Baby Update

More baby photos. The twins are doing exceptionally well. Piper even nursed. Laurel said she was ravenous and was screaming about it. She already has quite a reputation in the hospital nursery. Yikes! Just what we need, another drama queen in the family.
The children in our family are very hard to raise. They're self-willed and stubborn. None are easy going. But they sure make interesting adults and friends. If you can get to that point! I about lost my everlovin' when I had four little ones at home. Note: I don't know if 'everloving' is a Southern thing or a modern word. Anyway, it means 'my mind' as in "I about went crazy" or "I lost my mind". Does anyone else say that?
Babies and mama are doing well. The pediatrician said last night that their lungs will be compromised until ages 2-3. We all have to get a flu shot. I was whining about needles when Laurel said you can get a squirt of the vaccine up your nose. Oh boy, flu germs in my airways. Actually, that may not work for me. I have viral issues anyway. I'll have to check. Anyone have any experience with this?
The girls are going to be called Piper and Scout. I think those are the cutest names ever!
Piper getting some Nana love.

Blewett Pass ..

Technically it is Swauk Pass. The old highway went over Blewett, and the name was kept when they rerouted over Swauk Pass. I headed out with the intention of seeing if there was any climbable ice in the area, but as best I could tell there wasn't any. It appears to me that the terrain is not steep enough, but there could be other issues as well.
I took the skinny skis out on the ungroomed forest service road 800. I have always stayed away from the Blewett Pass area because it is an area where snowmobiles coexist with skiers. This is usually not that pleasant, but I wanted to give it a try. After a few hundred feet into the woods, I could almost no longer hear them and I had stopped coughing on the two stroke fumes. Then it was a peaceful ski in. If I stopped, all I could hear was the snow hitting my body.
Peaceful skiing up the road
There are a few turns in getting to the correct road on the ridge, but it was fairly easy navigating. A group of three women started off long before me, so I had a decent track to follow, although with how heavy it was snowing, it wasn't obvious to me if they had been there the day before or not. (It wasn't until I caught them at my turnaround point that I could confirm they were there the same day.) I think they were following a track put in earlier in the week. Unfortunately I brought my track poles which were way too long to use efficiently when my skis were 4-8" in a trench. It really turned out to work my shoulders due to that fact. For future reference, I'll bring shorter poles in this type of scenario.
Snowing hard
This route would be fairly scenic if it wasn't snowing so much. But I did get some nice glimpses at the surrounding area. There isn't a whole lot of hills, and it made for a nice workout plugging along the road. Some of the downhills I could coast a bit, but mostly I had to keep kicking or double poling on the downhills as the snow was offering a little too much resistance to just coast every hill. At about the three mile mark or so I stopped to have a bite to eat and turned around. I wanted to get home to see Jennifer off to work, and hopefully eat dinner with her.
By the time I got back to the car it was covered in two inches of fresh snow. It was coming down fast enough that I had to scrape the windows three times before I eventually left the Sno Park. Then it was a slow ride down from the pass and out to I90. There were a few cars in the ditch on 97. From I90 things didn't get much better and I maintained a ~35mph pace from Cle Elum to Snoqualmie Pass. The area between Cabin Creek and Hyak was the worst. A plow hadn't been by in a while and there were stiff peaks of snow between the wheel ruts that made driving difficult. Heading up the hill from Hyak plows had recently cleaned the road, so it was much easier. Then everyone got stuck behind the plows on the downhill side and there were a few cars in the ditch near the big right hand turn before the Denny Creek exit. Soon after that we were low enough for the change over to rain and the speed picked up to near the limit. The forecast hard rain was being delivered, and I had to turn the wipers on high.
Being from the Northeast US, I had never associated insects with snow. Having lived in Seattle for a while now, I have learned to see spiders and insects on melting snow in the Spring and Summer. But now twice this Autumn I have seen this one type of insect on the snow. A quick search on the internet makes me believe it is a snow fly or winter crane fly. I have seen a bunch of these walking around today, and a few weeks ago with Steve at Hyak.
Snow fly?

Cactiprunes

I've read that they're supposed to shrivel in winter, to prevent damage when it freezes. But this seems a little extreme.

Opuntia humifusa, Eastern prickly pear cactus.
It's the only cactus that's native here. I remember being really surprised the first time I ever saw one growing out in a field.
It likes poor soil - dry and rocky suits it just fine. So where it grows in our backyard is probably not a good place for flowerbeds.
When the previous owner scraped out a road and put down chert on part of the property, this cactus sprang up in sunny areas along the edges. The healthiest plants are growing in a small area that was apparently cut over as a turn-around for the trucks. Wild hyacinth (Camassia scilloides) flourishes there in the spring.

Night Wishes

I am really having a lot of fun with my Canon 5D Mark II. This camera is allowing me to capture images that I never thought were possible. It certainly is a wonderful camera for night photography! The waterfall seen here is Partridge Falls on the Pigeon River in northeast Minnesota. This river is the border between the U.S. and Canada in this part of the state. My friend Roger was up for the weekend and when Roger visits we usually try to do a session of night photography. The concept portrayed in this image was actually Roger's idea. I was in between shooting images when all of a sudden Roger walked out in front of me and stood near the base of the falls, using his flashlight to paint light up, down, left and right across the falls. After I saw his image I knew I had to try one of my own. I have always wanted to try shooting Partridge Falls with the stars above it but with the cameras I used to have the results, while interesting to view at web size, would have been too noisy for printing. The Canon 5D Mark II changes that. I have already had a print of one of these images made, and it is stunning!

(Above: I used my Petzl Tikka headlamp to "paint" light onto the falls during the 30 second exposure.)
(Below: In this image, in addition to my Petzl headlamp, I was also holding my flashlight in my right hand. My intent was to try to look like I was holding a lightsaber, making me look like a Jedi from a Star Wars movie. The effect sort of worked, except my lightsaber is really long!)

After shooting at Partridge Falls, Roger and I then headed down to the Spirit Tree to do some more star shooting, this time with longer exposures to produce some star trail images. In this first image below, I was looking for a unique angle on the tree and was lucky to have both the North Star and the Milky Way in this image behind the tree. Overall, this night was one of the most fun times that I've ever had with a camera!

Lake Manawa Trail

The week continues to be a beautiful week for bike riding. Thursday and Friday I parked at the Wabash Trace Trailhead and headed out for the Trails Center.
At the trailhead, there still are signs that the trail is closed. Again near the bus bar, and at the end of E South Omaha Bridge.
I had heard that the water was down and could get through there. The worst of the mud has been cleared from the trail. Looks like there were waiting for the "mud" to dry when it can be swept off. It is dry, except for one short section under the railroad. (today's photo)
Thursday was a bit breezy - winds from the NNW. It was rough pedaling up Indian Creek into the wind. Stopped at the Trails Center for the normal visit. Next stop was Xtreme Wheels, then back down to the trailhead. A good 19 mile ride.
Friday, I started off with the same route. Wind was not as bad, but still basically from the North. Instead of riding up to the bike shop, I rode back via Manawa - did not want to ride Harry Langdon with Friday afternoon traffic.
The two rides where enough that I made my first 100 miles week this year.

Downtime

Downtime is not something that I particularly enjoy, but after suffering mild burnout last year, I'm reaching the conclusion that sometimes it's a necessary evil. The weekend just past was a little like that. Apart from riding to Brisbane for an errand on Saturday morning, I just didn't do a great deal -- hence a picture from Thursday's early ride to Little Nerang Dam in the rain. It was fairly convenient to schedule a lazy weekend, given that my bike currently has some mechanical issues that need resolving. Quiet contemplation was more my style last weekend, mixed with a stint of garage cleaning, but in an increasingly shallow and vapid world, contemplation is an activity that seems unlikely to hold my interest for very long.
It's clear that I need a new project, something capable of holding my interest when I'm not actually riding. This blog looks like needing a complete redesign because of it's apparent non-functionality for anyone who uses anything other than Internet Explorer, but that's hardly a fulfilling challenge. I could always get involved in cycling advocacy again, but that felt more like banging my head against a brick wall, and it's probably worse for the burn-out factor than simply riding all the time anyway.
I suppose I just need to look at downtime as a necessary evil, and just grin and bear it.

The Lure of the Garden

My garden all is overblown with roses,My spirit all is overblown with rhyme,As like a drunken honeybee I waverFrom house to garden and again to houseAnd, undetermined which delight to favourOn verse and rose alternately carouse.                         Vita Sackville-West-a sonnet
I really understand her feeling about wanting to be outside, and as soon as she is, she wants to be back inside.  There's so much to do and delight in, it's hard to pick sometimes!
Here's another poem fragment from The Land by Sackville-West:  'She walks among the loveliness she made,Between the apple blossom and the water-She walks among the patterned pied brocade,Each flower her son and every tree her daughter.'

Pink- A -Phobic

Were there too many pink rooms in my Boomer childhood, too many pink sheets and towels piled high at bridal showers, with subsequent weddings themed Blush & Bashful? Could it have been an overdose of girly gift shopping in the Pink aisle of the toy store? Whatever the reason, I can put up with a small amount of this color, but I don’t love it … yet it appears uninvited all over my garden.
Nature is against me: A group of white dianthus plants may suddenly display a pink heart, as the default-color seedlings sprout and bloom, their roots too entangled to separate. All the peachy, yellow, white and dark purple verbena will die, but the neon pink plant thrives and lives through the winter, ready to resume its battle with the pale yellow Ladybanks rose. The seed packet shows vibrant purple zinnias, not the actual washed-out pink ones that appear. The skullcap tags read ‘Cherry red’ but the plant shouts pink!
Back in .., as we pulled in the driveway of our just-purchased home, the very air seemed to have a roseate cast to it. The crepe myrtles were in hot pink bloom, lightly frosted with the powdery mildew that usually accompanies the flowers. Our neighbors to the North had several large trees; the East-side neighbors grew a row of 15-footers along our mutual back fence, while the South-side neighbor had a mere half-dozen in his yard. More crepes sprinkled across the street added to the spectacle. On our quarter-acre we counted twenty-two Lagerstroemia “WayTooPink”. Our guess is that the eight largest trees were intentionally planted. The rest were 4 to 7 feet in height, apparently seedlings that had been allowed to grow against the windows, inside the boughs of flowering shrubs, and right on top of the few existing roses.
We took out many of the pink myrtles, pruned and cared for the rest, and as you can see, they're blooming again. Over time the numbers were reduced to 7 trees. Last year we released two semi-dwarf, mildew resistant crepe myrtles from the deck containers where they’d sulked for years, planting them into the yellow/blue/purple border, where they are now opening white flowers.
Once rescued and revived, the climbing rose bloomed pink.
I love it.