Barbarians At The Gate

Last Saturday morning, I poured myself a cup of coffee and looked out one of our kitchen doors, when I saw two raccoons in our side yard.  I thought that once they saw me, they'd scamper off.  Not so!  Instead, the brave one came right up to the door and stood up as if "begging" like a dog for food.  Not happy with only having his mugshot taken, they turned around and left...

 
 

Belated Mother's Day

Sunday I went for a long walk with my camera and took tons of pictures of neighborhood flowers. It reminded me of the Mother's Day that Kim and I went through town with a brown paper bag and cut one flower out of each yard we passed and nonchalantly tossed it in the bag. (I remember justifying it to ourselves by saying it was just one flower. People probably wouldn't even notice.) We went home and (I think--made a cake) and arranged all of "our" flowers and waited for mom to get back home from sailing so we could give her her Mother's Day present--our beautiful bouquet of stolen blooms.

But now, I've given up my stem snipping ways and just take pictures of them instead. (Far less risk of angering the neighborhood gardeners.)

So Happy Mother's Day Mom.

This was my favorite shot of the day:

In Mid-Air

This tuft got caught in a spider's web near our bbq.  From a distance it really looked like it was just floating in mid air, suspended from nothing.  I thought I'd better get a picture of it before the next bout of rain/wind hit and took the wonder right out of it.

 

Leaves I Couldn't Leave Behind

These leaves were lying on the sidewalk on my way home the other day.  I picked them up and brought them home so I could take some pictures of them:

 
 
 

April 11th, 2009

Kim came over and we went to visit Granny.  We took her some flowers from my yard (for her birthday), and two blue Peeps (for Easter).  

We miss you, Gran.  (We also decided that next time, we're bringing some lawn chairs and the fixin's for some cocktails so that we can have happy hour with you and Mick.)

 

Olive Oil Almond Cake

(In harsh sunlight.)  This was our Easter dessert--and it was delicious.

 

Orange Cauliflower

Do not adjust your monitors.  This really is orange cauliflower.  I chopped up a head of it, tossed it with a smidge of vegetable oil, some curry powder and salt and roasted it in the oven.  (As you can see, its color didn't change much during roasting.)

 
 
 

Light and Shadow:  Living Room

It was a cold and clear week.  Sunny most afternoons.  And with daylight savings time, the sun actually made an appearance in our living room.  I had to snap a couple of pictures of this phenomenon.

 
 

The Way Home

These are two shots of scenes I pass every day on my way home from the bus stop.  

 
 

Pike Place Market

Yesterday was a lovely day, relatively warm and sunny and I had planned on taking my camera and doing some serious picture-taking.  However, I ended up getting a very late start and ended up at Pike Place in the afternoon.  It was filled with tourists.  Uggh.  Slow-walking, super-gawking and my least favorite attribute of all, their insistence on walking three or four abreast.  (Were you hoping to get around us, Seattleite who knows where you're going?  Well, it's not going to happen.  Just stand behind us until we figure out where those guys are who throw the fish.)  Let me reiterate in the form of an equation: Sun + Weekend = Crowd at the market.  Winter is over.  The tourists are here.  

On the bright side--since it was so crowded with people taking pictures of everything that anyone who's ever gone to the market takes pictures of (produce, flowers, Pike Place Market sign), I ended up taking shots of some of the utilitarian things that make the market work.  I think I'm going to try do some more of these.

 

Lights near newsstand:
 

Gears over Mee Sum Pastry:

Chart Quilt

This is a detail of a quilt hanging in the window of Undercover Quilts (a quilting store one block south of Pike Place).  This is a quilt of a chart of the San Juan Islands.  I, of course, focused in on the Port Townsend region of the quilt.  I think this is such a cool idea, and the quilting itself is just fantastic.  There was also another quilt that was a detail of a topographical map of Mount Rainier.  Also very nice.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

This is my latest addition to the flock: a 10cc moment by Amy Ruppel.  

 

Last Night's Dinner

Lemongrass beef Vietnamese noodle salad.  Very tasty (and a wee bit spicy).  I marinated some steak in lemongrass, garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar and soy sauce, then broiled and sliced it.  Dumped it on top of a bowl of napa cabbage, carrot, red pepper, red onion, cilantro, thai basil, shiso and rice noodle.  Dumped the nuoc cham "dressing" (fish sauce, lime juice, minced garlic, minced thai bird chile, water) on top of that and threw some chopped peanuts on top of the whole thing.  Light and filling at the same time.  

 

Rainy Night in Seattle

Before going to dinner Tuesday night, Mike had to run into his office for a few minutes.  Juliet and I waited in the car.  She played with her DS in the backseat, and I had my camera in the front.  So I took a couple shots through the rainy windshield.

 

Just Another Day in the Neighborhood

 

So I took these shots a week ago.  Space Needle, seagulls, ferry.  Quintessential Seattle.  And only a few blocks from home.  
 

Still Life with Citrus

 

Yum.  Oranges, grapefruit, tangelos, etc.

So Seventies

More from the thrift store.  I remember all of these colors and motifs of the 70s so well.  Harvest gold.  We didn't have much of it at our house, but we were the proud owners of two avocado phones (rotary, of course) and an avocado refrigerator.  We did have a harvest gold set of dishes though, procured from our local Safeway.  
 

 

My Brunch with Barack

Featuring:

ruby red grapefruit

creamed arugula with lemon and parmesan on Dahlia Bakery potato bread toast, topped with poached egg

Dahlia Bakery eclair

Roederer Estate sparkling wine

Accompaniments:

pride

hope

joy

Prez print by Erik Rewitzer

 Christmas Is Over

But our tree is still up.  Oops.  Oh well.  My life isn't perfect, but I really enjoy it anyway.

Dahlia

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