Still trying...

I'm still trying to get a picture of our little babies - and still they elude me. I managed to capture one, just managing to get himself up on the deck. But without the mother and the other ones around, the picture fails to capture the magic of the 5 of them together.

I'll keep trying. (Remember all the pumpkin pictures? I'm nothing if not single-minded...)

More about raccoon babies

So here's the thing about raccoons: They're nocturnal. Hard to get pictures of in the dark.

But our Little Mama, desperate as she is about getting enough to eat so she can feed four hungry pups, has been coming out to the food dish in the early evening. And today, after she was done eating, she decided to bring the kids out. Way out. Over the fence, actually. And getting them back 'home' was a bit of a challenge. Sort of like the first practice of a developing circus act. The High Wire.

And of course I'm standing there at the back door with my camera trying to take pictures in too little light, laughing too hard to hold the camera still...

47 pictures, and not ONE of them in focus.

I am SO disappointed. But maybe you can get the overall 'feel' of the thing anyway:

It's going to be an interesting week!

Midnight Marauders

Just wanted to 'record' the progress on the critter front: There are, indeed, 4 little raccoon pups living under our deck. They finally appeared last night to play in the water dish, knock over small furniture and chew up the pansies in the pots. Too cute to believe.

Mark is so pleased and proud I think he's going to take cigars in to work on Monday.

They didn't seem to know what to do with the food dish - pulled it around the deck and scattered the contents basically - but the water was an instant hit. Four small raccoons vying for real estate in a 9-inch glass pie dish is a whole lot of fun. The water didn't last long, but they kept after it.

We are really going to pay for this, aren't we?

Wonder of Wonders

We - meaning Seattle - went for 29 days without rain. Nearly a record, they said. The record was 30 days - unless (and this is where it got a little tricky and I had trouble paying attention) you count the 'old' record of 59 days back in 1959. (Or was it 51 days back in 1951? 59 in '51? Or maybe 51 in '59?) I didn't get the finer points of which 'record' really counted or why there was more than one record, but in any case, with less than 2 hours left in the 29th day, rain happened. Our grass audibly sighed in relief.

So, I think, did our local weather predictors - who have seemed disoriented and confused, 'record' reporting notwithstanding. They just don't have the vocabulary for sunny weather here.

We celebrated by going out today without taking raincoats with us. We didn't get rained on, but we could have - and that was the best part.

Or maybe this was the best part...


Suffice it to say, there were lots of best parts. We are glad for the weekend!

Sick

I've been sick for a week. A cold, I think, although it could be swine flu. One of my co-workers came in to work with a fever last week, and 3 days later - bam. Flattened me right out.

I don't do 'sick' well. Not that I whine or fuss (do I, Mark?) but more that I just can't get over something once I have it. I hack and cough and blow and carry on - can't sleep because I'm choking on phlegm... nasty business. Used tissues everywhere. Red nose. Sore ribcage from all the blowing and coughing action. Not good.

I've stayed home from work - not wanting to spread the cheer to anyone else because I'm secretly suspicious that it really IS swine flu, even though everyone else scoffs at that. (More than just cold symptoms, duration, severity of the fever... I'm not totally irrational on this, am I? Since it happens that I have my annual physical appointment today anyway, maybe I'll get reassurance from my doctor on that point.)

Anyway, it's a complete waste of time. Not going to work; not really doing anything at home. Not even feeling well enough to read - certainly not well enough for cleaning and just plain impractical for cooking. A week of my life just blown away. Unfair. I missed a weekend in Portland for my son's birthday. They just bought a house and I missed getting to see it before they put in the offer. (Congratulations, you guys!)

Is there another way to deal with this? It just seems like such a waste of a good week. And how many of those can any of us afford to lose?

Still Celebrating Flowers

Summer at last

Yes, things have been growing, and flowers have started to bloom in our garden, but it still felt like spring up until this last week. That we are 'full on' to summer finally was evident to me only yesterday when we hiked a wooded trail and found everything green and thick and lush in the forest. Ferns are unfurled, foxglove are blooming and birds are everywhere.

And last night the sky was clear and showed plenty of daylight still at 10 PM - the Northwest at its best, right now.

Thank goodness for weekends!

Sweet Anticipation

My grandmother used to take folks visiting her little farm on a tour of her garden, pausing here and there to pull a weed or break off a spent flower or tie up an errant pea strand... satisfaction and fondness evident every time she stooped over another plant and said its name. And yes, a little exasperation in her voice at the sheer volume of work that surely waited for her while she was spending time with guests.

To my child's mind, Grandma's gardens knew no bounds. She had an apple orchard, a vineyard, cherry trees, and a large vegetable and flower garden. She had a small field in which she grew sweet corn. And she tried to teach us to dig potatoes, pit cherries, shell peas and string beans (that last skill seemingly useless now that they have bred the 'string' out of String Beans.) But, having grown up in the desert myself I didn't know how to appreciate gardens. Now, of course, I wish I'd been a more avid learner.

I'm getting it now though. I completely understand her enthusiasm. I head out to the yard as soon as I get home each day to see what 'friend' has made progress since we last visited. And it's particularly satisfying right now. The roses are starting to bloom, the peony buds are swelling and have ants (there is an old wives tale about ants being necessary for peony blooms, but it isn't true - they just are attracted to the bud's sweetness.) The pumpkins are up, the beans are tall enough that they are starting to reach for support, and there are two little tomatoes already formed on one of the tomato plants. The hydrangea has buds galore and the dahlias are already 6 inches high. Two dahlias from last year reappeared in the garden, along with the new peony that we planted several months ago but thought wasn't going to come up - and then when it first appeared I thought it was another dahlia.

Sweet anticipation. All this wonderment to come...

Unintended Consequences

News reports last week touted a victory for consumers in the passage of the credit card bill – a new law that attempts to put some constraints on 'greedy' credit card companies and make it a little less difficult to get into big financial trouble with past due bills and interest rates. To my mind it really didn’t do that much to help the terminally stupid credit card abusers, but it IS expected to do a whole lot of damage to those of us who pay our bills on time and don’t run up big finance charges - they call us 'Deadbeats' in the business. The banks have already declared that, with the passage of this bill, us ‘deadbeats’ are now going to have to pay our share of fees and extra charges – to make up for what this bill will cost them in lost fees and charges from those the bill is designed to protect. I guess they don’t really care where the money is going to come from, as long as it comes to them in ever increasing amounts.

And our lobbyist-funded legislators seem more than happy to make sure it does.

(Is anyone else enjoying the irony of our taxes going to bail out companies who, in turn, are using those same tax dollars to hire lobbyists to make sure they can continue to rip off the taxpayers?)

So here’s the problem: Every single piece of legislation or new policy decision carries the risk – more likely the certainty – that there will be unintended consequences resulting. Let’s subsidize farmers to grow corn for ethanol – surprise! Food prices skyrocketed. Let’s pretend that it doesn’t matter if we loan money to people who have no hope of paying it back – surprise! Did we all just lose 40% of our net worth? Gee. Let’s ‘believe in’ Global Warming – it will be swell. We can declare a whole bunch of taxpayer dollars designated to ‘create Green Jobs’ – never mind that we don’t know what those would look like or to whose private pockets all that money will really go. So far it seems to be going to hire the ‘down and out’ to clean up parks and stuff – after the largest portion is skimmed off the top to pay ‘administrators’ and ‘contractors.’ Now there’s something that is going to add significantly to our GNP and pull us out of this recession!

Our elected officials – state and federal – are pumping out such legislation at an amazing rate. They have to. They are going to have to run for office again on their ‘record.’ And goodness knows they need to be reelected in order to get the big payoffs that people in power enjoy.

Maybe those consequences were actually intended?