Category: Uncategorized

I need to take pictures when the sun is out so on days like today when the rain pours all day long I can remember the sun. According to the National Weather Service, Seattle had 5 hours in all of May when it was 70ºF or higher. In a normal year there are 80 to over a 100 hours of 70ºF weather in May. So you can see how off we are this year.

What do the spiders think of all this cool, rainy weather? They can always crawl into a crack to escape the steady rain drops.

Snow waits patiently on her nest, waiting for her eggs to hatch. She picked a perfect place to hide.

When it isn’t pouring rain, I do like to let the chickens enjoy the nice weather. Do they compare this spring with sunny springs from years past?

On a totally, not a man and his hoe type of topic, with all the horrific shootings happening recently, I decided to get the latest numbers on gunfire deaths in Japan. And for that I turned to a reliable source, the National Police Agency of Japan. So these are the statistics for gunfire deaths in Japan from 2017 through 2021. The English labels for the rows is on the right.

The figure that popped out to me was that in all of 2021 there was just one death by gunfire in all of Japan. If the US had the same ratio of gunfire deaths, there would have been just 3 deaths by gunfire in the US during all of 2021. The number of gunfire homicides in the US during 2021? 19,384. A far cry from 3.

The goal of the National Police Agency of Japan is to have zero gunfire deaths. They are almost there.

Letting children get gunned down in elementary schools is a choice not an inevitability. Some countries choose to let this happen, others do not.

From me to you, a photo of a bee gathering nectar and pollen from a Thimble Berry flower. Cool weather still dominates here with the occasional warm, sunny day breaking the wet, cloudy days. I’m sure the bees are wanting warmer weather more than we humans.

Despite the cool spring, the bees did pollinate many of the cherry. The proof is the green cherry fruit where white cherry blossoms used to be.

And the three duck eggs in the second duck nest are now seven. So how many duck eggs will the ducks lay before they decide it is time to incubate them?

The chickens do enjoy foraging in the meadow. But the bob cat is back, so how much time to let the chickens roam is something to consider. Two nights ago the dogs were still out at 2 in the morning. It was too quiet. Something wasn’t right. I grabbed a flashlight and went looking for them. I found them at the gate, looking up at the archway. And on the top of the archway was a large bobcat.

When I aimed the flashlight at the bobcat, it jumped off the arch onto the roof of the garden shed and disappeared into the neighbor’s woods.

I did find it odd that the dogs were so quiet. Normally if they corner something in a tree like a squirrel or raccoon, they bark constantly. They were eerily quiet with the bobcat.

So how do these pictures get from me to you? When you look up into the sky, do you imagine that at some point the pictures I take were at some point radio waves bouncing around 550 kilometers (340 miles) up in the sky? They go further into space than the International Space Station.

So how do my words and photos get from me to you? I use my iPhone to take the photos. I edit the photos and words on my MacBook. From my MacBook the words and photos get beamed as radio waves from our StarLink antenna to a StarLink satellite orbiting the earth. From there they get beamed back to a StarLink ground station and sent to our host company’s servers, and sent on to you.

This morning, there are 1,877 functioning StarLink satellites orbiting the earth. Each one circles the earth in 90 to 95 minutes. Which means they are overhead for just a few minutes. If I could grab a tether from one, I could be in Tokyo in 12 minutes.

Every little white dot is a StarLink satellite orbiting the earth. The long strands of satellites are recently launched satellites which are still climbing. As they reach their final orbiting height they will spread out and blend in with all the other orbiting satellites.

The hexagon cells are areas where StarLink provides service.

Our StarLink antenna tilts north, so it mostly communicates with StarLink satellites zipping across southern British Columbia. Which in turn communicate with ground stations in places like Redmond, North Bend, and Brewster. And this happens in millionths of a second.

So that is how my words and pictures get to you.

Summer skies have returned to the Skagit Valley. It’s finally warm and dry enough to work in the garden.

The late spring warmth has the bees buzzing about. Speaking of bees, I’ve been reading and listening to Jacqueline Freeman’s Song of Increase. The book is about the life of bees. After keeping bees for many years, Jacqueline Freeman wrote down what she heard the bees tell her about their lives.

“Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World,” is how she describes her book. “When the bees speak, I listen,” she says. Throughout the book she sprinkles sections where the bees speak for themselves, like this:

“We wake up to the understanding that we are all one, all the time. Human beings exist connected each to each, but believe that they are not. Honeybees dwell in the full realization of that connection and have done so for eons. The unity we embody is a reflection of the kingdom-wide Unity that dwells in us all.
This is the gift we bring: complete, sacred unity in body and spirit. To be in the presence of Spirit [God], to simply sit and be in such presence, offers the opportunity to be transformed by it. This we offer you. Come sit. Be with us. Drink in the Unity as you would fresh rain. We offer our gift with great joy and love!”

For a refreshing, different view of bee society get a copy of Jacqueline Freeman’s Song of Increase.

The harsh winter killed our grand California Lilac. So we were debating how to cut it down today when we noticed a green sprig sprouting on one of the main branches. It lives. We won’t chop it down yet.

A harsh winter followed by a long cool, wet spring has given way to summery days of delight.

Have you seen a dirtier dog? Talk about dirty dogs. Enna and Taku outdid themselves hunting rabbits in the woods. They caught two! One they brought back early and left at the gate. Perhaps they were hoping we would chop it up and fry it for them while they got more rabbits?

They came back hours later with another rabbit. The two dogs looked like they had died and gone to heaven. Enna and Taku love nothing more than chasing and catching rabbits. Wild rabbit is their favorite food. Fortunately a straw bed is the best cleaner for muddy dogs.

This is the first nest like place I’ve found of duck eggs this season. Most of the time the ducks are leaving their eggs scattered along the banks of the pond or in the grass. But this spot is too muddy, at least for me, maybe not for the ducks. So I couldn’t stop myself from spiffing it up with some straw.

So if at some point a duck decides to hatch ducklings, she’ll have a drier spot to sit. And the view from this nest isn’t bad. She can watch the swallows dart over the pond while she sits, and sits, and sits, and sits.

However, danger lurks nearby. Close to the nest is a favorite spot for bull frogs to sit in the afternoon sun. These invasive frogs can swallow baby ducklings whole. Now that I know where these large frogs like to whittle away the afternoons, I can catch them, or at least try. There are three that hang out in this spot. Maybe the dogs will prefer them to rabbits. Don’t they taste like chicken?

Cherry blossom snow blankets the bank of the pond. And witches and goblins decide our future. We live in absurd times. But I suppose humans through the ages have always thought their time was particularly absurd.

I never thought I’d see the day when modern judges recite Medieval texts or the foreign judge, Mathew Hale, 1609-1676, from centuries ago who argued such blithering nonsense as the existence of laws against witches is proof that witches exist. Really? You’re going to base your argument on a judge from the 1600s who thought that? And yet our highest judges think these are perfectly reasonable reasons to back up their rulings. We might as well leave our fate up to goblins and such.

Spring is still cool with clouds, sprinkles, rain, and downpours nearly every day. So when the sun comes out I record it, just so I have proof that blue sky does exist and that somewhere a sun does shine.

The apples are a riot of color. They can be as beautiful as cherry blossoms.

See how wet the leaves and petals are? Don’t let the dabbles of sunlight on them fool you. It’s not as warm as it looks.

The lilacs are starting to bloom too. I could cover my face with their blossoms and inhale their sweet fragrance all day long. It would take my mind off the reality that our fate is up to judges who think highly of an English judge from the 1600s who executed witches and argued for chopping the heads off of 14 year olds. It makes me wonder what the war of independence was for if we’re bound to beliefs and superstitions of English judges from so long ago.

In the woods the skunk cabbage grow vigorously. I admire these robust plants which can produce such huge leaves out of the air they breathe and the minerals they quaff from the ground.

And in the garden I find these large, translucent earthworms. It’s remarkable how such soft, fragile tubes slither through the soil. There are some 22,000 species of these creatures. Annelids is what they are called, from the Latin anellus which means “little ring.” You can make out the thin segments on the earthworm in the picture. If you want to take your mind off the absurdity that our highest judges have their minds muddled by Medieval thought, count the rings on this earthworm. This earthworm is large, but it is nothing compared to the meter long Giant Gippsland earthworm of Australia.

Warmth arrives and with it the bees. The Rainier cherry trees are in full bloom. This year warmth arrived in time for the bees to be buzzing when the Rainiers are in bloom.

Some of the apples are starting to bloom too.

As are some of the rosemary bushes.

The trilliums are opening their delicate flowers too. I’m very lucky to be able to step out of the house and stroll into the woods to see trillium blossoms dabbled with sun light. How many get to do that?

And a sure sign that warmth has arrived are the first potato shoots poking out of the ground. If potatoes are sprouting, some things in this world are going right.

The calendar says it is April 20, but the snow falling in the foothills makes me wonder what month it is?

Blooming mustard says it is May, but we saw a flock of snow geese yesterday so it can’t be that late. And then this morning, thick frost painted the grass.

And here I thought we were way past the last frosty morn. Even the tips of the tulips had tiny ice droplets on them.

So what month is it? Though I’ve seen tulips with heavy hats of snow on them. A fairy dusting of frost soon melts away.

Pink weeping cherry blossoms tell me that it is April, so the calendar isn’t misleading me when it says April is in its last third. These weeping cherry trees don’t weep in Japan. They are called “Drooping branch cherries” 枝垂れ桜 – 枝 branch 垂れ drooping 桜 cherry.

And the billowing white clouds I saw yesterday say that May is just around the corner.

Even in death a single cherry blossom is remarkably beautiful. Half or more of the cherry blossoms have fallen from the tree. The wind whipped them into a blizzard the other day, scattering them far. Underneath the tree, they form a river of white.

They are as lovely off the tree as they are on the tree. There is no wind today. No clouds. No rain. There will be no blizzard of cherry blossoms on this quiet, cloudless, morning. A perfect day to hold a funeral for this year’s blossoms. Short, short lives to celebrate.

Frost tinges the grass this morning. A very late frost. No more bumblebees tickling their anthers or humming bird tongues licking their nectar. Cherry blossoms live but a week or two but impart wonderful memories that last a lifetime. When they are long gone, all I have to do is close my eyes and see them floating like clouds against a blue sky.

Now it’s the white plum blossoms that are opening. Followed by the pears, the fruiting cherry trees, and the apples. So the bumblebees and humming birds won’t go hungry. Not this year.

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom. They started opening a week ago, slowly at first. But on the first warm day, March 24, they all popped open at once. Warm? Not really. Warmer is more like it. Has it really been warm yet this year? That’s debatable. The bees certainly don’t think it has. They are still fast asleep in their dens and wintering hives.

Bees buzzing about is a sure sign that it is actually warm. This year the cherry blossoms will bloom without swarms of bees buzzing about. And the forecast is for clouds and rain through April 6. Some sun is forecast to appear on the 7th. But still no warmth to speak of.

So the cherry blossoms will probably have floated away before it warms up enough for the bees to buzz about.

Wet, cool Marches and early Aprils seems to be a trend. It’s been a number of years since we’ve had warm, dry weather when the cherry blossoms bloom, and swarms of buzzing bees so loud that you can hear them long before you reach the cherry tree.

Down in the valley, fields of daffodils cover the valley with brilliant yellow carpets. They stretch for as long as the eye can see. The swans are still about, though not for long. What do they think of these daffodil fields when they go flying overhead? Do they cock they heads to look at them? A week or two and they will be gone. It doesn’t give me much time to ask them.

Sunrise on a calm spring equinox. It happened here at 8:33 this morning. Yesterday’s pouring rain lifted and there was blue sky behind the clouds this morning.

At 8:33 this morning I decided to look online to see at what time the solstice happened today and was surprised to read it was happening now, at 8:33 in the morning. How fortuitous was that?

The drab winter colors are changing to spring’s wonderful hues. Soon, winter will be but a memory. Each night the frogs sing louder at night. Every day there are more birds flying in.

This spring, wood ducks have taken to eating the ducks’ feed and hanging out at the pond. They’re getting used to my presence and don’t automatically fly off screaming when I show up.

What do our ducks think about the wood ducks? For the most part they leave them alone. At first there were just a few wood ducks, then five, then ten, and more. But they are nowhere near as plentiful as the snow geese having their last grazing on the pastures in the valley.

The snow geese have yet to leave for Alaska and Siberia. On Friday a huge flock of them covered much of a pasture on the way to the post office. Flocks of snow geese, herds of swans, those are winter scenes that will be gone in a few weeks. But new, wonderful things, cherry trees in full bloom, potatoes sprouts, and spring rainbows will come. It really feels like the spring equinox . From now on there is more light than dark, more warmth than cold.