicle. The city attorney is appealing. And so it goes...

 

Oh well, it gives me something to look at while I'm trudging out my two miles on the treadmill. I'm starting to feel like I know this guy.  The other morning I watched him in the tent tossing and turning at 9 am. It looked like he had just finished eating a Costco sheet cake and he threw the plastic box outside his tent.  Munchies?

And then, we have that other Seattle of $4 lattes and $50 lunches. We took Uber downtown yesterday to get a new rain jacket for John to take on The Big Trip.  At the fancy sportswear store, we found something decent enough to wear in one of the great capitols of the world, although it has the logo "Columbia" plastered right on front.  Just in case there's the slightest doubt we're Americans. 

Since we were downtown, we stopped at the Art Museum on the way home.  They are running a Edward Curtis photograph exhibit of indigenous people in Native America.  It was organized with the New York Public Library, although I recognized some of the photos from MOHAI's vast Curtis collection.

There was also a small exhibit with various spooky masks, sculptures, and a psychedelic light show created by the Institute of Empathy. It's designed to help "improve your understanding of others."  Which includes, I suppose, looking down on others while walking on the treadmill listening to an Ipod.

Empathy—the ability to understand the experiences of others—is a skill that’s said to have eroded in the modern world. The result is Empathy Deficit Disorder (EDD).

Hot meat and two veg

That's what they call a fine Sunday lunch in Jolly Old England.  Wow, look at that beef rib roast dinner I made last winter. My mouth is watering at 5:57 AM like a wild carnivore.  I found that photo buried in a list of draft posts for the blog (stuff I never finished, or might be inspired to write about someday then promptly forget.)

Anyway, we got through another smoky, dry, hot week.  It was a tough one around here on several fronts, but things are looking up.  Friday night and we deserve a special dinner. Unfortunately not prime rib, but small sirloin steaks from Costco on the grill.  I know, it's summer, but looking at that picture inspired me to make green beans and Yukon Gold mashed potatoes with a touch of Knorr brown gravy, the only edible instant gravy mix in my humble opinion.

An impressive 59, solid five star customer reviews on Amazon...

Well, it seems to be constantly raining east of the Mississippi this summer, while the West bakes on in a hot, dry oven.  But I hope you have a nice weekend, wherever you are. See you Monday.

Spider House

It seems like there are even more spiders than usual this summer.  A person can't walk around without having her face and glasses plastered with webs. Maybe they like hot, dry weather.

Come October, we get those huge black creepy ones inside the house, especially in the basement. Where do they come from? So much about nature is a mystery, even right under our noses.  Sure we can "look things up" on the Internet, but people don't sit down with sweet old books like this anymore. What a shame.

We have relief from the smoke today, at least in western Washington. But it will be months until all the fires are out and people are suffering in many areas across the Northwest. Amanda was worried about the kids, because there are few options for indoor play over there. You can't keep two active little girls cooped up all day. In Seattle the sky is murky and dark this morning, but mostly from the marine clouds (and fresh air) that pushed in over night.

Our weather guru Cliff Mass wrote on his blog that yesterday had the worst air quality ever recorded here.  Like lots of other people, I woke up with a headache and cough. It was cooler inside than out, so I kept the windows closed with the fan on, as "the elderly" are advised on the news. I see we have now joined the "sensitive group."  Oh, good grief...

My little tame bunny is still hopping around with the busy young squirrels, but the yard is devoid of birdsong in late August. Other than crows making a racket, of course.  The trio that hatched across the street have apparently made our yard their permanent home. Their parents told them that the lady who lives there sometimes throws stale nuts in the yard. (I don't do that anymore, but the damage is already done.) They don't have much to do with themselves, so they perch on the garage roof pooping and staring balefully at the house for long periods of time. A gloomy sight.

All my favorite small birds (White-crowned sparrows, Chickadees, Bewick's wren) finished raising their families and have gone elsewhere.  Once again, where? 

Still no rain in in the forecast for the foreseeable future.  Unbelievable. Remind me to look back on this when it rains for 40 days and 40 nights this winter.  The weather only comes in extremes these days. Maybe the years of cool, moist Northwest summers are over.

"The bluest skies you've ever seen..."

 Sorry, Perry Como, Seattle is smothering under an ugly haze of smoke.  You can barely see the downtown skyline from West Seattle; the mountains are invisible.  The entire West is suffering from these wildfires. My niece in Medford, Oregon, says its been like this for weeks. Amanda wrote this morning that it is dreadful in the Methow Valley. You poor things.

On the bright side. The weather situation should improve some by tomorrow, with cleaner ocean air pushing in overnight.  Here's something to cheer us up in the meantime:

Mellow fruitfulness

I canned four pints of tomato salsa yesterday. There's twice that much in the freezer already, so we got quite a bounty from one tired Roma plant.  I can't bring myself to waste a single homegrown tomato and that seemed best, since we go through at least a jar of salsa a week.

On the news we watch the drenching rain in the East, but our dry, warm weather goes on as signs of fall appear. The mornings are dark and there's condensation on the windshields, although the "season of mists" is more like the season of smoke, drifting down from forest fires in British Columbia. The sky looks like dirty dishwater. The air is unhealthy. Ugh.

It's raining cherry tomatoes though. They're sweet as candy but even more than I can eat, which is saying something.  The plums are almost ripe, and it turns out more than I thought, although most are inconveniently high up in the tree. We have a handy-dandy picker on a pole, so can get a few of them.  I'll have plenty for chutney and something else, if I get more ambitious.

Apples, apples, apples. Hundreds of tiny ones, each with its own personal worm inside. Rachel was asking about our unpleasant "apple maggot quarantine" signs, and here it is in living color. The tree should be thinned early in the year, I just never get around to it. Then I'd have large wormy apples instead of small wormy apples.  Farming is a lot of work, which is why I love our flowers.  I'll be picking up rotting little apples until November.

Speaking of, there's a nice second bloom going on the roses...

I've already started the long process of cleaning vegetation from the flower beds. Actually I like this time of year in the garden, and seeing a little space between plants again.  The tired gardener takes a deep breath and looks ahead to the coming season, whatever it may bring.

Autumn
John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The big party

Oh, to be nine years old again...
When birthdays are still a wondrous thing.

The pool party.

Best friends Maya and Kate.

 Sisters...

The gang hits Hometown Pizza Parlor in Twisp.

And a beautiful cake from Hank's grocery store bakery.

And of course, presents for the birthday girl.

Nice job, Amanda!  Hope you had some energy left to enjoy your own birthday.