Coffee shop and eye food

Smile!

Yesterday Chase, my local barista for the day, planted this smiley face right there in my latte. It was delicious and also made me grin. I visited with my fisherman friend Gene and his girlfriend Paula until Leo showed up and took me away to play. Because of Leo, I've learned of several new toys, but yesterday we played with vampire bats and gummy worms.

It was a beautiful day yesterday, with abundant sunshine (of course: the weekend was over), but today the rains have returned with a vengeance. I walked to the bus in my raincoat and used my umbrella. Gene tells me that using an umbrella is a giveaway that I am not a native, and he's right. I see people here in Bellingham walking around in the rain with shorts and a t-shirt, with no apparent need for rain gear. I use everything I can to keep dry, but maybe one of these days...

After I saw that retina specialist last month, I started taking some different vitamins. Although I had been taking beta carotine and lutein for about a year, I have also added zeaxanthin to the mix. All three of these are carotinoids found in nature. Apparently lutein and zeaxanthin are essential to the retina. From that Wikipedia link:

Zeaxanthin is one of the two primary xanthophyll carotenoids contained within the retina of the eye. Within the central macula, zeaxanthin is the dominant component, whereas in the peripheral retina, lutein predominates.

It wasn't all that easy to find zeaxanthin in a supplement in the proper ratio with lutein (five parts lutein to 1 part zeaxanthin), and I was taken in by a supplement that purported to have both but nowhere could I find the amounts before I ordered it. It's called "I-Caps" and is completely misleading. I finally found one formulation on Amazon that is sold at Costco (Trunature) that has the correct ratio (25/5) and was fairly inexpensive. I read all the reviews on Amazon and finally bought it.

The most interesting thing that I can relate after about a month of taking this formation is that my night vision is significantly better. I noticed a distinct difference after starting the beta carotine as well, so I'm hoping all this will help keep my intermediate age-related macular degeneration from developing further. There are no promises and no guarantees, because all the possible benefits from vitamins cannot be proven. I don't want to take any of the AREDS (age-related eye disease study) formulations because of the massive amounts of zinc (80 mg) included.

Anyway, the good news is that something I am taking seems to be helping with my vision. I feel quite pleased to be in the hands of a good specialist as well. It really helps when you trust your doctor.
:-)

Clouds, rain, and a nice day anyhow

Klipsun Trail near Barkley Village

 No skydiving today. It's an overcast day with rain falling during most of the previous night. I woke to the sound of rain drumming on the roof, sighed, put on my walking shoes and headed out to Barkley Village to join the Fairhaven walking group at 8:00am. Not many women showed up, maybe a dozen, because of the weather, I guess. But by the time we introduced ourselves around the group and started out, the rain stopped and hasn't returned yet.

Peggy, Diane, Judith, before starting out

Most of the women who showed up this morning I already knew. As you can see from this picture, we were not overly warm when we started walking, but by the time we had navigated more than five miles with lots and lots of ups and downs, we were very warm. After a few minutes, almost everyone had their jackets tied around their waists, instead of wearing them. I had chosen my own layers carefully and was comfortable the entire time. As I've said before, the brisk pace gives me quite a workout, since I never walk this fast with any other group. We kept up a 3.8-mph average, even with around 700 feet of elevation gain and loss.

My plot on the left, Nate's on the right

After a quick lunch, I headed out to the garden to weed my little patch, and I worked with the hoe to get that green section between our plots looking a little less healthy. I also have two more plants, nasturtiums, to get in there soon, but I ran out of steam before I finished. Nate has constructed a very neat mesh lattice out of twine to give his snap peas something to climb up on. I put poles in mine, since I don't have anywhere near as many as he does.

Compost bin and containers filled with composted horse manure

Yesterday Clint put out a call to the community gardeners to help with the compost bin. I've been putting in my kitchen scraps, along with many others, and apparently there needs to be a balance between "green" and "brown" materials: green being stuff rich in nitrogen; brown, rich in carbon. He asked if anyone might be going by a nearby horse farm; if so, would we pick up a couple bins of composted horse manure, and I volunteered.

I drove out to the stables and found the pile, along with the promised pitchfork, filled those two black bins and brought them back to the garden. There was nobody around at the stables, but two ducks guarded the place, putting themselves right in the middle of the road leading to the pile. I tried honking the horn (no luck) and finally put the car in neutral and tried to shoo them out of the way. Of course the drake was having none of it and came at me, quacking menacingly and flapping his wings. I ran away, screaming. By the time he had driven me away, he got his mate and went off somewhere, proud of himself. I sneaked back to the car and got the manure and made a quick getaway.

There's a lot more to organic gardening for me to learn, but next time I head out to the stables, I'm wearing some high-topped boots!
:-)

Mud Lake 2013

Getting to Mud Lake starts at Pine & Cedar trailhead

Seven Senior Trailblazers started our hike today under gloomy skies. It had rained off and on all night, but the forecast was for the rain to diminish and possibly give us some sunshine by midday. We hiked to Mud Lake for the first time last year, and I wrote about it here. Usually we would just head up to Pine and Cedar Lakes. We start this hike at the Old Samish Highway trailhead to those lakes, and it has a very steep first mile or so. It is my least favorite part of this beautiful hike, not because going up is so hard, but because coming down is a killer on my knees. Without the poles I simply could not do it.

The trail is very pretty, though. It's at its most lush and green right now, and we didn't have any rain at all during our hike. The best we had for sunshine for most of the day, though, was filtered light, and it was very humid. When we stopped for any time at all, we got cold. We passed the turnoff to Pine Lake and continued down an old logging road to get to Mud Lake.

There is an old fishing boat at the end of this old log in Mud Lake. Since it was still early, we decided to hike back to Pine Lake for lunch and get the uphill part behind us. The hardest part of this hike is the steepness at the beginning, and the fact that you need to lose at least 700 feet of altitude before getting to the lake. It was pretty, though, and I took this kind of artsy shot of a lily in the midst of some lily pads.

Lily in Mud Lake

As we were hiking back to the Pine and Cedar trail, I saw these two old trees with chinks in them that made them look to me like two old beings who were watching our progress. You can also see the filtered sunlight on and around them.

"And who are YOU?"

We reached Pine Lake a little after noon and settled down for lunch. Afterwards, Peggy and I walked onto the boardwalk that covers part of the area around the lake, which is very boggy and perfect for skunk cabbage. I thought it looked a bit like she was a traveler from another planet, checking out the aliens.

Big cabbages in a foot of water

As we walked carefully on the boardwalk, not wanting to have a misstep and fall in (it would not have been much fun), I saw that the skunk cabbages have grown to an enormous size. Looking down into one, however, was very rewarding, as it curls inwards very prettily. The cabbages were covered with raindrops from earlier in the day, and I was happy to capture this scene next to an old log.

By the time we reached our starting point, my knees were complaining mightily but have since recovered. We traveled up and down more than 2,600 feet in elevation and hiked more than nine miles in total. And yes, by 2:30pm, the skies had cleared and we were in full sunshine. It was simply a fine day: good company, good hike, and no rain!
:-)

TBM award in the mail today

The POPS award, the ladies, my TBM Award

When I was in Elsinore last month, weathered out for three of the four days of skydiving that were scheduled, our organizers intuitively assigned us ladies a videographer on the last jump so that we could attempt a two-point six-way skydive. (It wouldn't have counted if we didn't have a video to prove it, I found out). POPS (Parachutists Over Phorty Society) has been around for awhile, and they have a few offshoot groups, such as SOS (Skydivers Over Sixty), JOS (Jumpers Over Seventy), and JOE (yep, you guessed it: Jumpers Over Eighty).

From Parachute History

I had been expecting the SOS award, but I was puzzled by the card assigning me TBM #73, until I realized that TBM stands for the Tiny Broadwick Memorial award! Who was Tiny Broadwick, you wonder? Well, I had heard of her for years, and some of my friends even met her in her later years. She was a very interesting woman who set all kinds of records. You can read about her on this Parachute History page. She made her first jump at the age of 15 in 1908. Now POPS has begun this memorial award in her name, for all-women skydives. The biggest one of these was the Jump For the Cause skydive made in September 2009, with 181 women in a formation. (That link takes you to the post I wrote at the time, with pictures.)

But what makes my little six-way skydive special is that all of the women on it are over sixty years of age, and two of us are over seventy. Frankie and I could get a videographer and make a two-way and set several records, since right now JOS has no TBM records at all. There are a few perks to being in advanced years. Not many, but there are a few. Can you tell I am really pleased by this award?

I would also like to thank all of my readers who left a message for Gene about the loss of his bird. I sent him the link and he appreciates the condolences you offered him. I also went to the library to pick up the book Murr Brewster (from Murrmurrs) recommended to me in her comment. It's called The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds, and it's simply magnificent. Written by naturalist and storyteller Julie Zickefoost, I have been unable to put it down. With that, I'll sign off and get back to the book!
:-)

Requiem for a bird

Five years ago, and last month

My fisherman friend Gene has lost his companion of more than two decades, his parrot Poopstain. On Friday I was sitting the coffee shop having my morning latte when Gene came in, obviously upset. I looked up at him and saw that the bird wasn't with him. I asked if he was okay, and he teared up and said the bird had died. He found him in the cage that morning and wasn't sure when he had finally passed away during the night.

We all knew that the bird wasn't well. He had a stroke or something similar about a year ago, when he stopped squawking constantly and stopped growing new feathers. I refer to the bird as "he" because Gene does, but a few years ago "he" laid and egg and Gene realized that the bird was female, but it was too late for Gene to make the transition in his own mind. The bird's behavior had also changed pretty drastically lately, with him sleeping more often and crawling under Gene's beard, where he obviously felt safe, instead of perched on his shoulder. Gene also got in the habit of wearing a shirt so that the bird could nestle under it, and he spent more and more time when outside huddled in the safety of Gene's beard and shirt. He made little noises like baby birds do, and we speculated that he had reverted in his old age to becoming a nestling again.

Gene said he thought it would be a relief when Poopers finally died, but you just don't lose a companion of more than twenty years without suffering a real loss. He said that he should just go home and clean everything up and bury him, but I reminded Gene that his girlfriend Paula has a relationship with the bird, too, and would need to have some closure. I sent Gene off to Paula's house and will find out on Monday what they finally did to lay the bird to rest.

I went looking for a card to give to Gene, but after perusing all the sympathy cards, nothing was appropriate, so here is my gift to the bird he loved: a blog post. Goodbye, little bird! May you fly free and squawk to your heart's content. You gave my friend Gene an awful lot of love.
:-}

Oyster Dome 2013

Mikey's new purple boots

Only five of us showed up for the hike today, rated "hard" and boy is it! I looked up our crew last year, and there were only five then, too. Most people don't particularly like to climb an almost 12% grade for the first three miles and then add on another six miles after that. But the hardiest of the hardy showed up on another glorious weather day. It was Mikey's first time wearing his new boots, which were on sale because of the color. Except for the next one, all these pictures are from my iPhone, since I had to document the event somehow and had forgotten to bring my camera.

Our upward route and fog, taken by Diane

When we left the Senior Center, we were beginning to see blue sky through the marine layer that had moved in during the night, but as we began our hike, we ended up being in some pretty dense fog, keeping the temperatures down and making the upward part of the hike more comfortable as we grunted and groaned up the steep grade. The fog began to lift as we ascended, making for some dramatic shots through the trees.

As we headed upwards, we were convinced that the marine layer had dissipated and that we would have a cool view of Samish Bay once we reached Oyster Dome. But here is what we saw instead:

We had simply climbed up above the marine layer, which was still very compact at 11:00am when we got to the Dome. If you want to know why it's called "Oyster Dome," read my post from last year where I explained it (towards the end of the post).

By the time we had hiked to the Samish Bay Overlook, the clouds were almost gone, as you can see here. Although I've got lots of wonderful pictures of the bay, today's shot was just to show how long it took for the marine layer to lift (it was after 1:00pm when I took this picture). We met lots of people just starting up as we headed back down, and we were plenty tired and ready for a rest by the time we reached the cars. We hiked almost nine miles and covered a total of just under 2,500 feet of elevation up and down. There's a reason it's labeled "hard," and now that my feet are up, my wine glass is in my hand, and my post is almost finished, I'm smiling!
:-)

Artist Point snowshoe

This past weekend Al sent around an email to the Trailblazers to see if anybody wanted to go up to Artist Point with him today from the Heather Meadows parking lot to "snowshmush" as he called it, and he was right. With all the warm weather we've had lately, the plentiful snow was the consistency of sno-cones. We strapped on our snowshoes and went anyway. Nobody showed up except me, so just the two of us went out for one last visit to the area before the summer season.

Here you see Al messing with his new camera as we get started. We intended to head up to Huntoon Point, our usual snowshoe destination, but once we had navigated Cardiac Hill and made it to the ridge, we decided to head towards Table Mountain, just for a change of pace. It was slow going through the soft snow, making it much harder than usual. But the scenery was spectacular, not a cloud in the sky, very little breeze, and temperatures in the sixties.

Al took this picture of me with beautiful Mt. Shuksan in the background. I never tire of looking at it, and thanks to the many hikes taken with the Trailblazers, I've seen it from several different angles. Artist Point is the starting point for many of our summer hikes, and I was hoping I could find a picture of the parking lot at the end of the road to Artist Point, which doesn't open until the end of July, usually, but here's what it looks like today.

Underneath that mound of snow in the middle of the parking lot is a bathroom that will probably not even be visible until right around the summer solstice at the end of June. Two years ago, the road to Artist Point never did open because there was so much snow. Hopefully this year we will get to enjoy some of our favorite hikes once again. If the warm weather we've had the past two weeks continues, there will be no doubt!

But, as you can see here, there is still plenty of snow that needs to melt before the flowers at this altitude will be able to bloom. The bloom today is all in my pink cheeks, although I slathered on the sunscreen liberally. The incredibly fine weather will continue around here at least until the weekend, and I intend to enjoy it to the fullest. Not to mention how happy it's making my garden!
:-)