Happy Easter

May this day devoted to the celebration of rebirth and renewed life be filled with beauty and sweet things. 

Happy Easter!

Democracy is Messy

Democracy is messy, and noisy.

This morning we participated in the the precinct caucus for the Democrats of Washington State.  

The Republicans will hold a quiet, ballot style primary in April. For Democrats, it is hands on, speak your mind, try to sway your neighbors, state your preference, and select delegates based on the outcome.

We met in a local elementary school cafeteria. There were about thirty precincts represented. We found our tables assigned by precinct, sat down and greeted each other as participants arrived. There were ten of us in our group, one young woman I knew who was a classmate of my son, and another woman my age I had met a long time ago in a school related activity. Others we didn't know  looked at Tom and me and said, "You are the people who walk by my house all the time". 

The directions weren't clear as we got started. It was a bit chaotic. We appointed as our  Precinct Chair a young man who it turns out is a close neighbor, living with his parents so he can save up to buy a house of his own. The family is from Bosnia but are now US citizens. The others were another older couple like Tom and me, two  middle aged men, one of Asian descent, the young woman and two younger men probably of Pacific Islander heritage. We were multicultural.

We were also of different minds. The vote for candidate preference was six for Hillary Clinton and four for Bernie Sanders. All Hillary supporters said they could vote for Bernie if it turned out that way. Three of the four Bernie supporters said they probably could not vote for Hillary. There were the usual comments about her not being truthful. We tried our best to say that changing your  mind, or evolving, is not the same as lying. One man said if Hillary was the candidate he would vote for the Green Party. He had done that the last time. Oh well. 

It was a noisy and disorderly process. I tried using my hearing aids and then tried turning them off. I eventually left them on when the leader wasn't at the microphone. The noise was distracting but I hung in there and did my job as secretary. 

There were some passionate points of view among the ten of us. The two youngest men are quite unhappy with the lack of opportunity, the high cost of education and of the impossibility of buying a home in our inflated housing market. They want a Sanders revolution. Another Sanders supporter was adamant that we could not have another four years of status quo. He gives the current administration no credit and lots of blame. He wants us to take all the money we are spending on bombs and weapons in the middle east and use it to build schools and hospitals and human services. This is of course very idealistic, and pretty hard to do in a war zone without first achieving stability. 

We Hillary supporters spoke to her experience and knowledge and ability to get things done. That didn't seem to matter to the idealistic Bernie boys.  Most of us shudder at the thought of a Republican victory but one man said Trump might be better that Clinton. 

So you can see we ten neighbors are a microcosm of what is going on in the Democratic Party this election year. A lot of people are hurting or discouraged. They are looking for answers, sometimes in the wrong places.

The other older woman and I talked together about the changes we have seen in our lifetime. Growing up in an era when sex was not even talked about, now we find ourselves supporting same sex marriage. We have evolved. We have experience. We have the wisdom that comes with experience. But just as when we were young we did not appreciate the wisdom of "old people", so too do the young reject our message now. It would do no good to try to explain that we had to work for everything we have and that things were not easy back in the "good old days" either.  

The concerns of the young and idealistic are real. We all want solutions. We have to work together to make that happen.

With little interest from most of our group in going on to the next level, the legislative district caucus, I volunteered. I will go on to support Hillary and my point of view at least one more time. I don't think I will make it all the way to Philadelphia though.  I'm not sure my ears could take it. 

It's a Noisy World

Crinkly, Crackly, Swishy, Hissy, Squeaky, Creaky! 

Noises I didn't really need to hear.

But now I am. 

This photo is not intentionally blurry. I'm not really trying to hide my new apparatus. But I am trying to get used to them. 

Yesterday afternoon, that's Wednesday for those of you who might not find me until tomorrow, I was fitted for my new hearing aids. My immediate reaction was "Would you please sit still and stop crinkling that paper." That was silently directed to the audiologist and to Tom, who accompanied me. 

I can tell you that friction is noisy:  rustling of clothing, rattling of the newspaper, and worst of all, crinkling of plastic bags. The water running out of the faucet is noisy. There are more creaks and squeaks in the floor than before.  

At first I thought it would drive me crazy. I have since used my iPhone app to lower the volume or amplification in my left ear piece and that is helping. The hearing in my left ear is worse than in my right, so the amplification is set higher, and I'm thinking it is too high. Just walking across the floor was causing a rattling sound. I will monitor it in various settings and then work with the audiologist when I go back for a follow up in three weeks. 

Tom is my gauge to what is better. The TV and the radio volume are much lower. I can hear him from across the room or even around the corner in another room. Tomorrow morning when we go to Friday breakfast, I'll see how much better I do in hearing conversation in a restaurant. 

I am told that I will get used to hearing the sounds I have not been hearing and the over amplification of the crinkle crackle rustle squeak will even out. 

I'll be letting you know. I do understand that for some of you I am a test case. 

A full Day

We got lots done here today. 

We started out by doing the weekly house cleaning and the laundry. Yes, we do work together on all these things. We got that done in time to go over to Jill's house and plant some pansies in Irene's planter on their front porch.

Irene has a pet tree, a Lemon or Monterrey Cypress, that lives in a big pot. Each spring it gets a new skirt of color. When I asked her about it on Saturday she said she wanted bright colors, a rainbow of color. She got red, orange and blue. Sorry. I didn't take a photo. 

When we got back home I had time to pick a new spring bouquet for the kitchen table before sitting and enjoying it as I ate my lunch. Lunch time here is 1:00, since we are not early risers. 

Spring flowers last longer outside, but I enjoy bringing some of the beauty indoors. This one will last three or four days. 

After lunch, since it wasn't raining, Tom and I went for our exercise walk. 

 It was brisk but sunny in our neighborhood park. 

After walking a little over three miles we returned home and got right to work dealing with some plants that needed attention. 

 This agave that I bought last year had pups springing up around it and they needed to be removed and planted in their own pots to grow on. I managed the job with only one poke. 

They'll stay in the greenhouse a while longer to remain out of the rain. 

 I bought this Phormium (New Zealand Flax) last year as a pot filler along with a hebe and a wall flower and something else that was an annual. Fill the pot it has!  It obviously enjoyed the mild winter in the greenhouse.  I dumped it all out, and replanted the phormium alone. It will now stay outside on the patio. 

 It's pot mates got pruned severely and potted up. If they decide to branch back and shape up, there will be a place for them. Otherwise they get tossed on the compost heap. 

While I was filling pots, Tom was emptying some. 

 We have been contemplating what to do with the space where the end of the juniper hedge died. Tom has transplanted some of the native Mahonia - Oregon grape - to extend the thicket that is already there on the left. Today he added a golden euonymus for year round color, and a winter blooming Mahonia to provide winter food for humming birds.

This spot is the back corner of the neighbor's property and borders our driveway. Most of what's there is native plant life. We'll encourage that and try to keep the weeds under control in the part we can see. 

I still had time to do my PT exercise routine and download these pics before starting dinner. 

Now it's 7:30 and daylight still lingers. I hear that rain will return tomorrow. We'll see. March weather in very unpredictable here in the Pacific Northwest. 

The Vernal Equinox, and the Verdant Season

mixed bouquet of spring snippings from the yard

About 9:30 PDT yesterday evening the sun crossed the celestial equator from the southern hemisphere into the northern hemisphere. For us in the northern hemisphere that makes this the first day of spring.

It is the Vernal Equinox: vernal =pertaining to spring, equinox = equal, or equal amounts of daylight all over the globe.  For those living in the southern hemisphere, it is the Autumnal Equinox. 

The clouds moved in to cover the sun early this morning.

 So how has your first day of spring been going? Our spring began with the return of rain. After a week of mostly sunshine and dry days, we are worn out from using every dry hour to work outside, here at home, in the Whidbey garden, and in Jill's yard. The rain is giving us a reason to take it easy today.

Today's rain, however, is not that hard, cold winter rain. Today it is a soft rain, a persistent spring shower, rain that will keep everything fresh in this verdant season, when our world goes green again. 

I took my camera with me when I walked out to the street to pick up the newspaper this morning. Greening and blooming keep on happening. 

 Oregon grape has prickly leaves but a lovely fragrance

 The full moon maple, and all maples, are beginning to bloom

 The moisture streaked window blurs the bloom on the geranium cutting in the greenhouse. That's where you will find Tom this afternoon - rain-free gardening. 

It's hard to believe that the daffodils will soon be done already. But as you saw above, the tulips are not far behind. 

What will be left for May flowers?

Happy Spring, everyone!

Island Gardening

Because we plan our activities according to the weather forecast these days, we scheduled Thursday, St Patrick's Day, as the time to make a day trip to the cabin on Whidbey Island to get the garden there cleaned up.

 We were up early and joined the slow moving traffic getting through the city. We arrived at the ferry dock at 9:30, just as our boat was coming in. As you can see, it was a beautiful day, just as was predicted. 

 We had a lot of cleaning up to do in the yard, and a ton of weeding. We worked together for over four hours, with a break for lunch. The results were worth it. 

 We won't wait so long for our next visit. We'll spend a night at the cabin when we go to the Tulip Festival in the Skagit Valley. The tulips are already beginning to bloom in the bulb fields there. 

It was very quiet at the beach today.

Not much wildlife; just this bunny. 

We had a rest after the work was done, and visited the Bayview Garden Center  before going out to eat on the island. Then we rode the ferry back to the mainland as the sun was setting. 

It was a good day's work on a very good day. 

Getting Our Ducks in a Row

I was fiddling around before lunch today, and got a little silly. I posted this photo on Facebook with the caption "Getting my ducks in a row". 

Then I added this one: "I have more but some of them are chickens". :-)

I was just chilling for a bit, glad that we had been able to get our exercise walk in this morning, plus my physical therapy exercise routine, finish the housework we started yesterday and get the laundry done. Then I was wondering where we should start on our jobs outside.

You see, it stopped raining!

Over the weekend, when it was raining, I realized that Easter is not far away, and I hadn't decorated. But Saint Patrick's Day hadn't happened yet. Can I say that I think Easter ought to be a fixed Sunday in April? Anyway, I just mixed the two. 

Did I mention it stopped raining?

This afternoon we got to work outside. Now the driveway is raked, and the front entry is cleaned up.

 While Tom raked the debris off the lawn, I scraped most of the scuzz off the patio. Now it can dry off and we can take the blower to the rest of it. The lawn is ready to mow as we move into some sunny days. 

Our ducks are lining up. It feels good. 

Just watching It Rain

We are so tired of the rain. 

We tried to get outside this morning to begin the clean up after the latest big wind storm. We got the larger branches and boughs picked up, but the continuing squalls just kept marching across the March sky. It made me think of the opening lines to a John Denver song. "I'd rather be outside. Here I am inside, watching it rain".

https://youtu.be/XXHeNuy9x_U

I guess I should just put this album on the stereo and dance. Maybe that will take care of the itch to be working outside.

But it won't get the clean up done. 

 You can see how messy it is out there. The patio hasn't been dry enough to clean off for a month. Cedar tree cones and pollen and twigs have created a layer of goo. The cat refuses to walk on it. 

We have been planning our days based on the weather forecasts. Weather Underground  gives us current satellite maps of the immediate weather and the what's-coming-up-next weather. It's not pretty for the rest of today or tomorrow.  

But Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and maybe part of Saturday, the sun is supposed to shine. We sure hope so. Wednesday we'll be working in our yard. Thursday we'll clean up the garden at the Whidbey cabin and Friday/Saturday we'll work in Jill's yard. 

Oh please, let it happen. 

Reeder Garden Report

It has been a rainy week, which has prevented us from getting much done outside in the yard. We did get all of the sword fern fronds cut off, as the new fronds are getting ready to unfurl. We have piles of stuff waiting to go out in the two yard waste bins, but pick up is only every two weeks, so we have to stock pile.

This morning, Friday, the rain stopped. We enjoyed a view of The Mountain as we drove to breakfast. Then back at home, we headed out for a walk about 11:00. We got in our 3.75 miles under darkening skies. As soon as we got back home I grabbed my camera to take some garden photos of what's blooming. The rain was beginning to fall as I finished the rounds of the garden. 

It's now the middle of the afternoon. The rain is falling steadily. I have completed my physical therapy exercises, had lunch and read the newspaper, called my sister, read political editorials in line, and just now finished editing my garden photos. Here we go. 

 Spirea

 Tete-a-tete daffodils

 Ranunculus

 Camellia grown from a cutting from the farm in Oregon where I grew up

 Euphorbia

 Daffodils and violets

 and primroses. 

Brunnera 

 Native red flowering currant

 Hellebore

 pink flowering pulmonaria 

 A newer variety of forsythia that we transplanted last spring 

 Mouse plant - Arisarium proboscideum

Native ginger 

 Native Indian plum

 One of many kinds of epimedium

Leucojum (summer snowdrop) 

 Native trillium 

 Camellia - the leaves are coated with pollen from the evergreen trees and the trees with catkins. Aaaaa-choo!

 Magnolia stellata 

 Another variety of pulmonaria

 White camellia from a cutting from a neighbor, long ago

 A long forgotten variety of rhododendron 

 Spring blooming cyclamen are just about done

 Crocus

 White flowering pulmonaria 

 A fancy red trillium emerging from the deep

 Chionodoxa

 Viburnum burkwoodii

 Native Oregon Grape. It will be opening to yellow flowers soon, much earlier than usual. 

 From the house, as the rain falls, we are enjoying watching the leaf buds burst on the fern leaf full moon maple. 

And there you have it, the mid-March garden tour. Thanks for visiting.