No, not a mouse. But the lizards are timid too. They do not want to engage and they leave very quickly. These one is fairly large, a foot long, so she posed for a photograph. Let’s crop it.
The next one is going for camouflage and is really quite brilliant at it. I like the tiny blue dots.
I also catch sight of small things scurrying out of my path hiking. Also lizards, 3 or 4 cm long, and very fast.
Today I go back to the first clinic I worked at here. I am feeling mildly timid myself. Stage fright? I can’t sing a song that I know, because I don’t choose the patients. They show up.
I took these photographs on the Palisade loop trial, in July. The lizards like it.
Dr. Suess has a ruse
that disguises when he pats a moose
He’s teasing that the hidden reason
Is the looming change of season
Locks the box, rocks the docks
Fox in socks, equinox.
We do have concerts on the docks in Port Townsend in the summer. Not in the winter, the instruments get wet. This is the Pourhouse, which is also right on Port Townsend Bay, in August 2022.
Many of the yards here have weed cloth and then rocks. Sometimes this surrounds a patch of grass and sometimes it doesn’t. There are lots of early morning automatic sprinklers.
This morning my cat Sol Duc encountered a toad in our yard. This is the first toad she has met. She was quite interested but was not sure what to do with it. It hopped when she sniffed it or when she poked it with a paw. I thought it was not going to turn out well for the toad but then the sprinklers came on. The toad had a reprieve.
The photograph is another yard. These people are creative with their rocks!
My daughter got here from Denver on Wednesday early. I picked her up in Seattle, we met a friend of hers for lunch, and returned to Port Townsend. I am so happy to have her visiting!
On Thursday we walked from East Beach on Marrowstone Island south to Nodule Beach, where it looks like rock eggs are birthing from the sandstone. What does one call a group of those rocks? A flock? There is flocked fabric, after all, why not rocks?
And what about the sea anemones? What is a group of them called? They really like certain rocks!
It was a beautiful day and a super low tide and we tried not to walk on the exposed eel grass or the sea anemones. The rocks and sand were fine!
What worries a skier about the opening photograph?
Yesterday the introverted thinker and I went water skiing. On Mount Baker. It rained the whole time. Cold! And the introverted thinker’s knee hurt. We bagged it once I had ice puddles in my ski boots and could squeeze a stream out of my ski gloves.
On the very first lift ride, I realized that my wrist pocket was unzipped. Cash was still in there but the car key wasn’t. We skied down and I checked each place I’d been. No key. We got back on the lift and watched. There were a lot of small black specks. We discussed how much fun it would be to wait for AAA on the top of the mountain.
We skied down, going very slowly right under the lift.
FOUND IT!
Whew. After that neither of us whined. We skied until we were soaked. Her knee was being uncooperative and she was skiing warily. I couldn’t wear goggles because then my glasses fogged too much. Neither of us could see much through the rain. We went up a higher lift and then it was heavy wet slushy snowing. Then we really couldn’t see. Both nearly crashed skiing by proprioception, when a dip was invisible. I stopped at a sign and then fell backwards, visual cues just weren’t working for balance. Unhurt.
And what does this have to do with dirt? I started skiing at age 9 on the east coast, in upstate New York. We would go from Johnson City and meet my uncle and cousins at the small Labrador Mountain ski area. It was a family area. The snow was often awful. We skiied on ice, slush and dirt. Patches of dirt would show through and we learned to avoid them and avoid the rocks. The first time I skiied powder in Colorado I was mystified: I didn’t know how to ski it. But slush on top of hardpacked moguls? No problem.
So skiing Baker put me back to my tweens. The conditions were so familiar. My body was so comfortable with really crappy snow. The ungroomed parts had so much water on top that skis practically stopped. If I had been dressed in foul weather gear I could have skied most of the day.
But soaking wet is another matter. We turned in the skis and ate a late lunch. Happily used the car key to get dry clothes. Changed and drove back to Bellingham. We had a fabulous dinner looking out over the bay with a wonderful sunset.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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