The first of many

  Yesterday, on an impulse, Davy and I took what we thought would be a little walk in Sharpe Park, just down the street. It was a Tuesday, so we weren’t expecting a crowd. We crammed our binocs and camera in a backpack, bundled up against the wind and cold, and took off.

   Even though we noticed seven cars in the cramped parking lot, it wasn’t until after we visited the wetland pond (map), photographed the miniature Calypso orchids dotting the path, watched a wild goose chase (literally), spied a goldeneye duck and a red-winged blackbird (Davy and I have become impossibly nerdy bird watchers), that we actually saw a couple of women out for a girlfriend walk on the bluffs.

   The wetland was the easy part. 

   Instead of heading west to the bluffs, we hiked toward Sares Head Viewpoint. The forest’s interior breathed silently, like a huge, empty cathedral. The wind ceased, the chill thawed, and all that could be heard was an occasional bird singing or tree limbs rubbing against each other. Along the way we saw more orchids, holed trees, a mushroom that didn’t look like one, and two pairs of leashless retrievers who’d taken their owners out for a spin. It took like forty-five minutes to walk; climb; battle our way through slippery mud, moss, and tall supraterranian roots; and claw our way up rock-faces to finally come upon the most spectacular of views.

   From Sares Head, our southern vista held Whidbey Island and a great view of Oak Harbor Naval Air Station’s jets’ landing pattern. To the west, we could see San Juan, Lopez, and Vancouver Islands, and all the other little islets that speckle the Sound like punctuation marks.

   By the time we got home two hours later, we’d walked a mile and a half, sweated through our clothes, and realized this would fortunately not the last time we’d walk in this park a half mile from our home.

Gardening in the 48s

  I must rely on our neighborhoods NOT taking to heart the quote, “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.”  For if they do, they’d think Davy and I are stoned, which we aren’t or gave up ages ago so I wouldn’t lose my teaching credential.
  That’s right, we live on a rock where people use picks, chain-gang labor, or dynamiteology to crumble the igneous mountain into boulders, chunks, and pretty little shards, which they then use to demarcate garden areas.
  Most of our neighbors have done a lovely job of this. 
  Our sellers, on the other hand, did not.  They nestled (or just left) so many rocks in the yard, I’m still guessing what color the soil actually is. I dig and dig and what do I find? More rocks.

  Ironically a Japanese woman who loved  Japanese gardens designed it, but she moved away in ’03. Now the only thing remotely Japanese about our garden is the  waterfall and pond filled with two Tang-colored and one albino carp.  (These fish, by the way are suspect. In an effort to clear up the water, the realtor had thrown in four or five bleach tablets, which killed neither the algae nor the fish.)

  I’ve spent a great deal of time walking the paths of our garden, which IS fun. That’s how I discovered the bevy of California quails nesting under some brambles, the irridescent pink garden snake who stopped to stare back at me, the deer footprints (oh no!!), and the cotton-tailed bunnies mowing our small patch of lawn. 
  On these walks, two questions continually came to mind: Is this a weed or a desirable plant? What the hell am I going to do with this yard to make it pretty?
  I’ve given up asking nurseries the first question. I either get, “One person’s weed is another person’s rose,” or “Leave it alone and see what it does.” Being from SoCal, this last option seems dangerous. I’m a Type A. I need an answer yesterday.
  So we’re hiring someone to come out and walk the garden with us and answer both questions. I CANNOT wait!
  Still, I want to share some delights of the garden that I really didn’t experience in California.
  First, the trees are gorgeous. Many are naturally shaped like umbrellas. Yeah, funny, huh! Others just bend over and drape the earth like a shroud.  Pine trees and madronas pop up everywhere.  We must have fifteen different varieties of fir in our yard, some never even leave the ground.
  In front of Davy’s office there grows, in my opinion, a particularly horrid looking pine tree with its fat trunk sprouting more fat trunks.  Sadly, someone should have tamed it years ago. Thus, in the back of my mind I kept thinking, that tree’s days are numbered.
Until last week, when Davy came upstairs and first told me about how the quail family grubs under the tree, and then described how the same bunny makes a daily stop to play and roll in the dirt under the tree, safe from being eaten by the bald eagles and hawks looming above.
  The tree’s staying. 
  I wonder how much of the garden will have the same fate.

  PS - here's a real favorite of mine. Evidently a pretty blue spruce volunteered in a walkway, so the previous owners found a way to keep both. 

Being a Type A on a Type B island

   I don’t know which is harder, the exhaustion that comes from being a Type A, or the guilt that comes with not accomplishing my Type A goals.
   Case in point: our home.
   Back on March 8, when we moved in, I assumed that everything could and would be accomplished in a month. I considered it an honorable and justified goal, one worthy of daily sacrifices. I can do anything for thirty days, right?
But I live on a Type B island, where there’s a maximum amount one can put out for the trash truck, where people answer my Craigslist ad to pick up free stuff three days after the fact, where the closest Home Depot is a half hour away, where yardage stores market to quilters instead of people who want cool decorator fabrics, and where every project takes approximately three and half times longer than it should. For example, we had to rent a truck ten miles to the north to pick up the guest bed twenty miles to the south. Four hours it took! (Why didn’t we have it delivered? Because I wanted it NOW!)

   So, we’ve lived here just over six weeks, and I’ve gotten the two master bathroom windows covered so we don’t scare the neighborhood kids anymore, and I finally one guest room is 99% done (it took me over a week for god’s sake), while the other one waits for my creative hand. Note to writing friends, both guest rooms will have writing desks.

   This, you might think, is an accomplishment in itself.

   But, here’s our bedroom, still with lamp parts strewn on the floor, a library of windows needing attention. (We have a great view of Orcas Island's Mt. Constitution from here.) And you should see the living room! Actually, you shouldn’t. More huge view windows needing covering, while the dilemma of where to put the furniture persists. It's a visual mess that's driving me crazy. I contemplated throwing out all my chairs and stuff and starting over, but I won’t because I’m your basic Capricorn who likes her familiar old pieces. After all they retain our good friends' auras and fabulous energy.  

   In rereading this, I realize guilt grips me in a full nelson, or rather a finger trap, and I should just relax. Being uptight will get me nowhere. Chop wood; carry water. Things will progress. It’s not a race. (It isn’t???) It will all get done.
    Except I want it done NOW!
   I should reread my book! What is it I love to say? "Thinking the right thoughts takes the work out of doing!"

The show outside

Dave here:
The light show out our windows continues to impress. Early this morning the sunlight beamed beneath the overhanging cloud layer and onto the tall forest trees to the left and down front in my view over the water. A tug ambled northward as lazily as I have seen one move across the mirror of the strait before us. As I watched, an incredibly bright rainbow lit up the sky arching from behind our house and alighting almost on the tug as a thin veil of mist moved toward us across the water.
Below is from last night's sunset.

The whole town showed up

   Within a day of our arrival in Anacortes on Feb. 22, we heard that on April 10 the BMW/Oracle Racing team would be in Anacortes, along with the America's Cup (trophy), which they'd just won the week before in Valencia, Spain.

   Anacortes!?!?!

   The small town of Anacortes, population 17,000, we soon learned, had designed and built USA 17’s hull and 243-foot wing of the fastest boat to ever compete in the America’s Cup race.

   No small feat indeed. Imagine a boat that can sail 2.5 times wind speed! Or a boat wing larger than 747’s.

   So last Saturday night, we left early for Warehouse 1, assuming the line might start early for the free celebration Larry Ellison was putting on for the town.
   Sure enough, we were 320th in line with fifteen minutes left to stand out in the freezing westerlies blowing through Guemes Channel.

   Once inside the standing-room only space, there was no Larry Ellison to be seen, which we suspected would be the case. But there were plenty of people. Half the town showed up to celebrate the part they played in winning back the Cup: baristas, waiters, machinists, millers, and boat builders. Up on the makeshift stage were the designers, the production chief, members of the crew. BMWOracleRacing blog describes the evening pretty well. Here's a cool video.
   For Davy and me, as newcomers to the town, it was amazing indeed to think that such a small town comes equipped with such incredible talent up to such a valiant task. One designer explained that he considered the impossibility of the task, then "gulped, and signed on."
   The town loved the workers, and yelled out their names as they walked onto the stage. “Hey, Irish!” “Billy” “Smitty!” The crowd’s height changed as hands holding cameras shot aloft, periscope steady, capturing some sense of the event to instant message to friends and family. The love was big and contagious, as love can be.
   Next came the production jokes and sea stories. A crewman reminiscing how, as a kid in New Zealand the only way to get to school was by boat, he and his friends often arrived to class wet because they’d raced to school.
   Finally, the crew and designers signed free posters for the town, and the Cup was placed on a table in the middle of the warehouse so townspeople could have their pictures taken with it. It sounds hokie, but yum was it delicious!

   David and I enjoy Anacortes, though we actually live outside city limits. The people are friendly and real, and always have a smile and a wave for others. It’s a pretty, clean town, one not overly self-aware or stratified. There are only two grocery stores within blocks of each other, and everyone patronizes them, regardless of where on the island they live. We feel lucky to be here, to get to be a part of all that it is.

The whole half day at Orcas Island

  Based on our daring weatherman's forecast for April 7, we arranged our week's schedule so we could spend the whole day at Orcas Island. A mug of coffee in Orcas Village or Deer Harbor; a foray to the top of Mt. Constitution to get a 360 of the entire world; down to Rosario Resort for a long, slow lunch; a couple more hours touring the island; then home by seven. 
  But the weatherman proved wrong.

  Before we even got to Orcas Village, the wind was whipping up the sound, making our landing a lurching, cantankerous event. Some coffee sounded great, but we found nothing was open. Intrepid as we are, we did not take this as a prophetic sign for the day. 

  Onward we drove, past Massacre Bay and Skull Island, toward Deer Harbor, where surely we'd find a little cafe to sit and reminisce about our previous journey to the spot with Hank and Gail Salerno in '06 (the trip that ignited our desire to live up here).  

  Alas, nothing was open.

  Reality was setting in. Just because it's springtime doesn't mean things are actually open.  We lingered to take a few gray-day pictures. The one above's of the dock where we had moored and kept our eye on the dapper IRA spy who'd just flown in by red (!!!) sea plane from some clandestine point between here and Russia. We also checked out the Deer Harbor Inn Restaurant where we had once made dinner reservations on the chalkboard they kept on their front stoop.

   We moved on, eager to try out the Westsound Cafe, which we'd spotted on Crow Valley Rd.

  You guessed it. It was closed.

  We're resilient. Having been to Eastsound before, we KNEW we could get a cuppajoe at Vern's along the shore. And we were right. We got our coffee and had breakfast too. After all, we reasoned, we could have a late lunch at Rosario. No harm done. 

  Naturally we did a little driving around town for old time's sake. We checked out Madrona Point. A little walk might do us good. But, eek! It too was closed by edict of the Lummi Nation. In our previous visit, I had loved this peninsula for its redolent and stately madronas and the sherbet orange and hyacinth purple starfish that hugged the shoreline rocks. Alas.

  We also spotted some very large and tame rabbits. Later, at Rosario, I spotted a blue jay that was larger than a crow. Orcas Island's Amazonian  animal population! 

  Off we went to Mt. Constitution, despite the day getting grayer and windier. Wes was glad to be on mountain roads, and his rubber paws came alive with anticipation. But signs along the way warned us: Carry chains. Watch for ice. 

  Undaunted, we wove our way up the mountain. Wes's thermostat showed the outside temperature dropping from 45 to 42, to 38, to . . . .  All along the way downed trees, either snapped in half or levered out of the soil root ball and all, made it increasingly apparent that being a tree on Mt. Constitution is no easy task. 

  By the time we got to Little Summit, we were in the clouds; driving the twisting, hair-pin turns lost its attraction. We got out, took a few dim pictures, and headed down the mountain for Rosario. Secretly, we each considered leaving on the 12:10 ferry and try Orcas Island another day. 

  Our mind's were made up promptly when we got to Rosario Resort, and, you guessed it, it was closed. It's usually a bad sign when only contractors' trucks fill a hotel parking lot.  

  So that did it. We had half an hour to drive thirty miles if we were to make it to the ferry on time. Wes was up to. He hummed and drooled. He hadn't been driven over 50 mph in a long time. (He travelled from SoCal to Washington with the living room furniture.)  Davy checked his watch. His competitive gene sprung to life. I looked at the clock and the map full of winding country roads, considered the impossibility of it all, and decided that we would, against all odds, make it to the Ferry dock by 11:50,  the world being a far more pliable place than apparent reality makes it out to be.

  We set out. Obstacles came at us from everywhere, as though we were in a video game. 1955 Chevy trucks. Stop signs. Little towns with 20 mph speed limits.

  But, just as Wes's clock was rotating from 11:50 to 11:51, we drove into ferry line 6 headed for Anacortes. To our left were several cars that had been on the early morning trip. To our right was a woman in a "Ride Horses with Us" sign painted on her truck, carefully putting on her make-up in preparation for re-entry into civilization.

  We got home, had a beer, took a two-and-a-half hour nap.

  When we woke up this morning, the first thing we noticed when looking out at the sound was the snow on Mt. Constitution. It's good to be home snug as bugs.

  

    

Amen!

David's daughter Dana urged her father to post on this blog. Amen!

Just like my dad

David and I have become ship-spotters, just like my dad was.


Except he had an excuse. He chartered ships for ARCO and ran Pier E, their Long Beach tanker dock. It was his job to know who was sailing in and out of port. Obviously ship words were my family's dinner-table staple.


David and I have no such excuse, and therefore we blame mere fascination. So charmed are we by the boats that pass before us, we keep our two strongest pairs of binoculars on the living room window ledge, along with maps of the islands and straits, AND our laptops so we can log onto marinetraffic.com to check out the names, destinations, and vital statistics or every commercial boat or ship that passes before us through Rosario Straits. Talk about addictive.




But it became poignant the last couple of days because my son Nicolas, who has been sailing as Chief Mate aboard the Green Cove, was in Vancouver, BC, on Saturday, on his final leg to Long Beach. We could see the ship on marinetraffic, but we never saw his ship because, aside from the fact that he left Vancouver to Portland at 22:00, he sailed down Haro Strait, and not Rosario.


Alas.


But at least he'll be home on Thursday. He's been gone since mid-December, and has sailed from the Middle East, through Asia, and homeward down the Pacific Coast.


And, as a final note, it continually fascinates me that my father's two grandsons both became mariners. In most families, this would be no big deal. In our family, everyone's adopted, so it's not the gene-code at work. Maybe it's because we're all somehow just like my dad. (Nope, not in every way!!!)

A jog down to Whidbey Island

Last Friday we hopped in Wes, opted to keep his top up, and crossed the Deception Pass Bridge for a jaunt to Whidbey Island.

The day proved the weatherman right (rain and gales) and our escrow lady prescient (the lunch spot was perfect). After making a short stop in Oak Harbor, the island's Naval Air Station bedroom community, we headed south to Coupeville, which edges Penn Cove's southern shore. Low tide bared the sound's bottom, and called to the locals like a siren song. Whole families were out, slickers on, shovels and pails in hand, digging for clams, oysters, and geoducks (really! check out the link. pee first, if that's a problem). Also near the shore are dozens of swimming platforms, except, they're really for mussel harvesting, which was main reason for coming to Coupeville. Mussels!

Starving as we were, we couldn't resist touring around the place because of such lovely funk. Gorgeous gardens and crayola-colored cottages. But we made it to 12 Front Street, and found the Mosquito Fleet Chili down a flight of outside stairs. OMG! Such a meal! First the BEST mussel chowder I've ever eaten. "It's an eleven-hour recipe," the owner told us, after we'd oohed-and-awed over the mussels' tenderness. Then we had the pulled-pork, which was also stupendous, but not as good as the chowder, for which they'd just won the medal at the previous week's Chowder Festival.

On our way back to Fidalgo Island, we stopped in Deception Pass Park because it seemed like a smart and lovely thing to do on such a day. . . until we got out of the car and realized just how strong the gales had become. But heck, everyone and his cousin were out walking in the park and picnicking. What's a little rain and 50 mph wind??? Susceptible to peer pressure as we are, we got out of Wes, prayed a limb or 40-year-old tree didn't fall and flatten fine physique, and presssed our way to the park's end. It was impossible to hear, so forcefully the wind roared through the huge pines and madronas. I couldn't help laughing for the fright and wonder the experience conjured in me.

A little history: Deception Pass Bridge was built in the 1930s to connect Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands, making it easier for Whidbey Islanders to get to the mainland.

some pix

We love looking out our living room and bedroom windows at sites such as these:

Last Sunday we took Wes to Washington Park to see if we could see our house from there. With the help of binoculars, we spotted us! We're in the houses right beneath the pink star.

40 Is the New 60

Since moving to Anacortes, 40 is the new 60. Why?
1. Because I got distracted by God-knows-what when I got home from the grocery store, I wound up leaving two packages of frozen salmon on the downstairs kitchen floor (don't tell my mother). Three hours later I remembered what I'd done and dashed downstairs to save the fish and my cozy kitchen floor. To my surprise, both packages were still frozen hard, and I was left to reconsider my definition of cozy.
2. You know, in SoCal, if you're going to make a right or left hand turn, you better be snappy, or you'll either lose your opportunity or you'll end up in a wreck. So it took me a while to realize that Anacortes traffic is too slow to hit anyone, and that if I spotted a car half a block away, I had another five minutes before it would even be close to me.
3. In SoCal I loved those prepackaged salads, especially the Taco Fiesta one that always sold at Pavilions for five bucks. Up here, they're only three. And that's typical for food. I can't believe my grocery bills. I feel like I'm paying a water bill. Gas and wine, not so much. In fact, wine is a good 30% higher, and gas is about the same.
4. We went to the DMV and the state licensing board, and we were the only people in line. Maybe the joke's on us; Washingtonians never use the DMV. But I doubt it.
5. It rains a lot, but there's plenty of sunlight. No one around here uses an umbrella, because the rain doesn't pour and make big puddles. It's just kind of wet, but not noisy wet.

Note to our readers

It was our original intention to have this blog up and running a couple of months ago. Alas, we cannot chew gum and maintain a blog at the same time. Our Plan B, which we are now executing, is to keep you posted on our adventure into the Pacific Northwest, and to fill in the details of the last few months when we had been extraordinarily noncommunicado. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts!

What's happened to the time?

Moving from one house to another should be easy. You move your old kitchen into the new kitchen. Do the same with the living and dining rooms and all the other rooms. What's the big deal?
If only!
I'm into my third week of unpacking and putting stuff away where it probably shouldn't go, but, oh well. And the Goodwill and Soroptomist ladies, I'm sure, are getting pretty tired of the sight of me.
In fact, I'm tired of me. My normal, anecdotally-based relocation rule of thumb is: Two weeks out and two weeks in. (I also have a pregnancy-shape rule of thumb: nine months on; nine months off.) History tells me I should past the crap-stowing stage.
Except this move was NOT normal.
First of all, we moved nineteen-thousand pounds, a fourth of which consisted of packing materials. Another quarter consisted of anchors, chains, and rope with no boat into which they could be stowed.
Second, the house I packed and labeled for wasn't the house we bought and moved into. Two days before the moving van was to arrive, we received word that the house we'd been in escrow with since mid-December would not be ours because the owner had died, and his daughter wouldn't sign the papers. Eek! (Fast forward a second. The other house had two guest rooms upstairs in which I would stage the living and dining room stuff. The house we bought had one upstairs and one downstairs. Thus much of my time has been spent migrating downstairs' stuff up, and vice versa. A Capricorn's nightmare!)
Then, one day before the van was to arrive, the van arrived. Just to survey the job, they said. Ha! Within an hour, furniture and boxes began disappearing. Like a rabbit with a coyote on its tail, I packed even faster, sometimes remembering to label the box, sometimes forgetting to keep kitchen stuff separate from bedroom-number-three stuff. You can just imagine!
Third, we have such a fetching view of the San Juan Islands. Our front window has turned into a veritable TV screen that we can't take our eyes off. (We even contemplated arranging the furniture for stadium seating, but didn't because it looked stupid.) Thus, it's entirely understandable when, for great periods, unpacking takes a backseat to figuring out which ridge is on which island. Is that node on Orcas or Blakely? Are both those hills on San Juan, or is one a part of Vancouver Island? Is that bald eagle headed straight at us? I'll tell you, if you have a schedule to keep, this is not the place for you.
Anyway, my goal for today is to have the last of the stuff put away, so the next phases can begin: window treatments, indoor plants, guest rooms, and the garden (we still don't know what's a weed and what's a horticulturist's find). I actually thought I'd be done by noon, except, alas, David discovered marinetraffic.com, and now we spend hours identifying each tanker and tug plying its way up or down Rosario Straits before our very eyes.