rmcnair-huff@qwest.net
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Sunday, April 15, 2001
Much of today was spent doing family stuff and then on the road back home to Tacoma, but before hitting the dinner table this afternoon I was alerted by Natalie's dad about the pileated woodpecker in the woods along their back yard, and the bird was patient enough with me to allow me to get pretty close. I snapped the shot from about 20 feet away from the woodpecker as it scavenged for bugs in a rotting tree that from its appearance had been pecked at quite a bit before...
Saturday, April 14, 2001
Have you ever lost an entire day? That was pretty much the story of my day. I woke, worked on canning pickled asparagus with Natalie and her mom, then made a shopping run to town, and by the time we returned home to Natalie's parents' home, I had to head to bed for six hours to try and overcome a migraine headache.
Natalie snapped today's picture of a hummingbird feeding outside her parents' house...
Friday, April 13, 2001
Today I made like a deer down at Puget Park and investigated a side trail that leads up a side gully off the main trail along Puget Creek. The trail starts muddy, then gets dry and shows signs of very little use outside of the many deer tracks. It winds up the side gully and peters out at some toppled trees, but I could see a deer trail picking up on the other side so I climbed over and scrambled up a steep incline to see if the trail would end up in some neighbor's back yard, but to my surprise, it just ended on top of a ridge not more than 25 yards or so from the main trail. Before sliding back down the embankment, I snapped today's picture that looks down the 100 feet or so to the main trail...
Thursday, April 12, 2001
The picture I include with today's entry isn't the image I have burned into my mind from today. This white flower along the north side of our property is the same color as the imagery on my mind - the dancing colors of the Northern Lights that Natalie and I sat outside after midnight last night watching dance across the sky. I knew last night that there was a good chance to see the aurora, thanks to reading a story about it on the CNN.com Web site earlier in the evening. And after seeing the aurora for the first real time last summer, I was excited at the chance to see it again. I kept going outside every 30 minutes to check the sky, and eventually around midnight I was able to make out ribbons of white light flickering over our house. When Natalie and I watched a few minutes later we could see a series of spotlight-like lights dancing across the sky, tracing spirals that would converge and then break away from each other over and over again. It wasn't the classic sheets of shimmering light that are normally associated with the aurora, but it was amazing to watch!
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Sunshine graced my part of the world today, and while we need the rain, I thoroughly enjoyed the sun. I snapped the photo above while on an evening walk just a few blocks from home. The shot looks north across Commencement Bay to a tug boat working in the bay, with Maury Island in the distance to the left and to the town of Des Moines along the Puget Sound waterfront between Tacoma and Seattle.
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
On a wet and cool spring day, the best I could muster was a last-minute snap shot of a poppy bud and plant coated in droplets near the front porch of our house. This was not the kind of spring day where I felt like lingering outside. Sure, a walk in the rain is great therapy and cleansing, but try to take photos with a digital camera, or any camera for that matter, and the relaxing walk is likely to turn into a challenge. I wasn't up for challenges today.
Monday, April 9, 2001
Cloudy skies burst open briefly before sunset today to reveal a spring day that had been hiding under the cloak of winter. It was chilly and damp, perfect conditions for the trillium I took a shot of in today's flower closeup. I have noticed that my pictures in this project have centered around closeups of flowers much of the time, but in truth those flowers are the essense of spring. After the dark days of winter, the flowers offer a whole new range of colors against the ever-present backdrop of green grass, moss, and green/gray lichen. And my eye is drawn to the color and exuberance offered in the spring frenzy. Much like the oranges and yellows that make fall my favorite season, the greens, reds, pinks and yellows of spring make it my second favorite. And I have to revel in the color now, because in a few months it will be hot, the grass will be brown, and my throat parched from the summer.
In fact, with the latest news about the lack of snowpack and our still being short of our normal rainfall here in the Pacific Northwest by more than 12 inches, there is a good chance that in a few months, everything around here will be parched. It is time to revel in the color...
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