National Rose Month

Sometimes you wonder if roses are worth all the trouble-- then June comes around again.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
Antoine de Exupery, The Little Prince


“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.”
Aphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

"For the roses had the look of flowers that are looked at."
T.S. Eliot

“They are not long, the days of wine and roses. Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes, within a dream.”
Ernest Dowson

 “It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”
Maud Hart Lovelace

 “...but from this distance, the velvety reds, flashing yellows and glassy whites [of the roses] seemed to break up the light of the summer sun into its various elements and cast it back far more brilliantly than any other flower ever could, seemed not exactly of the earth, but of space and air itself.”
Jane Smiley, Duplicate Keys

“There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair”
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Our new RN

In my mind, Amanda is frozen in time as our beautiful little girl.  (I can't help it, I'm her mom. ) That makes it all the more amazing to look at these pictures she sent, dressed in her nurse's uniform and ready to graduate. We'll be going over to Omak in eastern Washington later this week for her RN Pinning Ceremony.

Amanda and her Preceptor, Kelly

Becoming a registered nurse is a big accomplishment anywhere, requiring at least 2 years of classes and countless hours of clinical experience in different types of medical settings.  But if you live in the Methow Valley, it's an amazing accomplishment.  The college isn't just across town, it's an 70 mile round trip over a two-lane mountain pass.  Just think about getting in your car on dark, cold, snowy winter mornings and heading to class while your children are still asleep in bed.

And those rural hospitals where Amanda did her clinical practice?  Add a two-hour commute on top of that 12 hour work shift. Then study, and more study. But Amanda also found time to enjoy her life, have a new baby, and keep up with an active toddler.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without incredible help and support from Tom, the family (special kudos to Grandpa Jerry) and her good friends. But the final accomplishment was done by her alone.  It took tremendous drive and discipline.

While seeing my little girl in a nurse's uniform is pretty amazing, it's nothing compared to the sight of her assisting in the operating room, and telling me she loves every minute of it.  Yikes! I'm glad it's you, and not your squeamish mother.  Way to go, Amanda-- we're so proud of you!

Another anniversary

Morning

Poll Hopper

June 6th is the anniversary of Feathers and Flowers.  On this morning five years ago I hit the "publish" button on Blogger for the first time with great trepidation.  I can still remember that scary feeling of "being out on the Internet."

Ha!  Well, don't we get used to things? I seem to have no trouble now blabbering on in a way that sometimes borders on narcissism. On the other hand, I wish I'd had the discipline to record the "events of the day" many years ago.  Handwritten diary or blog, it doesn't really matter. Paying attention to the small things can be life transforming.

Anyway, that very first post is still on the blog  (click here) with a photo of my beautiful horse, along with all of the 1,587 entries written since June 2009.  Thank you, oh Great Google Storage Plan in the Sky for preserving all those words and thousands of images for a few pennies a day.

You know you've been blogging for a long time when you start to use your blog as a reference tool. (Now... how DID I make that recipe?) But the real gratitude goes to my little group of daily followers. Thanks for sticking with me.

Goodbye, old friend

Tolek and Charlie the Cat

May 2010

Our friend Leo Emerson passed away at the Seattle VA hospital this week at age 80. His close friends called him Tolek.  Amanda first met Tolek when she was in her early 20's, and over the years he became part of our lives, too. Amanda and Tolek had a unique friendship, and he was a generous source of support and encouragement through her young adult years, from college student to waitress, Peace Corps volunteer to wife and mother, and now, soon-to-be registered nurse.

Tolek was raised in a New England orphanage and joined the Marines when he was a teenager during the Korean War. He never lost his gratitude for what his country gave him.  He was the most highly-educated self-educated person we've ever met.  He liked art and collected rare books, especially literature and philosophy.  He also loved whimsical toys, silly mechanical gadgets and watches and pens.  His apartment was a wild mixture of used book store, Woolworth's and Aladdin's cave.  When Amanda left for the Peace Corps, he adopted her Charlie and turned him into the most spoiled cat in the universe. 

Above everything, Tolek loved conversation, even though thirty years ago cancer of the larynx had taken away his ability to speak without an electrolarynx, that external device that is placed against the neck. Many people in West Seattle knew of him because of this, but just a small circle of friends knew him well. His lived his life on his own terms.  He was brave, tough and ornery like an old Marine, and despite years of serious health problems never felt sorry for himself. Bless him, he had nothing but good things to say about the VA hospital that saved his life many times.

When I saw him for the last time at the hospital on Saturday, he said he considered himself one of the luckiest people in the world.  And our world will be a little less colorful without Tolek.

Dahlias

If you mulch in the fall,  dahlia tubers can usually survive the winter, something you can't do in many parts of the country. I thought I'd lost the first one in many years, and hoped that it wasn't my favorite pink ball.

Dahlias are so inconspicuous and fragile when they first come up it's easy to stomp on them or snap the top off when you're weeding. Sometimes I break the shoots off when I dig down to "check" and see if they're still alive.  The impatient gardener.  Like begonias, dahlias are very slow to start growing, and nothing much to look at until late August. 

But I was happy to see this little sprout yesterday. Once again, I almost ripped it out accidentally.  I don't use poison in the garden except under dire circumstances, but I sprinkled a touch of slug bait around to give it a head start.  There's nothing slugs like better than eating new dahlia shoots.  When they get big, an army of slugs can't kill them.

This picture is from 2009, so I've had pinky for quite a while.  It is amazing how such a tiny sprout grows into a magnificent 5 foot plant by the end of summer.

And then of course the whole mess has to be cut back to the ground and dragged off in the fall. With all the staking and flopping, dahlias aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I think the almost artificial symmetry and pure colors make them quite classy.

One of the "cuter" mammals...

There were animals fighting in our yard this week at night.  It wasn't that back and forth yowling of cats, with a big final scream to settle it so you can go back to sleep. More of a wild, scary Africa-savanna sounding fight.  OK, I'm exaggerating, but everything sounds bad when it wakes you up at 3 am.  I'm sure it was "just" raccoons.

Nova went beach-combing down at Alki when she was here on Memorial Day weekend and brought home a plastic bag of fragrant treasures: shells, wet feathers, stones, crab claws with pieces of crab meat still attached.  I lost track of where she left that zip-lock bag, but the wild creatures found it in the yard and ripped it to shreds.

Beach refuse must be worth fighting over.  So why don't they just walk down to Alki Beach and get their own stinky crab scraps?  Actually, I know why-- because city raccoons have a very small home range.  Why move around when everything you need is within a few blocks?

Each morning while I'm sitting at my computer they walk through the front yard. I recognize the regulars, like the one who had the end of of his tail cut off.  Like all animals, they have no sense of property and if it feels good and safe they just make themselves at home.  I know they can be a nuisance, but I enjoy watching them.

What else is new in the wild kingdom? These nice mornings the back door is open while I'm doing chores in the kitchen and the Stellar's Jay is training me to leave his peanuts on the gate. He sits in the plum tree making a racket, then swoops down and grabs it before the crow.  I was looking on the Internet trying to find out if crows are smarter than jays.  They are both members of the Corvid family.   

I know we shouldn't use human personality traits to describe animal behavior, but the crows are like street bullies, used to getting their way but wary of people.  The Stellar's Jay is more of a brash and quick thief. But all the birds in the Corvid family have astonishing memories and problem solving abilities.

Naturalists say crows and jays have languages of their own and are able to do tasks that three and four-year-old children have difficulty with.  So it's probably no big deal teaching a senior citizen where to leave their peanuts.

Here's what Mark Twain had to say:

There’s more to a jay than any other creature. You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure, ’cause he’s got feathers on him and he don’t belong to no church perhaps, but otherwise he’s just as much a human as you and me.