Point Bridget

A couple of weeks ago Grandma and Grandpa and I made a trip out to Point Bridget. Lunches on our backs, we made the rather long hike through the glorious but mosquito infested woods. Summer in Juneau is great, until it stops raining and the bugs come out. Another reason to love the rain. Though the view is a little better when it's clear and you can actually see the tops of the mountains as it was on this day at Point Bridget. But there is something to be said about the beauty and mystery of mist enshrouded mountains. Great, green giants reposing in a white, wispy embrace...

Any-who, it was sunny an warm at Point Bridget. No mist enshrouded mountains in sight. Only clear skies and a vast, rolling expanse of glorious wildflowers. The whole meadow was yellow with buttercups, Bright purple with geraniums, dark purple with irises, blue with lupine, chocolate with black lilies, and shot through with shooting stars, and every little bit you could find the pink blossom of a beach pea. All the spaces filled in with each of their unique greenery.

Authority

The other day I was working at the mall store and there was a little boy, probably around 3 or 4, playing with the Schleich animal figures. He was making it impossible for people to walk by without stepping on a zebra or cow, so I went up and squatted down next to him and kindly asked him to either put the animals away or play with them at the table provided for that purpose.

You'd think that would have worked. When I was a kid I remember being completely mortified if some strange adult told me off. You get orders and such from your mother all the time, but if you do something someone else expresses disapproval of, you straighten up right quick. Or at least that's how I remember it.

But this kid... As soon as I had finished my question he looked at me in indignation and said to me "My mom can tell me that."

Luckily his mom was nearby to help out, because in this kid's eyes I had absolutely no authority.

"Well if you chew them up..."

Some weeks ago Grandma made brownies, and Grandma likes nuts in her brownies, unlike me. When I grumbled about the intruders in her perfectly chewy, chocolaty brownies she turned to me and said something along the lines of "Well if you chew them up, you won't notice them."

I'm still chuckling about it.

Spring Glories

The sights of spring in the yard.

Mountain Ash tree.

Grandma's garden(s).

The onion bed.

Primroses.

More primroses.

Daffodils.

Tulips yet to bloom.

Rose.

Salmon berry.

Blueberries.

Skunk cabbage.

False lily of the valley.

Water skipper bug. :)

Alder trees.

More salmon berry.

The baby ducks are out in the barn now. They've grown a lot.

Geraniums in the kitchen window.

Beadsession

Let me tell you about my new obsession. Beads! Not just any beads, but seed beads for my new bead loom, which I got for Christmas. I'm obsessed, I tell you. It is way too much fun to be healthy.

Spring's first "Hello"

Spring has arrived...sort of. The primroses are showing their colors, the crocuses are glorious, the robins are out in force, and once in a while we get a day warm enough to go out barefoot and enjoy the sunny, springy atmosphere. But we still seem to wake up to a handful of snow on the ground most mornings. I came down the stairs on the first really snowy morning after our really springy weather and asked Grandpa if spring had given up on us. He laughed and reassured me that it was just a spring snow. Sure enough, it had all disappeared by noon.

Grandma and Grandpa used to have a lot of birds here on the "bird farm". They rehabilitated swans, geese, ducks, eagles, and others. They also raised chickens and ducks and such. The trees have now grown up enough that the eagles find them the perfect perches from which to swoop down and prey on the poor domesticated waterfowl and poultry. There haven't been birds here for several years. But Grandma misses having them so much she just decided one day to go out and buy herself some baby ducks, and hope that they will survive the eagles.

They're darn cute little things. Three girls and a boy.

Blueberry blossoms in the yard.

Here's the sapsucker that likes to come over most mornings and bang on the ladder up to Mom's old bedroom window for an hour or so. He may be trying to attract a mate, or maybe he's just making a fool of himself, we really don't know. He is quite handsome though, despite all the banging.



Spring sunshine and the swing!

Crocuses.

The barely blooming primroses.

The Working Caterpillar

The Saturday before Easter the book store had an event. We were graciously visited by Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar himself! It was quite exciting, and the children only found the very large and very hungry caterpillar a little scary... when they weren't petting him.

The caterpillar wasn't the only exciting thing in the store that day. Cindy read the book about 7 times in one corner while Danny gave out juice and cookies. I manned the craft table where kids could make their own gourmet caterpillar snack, complete with fuzzy caterpillar buddy!

Mendenhall Glacier in Winter

These are pictures from the day we walked across the frozen Mendenhall Lake to see the glacier closer up. It was quite surreal making our way across the smooth ice to the jagged blue wall ahead.

The lake was almost entirely deserted that afternoon except for us, and the awe of the thing hung uninterrupted. Well, uninterrupted save by Grandma's periodic inquiries as to if we had made it close enough to the glacier to turn back as she fretted about the remote possibility of the glacier calving and throwing us into the freezing water inches, maybe feet, below. And Grandpa's reply that no, we were no close enough and even if the glacier did decide to calve right then the resulting cracking and shaking would not be enough to open up holes big enough to swallow us.

So we made our way, one peaceably, one determinedly, and one reluctantly, closer and closer to the glacier's face. Sometimes almost sliding across the glassy ice, admiring the marks the skaters had carved earlier in the day, and sometimes crunching across the tiny crystals that had grown up in little patches here and there. The broken crystals made a faintly musical tinkling as they were knocked against each other by our boots.

When Grandpa finally deemed that we had gone close enough we stood and wondered at it for a while before turning about and making our way back to the car.