Summer Rains...

...are weird if you live on the Palouse.  The first few days of August were unseasonably cool and RAINY!  I'm not sure what to make of it--volatile weather patterns to say the least!  But rain when it's been so dry is much appreciated, even as it disturbs you with its unpredictability.

Yesterday I did something that I hope will become a more regular habit--solo bike ride!  So lovely to ride to Troy and smell the ripening wheat and the pine trees!  Even the spring wheat is turning golden, so summer is truly winding down.

Things are still a little unsettled around here, much like the weather.  Hopefully we will have more certainty and "settledness" once I start to feel the chill of fall in the air.  The drama of the day was that our washing machine died--mid load, if you can believe it.  Lovely.  We made ourselves feel better by completely reorganizing our son's room, to much success.  I guess you win some, you lose some!

Garden Beauties

Relic of a railroad age on the Latah Trail

Made it to Troy!

Moscow Mountain

 

Happy and Tired

The irony of summer...we wait and wait for it to get here and we fill our days so full of fun and adventure and trips and busyness that we exhaust ourselves.  What a fun filled Independence Day weekend we had!  Parades and bike races and friends and fireworks!  I was so tired last night, and just wanted drift off to sleep and forget that today would be Monday.  Sadly, it was not to be.  The sound of thunder woke up the little one and we all had a sleepless night. 

Even still, I treasured this weekend.  It is so, so achingly lovely on the Palouse right now.  The spring wheat looks like velvet and the winter wheat is fading to pure sunlight.  Hay is being baled and put up for the long, cold winter ahead.  We were so stressed in June, though we tried to hide it with all our trips, as we waited to see if my husband would have a job in the coming months.  Thankfully, he does, and we shall stay here a bit longer, it seems.

Oh Palouse, when I think it is time to leave you, you find a way to keep me here a bit longer.  How is it that you do this to me, year after year?  Every passing year, I love you more.  You don't have the hardwoods and the wetness of my childhood home, but you have the sweet scent of pine and grass.  You are the place I am raising my baby, his happy home.  My happy home! 

Sun and Snow

It's the first week of spring and it has been f-f-freezing!  Except when it's super sunny.  Which is usually followed five minutes later by sleet.  We've managed to get outside, usually running back in for extra hats and mittens at periodic intervals.  The cold weather has kept me knitting, as my hat obsession continues.

The neighborhood Great Horned Owl has been roosting in our tree and leaving owl pellets--very exciting!  As soon as I get them sterilized, we will have a dissection party.  Our bulbs are coming up, and today my son and I planted out the lettuce.  He also went around the yard taking pictures, and took some of these!  He's learning so many things right now, it's pretty amazing.  Baseball, for instance.  I'm sure the ball sport thing he did not inherit from either one of us!

Despite the cold, we're so excited that it's spring.  Easter is almost here, and today we got the decorations up!  I love love love spring, and get so giddy this time of year!

Owl Pellet

The artsy fence photo taken by my son.

The fact that I finished this is pretty amazing in and of itself.

Winter's Eve

When I am coming back to Moscow, and I see Moscow Mountain, I sometimes have a sense of home wash over me, just as I used to when I would see Sharp Top and Flat Top in the Peaks of Otter where I grew up in Virginia.  It's funny how your adopted home can become just as comforting to you as your native soil, as the years wind by.  

So beautiful today, in the last light of the day.

 

Moscow Mountain Morning

This morning I loaded my mountain bike onto the truck (with a lot of instruction from my husband) and headed up to Moscow Mountain with two friends and a dog for a morning of riding. It had rained the night before, and it was very pretty.  I hadn't been to this area in the summer, though I'm pretty sure I've skied it. 


I need to bike more often, as in, at least once a week.  Climbing is tough, but it's the downhills that scare me.  I admit I walked the whoop-de-doos.  I want to be a better bike handler, and a better climber, and a better descender.  Ok, I need to improve pretty much everywhere. Good thing I have friends who are similarly motivated!


But I did feel really hard core driving home in the truck with the bike on the roof!

 

 

 

 

Idler's Rest, Late Winter

In a parallel universe, we have a cabin on the mountain.  Except that in my mind, it's a farm, and in his mind, it's a yurt off the grid.  Hmmm.  Not close to resolving that yet!

Cedars

My husband takes beautiful pictures

of the beautiful, quiet places of the world.

The cedar grove on Moscow Mountain is one of those places.

February Snows

Presidents' Day weekend snows on Moscow Mountain.

Moscow Mountain Ski Tour

Sometimes, I am reminded how different my life is from other paths that it could have taken.  

For instance, if I had stayed in the South there are certainly many things I would not have done...

• Catch a westslope cutthroat trout on a fly rod
• Learn to tele ski
• Regularly spot moose, occasionally in my backyard
• Go snow camping
• Pick huckleberries.

I'm also reasonably certain that I never expected that this sight would be that of my family, skiing uphill!

 

More Snow

It's continued to snow all week.  Never a lot, but enough to make each day fresh.  Driving north this morning, the snow was substantially thinner, and it seems as though the bulk of the snow is to the south.  Since the temperature is supposed to drop, with more snow predicted, I expect we'll get more of these scenes in the coming days.

Moscow Mountain

I think my garden gnomes have seen better days.

The Palouse

This wasn't the post I was going to write today.  I found these pictures while I was de-cluttering and they fit with my mood.  I don't remember the precise location where  the pictures were taken, but the photo is dated 'summer 2004'.  These pictures are of Moscow Mountain at sunset.  Home.

Odds and Ends

We had planned to go cross country skiing today at Field Springs State Park.  As we watched the snow level rise on Moscow Mountain, however, we decided that it might not be the best idea.  Field Springs sits at about 4,000 feet, so the snow was likely to be slushy and/or spotty.  (Secretly, I think that the football playoff game today might have also had something to do with the decision to stay closer to home, but that is speculation on my part).

Despite the fact that our skiing trip fell through, I really wanted to get out of the house.  We decided to take a walk on Moscow Mountain at the Pond Nine area.  Moscow Mountain is a hunk of granite sticking up out of the basalt that makes up most of the rocks found on the Palouse.  We found more snow that we expected, but it was still mostly gone from the roads and trails.  

My friend Scott sometimes posts the "Heap of the Week" on his blog and the base of Moscow Mountain has a couple of good contenders so I thought I'd post some pictures. 

These heaps have been here so long they are starting to become part of the landscape.

I always wonder if these cars crashed here or were dumped here.  Probably the latter.

The other exciting news for today is that it appears that the winter lettuce and spinach I planted survived (sadly, the same cannot be said for the garlic).  I am optimistic that in a few months I will have fresh greens!

Spinach.

Lettuce