In a bit of a slump here...

I haven't done a very good job of keeping up on things again. I'm in a bit of a slump. Our weather changed in an instant, it seemed, from summer to fall - and I'm having difficulty making the adjustment myself. It's not that we haven't been doing things - we have. I'm just resisting the routine of documenting things at the end. I'm resisting time altogether!

It's been a year out of routines.

This year we didn't get to the usual 'events' like the Flower and Garden Show, the Tulip Festival or the State Fair. We didn't have terrific gardening success - managing somehow to end up with all 'male' pumpkin seeds or something, and not having enough warm weather for most of our dahlias to come up or our tomatoes to produce the usual crop. We didn't get to see our son on his birthday and I forced myself to get by my father's birthday without comment here. (On the other hand, we've been to the nursery countless times this year - all year - and certainly spent a lot of time 'street walking' in Seattle, also typical for us.) On the plus side we had some visitors but on the down side I wasn't a very good tour guide again.* And yes, we added 'new' to our lives in small other ways as well, for example: We discovered a new donut place in Monroe (not exactly 'on the plus side' in the current meaning of the phrase but 'on the plus side' for us personally, I admit) and tried out a new hiking trail** to balance it out.

Anyway, I'm also feeling out of the norm in carrying on a blog - a one-way street, as it were - when blogging has become something else (something for professionals dedicated to a cause or at least a subject) and Facebook has become the preferred way to keep up with family and friends. I just don't want to be on Facebook.

So - lots of excuses for being out of touch. But pictures to make up for it. A trip in to Seattle to the market to see the flowers, a hike to Wallace Falls, and a long drive on the Cascade Highway:

* A side story about that to help me expunge my despair in this regard: My mother and sisters visited niece Lauren in Boston a year or so ago and remarked afterward about how impressive and successful Lauren is - including that she drove them around Boston with ease and knew where to go and how to get there. I agree wholeheartedly that Lauren is wonderful - I have just an incredible bunch of amazingly wonderful nieces and nephews - but remember thinking at the time that getting around her city shouldn't really be an amazing thing since she's lived there for years. But of course I myself managed to get lost twice in the course of my mother/sister's visit. I'm mortified. I've lived here for years too.

** This hike was not a complete success because it rained, and while the trail - marked 'easy' by sadistic forest rangers - may have started at an elevation of 350 feet and ended at an elevation of 550 feet it nevertheless scaled a 1500 foot ridge 3 times in the course of start to finish and was steep enough that stairs were required through 80% of it just because physics wouldn't have allowed walking otherwise... enough said.