Southeastern Summers

My parents' pond at sunset

Johnson Farm at the Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Otter River

I grew up in the Southeast.  As a teenager, I was involved in a summer tennis league.  Our practices were from nine to eleven in the morning.  I would bike home from practice and turn on the garden hose and soak myself in the freezing water to cool down prior to going in for a shower.  It was that hot and muggy.

When we traveled back east to visit family last week, the weather was unbelievably well-behaved.  It had rained all summer, so everything was verdant.  The temperatures barely reached into the 90s at their worst, and in the mountains, the temperature one morning never exceeded 70.  Perfect.  While I can't say I have any regrets about moving to the Northwest and having dry summers with cool evenings, I will say I do occasionally miss the lazy, warm summer evenings.  And it goes without saying I miss the trees and the flowers and the abundance of water.  I also had forgotten a lot of things about southeastern summers.  For instance, I had forgotten that if you take a hike in the morning, your sneakers will be soaked with the morning dew.  Your feet and ankles will be covered with fresh cut grass snips or leaf bits.  The same dew also makes the really outrageously ginormous spider webs visible.  Except when it doesn't, and you walk right into them and spend the next 30 minutes trying to pick off bits of sticky, hoping against hope that the spider wasn't home at the time you crashed into its domicile.  And gnats.  I had completely forgotten that gnats existed, until they made their presence known via kamikaze runs into my eyes.  But I loved the streams bubbling in late summer, and the squishy ground, and the moss covered trees.  I loved the butterflies and the hummingbirds, and the fact my mom's rosemary looked like a sequoia compared to mine.  Yes, the northwest is home now, but what a lovely southern visit!!  

Well, It's Good for the Estate...

Cool and rainy the last few days.  I love it.  As one of my friends says, "it's good for the estate."  She meant her garden, but she's a sociologist so I think it was also a commentary on American suburbia.  You never can tell with those sociologists.  

It is good for the estate, though.  My gardens are soaking it all in, and it postpones the dusty, dry season and prolongs the green, flowery season.  June rains.  We weeded the tiny flower bed around the choke-cherry tree in front, and the peonies rewarded us by blooming this year.  The rain popped them open.  

Last night I fell asleep listening to the rain through my open window.  If my husband would let me, I'd sleep with the windows wide open every night.  Sleeping with the windows open makes me feel closer to nature, just as I do when tent camping.  But then again, sun and birds at 4 am do not wake me up, even though I'm a very light sleeper.  Hubby is also a light sleeper, but sun and birds do wake him up (although, ironically & annoyingly, the sound of a baby crying does not always wake him up).

Window open or not, I'm glad for the rain.  I hope the rest of summer passes much slower than these first few sunny, fun-filled weeks!

These Long Days of Spring

The longest days of the year are really in spring, you know.   By the time the first day of summer is over, the days are already getting shorter.  These are the busy days, the flower-filled days, the can't we stay up just a bit longer days. We had a thundershower today, so rare on the Palouse, and this one even came with hail.  After watching it for twenty minutes, my husband and I both looked at each other and said, "I hope the plants are OK!"  They were, although the lettuce is looking a little rough.  Fortunately, my hubby doesn't like big chunks of lettuce leaf in his salad, so now it comes pre-chopped!  But rain makes the garden wet and grow-y, and I love walking in the garden after a storm.

Putting my son to bed, it seemed like nothing could be a better finale to the weekend than watching the last, soft light of the day fall across his cheek.  Love.

Daffodils

We are still tired after our busy Easter weekend.  On Tuesday we went to a screening of the movie Chasing Ice, which was sponsored by the Environmental Law Society at the University of Idaho.  It was quite good, but depressing.  The movie documents a photographer, James Balog, as he sets up cameras to take time-lapse images of the glaciers in the Arctic.   It's a good reminder that sometimes geologic activity can happen very, very quickly, and that the overwhelming scientific evidence points to humans as a least one of the primary factors leading to climate change.

The movie also helps put things in perspective for me, so that when I'm whining because it's April and I'm wondering if I should start a fire in the woodstove or just put on a sweater, that it is good to have seasons and it's good to have them come when and as they ought.  So I'll just keep knitting hats for now, instead of sewing up cute skirts, and waiting for my flowers to bloom.  Oh, and trying to think of ways to reduce my family's carbon footprint!

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.

Getting Ready for Fall

Even though fall has been decidedly here for several weeks, we spent some time this weekend "getting ready for fall."  We went around the neighborhood and found pretty leaves and dipped them in paraffin wax to make a garland.  We dug up the carrots and planted the garlic.  And of course, we went to cyclocross races.  Fall.  We're ready!

Leaf garland...unfortunately it matches the brick colors almost perfectly!

Getting ready to work in the garden

Who says red and green and yellow don't go together?

The willows, looking pretty.

A rainy day for cycling...

 

Date Weekend, CX Style

We spent the weekend in Walla Walla, along with many members of our "cyclocross family"--i.e. the folks from all over the Inland Northwest who brave rain, snow, wind, and, rarely, heat, to travel long miles for an hour or two of suffering.  The weather was classically unpredictable, true to cross style, but we did catch a glimpse of fall color.  

Even though the venues are the same, each time, each race, is still unique.  Life gets in the way, so it's a different mix of "regulars" each time.  The courses change.  The weather changes, often several times in a day!  This year, my husband and I are feeling even more a part of the group.  People know us, they asked where are son was, and they laughed and teased us when we said we were on a date.  I didn't have to be the mom up at 4 am--though there was one of those!--and we could sleep in late.  Awesome!  We got to act like grown-ups and go wine tasting and have a nice dinner out.  We bumped into other friends at breakfast.  All of us are on different trajectories, from college students to empty nesters.  But we all do this crazy thing every fall and support each other.

Of course, the only thing about being "known" is that people are starting to ask me when I'm going to race....   

The Colors of Fall

Once, when she was here at the end of summer, my mother remarked "these are the colors I know how to paint."  She said this as we drove around the Palouse.  A Kansas girl, she meant, of course, the gold of the wheat, the blue of the sky, and the white of the clouds.  Today the clouds were more grey than white, but in the morning, the clouds occasionally gave way to bright spots shining down like gold on the fields.

We spent the morning at Bishop's Orchard in Garfield, WA.  Red and gold and green.  As my four year old neighbor reported, the "apples have glitter on them" -- drops of rain leftover from last night, the first rain we've had in three months. 

Honestly, fall, when we have it, is there anything more delicious?

Goodbye, September

This post may be somewhat random.  So many thoughts going through my head.  I think the fall does that to me.  Even though I hate the end of summer, and dread the cold, dark period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I do love fall.  I love the cool that comes in the evening, the breeze with a hint of change, and the leaves rustling on the ground.  Not that we have many of them out west (leaves, that is).  

I bogged down somewhat in the garden.  I think I am waiting for it to rain, and it doesn't, so I just forget about the garden.  Every year, it feels like one of three things happens to everything in the garden:  1) it completely underperforms--this would describe my onions to a T this year; 2) I get the impression that if I had only helped it a little bit more then I would have had an awesome crop--I feel my squash fits into this grouping; or 3) I am overpowered by the shear awesomeness of its production--my tomatoes and blackberries fit this category.  In the five years we've owned this house, my blackberry vines have never done as well.  I'm not sure if it was the cool, wet spring, or the fact that they received windfall water from watering the yard, or if they were just excited to be near the sandbox, but I have picked for weeks.  I wasn't even planning on making jam this year, but I am going to make some blackberry jam now!!  And don't get me started on the tomatoes.  I can't keep up with them--salsa and canning and fresh oh my!

But on the other hand, cyclocross is ramping up!  And we've been able to enjoy so many of those lovely fall evenings (despite the dust and smoke from want of rain)!  I took these pictures on Wednesday night...the last one is my favorite!

Smokey, Dusty Days

As much as I love September, around here it does seem to be kind of a dirty time of year.  We typically don't get much (any) rain in July and August, and until it rains in September it just seems to get dustier and dustier.  Harvest dust and forest fire smoke contribute to the overall griminess. It's also about this time of year that I just kind of get tired of watering...and thus forget.  So everything just seems dry, dry, dry.

But of course there is always the harvest!  I've been getting a ton of tomatoes, and supplemented with some from the Farmer's Market to can.  The blackberries this year are AMAZING, and I made a pie from them for a party on Saturday.  The pie wasn't terribly photogenic, but when smothered with ice cream it disappeared fast!

Despite the dryness, and the dust, it's still a beautiful time of year here. Fall on the Palouse really is lovely, all things considered!