Barkfest 2009 will go down as Barf-fest 2009

No wonder it stunk.

A cowpie the size of a dinner plate was deposited right in front of my desk. So goes the start of day three of Barkfest 2009, otherwise known as the extravaganza of festivities surrounding the addition of a new roof on our house.

Barkfest 2009 began with a bang at 7 o'clock in the morning Monday with two giant, and scared, Newfoundlands barking their heads off. However, what began as Barkfest 2009 soon morphed into Barf-fest 2009. Both dogs were so nervous about the goings on overhead and all the attendant bangs, rattles, and nearly constant thuds, that they developed upset stomachs. Even Yuki, Miss Big Tough Bossy Bossins, ran around the house with her tail firmly curled between her hind legs. Katy was much cooler about it all by the end of day one, but it has all caught up to her. She's been barfing up green bile.

I had hoped that she would be able to blow it off and acclimate to it, but nope. Poor kid. Just what she needs, numerous strangers surrounding her house, and wrecking it too. If I were her, I suppose I'd barf too.

And it was she who left the enormous, foul smelling dump by my desk, I know it.

But this afternoon, it wasn't a funky fart left by a big nervous newf that perfumed the air, it was instead — another giant saucer sized dump. In the kitchen, and diarrhea no less, with all the little air bubbles and splatter surrounding it. A foot from it was the most enormous puddle — no pond — of urine I have ever seen.

Oh very wonderful. Just what I needed with a crying baby who isn't ready to go take a nap yet. I can't hold her and bend down to clean up poop goop at the same time, so I compromised.

I put her in her swinging chair, gave her a few shots of pumped breast milk from a bottle, popped the pacifier in and hoped for the best as I went to the kitchen to clean it up. To clean poop goop expediently, all you need to do is scrape it up between two pieces of cardboard (cereal box cardboard is ideal), wipe the area with TP, then scrub and dry.

Piece o'cake.

Well, not when you have a screaming baby who either wants:
A) to be held
B) to be fed or
C) her diaper to be changed (oh goody! More runny poo!).

I chose B.

Feeding her always buys me about 10-15 minutes, so I went for that route since changing her diaper means I have to do that, then feed her for 10 minutes to get her to quiet down and nod off enough to set her back down in her big comfy chair (that's what we call her swinging chair). And I can't clean poo goo one-handed.

So there I was going back and forth between the mess in the kitchen and the swinging chair to give her hits of the bottle. That breast pump sure comes in handy. It is definitely on my top three baby essentials list.

It took several trips back and forth, and eventually Baby FN fell asleep. I think it was the vacuum that pushed her over the edge into milk coma land. And, once you clean one floor, they all need to be cleaned. And windows washed, and surfaces dusted... and and and...

That's what you have to do when you finally have a sleeping baby: Clean house.

I feel for the dogs. They are having a right well rotten time of it now. It's too hot for walks most of the day and they can't go out for yard time because the roofers need to keep the gate open to get their work done. I know the newfas don't want to crap and pee in the house. They are good girls, but when their person can't help them, there's not much point in sitting on your tail very long I guess.

Needless to say, I think the floors in the house are now the cleanest they have been since the day they were installed.

I hope I figure out a solution to the dog needs to go out immediately, on a leash, to the backyard problem soon, because we have at least 2 more days of this. Leaving the baby inside to scream her head off is not a solution. It takes the dogs far too long to get relaxed enough to do their business with all the scary people and equipment around.

........ Be thankful I did not post pictures ........

Arctic poppies!

Poppies rank high up, perhaps at the top, of my new list of garden favorites. Just like lavender and snapdragons, poppies grow extremely well in my yard. It has got to be the well-draining soil and sunny exposure.

This year, a California poppy plant overtook a lavender start I had planted in the front yard. The poppy plant grew and grew and got to be the largest poppy bush I have ever seen. It was at least three feet across and two feet tall. It was a giant. And I wasn't too disappointed it killed the lavender, after all, we have lavender coming out of our ears over here, so to speak.

And just within the last week, some arctic poppies bloomed and I see a whole bunch more buds getting ready to bloom. They started from seed from poppy plants I found growing over by the college. I used many of them in my papermaking. I always lose seeds off the surface of the finished paper so I collect them and toss them outside. In the fall I tossed a lot of different seeds in a blank spot right where the dryer vents out. The arctic poppies were one plant that took off there. It's so cool that one of the tiniest of the seeds I scattered, powder really, is what took off. The hollyhocks and lunaria are going great guns too, but I've grown them before so they aren't as exciting, or as pretty, in my opinion.

Arctic, or Icelandic poppies, are native to subarctic regions of North America and Europe and are a perennial, however as I learned today, they behave like annuals in areas with hot summers. It makes perfect sense. So, I'll be gathering seeds from them this year so we can have them again next year.

The trick with the arctic poppies is to sew the seeds where you want the plants to grow - they have sensitive roots so you can't ordinarily successfully transplant them unless you are a botanical transplant specialist, I suspect.

For some truly amazing close-up photos of poppies — to make you ooh and aaah and perhaps cultivate a love of botany — you simply have to visit this website: A Close-up View of the "Icelandic (Arctic Poppy) The photo of the poppy 'hatching from its coccoon' is my favorite.

Container Gardening Avec Les Chiens

My mother in law came to visit for the weekend and wore me out! Actually, I think it was mutual at one point, but she's still standing while I ... am ... not.

Our big success was Container Gardening With The Dogs. Yuki came outside to supervise the entire thing, but I hope it wasn't because she was eyeballing which ones to uproot later. Fingers crossed she won't revert back to her old shenanigans! She did a truly commendable job of being companionable without being intrusive, which is to say she stayed within 2 feet of us the whole time, never stole anything, gave polite kisses, didn't knock over anything and actually curled up behind me to lie down once near the end. She was so well behaved, she could have easily passed for Katy, who was inside napping the entire time. Lazy bones had a good excuse though — she went on a giant walk the night before.

Just like usual, I bought more plants than I needed to fill the containers left over from last year so we had to root out the plastic ones from the garage. I also had to get 2 hanging planters of petunias. I love them and get 2 every year just to make the porch more cheerful. They usually bloom until October so it's well worth the cost.

Salvia, zinnia, snapdragons and some others I forgot the names of make up the rest.

Snapdragons are my favorite garden plant mostly because they grow extremely well here. Because Yuki destroyed most of my snapdragons from last year, the only ones I have growing now are either in their last year (perfect for gathering seeds for next year!) or got started this year from seed so they're really tiny. They will be amazing next year, as will the newbies who just moved in. The last few years I had red ones and also peach with yellow ones. This year and the next we'll have white, yellow and rose colored ones in addition to whatever takes from the seedlings.

I plum wore myself out! But, I did so in fantastic looking toes — we started the day with pedicures. Purrrrrrrfect!

Yuki's Path of Destruction: Ways to R&R puppy style

Ever since her first day home, Yuki had a fondness for the garden lilies. It's just not a fondness I appreciated very much. After the number she did on my garden last year, it's a wonder how I managed to have any plants come back this spring. But, the lilies grew back and Yuki's back at them. This time, putting her ever-so-cute-I'm-not-gonna-get-in-trouble-spin on things.

Caught messing around once more in the lilies, she hammed it up for me by sticking her nose through the porch slats long enough for me to snap a photo to share. It really was adorable, that face. She still got asked to leave, though. Which she did, thankfully, and without too much damage done.

She's been running through the lilies ever since she got here. This shot I took right before she completely disappeared in them around this time last year when she was just 8 weeks old and small enough to hide in the long green fronds.

Yuki loves to R&R in unusual places.








Under the dishwasher..


















Wedged between the toilet and bathtub..








** On **
Mr. Field Notes (he assures me this is actually very comfortable). They've also been napping like this since day one with no letting up now that she's approaching 100 pounds.

Ew! Newfie slobber goes everywhere.

When you share your life with even one Newfoundland you get used to slime, spit, slobber, drool — and all the places it lands. It starts with your lap. The cute puppies get a drink of water then head straight for you to show off how smart they are, having found the local watering hole. Then they move on to the couches. They make convenient napkins, just like pant legs. Eventually you notice the floors get their share of the drool too. More than their share. Soon you notice slime streaks on the walls. And every once in a while, you spot it practically on the ceiling.

That's where I found some today — a nice, big long streak of dried slobber complete with fur (a lot of it) stuck high up on the wall nearly at the ceiling above the bathroom door. Ew. Gross. Thanks guys. Did you have to put it so high up?

You can sort of make it out under the words in that photo. That grayish smudge is a ball of slimed, matted newfie hair the size of a quarter. A streak of dried slobber 8 inches long hangs down from it. Ew.

Who the culprit is I'll never know. Just a little present from one of them, thought I'd share. It's all part of the charm of having newfies. Since I had the camera out, I thought I'd take the opportunity to show off the other things now hanging on the walls. No, not cobwebs and more goofy newfie goobers, just good old-fashioned art. We finally hung our art, well, most of it.

Here's a little tour.

Some Japanese fabric (the so-called lucky cat you see everywhere in Japan). If you look closely in the background you can spot Yuki hanging out on the 'big comfy chair' watching traffic. I'm convinced she's got her own version of a trainspotting game going on given how much time she spends gazing out the window from that spot.

Of course, most days the window in front of her is so covered with her own nose print slime I doubt she sees much! I'd have to clean that window every day to keep it looking nice. Vacuuming once — sometimes twice and even up to four times a day — is about as much dog-inspired cleaning as I am comfortable 'scheduling' so the vast majority of the time, that window is ... dirty. But who cares. You make a lot of 'adjustments' to standards of cleanliness when you invite a big, black shagorrific dog (or two) into your home.

Moving on... on the wall in the living room containing Dirty Window we've now got some handy dandy shelves with real, handmade art on them!


The art is a series of three 14x14 inch custom pieces on canvas I commissioned from an artist on etsy.com. She did a wonderful job with minimal instructions to make a crow, bluebird and a green egret. The shelves are from Pottery Barn. I bought them, no kidding, in 2007 as a reward to myself for finally finishing some horrendous piece of statistical analysis for my dissertation. It took until now to finally deploy them. Delayed gratification.

More framed Japanese fabric from my favorite store in Kyoto: RAAK. They specialize in material for furoshiki - the cloth used in traditional wrapping of packages, gifts and lunches. RAAK is operated by a Kyoto-based textile company called Eirakuya, which was founded 390 years ago. A trip to RAAK is a must if you find yourself in Kyoto. They make just about everything out of their fabric — furoshiki, hats, wallets, purses, teddy bears and more. It's not cheap either (nothing in Japan is) so be prepared for a big bill if you go hog wild like I did.

I bought a TON (almost literally) of furoshiki cloth. I think it was my single biggest expense from Japan, but I knew I wouldn't be back for quite a long time so I allowed myself the splurge. The framed stuff isn't furoshiki, but I saw panels like this hung all over RAAK stores in Kyoto and thought a set of three would be perfect for the dining room. The choices were immense, and difficult, but in the end I chose these three for being iconic of Japanese culture and because they fit the color scheme of the dining room (red and black). All I had to do was find three that looked good together. Michaels craft store did the custom framing. They do a great job, but definitely wait until they have a good coupon. I used one that got me 60% off the entire framing order!

Plum Blossoms are here!

One of the selling points of our house when we bought it, in my opinion, was the plum tree in our backyard. It only sports blossoms for a short time. A stiff breeze always comes within a few days and whisks them all away. But in those 4-5 days, the tree is profuse with tiny white petals and buzzing bees. They make quick work of pollination. Later in the summer we'll have gobs of edible plums. And while the blossoms are here, the tree looks stunning and smells out of this world.

I snipped off several twigs to bring inside and put them in a vase. Not only do they look pretty but the perfume the room naturally. Eh, so do the newfies, but this smells way better! One of these days I'm going to figure out which flowering plants to plant so that I always some sort of blossom to snip and bring inside. I had no idea what I was doing when I started my garden so I inadvertently chose plants that bloom in late summer.

I wish I had pics of the full tree, but instead I put my nose to the grindstone and took pictures of cards I made so I'd be able to make use of the excellent but momentary backdrop. The day after I took the pictures, the forecast called for gray skies and rain. Our spring is long overdue. Comparing the dates of last year's plum blossom photos, it looks like this year the blossoms came 3 weeks later.

Seeing the weeping cherry trees just about to explode makes me want to buy one for the front yard but they cost $60 and the environment in our front yard is downright brutal because of the exposure and the extremely well draining soil. I worry it wouldn't make it. So, I think I'll stick with the lavender that's there for now.

Another tree I'd love to have somewhere is a saucer magnolia. Someday..

And I've always wanted bleeding heart bushes. I think I may have found the perfect location for them in the one spot of good shade we have. I'll just have to figure out how to keep Yuki out of them. She is one destructive little wretch. At least I can rely on Katy to pull weeds. She's excellent at it. Only attacks the weeds — never the good plants. It makes me wonder how she knows. With Yuki it's the opposite. She picks the best stuff. Last year it was the jasmine, snapdragons and lilies. Who knows what it will be this year.

We hit the fabric store today!

Over the weekend I found some awesome jungle theme fabric at esty.com for the baby room and today we bought the coordinating fabric to go with it. I'll be making curtains with horizontal bands in dark kiwi green, a vivid blueberry denim and pretty chocolate. At either the top or the bottom I'm sewing in a band of this fun print by Michael Miller Fabrics called "Jungle Jam."


I also loaded up on tons of coordinating fabric so I can make a diaper stacker (to conceal stacks of clean diapers ready to deploy at a moment's notice), a dust ruffle for the crib, a bumper, a hanging basket or two for stuffed animals, rattles and other toys, and three or four pillows.


For the pillows I'm planning on doing some applique animals out of felt to match the lion, owl and dragonfly in the curtain border print. I should have lots of left over fabric to make all sorts of other things too. As if that wasn't enough sewing, I also got enough fabric to make two quilts. Overboard, I know! They'll be big ones - about 4 x 6 feet.




One will be the funky Alexander Henry 2D Zoo print (top) with a light blue 'minky' fabric on the reverse and the other is the cheerful monkey print (bottom) with a pale lime green minky for the other side.

I ended up getting the rest of the bolt of dark kiwi green cloth at the fabric store today so they gave us the cardboard it was wrapped around.
It became the newest dog toy.



Yuki paraded it around, including from on top of the furniture, until Katy managed to tear half of it off along a perforation. Then Yuki dropped her piece to chase Katy's piece. They ended up shredding their cardboard in separate rooms until Mr. Field Notes eighty-sixed it before it became 386 dime-sized pieces all over the floor.


It ought to be fun to see how the sewing goes with not one, but two, Newfoundlands. Previously, it was just me and Max, and he was oh soooooo helpful, as you can see!

Home Improvements Meet Canine Approval

All home improvements are made for the comfort of the residence's two canine guardians. We bought those couches for them, so they'd have a comfortable place to chew toilet paper stolen off the roll in the bathroom. And, although we put a lot of thought into how much Katy would appreciate the cool temperature of the wood floors, she has made her preference clear. Somewhere behind those couches a third Newfie grows tuft by tuft, day by day. The only question that remains is how large will I let it grow before I move it to its new home in the innards of the vacuum cleaner, a device purchased solely for the entertainment of the Newfies.

Hello Wood Floors! A little photo tour...

It's finally done! The carpet is out and the wood floors are in. We just need to finish staining the wood transition pieces that go between the dining room and the living and it will be complete. I spent all of yesterday afternoon putting the new decorative touches on the living room... and cleaning off the dining room table that had an absolutely hideous amount of stuff on it.

Katy made herself right at home right away. 'Moving in' to a new room gave me the opportunity to decide what to keep, what to move, and in some cases — what to get rid of. I had a lot of fun combing through our collection of handmade art to redeploy it in new spots. I find that if things don't move, they fade into the background where they are eventually unseen. We have a large collection of raku pottery that is now displayed on the shelving unit behind Katy. I decided to keep the funky blue and white fish noren from Japan that hangs in the doorway to the baby room.

Next to the entertainment armoire I deployed some iron lantern candle holders on top of our speakers. I left the wall ones where they were at. My little bamboo plant sits behind one speaker and I moved my gardenia plant to the floor next to it. Hopefully it will get enough light there. Now that it's in a more public place it is bound to get more watering. I've also got a big umbrella 'tree' in the opposite corner that is also on the floor. Time will tell how ill-fated this move was to the plants, but I really like where they're at now and we haven't had any disasters or even any close calls yet.

The table in between the newfs' favorite "Big Comfy Chair" and our couch now has a chimp candle holder and a glorious wooden box that Mr. Field Notes mom gave us for our anniversary one year. It used to be way up on top of the entertainment armoire where it just gathered dust. I love having out in the open where I can better appreciate it. It's definitely among my favorite pieces of art. The stargazer lilies are from Mr. Field Notes for Valentine's Day. They are my favorite cut flower. The smell is intoxicating. Like jasmine and gardenia. Mr. Field Notes thinks they smell like urine but he gets them for me anyway. What a hero =D

The 'baby room' still has a ways to go. I'm not going to mess with it until sometime in April. We had planned to take the shelves off the wall and move them to the dining room but then Mr. Field Notes told me that as a kid, he would have thought a room with this many shelves and books was way cool. That it would have been perfect. And I got to thinking about it too and agreed that I would also have liked to have that much shelf space for books and to display my stuff.

Many of the books are still going to move to the dining room because I am not about to just hand over all of my primatology, psychology and evolution books to Baby Field Notes. Maybe BFN won't even like primates. Maybe monkeys will be boring because that's what mom does. Who knows. But the kid should and will have her own books, or his own books. So the shelves are staying.

But, the hideous orange curtains are going once I figure out what new colors to make the room. NO pastels! That's for sure. I like this baby bedding set at Overstock.com but it's not very 'babyish' in the sense of bunnies, teddy bears, bouncing frogs and whatnot. It's rather mature. I like it though, but then again, I've been mature since I was born. Just ask my parents.

The Agony of Home Renovations

Really, why do they all have to take six times longer than you estimated?

Over the weekend Mr. Field Notes and I decided, after one of our usual 'Yeah, I totally agree with you' brief-but-weighty conversations, that we would rip out our carpeting and install wood flooring.

Good Bye Carpet

With a baby on the way and carpeting that just three years ago was brand spankin' new but now is worse than horrid, we thought it was time to do something about it. I know you can't tell in the photo, but that carpet is seriously stained and spotted.

You see, the youngster Yuki (worst Newfoundland puppy on the planet) continues to not sleep through the night and then pees all over the carpet when no one magically wakes up to let out Yuki, the silent dog standing by the back door in the dead of the night who expects people to just know when she's communicating via mental telepathy that she needs out. Her communication is piss poor.

This was never a problem with Katy. She always cried at the back door to go out. No matter where you are in the house, you know when Big K needs to go out. She cried to go out early on so it was easy to reinforce. With Yuki, the only way she communicates is through barking. But never at any point did she spontaneously use that bark to go out. Very, very, very rarely she cries to go out. It's almost inaudible, but everytime we hear it, we let her out immediately. You'd think she'd learn but no. No one is up in the middle of the night to correct her for peeing on the rug. I know we have got to figure something out, and I have some ideas, so at least until we get that worked out, clean up will be a lot easier.

You'd think Yuki is the only impetus for the house transformation, but Katy isn't perfect either by any means. Katy (most sensitive Newfoundland on the planet) has done a number on the carpet her fair share of the time. She throws up, not constantly, but just enough to be annoying when it's on the carpet — which for her is nearly every stinkin' time. She has hang-ups, one of which is that vomiting cannot happen on any other surface than carpeting.

So, we decided to make clean-up easier and improve the smell of the house in one easy step: Install wood floors. Piece o'cake.

Heh.

We're 2 days into the project and it is looking really, really good. But, like all DIY home improvements, problems ranging from small to large creep up. Non-square walls, non-level sub floors, transitional wood pieces that don't fit right, etc. It can all be fixed, but it takes time.

We've got all the furniture (except for the bedroom which we're leaving the carpet in) crammed into the dining room which already has wood floors. It's a real obstacle course. And we had to unhook the internet. We've got it going again now that the "Baby Room" is finished enough to plug the Airport into.

Yeah! Internet again! It's kind of crazy how dependent I am on the internet, but when it goes out it cramps my style like nothing else. I think I'd sooner do without hot running water. Okay, maybe not, but that's the best thing I could come up with for comparison.

Hopefully I'll have some finished pics to show off by the weekend. Right now it feels like we're just moving into a new house. It's fun and exciting and a pain-in-the-butt all at once.

But these floors are looking sooooo good and the house already smells a thousand times better.

Weekend Gardening

My dream is to create a Japanese garden in my backyard someday. It would have to contain wisteria. If I started now, with a plan, in several years time it could be awesome.

The thing is, I am not much of a planner anymore. In my 20s I had everything planned. I new exactly what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it and kept lists and deadlines. Now I rarely do that. Flexibility is what works. I still have goals, but I am not so rigid about when and what I'll do. Perhaps I've just grown impatient with age. I want to see immediate results! That's why this Japanese garden dream may end up just being hodge podge of what worked at the time - and more realistically - what I had money for at the time. Add the fact that I really like flowers and they are not the main feature of Japanese gardens - at least not from what I've seen.

My weekend gardening saw me uprooting lunaria to transplant to the front yard - at the front of the house to hide the ugly foundation. I had hollyhocks growing there the last two years but decided I like lunaria more. Hopefully the transplants will survive.

I also uprooted a lavender plant I grew from seed. It was doing really well until the lavender it was near engulfed it, crowding it out of sunlight and room to grow (must have felt like Max in Katy's shadow). So, I moved it to a new location. I think I may have done quite a bit of damage to its roots when I moved it. It's wilted now and just looks awful.

Mr. Field Notes expanded my planter bed to 3 times its original size so I took advantage of the extra space to plant seeds for some veggies and more flowers. I'm really hoping I can get the columbine to take off. They are such a pretty plant and I've seen quite a few of them growing in our neighborhood. That will be the last of the flowers I need to grow to use the seeds from in my shop - all the others I harvest myself from plants I grow. It's just the columbine left, then ALL of my cards will have seeds from my own garden. Lots of people sell plantable cards, but so far as I know, I am the only one who grows the plants and harvests the seeds from them.

Next on the list is getting the wisteria and loofa started!

It's not shaping up to be a very Japanese garden...

For the love of - Lunaria

Last year I planted a bunch of lunaria seeds from plants I found growing by the railroad tracks that run through town. I didn't even know what the plant was called at the time; I just loved the seed pods.

Lunaria is also called the "money plant" because the seed pods look like silver dollars. It's a fragrant plant that produces big bunches of purple flowers and unique seed pods that look like silver dollars. They grow to about 4 feet high and produce big wide leaves that are perfect for hiding an ugly foundation. They grow well in partly sunny locations and are perennials so they produce flowers in the second year.

This year the lunaria I planted last year took off! I will be planting more of them for sure.

I pressed some into the paper I make and embedded seeds from the plants into the pulp. They can be planted just like my other cards.

As usual, I had a newfie helper during the photo shoot. She loves hanging out outside on cool, breezy days.

Spring Is Here Along with the 'Plum Rains' ... Sort of.

The last few days have brought an explosion of blossoms on the two plum trees in our backyard. I absolutely love the plums. The tiny white blossoms are gorgeous and some of the very first flowers to appear in the spring. The last few weeks have also brought noticeably more precipitation, just enough to start germinating seeds. The cosmos I started as paper cards are coming up, along with the holly hocks. I really love spring here.

To me, the plum blossoms plus the rains have made me remember traveling in Japan last year. We went during the "Plum Rains" which occur there for about 3 weeks in June. They are called the plum rains because they happen when the plums are ripe.

When the rain falls on the ripe plums, there follows 40 rainy days.
~ an old Japanese saying

The plum rains are caused by the "meiyu front," a meeting of warm moist air and cooler air over China. The front creates rain and really humid air in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and eastern China. The humidity can stay around 80 and 90 per cent at the same time the temperature is in the upper 80s. To say the least, the air is stuffy an uncomfortable. I am so glad I had years of New Hampshire humidity to prepare me. In truth, it wasn't that bad!

Although I would love to be in Japan during the spring for the sakura and ume blossoms, which are major cultural events, I'll just have to settle for the glorious 'plum rains' of Walla Walla. After the plums go crazy here, the cherries follow - along with the magnolias, rhododenderons, dogwoods and more. The plentiful flowering trees are definitely a great part of living where I do.

I couldn't resist using them as a backdrop for some snapshots of the thank you cards I custom created for a fellow etsy seller. They are the sprouting variety I make and are in stock in my store now.

** If you're up for more reading, the article Tsuyu: A Season that shaped a culture is well worth it.

A View of My Office

Yes, I read all of those.

Video of Squashed House

I have so much footage that I am still editing, so this is a brief bit of the squashed house on my block and the tree that still blocks our alley.

Walla Walla Rocked by Wild Winds, Paper Barely Gets Out

Although the winds were howling when my day began, as I walked to the coffee shop where I have been creating my primate portraits, there was nothing exceptional about the day at all - not even the noticeably strong wind. It does get windy here from time to time - kicking up dust and making a mess of the town as branches and power lines fall.


Little did I know that in about 4 hours, my little corner of heaven on earth would be rocked with winds that uprooted huge trees, took down entire power poles, smashed a well-known statue on the campus of my alma mater, and caused the local newspaper (the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin) to be printed by a press located in another city - for the very first time in at least 28 years.


The newspaper had talked about what to do in case their press couldn't actually print the paper, but they never had to execute those plans - until today.

As luck would have it, I was right there on the front lines, observing as the publisher whipped out his own personal credit card to buy the generator that powered up the server and three computers that would put together a skeletal paper for the day. Someone had to get gas to get it going and an extra long extension cord to power up the equipment that had been temporarily moved into the conference room. It was not by any means, a sure thing, that the newspaper would come out at all today.

That would have been unfortunate given that it was a fantastic day for local and national news.

I watched as the experts put together pages in a flash - snagging news stories and photos off the wire, formatting them, writing headlines and sub-headlines, and making sure it was all accurate. Mr. Field Notes demonstrated why he is the go-to guy for getting things done in a crisis. He is calm, cool, collected. I have to say I was impressed and proud.

I even got to play a role; I spotted an error in the headline of the story about the results of the Iowa caucus - Hillary's name was spelled with one "el." It's not that big of a deal, but when errors like that are front and center in headlines and sub-headlines, it really weakens the credibility of the paper. I also caught some minor grammatical errors on the front page.

The pages even came out on time. That is an achievement given that they had to rebuild entire pages from scratch and get them out the door and on the road to Pendleton, Oregon in less than 45 minutes.

That wasn't the only excitement in my neighborhood.

The walk back to my house got increasingly more exciting as I approached home. Away from downtown, old trees line every street and many grow well within the range to do major damage to structures.

The house around the corner from me is completely smashed by the huge tree that fell on it. The root ball of the tree blocks our alley.

Power lines are down everywhere, including the pole that brings power to our house. We will not have power for a good long time, I would imagine. The line that delivers power to, I mean delivered, swings in the breeze right over our front porch.

On campus, old trees are uprooted everywhere. They are mostly pines, but a few others of substantial size are also uprooted. The path over the campus creek to my old building is blocked by a huge tree. That pales in comparison to the damage leveled by the huge tree of heaven that stands, at half mast, behind "Mem." It fell over and crushed the most loathed piece of art on campus - the statue of the "paper clip."

Unless I go somewhere else, which I plan to do, blog posts and all etsy business will be on hiatus until power is restored to my house.

Dinner should be fun...

New Homes - A welcome and a goodbye.

For the first time ever, we have a our very own Christmas tree in our house. It only took 13 years! Mr. Field Notes ventured off to the great white north (er, south that is) with a buddy from work and brought us home a tree - a gorgeous Douglas fir.

Friendly fir, spiky spruce.

By its ring count, it made it about 20 years before heading off to its new home, in our dining room.

Miss Newfoundland looks very proud of her new tree, doesn't she? Crazy green eyed monsterish expression! Both dogs have been very well behaved around the tree, but just in case we bought a stand that is supposed to resist tipping. So far so good.

Keeping with tradition, we hung our collection of ornaments. My favorite is a cross-stitched lion in a red plastic frame.

Beneath the lion is the embroidered name "Leo," the name of my beloved childhood stuffed lion. My little sister made the ornament for me when she was about 10. She embroidered it herself and carefully taped the edges of the cloth into the frame. It's rag tag now, but I've kept it over the years and hung it on a variety of plants and miniature trees over the years at this time of year.

One year during Senior Spaniel's early unwrapping of Christmas presents destined for others, he got into the box of ornaments and altered the precious lion one. That's a nice way of putting it. Oh what a wretched curr he has been! You'd never believe this is the same dog who last night slept peacefully under the tree without a thought in his mind of further altering the ornaments that hung just above his noggin - including the lion ornament that bears the mark of his sometimes ferocious little mouth.

I'd rather plants trees than cut them down, so I feel good about having planted 4 plum trees, a maple tree, and a catalpa tree this year to make up for cutting this one down. The trees are all still alive, at least they appear to be. And, two of the ten trees I planted the year before are still alive.

Although we said hello to a tree this week, we also said goodbye to "Gorilla, the Non-Monkey Sock Monkey." She's in a box now, packaged up in a dark corner of the post office waiting to be put on a truck to travel to ScienceWoman! I snapped a pic of her with Russ, the Non-Sock Sock Monkey before she got bundled up to leave.

I sewed a new Gorilla this weekend; I think the profile turned out really well and I even got the front limbs to resemble what gorillas look like when "knuckle-walking." The blue-faced golden snub-nosed langur I've been working on is also done. Trouble is, that little wart-lipped rascal didn't make into the box destined for a new home in CA with my niece... oops. Miss PiPi will have to wait for the next shipment!

Stepping Out into a Winterwonderland at 1 am

If I hadn't taken Her Royal Newfsance out at 1am, her squeaking would have woken up the guy who has to be up an hour early for the "early deadline."

To give the carriers time to deliver, the newspaper sets an early deadline for page production whenever it snows. I am up late anyway so I took Her Royal Whinyness out.

I was rewarded with getting to see the fresh snow blanketing everything in sight. I brought the camera out with me just in case I could get good pics with the flash despite the darkness of night. I didn't take enough pictures at the previous place we lived and I do miss the massive snowfalls there, so I couldn't resist documenting the strange weather here. I have lived in this place for a total of ten years and have never seen this much snow pile up so regularly.. except that one year in college. The snow, if it came at all, either didn't stick to the ground or happened in early January when all of us kids were on break.

I don't know about the snow here this month. It's weird, but nice so long as this is fleeting. I would be happier with hoar frost. But I will just have to accept that we don't really live in a zone 8 gardening area. I think it is closer to 6. Seven in some years. Not this one, however. Oh well. My poor little jasmine plant is most assuredly a goner.


Katy spun some cookies in the yard around my planter bed before doing her back hoe impersonation. Can she just leave those weeds alone? I guess not. She must unearth them. I can't really complain - my giant dog aerates the lawn and pulls weeds for me. That dog is woman's best friend.

Finally I close with a photo of the snow shoes I will not be wearing to the mountains this weekend. Do they suggest I didn't grown up here, but instead grew up in a place where this weather would be considered a heat wave for this time of year?!