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! 

April Showers Bring...

Unbelievable weather we are having here.  Nearly 80 and only early May.  I try to just enjoy it and not worry that it means we will have a hot, dry summer.  

Here's the enjoyment part:

Oh--and we've discovered a new joy in our household:  bike commuting with our son to school/work.  So much fun, and today it was quite the social excursion, on National Bike to School Day!

Australia pt I

Fig or Banyan tree, across from the Opera House

 Here are a few pictures from a land down under!

Our B&B in Sydney

Sydney Harbor at Sunset

A cormorant in Sydney Harbor

I Heart Art Museum Sandwiches!

Rainbow Lorakeets, not pets

The Nobbies on Phillips Island

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!

 

 

 

 

Two Flat Day

I am a statistician.  While I am sometimes annoyed or pleasantly surprised by the rare event, I am also somewhat intrigued by the outliers of life.  I'm not sure if yesterday's events actually classify as outliers, though, as there is probably a strong correlation between flat tires and traveling in a full vehicle on bald tires over rocky roads.  At any rate my colleagues and I experienced the rare two-flat day while on a reconnisance trip for a grant collaboration at the Zumwalt Prairie Reserve in Wallowa County, OR.

Flat #1

Flat #2

Despite the two flat day, moods remained high.  Perhaps it was because we were at one of the most beautiful places in the West.  It was early spring, the mountains were full of snow, and the first wildflowers were blooming in the prairie.

Prairie Smoke

Larkspur

Bounded on the north by the Grand Ronde River canyon, the east by Hell's Canyon of the Snake River, the west by the Blue Mountains, and the south by the Wallowas, the Zumwalt Prairie is a distinct and geographically isolated remnant of the northern Rocky Mountain bunchgrass prairie system.  While some of the land was plowed at one point, the land has been primarily used for grazing and few true remnants of native prairie remain.  The Nature Conservancy purchased the Zumwalt Prairie in two parcels, and has made some progress restoring the landscape.

This is a depopulated landscape.  The Nez Perce--Nimi-ipuu--were the first inhabitants of the land.  This is the land of Chief Joseph.  After the 1877 war, the land was divided into 160 acre homestead parcels.  By the 1920s, over 30 rural schools served the area.  Then came the Depression, and Wallowa County never recovered.  To this day, unemployment and poverty remain high, and the rural schools have now been turned to bunkhouses for the Nature Conservancy volunteers.

If you can believe it, this farm had telephone access in the 30s, but today can be reached only by satellite phone.  Our cell phones were of little use when the first flat occurred, but that didn't matter.   It wasn't such a bad day at work after all, and it ended in the best possible way ever--at Terminal Gravity brew pub!     

Former school house

Barn at Summer Camp

 

Ground squirrel

Formerly a two-seater outhouse!

The "suicide" elk--found with his head in a pond!

Barn swallows

Elk herd on the horizon

Monuments placed by the Nez Perce and thought to be trail makers.

Lawson Gardens

Moscow and Pullman, despite their small size, are the proud supporters of many beautiful parks.  While I don't have actual data, I expect that our per-capita acreage of parks is better than that of most small- and medium-sized cities.  Lawson Gardens is unique in the area in that it is a formal garden park, complete with a rose bed, xeriscape exhibition garden, native plant garden, reflection pool, and gazebo.  The flowers were in full bloom for our visit, and very pretty!

Backyard Project, Part I

I worked some in the disaster that is our yard today. We are on a mission to reclaim this space for ourselves, and also for native Palouse prairie.  Today I accomplished several noteworthy tasks.   I finally finished reclaiming the stairs.  Here they were just after I sprayed them:

Once they were sprayed, I raked them and pinned down landscaping cloth.  The cloth was then covered with pine bark mulch.

Here are the stairs finished!
 

Next came the really crazy part.  A few weeks ago, my husband and I cleared all the sticks and debris our willow trees have spit out (kind of like the Whomping Willow) over the past several years into huge berms.  You can see one of the berms in the left of the picture below.  I and a hired gun today removed FIVE truck loads of willow branches and creek detritus from the backyard.
    

Here is a picture of the area, cleared and raked.  The hill in the foreground has been sprayed and is ready for planting with kinickkinick.  

While the hired gun was dropping the truck loads of willow at the recycling center, I planted kinickkinick and weeded.  I felt as if I needed to be a mountain goat and/or have one leg shorter than the other to properly access the hill.  I can also tell you I am feeling it now!
 

And the best part of the afternoon...taking off my boots and putting on flip-flops for the first time this season!