A slow day but the beach

It was a slow day, not much happening.  So I decided to go to Edmonds Beach.  Took this picture. 

JJ and Pam in Santa Cruz

My sister Pam is taking a vacation to Santa Cruz and Aptos.  A big step for her.  Here she is, with college roomie JJ likely on West Cliff Drive.  She looks like she is having a great time, so glad she's making it a success.  Many thanks to JJ for spending some time with her. 

Healing Hydrangea

 Check out my hydrangea plant.  From the wedding.  I planted it where Dennis chose.  Put a fancy ($13) bag of compost in where we planted.  It looked very very bad.  I cut off the flowers.  All the leaves turned black.  Stems were black. Looked like a goner.  But I talked to it, reminded it of the fancy compost.  

Look!  It's coming back!  All kind of new leaves.  Now, can I get it through the winter.  These bushes grow all over the place around here.

View near Deception Pass

 During our La Conner trip, we took a lunch cruise down the Swinomish Channel our into the Salish Sea and to Deception Pass, a pass between Whidbey Island and Fidalgo Island.  Big bridge, always fun to travel to.  This photo does show what it looks like.  Western Washington, that rain forest where I live.

My potato harvest

 My potato harvest.  Hey, I must have planted fingerling potatoes, who knew?  Pretty good amount.  I like planting potatoes (in my farm) because they give a satisfying amount of foliage and it's always funs (like a treasure hunt) to find the potatoes.  So far, I've fried some up.  Mashed is next

Informal family picture at Naomi's wedding

 

A more informal picture from Naomi's wedding in late June.  You can't see Scoutie in the yellow dress.  But we have Melina and Chris in the picture.  But everybody's there including my brother Charlie and my sister Pam

Mural of Skagit County Agriculture

 On our trip to La Conner, we enjoyed our visit to the Museum of Northwest Art.  This is a large mural, Mural of Skagit County Agriculture, 1951 by William Cumming.  A WSA project.  A family member stored it in his barn.  They dragged it out one day and saw a picture of the back side of cows and re-discovered.  Huge and attractive.  I've seen it or a picture of it before.

They had a fundraiser, they took an image, overwrote a grid and you could claim one of the squares.  We did claim L6 (or similar) and made a contribution.

No car vacation

 We recently returned from a 3 night trip to the small arts-oriented town to La Conner.  Designed to be a 'no car' vacation, we took the amtrak train from Edmonds to Mount Vernon and then the local bus Skagit Transit to La Conner.  The idea was to be dropped in front of the hotel.  That didn't quite work out but it was easy to get there.  You can walk to everything in La Conner; it's all local, no chains. 

We didn't need a car!  It worked!

We also took a boat ride on the last day.  This looks like the boat but we took the lunch cruise to Deception Pass bridge.  The top picture is taken on the boat by a fellow passenger.

Lunch with Danny

We had a lunch with Danny recently.  He has a six week sabbatical from work and he invited to have lunch with him.  He's looking good.  Not sure that he has a particular agenda for his time off but being relaxed.  They have new puppy and a good plan to replace their damaged rug.