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Week Twelve, June 4-10
Sunday, June 10, 2001
Earthquake! Another small earthquake shook the Puget Sound area this morning. This time it was a deep 5.0 earthquake with an epicenter about 40 miles from here. It hit around 6:19 a.m. Pacific Time and other than waking up around then, I had no idea that we had an earthquake until I got up and checked my e-mail and found mail about the quake from an automated e-mail list I belong to from the U.S. Geological Survey.
A couple of interesting things did happen before we had this quake. First, last night before heading to bed to read around midnight or so, I was taking a look at the earthquake list Web site from the University of Washington for the first time in a few weeks. I mentioned to Natalie that it was interesting that on June 2 there was a 2.4 quake at the south end of the Olympic Mountains, not too far from where the quake was located this morning. Why I chose to look at that earthquake list late last night for the first time in weeks, I don't know...
The other oddity is that around 1 a.m. this morning I got back out of bed because I could hear Natalie in the living room calling Rhia to her. I came out to see what was up, and found that Rhia was wandering all around the house sniffing at everything. We weren't too concerned about it and I just went back to bed, but the interesting thing is that this is the first time we have been able to correlate Rhia doing anything different before a quake...
To make a long story short, I see no signs of damage or even signs that a quake took place at all inside our house this morning. The quake was so deep, some 48 kilometers below the surface, that although it was felt over a large area, it wasn't very likely to cause damage anywhere but right at the epicenter.
Today's photo was taken during a short break in the afternoon drizzle. This section of various flowers along the south edge of our yard is a butterfly magnet. Nearly all of the photos I have snapped of butterflies in our yard over the last year have been nectaring here...
Saturday, June 9, 2001
Our monthly cleanup effort down at Puget Creek accomplished a lot this morning. With the planting season pretty much behind us, we spent the three-hour cleanup clearing out invasive plants - himalayan blackberries, morning glory and others. And this time we attacked an open meadow just south of the Puget Gardens area that was filled with blackberry vines. All in all, we transformed the area from a tangled mess to an open meadow, and in the process we wheeled at least one dump truck load of vines out of the area to a place where the Tacoma Parks Department can come along and scoop them up. A great thing about this month's project was the number of poly people who were in attendance - M and W were there along with another list member, C from the Olympia area. It feels good to make a difference, even if it is pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
The photo above shows the meadow as we finished up our work. Believe it or not, the stump and log in the photo weren't even visible before yesterday. They were hidden under the tangle of blackberry vines...
Friday, June 8, 2001
Today's photo is a closeup of a flower along the side of our back yard. I chose this shot because of the way the shadow of the back part of the bloom shows so clearly through the brilliant blue-purple bloom at the front of the flower.
It was mostly sunny this morning, but it clouded up and stayed warm and muggy well into the evening. Then, around 9 p.m. or so, I stepped out onto the front porch to have a look at the sky while the wind blew in my face, and the light rain that had dampened everything had mixed with the blooms and the soil to make that perfect wet earth smell that we only get here in the summer. And the sky looked like it was about to burst into a summer thunderstorm. A few minutes later, the flashes began. I sat on the porch and enjoyed the show, and at one point when a strong downpour hit, Natalie walked out on the front sidewalk and reveled in the rain. It was a great way to force me to shut off the computer and take it easy the rest of the evening!
Thursday, June 7, 2001
So much for the forecasts of rain. I woke this morning to bright sunshine and warm temperatures, and I took advantage of the weather and a change in my social schedule to squeeze in a 10-mile bike ride with photo-taking opportunities this afternoon. Today's photo of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, or at least the tops of the bridge columns with clouds and the Olympic Mountains in the background, was taken from the south end of a pedestrian bridge over Washington Highway 16. The pedestrian bridge is something I bike over when I want to ride out to University Place to visit M without having to ride on the traffic laden main streets, but this is the first time that I have taken a camera along to catch the view. Now I need to take a photo of the bridge by biking out to the car bridge over Highway 16 that is even closer to the bridge...
Before setting out on my afternoon bike ride, I spent some time this morning gazing out the front window and watching nature in our front and side yards. I saw another western tiger swallowtail in the yard, but once again it was there and gone well ahead of my being able to run out and take a photo. And I also watched for quite a while as a female rufous hummingbird fed on the same flowers where the red admiral butterfly was nectaring yesterday. The whole scene reminded me of the stereotypical picture of spring, with lush greenery, bright flowers everywhere, and hummingbirds and butterflies flitting from bloom to bloom.
While on my bike ride I took notice of how people keep their yards here in the city, and what I saw confirmed a lot of my suspicions about why I see so many butterflies here in our yard. To the casual or judgmental observer, our yard looks unkept. There are bunches of grass and volunteer flowers and weeds all around. Yes, we have some lawn that I mow a couple of times a month, whether it needs it or not. And yes, we also grow vegetables in the gardens in the front yard, where they can get full sun and the greatest benefit from how our lot is situated. But a lot of the flowering plants may be considered weeds in other yards. We let the dandelions bloom...I've seen butterflies nectaring at them and bees love them. We also have poppies blooming everywhere. And the dainty blue flowers of dock join with dame's rocket, lupine, foxglove and a wide range of other flowers. Our yard looks like it has been allowed to go wild, and there is a lot of truth to that. And, I think that as a result of its wildness, it seems to draw a lot of nature. Add the fact that everything is done organically and there is nothing to stop the spread of native plants and insects. Our neighbors may grumble, but I like it!
Wednesday, June 6, 2001
Today was a treat. The sunny weather and plentiful blooms around the yard and garden drew out the butterflies today. I started noticing them this morning, when a western tiger swallowtail, one of the largest butterflies we get in this area, landed on a dame's rocket bloom in the front yard. I stopped my work and grabbed the camera in hopes of getting a good shot of the bright yellow and white and black butterfly, but it flew off to the north as I stepped out the front door. The highlight came later this afternoon, when I noticed a mid-sized, kind of brownish butterfly nectaring on the pink blooms between our house and our neighbors' place. It was about the same size as the painted lady I took a photo of a couple of weeks ago in the back yard, but the coloring was all different.
As can be seen from the photo above, I was able to get pretty close to the butterfly. It turned out to be a red admiral, the first one I have seen and identified in my now year-long rekindled interest in butterflies. It nectared on these flowers in the sun for more than an hour before work forced me to stop watching and pay attention to the computer. I'm glad I was able to see the butterflies today. Tomorrow and the weekend are supposed to be overcast, cool and possibly rainy...
Tuesday, June 5, 2001
My brush with nature today took place in the early evening, when Natalie and I walked the four blocks from our house over to the edge of Mason Gulch. I took her over to see if the hummingbird that I witnessed and took a photo of on Saturday was there again, and sure enough, it was sitting in the same bush when we walked up to the guardrail and peered across the gulch. After watching the hummingbird feed on blackberry blooms and buzz around for a while, we walked further down Stevens St. to get a different view of the bay and the across the gulch, and we ended up standing along the fence at the top of the gulch, looking out as three crows dove at what I figured would be an eagle or something in the top of a fir tree below. A couple of minutes later what appeared at least to the naked eye to be a red-tailed hawk flew from the treetop with the crows following in close pursuit. The hawk eventually landed in another tree at the opposite side of the gulch, so we focused our bird watching on other things.
For a long time, while raindrops fell on our heads, we watched what was likely a falcon of some kind circling and flapping its wings as it hunted over the gulch. The whole time we hoped it would go into a steep dive and reveal itself as a rare peregrine falcon, but it never did take a dive. I flew around in circles over the whole gulch, then settled down in a treetop across the gulch from us. Maybe, if we are patient again, we will be able to see the same bird and determine if it is indeed a falcon.
Today's photos reflect what Natalie and I saw on our walk, from the panoramic view of Commencement Bay and the Tacoma tideflats above, to the circling red-tailed hawk being harassed by a smaller bird in the photo below. One interesting note about the photo above is that in the far left side can be seen a sailing ship. This ship is the replica of an explorer's ship, the Lady Washington. The original ship was sailed by explorer Robert Gray when he discovered Grays Harbor to the south of here, and we wrote about both the historic replica ship that is housed in Aberdeen and the history of it in our soon-to-arrive-on-bookshelves title Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula. The local paper, The News Tribune wrote about the visit of the replica ship to Tacoma today...
Monday, June 4, 2001
It is done! More than a year after accepting the contract to write a book, Natalie and I put the finishing touches on Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula today and sent the edited pages back to our publisher. The book should be in stores in its final form either late this month or early in July!
With that huge load off our shoulders, now we can move on to other things, including spending more time working with volunteer groups and returning to more work with the Puget Creek Restoration Society. I got word last night of two more cleanup and planting events at the creek this weekend, and I know that Natalie and I will help out with an event down there on Saturday. We also need to return to the creek and spend some time collecting plants for Natalie's project and watching for new butterflies and moths to help with the informal survey of species that I am trying to do down there through this year.
For today's photo, I didn't have the energy to go too far from home. Instead, I went to the north side of our house and took a shot of the huge calla lilies that dominate the landscaping alongside our house. These plants get more impressive every year. And on another rainy day like today, they look pretty happy indeed...
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