4th of July

I may just have to go to Juneau for the 4th of July celebrations. I just read that the community across the water from Juneau is going to have Miss Alaska 1958 as their Grand Marshall. She's the mother of one of my high school friends...a friend that died (she "drank herself to death") in her early 30's. Jill was always obsessed with her weight and physical beauty...I didn't even know her mom was Miss Alaska. I feel like I should honor Jill's mom, I can't imagine having a child die a sorrowful death.
Here is Miss Alaska, Stuart Sliter, getting Casey Stengel's autograph when she did a tour of the states when she was the reigning queen. When I knew Mrs. Sliter, she was the wife of a commercial fisherman, mother of 3 kids and usually hosting a party of some sort. Their house was a lively, rough and ready place that I loved to visit.

a little solstice

We all walk in the same places. It's been a few weeks since these tracks showed up down by the golf course, Ive been meaning to get a picture to share before the rains come. Small moose, small bear and average woman feet.The cabbage before.

Nancy Pearl shushing the cabbage that is overwhelming her.

A potato flower! Now that there are flowers, the tubers are forming under the earth...magic.

a rose is a rose

Most of the edible berries in southeast Alaska are roses of some sort, the rest are the Vacinnium family like blueberries and bog cranberries. The roses have big showy flowers the Vacinnium little bell shaped flower.
This is the flower from a raspberry in my yard, 5 petals, many stamens, flowers on last years' cane and has prickles.
This is a Thimbleberry flower, 5 petals many stamens, flowers on old cane and no prickles. Fruit is like a raspberry but in my mind the definition of pithy. Mushy and little flavor. Great big palmate leaves (like a maple) Aggressive pain in the ass weed that spreads in a sneaky underground rooty way.
Salmon Berry flower...see a pattern here? 5 petals, many stamens. Fruit is raspberry like but sometimes red sometimes yellow. Colors might be an adaptation to keep birds from eating the ripe fruit, the yellow ones don't look 'ripe'. Some people (thimbleberry lovers?) don't like the fruit, it can be watery and sort of flavorless if it's not ripe.
Last but not least by a long shot is strawberries. Everyone else in this story is a tall showy plant that flowers on old woody canes. Strawberries live close to the ground but have that same 5 petal flower with many stamens. The only fruit I know of with the seeds on the outside...and oh so tasty!

I'll snag a picture of the wild roses that grow around here, generally called Sitka or Nootka rose, they have the same flowers but a wonderful rose scent that the others don't have. Bees frequent the Sitka rose and the strawberry, but usually it's flies on the other flowers.

Some bead pictures to share

The doll is on high quality cotton, with leather 'boots' and leaves from the silk flower department at a Joanne fabric store.
The beads are sewn to pellon dyed green then the whole thing is sewn to hand dyed wool felt.

Yukon road trip

Just back from a short road trip to Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon (territory/province?). I sort of forgot how close Canadian Tire and a movie theatre (it's Canada, ya know) is to Haines. At least close in the summer months, the road is passable but scary in the winter. It took me about 5 hours to get there even with miles and miles of slushy snow falling.

Part of the trip was to meet up with my sister and part of her family at Takhini hotsprings. 2 days of bobbing around in a swimming pool full of hot water...very nice. Weekend camping during the warm months in Canada is, however, not peaceful, not nice. I forget how inconsiderate people are and how just plain LOUD campgrounds are on the weekends. Friday night it was drunken teenagers with fireworks. If you looked at the Wikipedia article, you'll note that the area is essentially an arctic desert...fire danger levels high all summer. Saturday night it was a site right next to ours that included the thundering feet of small children running laps around our site as well as an unending supply of modern country "music". Must remember not to camp on the weekend at Takhini, no matter how nice the water is it can't make up for noisy sonsabitches.

The other part of the trip was the visit to the city...specifically Canadian Tire to buy a reel mower for my grassy grass. I'm pretty sure the gasoline powered neighbors wonder what the hell I'm up to with my push mower in the summer and my hand operated shovels in the winter. Bob cat dude did come over and cut down the forest of dandelions in my front yard while I was push mowing my way through the side yard. But, ya know...the first mowing of the forest was going to be seriously hard work, I appreciate the help summer or winter!

On the drive back, I saw a black phase red fox. Very cool animal, all charcoal black except for a white tip on it's fluffy tail.

She came back!

I found Biscuit, she's safe and sound! ...and accidentally posted this in the BJP blog, duh.

Biscuit come home!

Biscuit the cat is missing. The plumber was here yesterday working on the water heater and now the cat is gone. I can only assume he left a door open and the cat dodged out. I'm worried about her, the weather has finally gone to rain and she's outside! Dog walks involve looking for the biscuit kitty now. Come home!

are you sick of the garden yet?

Again with the good weather! So I took the little (really old) table outside and did some beading out in the back yard. I decided to work on a design that I made up a few years ago based on the logo from the Cook Inlet Keeper website, a mermaid holding a seal. I don't usually do mermaids because they're overdone and too often cute. I imagine them as more selkie/siren like...not so cute and a little more dangerous. Less little mermaid and more sea lion.

No pictures of the 'maid yet, but of course there are garden photos! Lucky you, the weather might be going to normal so the garden shots will be less frequent. Ooh, then action photos of the rain barrel getting filled, lol!
A pea clinging to a twig...I love their curly tendrils! They're so delicate and just a little freaky too, the way they cling and entwine I imagine them moving ever so slowly to grab a small child or slow moving bird.

Nancy Pearl, radio librarian, watching over the cabbage bed. She has magic shushing action that right now she's using to point at the cabbage plants. Pope Innocent is watching over the sprouting beets in the bed that birthed the mountain of rocks. He's less aggressive than Nancy, but he's a pope so he doesn't need to point at the plants just stand around looking beatific.

steady on

Here's one for you: gardening is like watching t.v. I read somewhere that t.v. characters are good friends because they come back regularly, never get angry with the viewer and rarely change...sort of like when I walk out to the garden and all those little plants are pushing up further and listen attentively when I talk to them. Steady on, I like the plants better than t.v.

Today when I went out, one of the cabbage plants was standing up tall and straight like it had just woken up, yawned and stretched to greet the day. Cabbage pictures will come soon... peas are just so cooperative, ya know.



Peas May 8, Peas May 15...thanks guys!




Rain barrel that is really just a holding tank for water I've collected at the spring where I get my drinking water. It hasn't rained here for a month and a half! The downspout that is going straight down on the left will be redirected to the top of the barrel when it actually rains...and after the roof of the woodshed has been washed a little to get the dirt and pollen and stuff off before water goes in the barrel.

My favorite radio dude is back in town, yay! Someone who plays a variety of music and speaks in a normal voice with no goofy affectations, ahhh. Thanks for coming home, Tim!

I'm starting to believe in good weather

It's been an amazingly beautiful spring here, crazy warm, madly sunny and just plain "unseasonable" I love it. The wee garden is growing in size as well as in greenness, the sproutlings are moving right along and geez, I feel all green thumby! Which of course means I haven't been beading much at all...I think I've decided good weather trumps the bjp. Sorry bjp friends, but this sort of weather happens about never. Ok, maybe that's exaggerating...about once a decade. AND, I'm lucky enough to be in one of the most beautiful towns in Alaska this spring.
This is the indoor outdoor thermometer by my kitchen sink...99 is the temperature it registered right outside my back door. Ok, the spot is totally sheltered and sun reflects off of two walls, but still!
This is parsley. I have been informed by someone who knows everything that I shouldn't have been able to sprout it in such a short time, and that it's really really hard to grow. Mmm, don't tell the sprout that it shouldn't be there, k? It's surrounded by seaweed...our little coastal secret to gardening miracles. ...the magic parsely came up before I got the seaweed, btw.
This is the original raised bed with all store bought soil and compost, there are peas along the left side and broccoli down the middle, carrots on the far end and leafy stuff (spinach, kale and lettuce) along the right side. The plastic on the left drapes over the hoops at night. The buckets on the top right have potatoes in them...wonder if they're gonna sprout.
Here is the original bed on the left and the latest bed on the right. The rocks between? (oh my aching back) came from the new bed. There were more of them, but I put the biggest ones in the chicken wire baskets that make up the fence posts for the compost pile. Holy crap, I think the rock to soil ratio was 3:1...yeah 3 rock to 1 soil. I mixed the native soil with the closest thing to decent store bought soil that is available here today...miracle grow brand "organic natural". I read the ingredients and it sounds ok...but I don't really trust Miracle Grow not to alter dirt in some nasty way. The True Value (dirt store) didn't have the Whitney Farms dirt... we'll see if I grow frighteningly huge plants in the new bed.
Here's the over view...old bed has the hoops, new bed is in front, potatoes in the buckets next to old bed, blue rubber maid tub is full of seaweed, the crossed hoops are over the pea patch and the shabby green box with nothing showing has cabbage and spinach sprouts in it. Oh geez, what if all this stuff actually grows??