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.

Work Adventures

After returning to Juneau after my Christmas stint in Portland, (Which was wonderful. There was playing every day :) ) I was left alone in the house for a week and a half while Grandma and Grandpa went up to Ancorage. Before they left I listened carefully to all instruction involving preventing the freezing of pipes, and other winter hazards.

After a couple of days it started to snow, so I smartly decided to park the car up at the driveway entrance so I could get out in the morning to work without digging all the way down the very long driveway. The next morning I got up to 18 new inches of snow! So an hour before I needed to be at work I put on my new snow pants and trekked up to the buried car.

Before we reach said vehicle, I wish to take this trekking time to tell you about another experience I had recently with snow not in Alaska, but in Portland. My family and I went to a matinée showing of Avatar one unremarkable, dry, overcast but not overly cold, day. When we walked out of the theatre I thought we had been transported to another dimension, or at least a different state. There was 2 inches of snow on the ground and more coming down in big fat flakes. Shocked is and understatement to how we felt. We had not an inkling of the possibility that this might happen. It was quite and adventure getting home in all that. Anyway, back to the poor snow drift that was once a car...

Brushing the powdery build up off the top of the car was easy, opening the frozen shut door was another story. The problem with frozen doors, that you can't get any leverage on a little, lift up car handle, even if you can get the key in the frozen keyhole. After trying several different strategies, which I won't bore you with by detailing now, the very nice plowman, who plows the snow up to the gate at the end of the driveway, was kind enough to jerk open the door for me. Thank you plowman!

I made it to work quite safely and on time. Triumph of the week.

At work we were pulling books off the shelves for the annual inventory sale when the blackout hit. Juneau is not connected to a larger power grid, and so all of the power used here is generated locally. It is mostly hydro power, and the main plant is quite a ways out from Juneau, so it is not unheard of for a single snow slide (or other event) to take out power to the whole city. When this happens the power company has backup gas generators in town that they can power the grid with until the line is fixed.

So it was a little surprising when the power went out that day at work, but not really worrying. We had to get all of the customers out for safety reasons, then went back to pulling books by flashlight , with a little help from the emergency lighting. It was quite exciting. I quite enjoyed being in the dark with all of those lovely smelling books.

It should go without saying that the smell of books is one of the best in the world. Old library books are better than new, but book store books still rank right up there with lavender, lilac, and how it smells outside after it has been raining all day.

On another book related note, everyone who is reading this blogs needs to get up off their rears right this moment and make their way to the nearest independent book seller (see what this job has done to my loyalties? I now view Amazon as the unspeakable evil.) and buy the book Animalia by Graeme Base. It is the best alphabet book ever written or illustrated! For serious. There is an alliteration for every letter, my favorites are V and Q. Q is "Quivering quails queuing quietly for quills." And on every page is a beautiful illustration of the animals performing whatever action mentioned in the alliteration, littered with other things that start with that letter of the alphabet. On the B page, for example, along with the "blue butterflies basking beside a babbling brook" there is also a baboon playing a bassoon, among other B things. I bought a copy from work one day and sat with it that evening at the kitchen table at home for a good 40 minutes fully entertained. It is my professional opinion that every household own a copy if not two.

Hard Frost

Near Thanksgiving we had a string of really cold clear days. The moisture in the air freezes into ice crystals all over everything, and while everything may be white as though covered in snow, it looks completely different. Snow falls from the sky, frost grows up from the ground. It was really very beautiful.

A month before I had gone out and taken this picture of the golden grass on the flats towards town. By sheer chance I took the same angle again with the frost. I found the contrast between the two quite entertaining.

The Bald Eagle Festival in Haines, Alaska

Our trip to Haines in mid-November began before sunrise, waiting to get on the ferry aptly named the Fairweather. This newer, smaller, faster ferry only runs on smooth seas (or channels as the case may be, but they are still connected to the sea).

After arriving and checking into the hotel it began to snow. Grandma and I holed up in the hotel room for most of the first couple of days while Grandpa went to Eagle Festival meetings. We read and made bead dream catchers. It was quite cozy in the warm hotel room watching the fat wet snow pile up outside.

We ate mostly at the Bamboo room. A little diner just a block from the hotel. On warmer days the roof dripped into buckets on the floor as we ate our pancakes or sandwiches.

Haines is quite a bit smaller that Juneau, and as far as food options went, there were precious few to choose from. Not to mention the shortening of the menus as each restaurant ran out of this or that due to the large numbers of visitors in for the festival and the weather preventing many of the boats which brought the supplies.

The first day without snow we went out to see the birds. We scared this flock away as we drove by.

There was some truly beautiful scenery.

And many eagles.

It was really quite a spectacular trip, if a bit cold and wet...

Ode to the Neglected Blog

O quiet, undemanding, unpretentious blog.

Waiting without murmur. Forsaken, not forgotten.

Always open, always hungry, but never starving

For words, pictures, rambles and brambles.

You are mine and I am yours and

We rant and rattle...no matter.

Forever patient, unchanging 'till changed.

Change is remembrance.

Followers reach for such a change.

Watchers watch, waiters wait,

Readers hang in suspended anticipation.

Hanging for life's stories, your rambling words.

Mine... apologies, echoing forever,

Sorry loves...

There it is, my artsy-fartsy, yet heartfelt expression of regret at my prolonged silence. Now on with the show.

P.S. Email and let me know if you want to get emails every time I post something new. I'm putting together a list for people who haven't figured out how, or don't want to become official "followers".