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Week Sixteen, July 2-8
Sunday, July 8, 2001
A headache combined with a sudden need to do some productive writing kept me indoors today. I barely wandered out to the garden. And so for the first time since March, I am not including a photo taken today. The shot above was taken a couple of days ago, of the leeks about to bloom in the raised garden bed in our front yard.
After having some good conversation with a reading group that Natalie and I recently joined, we returned home tonight and I launched into reading and responding to more e-mail on The Commons mailing list from the Orion Society about the struggle to balance the interests of endangered fish and the irrigation needs of farmers in the Klamath Basin in Eastern Oregon. I include the text of my most recent post to the list below:
You definitely have a balanced perspective on the situation in the Klamath Basin. I have wondered why I even post about this topic, about a place that is miles away, a place I haven't had the privilege to even visit to this point in my life. But I post about the Klamath Basin and the struggles of those suffering from the lack of water in the arid region because it is a great example. As an Associated Press article I read about the water struggle in the Klamath Basin stated today, it is a typical case where the government nearly 100 years ago made too many promises to too many people. They promised water, they made it seem that resources were endless, and when Nature conspired to drop less rain and snow than normal, then the validity of those promises comes to light.What we as a society need is a move to a more sustainable world. Water intensive crops should be raised where water is plentiful, not in an arid region where everything will shrivel and die without an artificial influx of water. Our society lives to fit an artificial economic model and not to work in conjunction with the environment. Why do we raise potatoes in the desert? Why do we pave over fertile lands in the rain-plentiful western slopes of the Pacific Northwest rather than maintain open farm land where it makes the most sense?
I too hope that something useful can come of the drought crisis and the struggle to provide for Nature as well as the artificial constructs of humanity in the Klamath Basin. So far, I hear and see the same divisive arguments that I heard when I was younger from the spotted owl vs. logging debates in Western Washington and Western Oregon. While the crisis in the Klamath Basin is sure to pass with time, as all of these crisis do, we can all bet that it will be played out again in another region. Across the West there are huge expanses of arid, dry land that artificially supported by massive amounts of water. Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego...even nearby Eastern Washington are all being sustained by artificial means, and it is not a question of if but rather when that the best laid plans of engineers long dead will fall apart and replay the Klamath Basin struggle on a much larger scale. Imagine all of the farms of Eastern Washington, served by the much larger Columbia Basin Irrigation Project subjected to the same struggle.
Let's just hope we learn. I am not optimistic, as we as a people seem to repeat the same patterns over and over.
I did get more writing done than for an e-mail list. I finally wrapped up the proposal for our next book prospect, another title for Falcon Publishing/Globe Pequot called Birding Washington. There is no guarantee that the proposal will result in a book contract, but my fingers are definitely crossed...
Saturday, July 7, 2001
Our amazing run of warm and sunny weather continued today, and I took advantage of it by lingering in the garden, finally getting some acorn squash and pumpkin starts planted in the garden, and doing some mowing in order to use the grass as mulch around the newly planted starts. Since I spent time down along the sidewalk in front of the house, I snapped my photo today of the lavender growing along the steps up to the top of the terrace on the way to the front of the house.
Friday, July 6, 2001
It's done! After spending quite a bit of time digging, mixing cement, making runs to those ugly behemoth hardware stores that put all of the small neighborhood hardware stores out of business over the last decade, and then finally today stretching and fastening all of the chain link fence to the posts, the new backyard fence for the dogs is done. My hands ache from tightening all of the nuts and bolts, but it is satisfying to have it done and there is no doubt that Rhia and Abe like having the whole back yard to run and play. I snapped the photo of Abe above late this evening as he slept in a corner of the yard, up against the new fence.
The singleminded way that I have been working on the fence and trying to hold down the fort doing my other work has kept us close to home this week. We haven't made a trip to Puget Creek in some time. Soon...I need to see what new butterflies are about...
Thursday, July 5, 2001
I spent a fair chunk of time outside today, but I was so busy working on fencing that I neglected to take a decent photo until night time. Lucky for me, tonight was a full moon. Big, bright, and lustrous enough to turn the night into a dusky playground. I snapped the photo of the moonrise from our back porch...
Wednesday, July 4, 2001
We seldom have Fourth of July holidays as warm and sunny as today. For the second year in a row, there was more sunshine than clouds. I spent my morning hours once again working on the backyard fence, then I napped away part of the afternoon before we got together with friends to eat and wander down the hill toward old town to watch the fireworks show from a great vantage point just a quarter mile or so from the fireworks barge. I have never been that close to the Tacoma fireworks show.
I snapped my Independence Day photo near the end of the fireworks show. Nothing fancy here...I just turned off the flash and held the camera as steady as I could to take a series of fireworks photos...
Tuesday, July 3, 2001
This was another warm day, with temperatures topping 81 degrees and hardly a breeze to help cool things down this evening as I worked some more on the back yard fence. After doing as much as I could with the fence project tonight, I did some weeding and planting in the garden, then kicked back with a cup of tea and a newspaper on the front porch. I kept hoping for another great sunset to snap a photo, but about an hour before the sun slipped behind the mountains the clouds in the photo above appeared overhead. It wasn't quite the classic mackerel sky, but there is a resemblance to fish scales, so I couldn't resist taking a photo.
Being outside at this time of night reaffirmed something I have always thought...that sunrise and sunset are the best times of day to be lingering outside. And in the summer months when temperatures climb, and when temperatures never fall quickly enough inside a house, then it is ready-made to be outside.
Monday, July 2, 2001
OK...I am not sure I could get a better photo of a western tiger swallowtail than the one above. I took a walk with M and her son today and we looped around to visit the Adriana Hess Wetlands area, just a couple of blocks from where M lives. This was her first time to the wetlands, so we wandered the short trail, checked out the ant hill and spent some time on the observation deck over the marsh watching redwing blackbirds and swallows. We even saw a great blue heron fly by us while it was being hassled by a couple of blackbirds.
When we left the platform and walked the rest of the trail back to the front of the park, the swallowtail butterfly fluttered to a stop on a bush just a few feet from me. I have taken so many butterfly photos lately that I hesitated to take another, but M prodded me to snap a shot, and so I took out the Nikon Coolpix 950 and took two shots. As I took them I thought that they just might be the best shots of a western tiger swallowtail I had ever taken, so it was no big surprise when I brought up the image on my computer screen that it had so much detail. Not often can I get this close to any butterfly.
It was another toasty day today, with temperatures hovering around 80 degrees...
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