This and that

Our community garden is now in full swing, as you can see here. I took this picture on Saturday, not wanting to wade into it since we have had almost two inches of rain these past three days. It was cloudy and rainy Saturday through most of Monday. Our temperature never got out of the sixties, while much of the rest of the country sweltered. Here's the latest forecast from the Climate Prediction Center for the coming 6–10 days:

Looks like the Pacific Northwest and the northeast part of the country will be cooler than normal, and the precipitation map (available from the link) shows those two places will be wetter than normal, too. Great for the garden but not so great for hiking, biking or skydiving. Although we go on our Thursday hikes rain or shine, it sure would be nice to have some shine for a change.

Last Friday, however, was a beautiful day and I rode my bike a fair distance. It surprises me how differently I use the quadricep muscles for bicycling, which is the only reason I can explain how sore they were after what I considered to be a short ride (10–12 miles). I got fenders so I can ride in the rain, but I had little desire to go out and break them in. It's amazing to me how many bikes are on the road: I never noticed before, but now I watch each rider and take note of their techniques for riding in traffic. I downloaded a map of the bike routes around town; there are quite a lot, and since I can ride the bus with my bike to avoid most traffic and get to parks and other places, I'll probably do a fair amount of that.

Yesterday my friend Judy and I went to see Hysteria, a move made last year with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy, among others. It is a comedy set in England in the mid-nineteenth century, when Dr. Mortimer Granville invented the vibrator for the medical treatment of hysteria. That is historical fact, but the movie is a whimsical comedy with some really fun performances. It didn't get great reviews (only 55% on Rotten Tomatoes), but Roger Ebert liked it and wrote

This milestone in human progress has never received the respect it deserves, and yet vibrators have been selling widely and well ever since, even in the early Sears catalogs. ... The performances are spot on, and I especially like the spunky Gyllenhaal.

So did I. This is not a great movie, but I really enjoyed it, laughed a lot, and I thought the guy sitting next to me was going to have a paroxysm of his own, he was laughing so hard at times. If you want to laugh and appreciate some good period costumes and acting, this is the movie for you.

I'm also reading and enjoying a book written and released last fall by Dr. Andrew Weil, Spontaneous Happiness. I'm halfway through it, and I'm enjoying hearing all the ways he suggests finding my own pathway to mental health in a world that I find difficult to appreciate at times. I sometimes get overwhelmed with current world events and lose my perspective, and he suggests many ways to find balance.

Well, that's why this post is titled "This and That." Filled with unrelated stuff, with my own small universe right at the center. I so enjoy reading about what is going on in the lives of my blogging buddies; I hope you will find this a little entertaining.
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Meet Butch

Smart Guy took this picture just a few minutes ago of Butch and me. I named her "Butch" because she's got that horizontal bar and could be mistaken for a boy, but she's definitely a girl; I know, she told me. She got a complete tuneup, new tires and brake pads, and really rides wonderfully. The guy at Kulshan Cycles told me, when I picked her up, that she has an 18" frame and was considered "top of the line back in the day." I rode the bike around the block before I took her in, and the ride now is completely different! Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, so I rode to Fairhaven, about 6-8 miles. Lots of people were out enjoying the sunshine. I rode back along Boulevard Park to the bus station and took the bus for the last three miles, probably having ridden a total of 10-12 miles. My legs were getting tired. I managed to get the bike secured onto the front of the bus without any problem.

Today it's raining, so I skipped the morning walk, not to mention that the gardening muscles and bicycling muscles are both a bit on the sore side. I figure the rain is good for the garden and a day off is not going to hurt anything. The flowers are out everywhere, and these peonies say hello to me on my way to check my veggies in the garden. Aren't they pretty?

Tomorrow is looking like more of the same weather, which means no skydiving this weekend. Today it's raining and there's a 70% chance for tomorrow. Even if it's not raining, it's likely to be cloudy. Someone asked recently why we can't jump through clouds. It's an FAA regulation: when you jump out of the plane, you need to see the ground. A plane could be on the other side of the cloud. When we get ready to leave the plane, we take a good look around for any air traffic, and the pilot also keeps watch. Of course, if you happen to fall through a cloud, there's nothing to be done about it, you can't very well stop! The pilot can lose his or her license if he or she allows a parachutist to get out and jump through clouds. Back in 1967, sixteen skydivers jumped out through clouds over Lake Erie and drowned, thinking they were over land. I found a legal document online that tells the tale here.

I'll read some of the books I've got from the library, or maybe even spend some time walking around in the rain (I know for  fact I won't melt), but I probably won't be riding Butch, digging in the garden (which will just be mud), or jumping out of airplanes. The rain is falling gently on the roof right now. Oh, and just for your pleasure, I found that Ray Morris, one of the Flickr people I follow, recently caught this amorous picture of two eagles.

Ray Morris Flickr site

It's that time of year, I guess.

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Cub Creek repeat

Eleven Senior Trailblazers decided to skip Welcome Pass (on the schedule for today) because Al, Steve, and Fred went up last Sunday to check out the snow levels in the High Country. They reported to us that it would be prudent to let those hikes "marinate" for a while yet. Instead, we went up the south side of Stewart Mountain, also known as Cub Creek, which we last visited in February; it was raining and snowing that day. You can see how different it was just a few months back. The weather today was predicted to clear in the afternoon. No rain at all when we started out.

We did, however, earn our "Trailblazer" moniker today. There is a very faint trail somewhere there within the bushes, so tall that Jonelle is almost obscured. We bushwhacked our way out of these bushes only to find ourselves engulfed in fog. The higher we got, the foggier it was, meaning we wouldn't be able to see any view again today; we stopped for lunch out of the wind right on the logging road, rather than going to the south summit. There was no reason to do that, as our main focus became putting on all the clothes we brought to keep ourselves warm and settling in for a nice lunch.

Three people joined us today that I haven't seen in awhile. That's Diane in the foreground, who has returned from her winter home to spend the summer with us. Ward (Norm's friend, not Linda's husband Ward) also joined us for the first time this year. And Aspen, who was on a hike with us last fall, showed up today as well. The company made it all worthwhile. And we had to stay close together: here's why.

It was necessary to keep track of eleven people on this old logging road as we made our way down, and people disappeared into the mist in no time. We had a few sprinkles, either that or the fog got really thick for a bit, but otherwise we stayed dry. It was cold, though: I needed all the clothes I brought. Someone remembered at lunchtime that today is Flag Day, and Steve was wearing all the right colors, so I'll close with this picture.

By the time we reached the cars, we had climbed a total of 2,500 feet and covered 9.3 miles in total, which made it a good workout even if there was no view. All in all, a very good day, and now it's Wine Thirty! Guess where I'm going...
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Garden is coming along

Amy, Marym, and Clint, June 2012

This past weekend the community garden took a huge step forward. We hauled in four yards of topsoil, that nice looking stuff in the beds behind Amy. I myself shoveled at least one yard all by myself. How much is a yard, you ask? Well, I now can answer that question. It fills the back of a pickup and is one cubic yard of soil. That's a LOT!

The way it happened is that Carol (not shown, but that's her son's pickup) decided to get a yard of soil to put on top of the hard clay soil (rototilled not very deep and mixed with horse manure) and everybody wanted some, too. I split a yard with another person because I had already planted at least a third of my plot.

My half topsoil plot, with Clint's plot on left and unused plot on right

That's the way my garden looked by the end of the day Saturday, with the already planted stuff showing itself looking pretty perky, and my virgin topsoil, which now has Swiss chard, a tomato plant, green beans, and cabbage in half of it. I still want to get some collard starts and more kale in the remaining two rows. I have been going outside to say hello to my veggies every morning before I head out to catch the bus, give them plenty of encouragement, and see if they are asking for water.

I've made some mistakes: I stuck the cabbage into the ground and Clint looked at it skeptically. He told me that there were EIGHT cabbage plants, and they all needed to be separated and stuck in rows, since they would get very large. What am I going to do with all that cabbage? Hope my neighbors like cabbage.

But what is so exciting to me is to observe the way the squash plants have begun to grow. The zucchini squash has more than doubled in size, and the two delicata squash plants are growing rapidly. My zinnia and marigold seeds have germinated and are showing pretty green sprouts. No sign of the carrots from seed yet, but I'm optimistic. I am enjoying myself far more than I ever thought I would, and it's a long time before I'll be eating anything from the garden. The community spirit is another side benefit; many of my fellow residents are now friends of mine, and we all have different approaches to the garden.

Amy decided not to plant in rows but instead companion plant in delightful randomness. At least it looks that way to me, but she has a notebook and is monitoring the plants' progress meticulously. It inspired Clint to dig up his already planted onions and plant them in a sine wave pattern, with his other plants whimsically placed around it. Mine are planted in rows, because I didn't know any better and I don't want to disturb them since they're doing so well. But next year, watch out!
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Tuneups and brussels sprouts

Here's my first garden starts! Nobody told me what a LOT OF WORK it was to prepare just the ground you see in the picture. Although the entire area had been rototilled and broken up somewhat, with the horse manure mixed in, I still needed to get the old shovel into the ground to break it up more and mix it with what is called "soil amendment." I chose three bags of premium compost, which came with the instructions to mix with 50% soil. Well! Once I got a big shovel of soil, I had to break it up with a hoe until I could get it mixed together and looking moderately soil-like. I have more than half of my plot still to go. This weekend will see me out there preparing the rest of it, hopefully.

Here I am showing Mary, another gardener-to-be, what I've got started. Now when I go to the grocery store, I spend some time looking over the garden starts outside, and I'm thinking that bush beans (the snap kind) and collards will be next. I've got three different brussels sprouts plants, three basil plants, ONE zucchini plant (I heard you, and frankly it looks the happiest of any of them), and two Asian eggplants out there. I was told that these eggplants mature earlier and are better for our short growing season. Oh, and two delicata squash plants. I also planted some carrots from seed.

The "new" bike is in getting a tuneup, new tires, and fenders. This is the Pacific Northwest, after all, and I figure I won't mind having fenders the first time I'm riding in the rain. Today I took the bike to Kulshan Cycles, which comes very well recommended by everyone I asked. We discussed what happens to rubber when it gets old (it deteriorates, even when not used) and so at the very minimum I needed to replace the brake pads. I decided to go ahead and get new tires as well, even though the ones on the bike would probably be just fine for the amount of riding I'll be doing. But it seemed prudent just to replace them, too. I'll pick her up on Wednesday, and I'm really excited now!

Between the garden and bicycling, I hope I will have some time left over for skydiving and my regular workouts. I'm learning that gardening muscles are not the same ones as those I use for lifting weights. Now I understand what Annie at Elegant Blessings is talking about when she comes in from a long day in the garden. Of course, she's also got chickens and acres of land to worry about, while I've got just a teeny little plot. There is so much to learn! But I'm a willing student.
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What a day we had

Intrepid Trailblazers Al, Jonelle, Steve

When I first started hiking with the Trailblazers more than three years ago, I was told not to watch the weather trying to decide whether we would go or not because, as Al said to me back then, "We go rain or shine." Today was not one of the shiny ones. Only four of us showed up on another rainy day, with rain or rain showers in the forecast for the entire day. I almost stayed home myself. I am sure glad I didn't, since it was an exceptionally wonderful day.

We were scheduled to drive up to the Mt. Baker Wilderness and make our first excursion of the year to Excelsior Pass. Al and Fred went there a week or so ago to check out the snow situation. Al wrote about it here. However, it's a fairly long drive, and I suggested that hiking locally in the rain was a bit more acceptable to me than driving for an hour and THEN hiking in the rain, so we decided to head up to the Clayton Beach parking lot and hike up to Burnout Point and then down to Fragrance Lake. We last went up there in March, with lots of snow. It looked very different just two months ago, with snow and fog; today everything is green and in bloom.

By the time we got to the first viewpoint, the rain had let up a bit and the wind was really blowing. We even had a view of the bay, which surprised me. When we started out, I thought it would be a repeat of last week's hike. I asked Al to take a picture of me with the view behind me. You can see by my transition lenses that we had no sun at this point.

I had taken off my jacket and draped it across my shoulders, since the hard uphill in this part of the trek was causing me to overheat. And the rain wasn't too bad anyway. Off we went up to the clearcut, the least attractive part of this hike. We didn't see Baker or have much view in the distance, but the clouds were lightening up and I got a good look at Lost Lake.

From this high point of our journey, we began a gradual downhill to Fragrance Lake, where we would stop for lunch. Along the way, Steve pointed out that the salmon berries are just beginning to ripen. I ate this one right after I took its picture; it was very tart and not quite ripe, but here it is almost mid-June and I'm already eating this year's fruit. In a few more days I suspect it would have been much better.

It's not quite in focus. I didn't have time to get it just right as I was trying not to hold up my friends from getting to our lunch spot. Once we got to Fragrance Lake and ate our lunch, suddenly we were inundated with lots of kids! It was quite a surprise, being a Thursday, but one of the teachers told us it that the entire third grade class from an elementary school in Burlington was enjoying the outdoors along with us. We decided to hike around the lake before heading back, and I got this picture of some of them on the other side of the lake.

That's where we had lunch a bit earlier. As you can see, nobody is huddled under trees trying to avoid the rain, because by this time it had stopped completely. On the way back down, we even began to cast a shadow, and then sun breaks filtered through the trees. It was far nicer than I could ever have imagined when I started out from home this morning. Here's a picture of Jonelle and all the incredible ferns that are now sharing their beauty with us.

When Jonelle saw this picture, she noticed her "hat hair" which we all had from the rain hats we wore earlier. I, however, couldn't help but see the way all the colors of spring showed up in this lovely picture. And now, as I sit here writing this, the rain has started again, much harder than anything we experienced today. We must be doing something right. By the time we reached the parking lot, we had covered almost ten miles and 2,100 feet of elevation gain and loss. It was a super wonderful day. I'm so glad I got myself out today, rain or shine!
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Exciting stuff keeping me busy

I just became the proud owner of this ten-year-old bicycle, which has been ridden only a few times. My sister was going to send me hers, and I mentioned it while on my last hike. It turned out that this bike was also available for cheap and was right in Bellingham, too! I picked it up yesterday from my friend's home and today I bought a helmet, bicycle pump, and a lock. We had to deflate the front tire to get it off (past the brakes) and stick it in the back of my car, but it's home now and only needs to be turned upright and taken for a spin. That's one thing going on, and now I can put it aside while I concentrate on the garden!

Our community garden is taking shape, and we are all working in our areas to get our soil ready for planting already-started seedlings. I bought 4.5 cubic feet of garden compost this morning, and the three bags in the right-hand side of the picture are ready for me to take out the contents and hoe it into the ground. This is quite a lot of work, and I'm learning from watching my neighbors as they prepare their own plots. I will be spending more money this year for a bit of return than during any other year, but I am such a neophyte at this I'm confused by what is the best and most productive way to do this. We do have one guy who knows exactly what to do and is making the rest of us envious.

One guess where his plot is. The center plot is a community garden for all of us to use, and people have been putting plants in there one at a time. I'm just hoping to get my own veggies into the ground by the end of the week. Things keep coming up and interfering with my plans. And then yesterday I managed to cut my left middle finger when slicing up an apple, right at the knuckle joint, and every time I stress it, it begins to bleed all over again. I won't work in the garden without gardening gloves on, so I'm not too worried about it, but it makes me angry at myself.

And right about now, early afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, the transit of Venus is beginning. We cannot see it here, as the clouds are covering the sun and spitting a bit of rain as well. (Perfect for working in the garden if I can just get everything else accomplished first.) The planet Venus will pass in front of the sun for the next six hours. The picture below was taken in 2004, and today's transit will be the last one until 2117.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day

The little dot on the right-hand side of the sun is Venus. I'm sure a picture of today's event will appear on the APOD site tomorrow or very soon, at any rate.

Since there are so many things going on in my life at the moment, I neglected to write a post this past weekend and am determined to get one up before going out to dig in the garden. Spreading compost and planting stuff is a lot of work, although very rewarding nevertheless. I also bought zinnias and marigolds to plant and will get those in this week as well, to help control pests, my blogging buddies tell me. I can hardly wait until I have plants to show you, but I can't accomplish everything all at once, although I do try.

This past Sunday I made two skydives in very unsettled weather. Lots of clouds (you can't jump through clouds) meant we sat around for two hours before getting in the plane for our first skydive of the day. Sometimes it's harder to sit around than it is to jump. I was as tired when I left after two skydives as I was last week when I made four. When I got home I didn't get around to writing a post and hoped it would happen yesterday, but it didn't. I'm trying to tell myself that the deadlines I set for myself are mine alone and nobody is going to lose any sleep over my failure to publish a post, but it doesn't take away my desire to write one.

When the weather is fine this summer I will get to know my new bicycle, spend every other waking minute I can in the garden, and blog in between times. Oh, and reading YOUR posts is high on my list, so I need to make time for that. It's like missing a coffee date, otherwise.
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