Westfest 2018

 California Avenue

This is great weekend for staying close to home.  I-5 through downtown is closed again for construction, leaving us, for all intensive purposes, stranded here on the peninsula. This is also the big Westfest weekend in West Seattle, our annual street fair. 

I love Westfest and have been going for decades, although like everything else, it has changed greatly over the years.  It was once just a sidewalk sale for local stores, but now has all the folderol of any street fair in the city. Booths with crafts, vendors selling everything under the sun, typical fair food and rides. I wish Nova and Maya were here, they would love it. 

I always go early on Friday with the other shrewd shoppers, looking for bargains at my favorite stores like Northwest Art and Frame. The weather is perfect, perhaps a tad hot for some people. It got up to 89 yesterday.  The forecast is wonderfully boring: clear sunny skies stretching way into next week.

Have a good weekend.

Distraction free shopping

Good for Trader Joe's. At many grocery stores, shoppers have to run the gauntlet of the homeless panhandling and selling newspapers, or else be solicited by people collecting signatures for voter initiatives. Those folks are paid by the signature, and their aggressive questions get old.  

We love our citizen initiatives here, and I guess there's nothing wrong with "direct democracy" per se.  Although sometimes we just don't like what we voted for in the first place and then want to change the law by getting it on the ballot again.  For example, we voted in favor of excessively high car tabs to pay for public transportation. When the license bills started coming, we decided that wasn't such a great idea after all.

Anyway, I find myself at Trader Joe's several times a week.  It's right on the way home from the gym and easy to get in and out of the parking lot.  Early in the morning the shelves are always freshly and fully stocked, which I understand is not the case late in the day when people are looking for food on the way home from work.  The employees are consistently cheerful, helpful and competent. In fact, TJ has one of the highest employee satisfaction rates of any company.  Sometimes I wish I was the lady working behind the free sample counter!  Well, maybe not. Retirement is pretty nice.

Still, a person who spends much of her time cooking, cleaning and puttering around the garden should make some effort to keep the brain cells functioning.  I've been thinking about starting a new volunteer position for some time, and tomorrow I have an appointment with the museum manager at the Southwest Historical Society. The nice thing is, they are right down the hill on Alki beach. 

I'll let you know how it goes...

View from here

For a couple of months in the summer, the western part of the Pacific Northwest has the best weather in the country.  June can be unpleasantly cloudy and cool, not like summer at all, but then the weather suddenly turns magical from July to early September. It rarely gets above the mid-80's, humidity is low, nights are always cool, storms rare, ditto mosquitoes and house flies.  Few people have air conditioning (yet) so windows are open to the fresh mild air in the morning.

I've been getting out and enjoying myself more this week. Why stress about things we can do nothing about? Like the Great White Father going around the world insulting our oldest friends.  Can the world survive this?  But there's been good news too, like the amazing and brave rescue of those baby-faced boys in Thailand.

The Ukes performed at the Senior Center party yesterday, and we have another "gig" at a nursing home on Saturday, a birthday party for a 95 year old lady.  I like the practice of course, but being part of such a funny and odd group is half the fun.  I'll tell you, it takes a mighty big cane to get The Ukes off the stage, especially when there's free food still in the room.  The party yesterday at the Senior Center was obviously over, but still the band played on. And on.

Good weather for housecleaning. I've been knocking down cobwebs and doing some cleaning of closets, drawers and cupboards. We are advised by the neat freaks to get ruthless, eliminate clutter and simplify our lives. I wonder why sometimes.  I like most of my stuff.
 

Speaking of the little stuff that collects, what does your fridge door say about you. I suppose some people prefer a pristine door, but in many homes, the fridge is the primary display place.  It tells the story of who we love, what makes us laugh, where we've been. 

The Only News I Know

The Only News I know
Is bulletins all day
From Immortality.

The only shows I see,
Tomorrow and Today,
Perchance Eternity.

The only One I meet
Is God, -the only street,
Existence; this traversed

If other news there be,
Or admirabler show -
I'll tell it you.

By Emily Dickinson 

Freeze frame

Happy camper Maya

Remember when you were a kid and summer seemed to go on forever?  Now the lovely summer months are over in a twinkling.  Time does indeed speed up as we get older.  Well, except for the month of January.

Anyway, I wish we could freeze frame Maya and Nova at the wonderful ages of 5 and 8. And I wish we could see them more often.  But they're having a great summer backpacking and camping with friends almost every weekend-- making memories they'll have for the rest of their lives.

We had a quiet but nice weekend.  I painted the deck, cleaned the grill and got everything put back together.  It is amazing how much c--p you can get on one little deck.  Everything here is old, old, old, but at least the deck looks pretty and fresh again.

We took a peaceful walk at Kubota Gardens on Sunday morning and had the place to ourselves. This is not an early rising town.  We got back to West Seattle at 11, about the time people are finishing their second cup of coffee and thinking about what they want to do for the day.  So all the traffic was pouring in the other direction as we headed home.

 Kubota Gardens

I'm sure I've written about Kubota Gardens many times on the blog. We've been there in every season, including after rare snow storms which is magical.

Japanese gardens are more about landscape than flowers, but I love the spectacular collection of unusual hydrangeas in full bloom.

 (He's actually having a good time :-)

Really?

I bought this marinated pork roast without really reading the label.  The directions said to cook it "no prep, no mess" right in the shrink wrap. You can put the whole unopened package right in the oven or crock pot. Yuck. Cooking in plastic is gross, not to mention, it was touched by countless dirty things in the grocery store: meat counter, hands, shopping cart, register belt and so on.



I took it out of the bag and cooked it on the grill.  We made little soft tacos last night that were pretty good, although when all is said and done, I prefer my own simple marinades without weird ingredients.  Live and learn.  Read labels.

So, looking forward to the first tomatoes and peppers.  The plants are growing like weeds and baking on the south side of the house.  I have to water the pots everyday.

The weekend is starting off cool and cloudy, good weather for my Saturday project-- once a year I paint the deck. A big job getting everything off the deck and cleaned, but the actual painting part is not bad. 

I can't help myself. Another showoff lily picture.
See you Monday!