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Week Eight, May 7-13
Sunday, May 13, 2001
We made a quick stop at Puget Park today to retrieve a crowbar left down there since yesterday's work party, and of course we couldn't just grab the tool and head home. We instead spent some time wandering around the meadow, watching moths, a few white butterflies and a mylitta crescent butterfly like the one I snapped a photo of last weekend. With the sun shining brightly and the grass getting to knee-high in the meadow, I took a photo of a robin sitting at the base of a tree for today's photo.
One good thing about our short visit to the park is that the plants we planted around the creek look really good! We had rain overnight, which is just what we needed to get the plants settled into their new home...
Saturday, May 12, 2001
This has been an odd day. Natalie and I rose in the morning and went straight to Puget Park to work with 25 students from Stadium High School who were helping plant native plants, pull invasive weeds, and do general cleanup along the creek. We worked with the students, some unbelievably whiny, from 9 a.m. to noon, then hung out for another hour or so before heading back up the hill to home. By the time we were home, both of us were beat - me with an oncoming headache and Natalie because she couldn't sleep last night - so we went to bed for a nap. I didn't wake up until around 5 p.m., and I woke with a horrible headache. The headache has since faded, but the result of its effects is that I accomplished little today.
This was an exciting day in some respects from the standpoint of my writing career. I received a copy of the mountain biking book I revised, Mountain Bike America: Washington, and it looks great. It is listed for sale now on Amazon.com, but since I am only the revision editor, my name appears nowhere in the credits. But the even more exciting news for both Natalie and I is that our yet-to-be-published book, the Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula, is listed for sale now on Amazon as well. While I am excited to see a final copy of the mountain biking book, I will be very excited to see the finished copies of the travel guide. I have a lot more ownership in that book!
Friday, May 11, 2001
We took a break from visiting Puget Park today and instead ventured over to talk to a friend this afternoon at the Adriana Hess Wetland Park and the home of the Tahoma Audubon Society chapter. We wandered the small wetlands area and spent time watching redwinged blackbirds, swallows, a flicker, and a green heron from the observation deck that sits at the heart of this park in University Place. And it looks like we will probably start doing some work revamping the society's Web site and doing some other volunteer work there.
I snapped the picture of the mallard above as it flew over the lily pad strewn pond and past the three of us watching the scenery on the viewing platform. And while walking the short trail back to the head of the park I took the photo of one of the bracken fern slowly unfurling their leaves to gather sunlight.
Thursday, May 10, 2001
Natalie and I were driving home from the monthly board meeting for the Puget Creek Restoration Society tonight when we were drawn to the sunset. The colors in the sky were amazing, but the steel gray color of Commencement Bay, with terns and gulls doing their last hunting of the night and cormorants skimming along the water's surface, all of that combined into a overwhelming urge to put off dinner for a few more minutes and stop along the waterfront to take in the scene.
I snapped a photo of the sky as the sun sank over the North Tacoma hillside where our house sits. And it turns out that I like this shot so much that it is now the desktop background on my laptop computer screen.
It was great to slow down and revel in the sunset for a few moments. A perfect way to mark the end of the day, a day in which Natalie and I became board members of the Puget Creek Restoration Society. We first started working with this group in March and over the last eight weeks or so, as life marches on and work situations and economic circumstances change, our connection to this place, this creek, this gully that over all the years we have lived in our home and driven past and savored the damp, creekside smells that felt like home, over these last eight weeks Puget Creek has been a constant. It is a place to stop, linger and reconnect. I'm thankful that we are getting involved. It's about time...
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
Puget Creek gurgles nearby as I sit at a picnic table in the meadow at the bottom of Puget Park. I am here with Natalie and M., unwinding after receiving the bad work news from Lycos yesterday. This afternoon we are all taking a break, wandering the park a bit, snapping photos such as the one of the salmonberry ripening in the sunshine that I am using as today's photo, and listening to the sounds of this place.
The meadow is not as alive with activity today as it was last Saturday, when I saw at least four different types of butterflies working the blooms at the edges and in the heart of the field. It was more sunny that day. Today the sun is darting behind clouds now and then. When it peaks out, its warmth feels soothing against my back, heating up this gray mock turtleneck shirt to a toasty temperature.
While the butterflies are not making an appearance today, birds and bees are active. Upon first stepping into the meadow, a bright yellow-backed bird, probably a gold finch, burst from the grass and set upon a pine tree just north of the park. I lost its robin-sized body in the foliage, but I am sure it was there, measuring the purpose of this intruder in his space. A few veined white and cabbage white butterflies flutter across the meadow in the sunshine while birds call out - crows, robins, bush tits, and others that I cannot yet identify from their sounds alone.
No matter what, while the bird sounds and neighborhood construction sounds and passing trains come and go, the creek offers a consistent chorus, gurgling, bubbling with the process of mixing air and water as the rocks break the surface of the stream. There is a lot of merit to simply coming down to this park and sitting and listening...
Tuesday, May 8, 2001
Our youngest cat Loki was caught in my camera lens this evening as I slipped outside after a dramatic day at home. I didn't have much time to contemplate nature due to dot com layoffs finally hitting our household. But tomorrow we will return to Puget Creek and unwind and regain some perspective about what really matters. And somehow, slowly, we will crawl back out of this money shortage caused by men in suits in Spain who decided that their stock was no longer worth enough money...
Monday, May 7, 2001
Proof of the garden labor done yesterday but still weighing on me today is the topic of today's photo. The garden and I basked in filtered sunshine most of the day. I slipped outside in the morning to write in my journal for a bit, and in the process I saw a butterfly in the front yard. It got away before I could identify it.
In the garden photo, the most obvious changes since I last posted a garden shot are the wood trellis around each tomato plant and twine I put up in a spider web pattern on the right and in a kind of plaid cross pattern on the left for the peas.
This was one of those uneasy Mondays. I was in and out of the house, basking in the sun, working in the yard, and awaiting word of work possibilities. And as I took in the sights and sounds of this city on an early summer day I was struck by the amount of noise around here on a Monday morning. The garbage trucks were out on their weekly rounds. Hired yard crews were mowing and weed eating and using those horrible gas blowers. And somewhere down the street at least one neighbor was working on a construction or remodelling project of some kind. There was hardly room for natural sounds along with all of the random noises of North Tacoma. And it had me aching for the country.
What I really needed was another visit to Puget Park and an escape from many of those sounds of the city at a time when what I needed to hear were birds, breeze rustling through the trees, and the soft gurgling sounds of the creek... Maybe tomorrow.
Interesting news links for today:
Is Seattle traffic getting worse? You betcha... - The latest semi-annual study to determine which cities have the worst traffic congestion in the U.S. ranks Seattle second only to Los Angeles. This should come as no surprise for anyone living in the greater Seattle area, where traffic jams never really end and no amount of studying and complaining from the public can overcome taxpayers' selfish desires to pay less taxes and yet expect more and more from the infrastructure...
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