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Week Thirty-nine, December 10-16
Sunday, December 16, 2001
And then the rain piled up. I heard on the news tonight, as the winds howled and the rain pelted the windows behind me, that we have already had more rain in this rainy season since October 1 than we had in the entire rainy season last year. There is no worry about a drought this winter, unless the precipitation stops falling through the next couple of months.Christmas shopping took Natalie and I across the Narrows Bridge in the wind this afternoon, since we wanted to do some book shopping at the only independent book store nearby - a small book shop in Gig Harbor that we didn't even really know about until we researched and wrote our book, Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula. We stuck with our non-traditional holiday shopping by going to Freighthouse Square near the Tacoma Dome and then stopping at an arts and crafts store on the way home. No mall shopping for us on this day...
Saturday, December 15, 2001
I feel kind of bad today. Natalie and I didn't get up to go work on the project at Puget Creek, and we neglected to take part in the annual Christmas Bird Count with the Tahoma Audubon Society. But we slept in and Natalie rested her feet that have been bothering her lately. We needed a rest, and today was it.
Friday, December 14, 2001
What a glorious sunny day for December, or for any month of the year. Yesterday it was darkness, but today the sun shone brightly and it made for a perfect chance to get some winter photos at Puget Creek and around town as I went Christmas shopping with M. Early this morning I snapped the shot of Loki in our living room window, where she sat looking out at the birds in the yard while the sun created a perfect silhouette against the blinds.
After having some coffee and doing a bit of work on Lycos, we wandered off to walk a bit along Puget Creek and then do some shopping at Freighthouse Square on the other side of downtown. On the way home from shopping I snapped the photo of the bridge over Thea Foss Waterway...
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Darkness dominated today, but as the evening hours approached I watched the barometer dive lower than I have ever seen it, nearly to 29.00, in anticipation of a wind storm tonight. It rained about one-and-a-half inches earlier in the day, but as usually happens, when the barometer took its big dive, the clouds broke for a while. Natalie and I were off at a public meeting about the state's aquatic reserve lands when the top winds hit tonight - topping out around 42 miles an hour.
I want to write more about the public meeting with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, but I am too tired to do so tonight...
Tonight's photo is the orchid that hangs in our kitchen window. It opened into full bloom last week.
Wednesday, December 12, 2001
I ventured down to the mouth of Puget Creek again this afternoon to look for chum salmon trying to make their way up into the creek, but it was too dark to see if there were any fish gathering at the bottom of the steep fish ladder or in the water boiling up from the outlet of the creek into the high tide in Commencement Bay. That water boiling up from the outlet can be seen in the photo above. The photo looks north from Ruston Way, directly over the mouth of the creek and up the channel that separates Northeast Tacoma and Browns Point from Maury Island and Vashon Island on the left.
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
On another dark and rainy day, I couldn't get outside to snap a photo in the bad light. And so I turned the camera on Maya, our kitten that we welcomed into the house in July. I snapped one shot of her sleeping on the back of Natalie's chair, and then this shot of her face in a close up - one that was skewed because she moved just as the delayed flash went off in her little face.
While I like this photo, it isn't the shot that I crawled on the floor for, that I snuck around the living room in slow motion trying to capture twice and failed each time. I was sitting on the couch this morning when I looked out the window to see a hawk sitting in the snowball bush, just 20 feet away from me. I didn't even take the time to try and identify the hawk before I walked off slowly to grab the camera in the office and walked back into the room, trying to get into position to snap a photo through the window. But just as I raised the camera to focus, it flew. I kicked myself after the fact, because I didn't take the time to be sure if it was a merlin or a accipiter - a sharp-shinned or cooper's hawk. I pretty much rule out a merlin, because while this is the right habitat for a merlin, this bird was too large and too steel-gray colored to be a merlin. And it looked too big to be a sharp-shinned hawk, but a cooper's doesn't make a lot of sense sitting a few feet above the ground in our snowball bush.
As if it wasn't enough to be frustrated by missing the photo the first time, later in the day I was looking out the kitchen window and saw the same hawk sitting in the snowball bush again. This time I crawled across the living room to grab the camera, then raised it to my eye to focus it when the camera-shy hawk took to the air and flew off to land on the neighbor's wood fence across the street.
I couldn't believe that this large 15-inch or so long hawk was in our snowball bush twice in one day. Amazing! And the first time I saw it, two small Oregon juncos were in the bush above it, sitting absolutely still and probably figuring they were about to be breakfast. I am keeing a closer eye on the bird activity outside now...
Monday, December 10, 2001
I immersed myself in this wet and cold day by doing one of the smelliest projects possible down at Puget Creek. This afternoon after driving through a rain and snow mix to reach the base of Puget Gulch, I wandered up the trail to join Scott and Tom, another board member of the Puget Creek Restoration Society, to fling salmon carcasses into Puget Creek. Now, this was no walk through Pike Place Market with colorful fish mongers calling out and tourists standing around as fish fly through the air. Nope, this was more a case of bundling up against the cold and the reality of dead fish, grabbing the 10-15 pound salmon through their gills and trudging through the brush to place them in the creek.
We do this project to add nutrients to the ecosystem, just as we plant salmon eggs in the stream and watch for returning salmon. But this is messy work, and I was glad after 50 minutes or so that the slimy task was done, that 50 salmon carcasses were in their new home in the creek and that I could come home and get warm.
Later this afternoon I wandered out between rain showers to snap the photo of a rain droplet dangling off the tip of a rhododendron leaf in our front yard. This is a time of water and wetness, and on this day that I dipped my feet in Puget Creek, that I had to wash the smell of fish off my clothing, what better image than water?
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