New kitten, new blog.

This blog has moved over to Vox. I'll be posting a lot more frequently over there than I did here at Blogger. The new blog already has pictures of the new addition to our household! Come and check it out!

Summerhead

jellyfish at the aquarium in long beach

Cocteau Twins Website - because Four-Calendar Cafe hasn't left my CD player in a month. The "media" section has some nice rare tracks for download, and the Dynamine contains, among other things, a random Cocteau Twins song title generator-- very amusing!

60 Books, 60 Libraries - an article about a project based on 1000 journals, but based out of local libraries. I'd love to see this happen up in my area.

Botany Photo of the Day - based out of Canada's UBC Botanical Garden, this daily blog is endlessly fascinating for botany freaks and nature photographers alike.

Petals Around the Rose - a puzzler! Satisfying to solve and good for a bit of time-wasting.

Hope everyone is well. Things are getting grey and rainy up in our corner of the States, keeping us indoors (and playing EverQuest). We haven't even planned for our annual Halloween party yet! But I have no doubt that things will come together at the last moment... they always do.

Thank you

Thanks for everything this past week, you guys. I'll be in touch as soon as things here slow down.

Beachcombing

Shirt draped over a driftwood log on the beach at Olympic National Park

Our landlocked visitors were particularly interested in seeing the Pacific Ocean, so we spent quite a bit of time on the beach during their visit. Having lived near (or on) the ocean for most of our lives, F & I generally take the beach for granted, but we had such a nice time there that we've resolved to get out to it more often.


Rocks collected on the beach with F's niece


A dead starfish found washed up in the tidepools


Puget Sound: our guests went crabbing!

Lavender Hills

We visited the Lavender Hills Farm festival yesterday-- the farm is about 10 minutes up the road from us and the festival is one of the town's most popular events. I don't have enough photos to do the grounds justice-- besides the "U-Cut" lavender field pictured above, they have a cut flower field with sunflowers, sweet peas, and gorgeous dahlias. During the festival, they bring in jazz musicians, food, and craft and garden vendors. The coffee booth even sells three varieties of lavender ice cream! The weather was beautiful and it was a really nice afternoon.

After the festival, we went to see The Fantastic Four. I don't have much to say about it, but isn't Ioan Gruffudd awfully cute? He played the title character in the Horatio Hornblower movies on A&E (based on the C.S. Forester novels), and I'm always thrilled to see him in anything new, even if it's just a superhero flick ;-)

Smokey

This is Smokey, F's high school vehicle. Once upon a time, F parked Smokey here in the woods and went off to join the Navy. Some twenty years later, we returned to move Smokey to a new spot and found it like this. Moss everywhere, the front windshield and hood broken by a fallen branch, slugs taking up residence in the door jamb.

We've been spending a fair amount of time up on the reservation property (where Smokey was parked) lately. Someone stole F's mom's mailbox... post and all... and it had to be replaced. We put three bags of concrete in with the post this time, so good luck to any would-be post thieves. Of course, F's mom says that kids will probably just blow up the new mailbox with M-80's on the Fourth of July anyway thanks to Boom City, the annual fireworks stand extravaganza put on by the local Indian tribe.

Actually, we're hoping to visit Boom City ourselves pretty soon in anticipation of the holiday. But things here are a mess at the moment... F's brother and his family will be coming to stay with us for 10 days in a couple of weeks, and we're going crazy trying to make the place presentable. Ack!

Decaying House

This house is located in an older part of our town, on a street with many beautifully landscaped front lawns. But you can tell that someone really cared about the place once... the front beds have gone wild and are overrun with vetch, but the roses endure; there's a giant buddleia off to the left, and old wicker furniture and a broken mirror still remain in the sunroom at front.