a brief and jubilant announcement

I just wrote “The End” on Finding Home, the third and last book in my Yellowstone novel set.  I had the original idea for them in September, 1999.  I was sitting in front of Grand Geyser, five incredible bursts, absolutely enthralled, when I thought, “Wow, this would make a terrific time travel device.”

Grand Geyser. The eruption that started it all, in point of fact.

And now. 276,000 words (well, actually more like 350,000, but not all of them are in the finished product) later, here we are.  I should say, that’s 276,000 words for all three books in total, not just for Finding Home, which topped out at ~85,000 words.

Finding Home will be available for purchase later this summer.

Its predecessors, Repeating History and True Gold, are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iTunes, and Smashwords (see links to the left).

Off to see the Rhodies

We have a lot of unusual gardens here in the Pacific Northwest, and by unusual I mean they showcase plants most people have never seen nor heard of.

Now I can hear you saying, everybody knows rhododendrons.  They’re basic landscaping shrubs here, with their big leathery leaves and their clusters of flowers that can get bigger than a baby’s head.

But those are hybrid rhododendrons, created by crossing and recrossing plants found around the world.  The Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way, Washington, just north of Tacoma across the King County line, is sort of a botanical savings bank, with seven hundred different kinds of rhody species growing on acreage owned by the Weyerhaeuser Company, next to their headquarters campus.

Most of them aren’t as showy as the garden varieties that are their descendants.  And even on my visit in May the companion plants almost outshone the main attraction.  But some of them were dropdead gorgeous, and others were so different from garden-variety rhodies as to not even seem the same species.

Anyway, here’s some of what I saw:

First, the rhododendrons:

Some rhododendrons (see the white one in the sunbeam) are more tree than shrub.

Some species rhododendrons don’t need any botanical tweaking to be as gorgeous as the garden hybrids.

I love the bell-shape flowers on this rhody. Pink’s not my favorite color, but these were just so pretty.

Splotched rhododendron blossoms are my favorite kind. This cluster is about the size of my open hand, and the golden splotch is the finishing touch.

And the companion plants:

This, believe it or not, is a kind of dogwood called bunchberry. It makes a lovely little ground cover, and blooms for several weeks in spring with blossoms that look just like miniatures of the ones you find on the tree-sized version.

I have a thing for columbines, and for blue flowers. Aren’t these gorgeus?

These chubby dwarf columbines were in the alpine section of the garden.

This is a Himalayan blue poppy, which is sort of the Holy Grail of blue garden flowers, and notoriously difficult to grow in most climates. But not here…

These are jack-in-the-pulpits, an Eastern North American woodland flower. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any in person before.

These are candelabra primroses. If I had any luck whatsoever at growing primroses from seed, I’d like to have some of these in my garden.

This is a tree peony blossom. It looks more like an Oriental poppy on steroids.

This photo should be called “survival of the fittest.” The blue blossoms are Ajuga reptans, aka carpet bugle, and the white flowers are Galium odoratum, aka sweet woodruff. Both are aggressive spreaders, but they really do look lovely in spring as they duke it out.

This is the patio outside of the conservatory (yes, there are rhody species which are too tender even for this part of the world). The two enormous white shrubs are doublefile Viburnums, and were absolutely covered with bees.

And, last, but not least by any means, if there’s an iris, I’m going to take a picture of it. They’re my absolute favorite flowers of all time. I’m not sure if this one is a Siberian iris, or if it’s an Oregon or Louisiana variety, but it’s awfully pretty.

All in all, I highly recommend a trip to the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden if you happen to be in this neck of the woods in the spring.

And, since I haven’t mentioned it in a while, if you like my writing here, you may enjoy my fiction.  My two novels, Repeating History and True Gold, are available from Amazon and Smashwords and most of the other usual suspects.  I hope you take a look.  And the third book in the series will be coming out this summer.

Yet another new park

I keep stumbling across lovely new parks lately.  I don’t know if it’s because I’ve just been obtuse in the past or what, but I like it.  The process sort of reminds me of new car shopping, how when you’ve decided which model you’re going to buy, all of a sudden you see that model everywhere you go.  But at any rate, here’s another good walking park, near Puyallup (pew-al’-up, in case you were wondering), Washington, with pictures, of course.

South Hill Community Park is largely taken up with sports fields for soccer, etc., but there’s also a rather big wetland and forest area with a loop trail winding through it.  A separate trail, named for Nathan Chapman, who was one of the first soldiers killed in the war in Afghanistan, leads from this park to the Heritage Recreation Center a little over a mile and a half away.

It was a lovely place to take a walk on a rare warm spring day:

The beginning of the trail, between the road and the ball fields, with crabapple trees.

Across the ball fields to the woods.

The wetlands, with cattails.

Into the woods.

Goatsbeard blossoms.

Around the bend.

Wild western bleeding hearts in bloom.

The boardwalk across the wetlands.

The expanse of water the boardwalk crosses.

I’m looking forward to exploring the seasons in this park, just as I am for the others in the area.

I’m going to miss this place

A sad story aired on the local news here about a month ago.  Van Lierop Bulb Farm is no more.  They’re closing down operations due to the owners’ retirement, and the shop, and more importantly, the display garden, will be closing for good at the end of May.  This leaves the Puyallup Valley, about an hour south of Seattle and once one of the world’s pre-eminent daffodil growing areas, with only one active bulb farm where their used to be over a dozen.

Change can be good.  But this change sure isn’t.

I mean, I understand about wanting to retire, and I understand about children not necessarily wanting to work in the family business, and I also understand about how it’s at least partly land values that have pushed farming out of the fertile valleys within commuting distance of the biggest city in the Pacific Northwest.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

At any rate, I made one last daffodil-season visit to Van Lierop’s a couple of weeks ago, and took pictures of the display garden.  While it was really obvious that the annual bulb-planting did not happen this past fall, daffodils are perennial bulbs, as are several other kinds.  And the trees and shrubs were still beautiful.  But the patches of ground where tulips and hyacinths, which aren’t as reliably perennial, used to crowd in past years were so bare.

Van Lierop’s was the place for Easter pictures in my neck of the woods, and a beautiful place on any given day between early March and early May.  And I’m going to miss it something fierce.

A view of the display garden at Van Lierop’s.

And another view, with weeping cherry trees.

Traditional yellow daffodils.

One forlorn clump of tulips.

A river of grape hyacinths, which would have been surrounded by tulips in past years.

More daffodils.  These are called Ice Follies.

Pieris japonica, one of our mainstay landscaping shrubs here.

That’s a blue squill in that enormous bed of hardy cyclamen foliage.

A bed full of daffodils.

An artsy view of the flowers.

Daffodils don’t have to be yellow.  These are descendants of a pink variety called Mrs. R.O. Backhouse.

early spring at Clark’s Creek

Clark’s Creek Park in Puyallup, Washington, to be precise.  I discovered this park last August, and at the time I wondered what it would look like in other seasons.  I meant to get back there in the fall when the big leaf maples turn school bus yellow, but somehow it didn’t happen.  Ah, well.  There’s always next year.

But we’ve been having the first 60+dF days so far this year this week, and I decided I needed to go for a walk.

This is what I saw:

Robin and worm        

When I first got there, a light shower had just ended, and the robins were out full force on the park’s baseball field, worm-hunting.  This fellow was quite successful.

Pieris

The landscaping around the parking lot is rather pretty.  This shrub is a pink-tinged Pieris japonica, one of the prettiest early spring bloomers around.

A huge pink heather

The heather’s been blooming for almost a month now, but it’s still gorgeous.

Clark’s Creek with alder catkins

This is Clark’s Creek.  The bits dangling from the tree are alder catkins.  Pretty in the wild, but I used to have an alder tree in my yard, and if it wasn’t dripping catkins it was dripping twigs and leaves.  I was glad when the condo association decided it didn’t need its roots in our septic system and cut it down.

Maple? flowers?

I’m not sure what these are, except that they’re some sort of very stamen-y blossom.  They may well be the blossoms of big leaf maples.  The tree was certainly big enough.

Mallard and friend

Your standard mallard, and a very similar but brownheaded version.  Clark’s Creek attracts lots of waterfowl, ducks and geese and coots among them.

Pussy willows

The pussy willows have gone past the fuzzy stage and are very stamen-y now, too.  Still awfully pretty, though.

Boy and heron

The land across the creek is private property, mostly people’s back yards.  These two sculptures were alongside the permanently-sandbagged creek bank.

Oregon grape, Oregon’s state flower

This is what Oregon grape (mahonia) looks like in full bloom.  Isn’t it lovely?

Golden shrub

I’m not sure what this little shrub is, or whether the color is new spring growth or the color it’ll be all year.

Wetlands buffer

The city’s been doing some wetlands restoration and protecting their work with a new split rail fence.

Telling us about ripaprian [sic] restoration

This is the explanatory sign about what they’ve been doing.  Note the creative spelling of ‘riparian.’ [g]

Wet tennis courts

The tennis courts after a spring rain.  When I was at the park a couple of days ago, in the warm sunshine, the courts were buzzing with people.

Indian plum

This is Indian plum (Oemleria).  It’s a native early blooming shrub.

Salmonberry blossom

This is salmonberry, Rubus sp., which means it’s closely related to blackberries, only the berries themselves are peachy-orange when ripe, and mealy rather than juicy.  It’s another native.

Skunk cabbage spathes

This is skunk cabbage (Lysichiton), and there’s a reason it’s called that.  A big patch of it will make you want to hold your nose.  But the big blossoms (technically they’re spathes — the tiny flowers cluster on the stalk in the center) pop up early early, and, as long as I don’t get close enough to smell them, they’re a glad sight in the spring.

Early azalea

And back to the landscaping around the parking lot, just before I left to go home.  Some rhododendrons and azaleas bloom really early (most bloom in May).  There used to be one in the yard of a duplex I once rented that bloomed in January.  This azalea isn’t quite that early, but it’s still awfully pretty.

And that was my walk through Clark’s Creek Park today, on a damp early spring afternoon.

a winter stroll

About three miles from my house is a place called Bradley Lake Park. It’s not a big place — the lake itself takes up most of the acreage, and the trail around it is less than a mile long (.8 of a mile, according to the little sign where the path from the parking lot Ts into the lake trail itself).  And it’s directly behind a Walmart.

But you’d never know that to look at it.  Or to walk through it.  I’ve seen a bald eagle catch a fish out of Bradley Lake.  I’ve seen rabbits and squirrels there, and of course the resident populations of coots, ducks, and Canada geese.  In the summertime it’s green and lush, and there are more wildflowers than you’d expect — ranging from skunk cabbage, which is much prettier than its name — it looks like bright yellow candles rising from the ground, Siberian miner’s lettuce with pinkish white flowers that look like something a kid would draw, wild geraniums (as opposed to pelargoniums), hawkweed, bleeding hearts, and even the occasional tiger lily.

But not in the wintertime.  Of course, here in western Washington state, winter isn’t what it is in other parts of the country, and if you didn’t know any better, some of the photos in the slideshow below look like they could have been taken in summer — especially those showcasing an unusually blue sky (no, it doesn’t rain all winter here) and bright green grass.  Our grass doesn’t go brown in the winter.  Unless it’s watered, it goes brown in the summer.

Winter is more subtle here, and it has more subtle beauties.  And this is what my little park behind the Walmart looks like in early February:

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Have a waterfall

In particular, you might want to have this one.  It’s Snoqualmie Falls.  The falls, for those not familiar with western Washington, are in the foothills of the Cascades less than an hour from Seattle, not far off of I-90, and are 268 feet tall according to Wikipedia.  I took a houseguest there last week, on a misty moisty day and cloudy was the weather, and they were really lovely and thundery.

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my quilts

And now for something completely different.  Just because.

Here is a link to a page with photos of all the quilts I’ve made in the last twenty-five years that are still in my possession or that I had enough prescience to take pictures of before I gave them away.  Be forewarned, it’s a huge page with a lot of pictures!

Finding Home, Chapter 1

I have posted Chapter 1 of my new novel Finding Home, the concluding story of my Yellowstone series, on my website.  I am well into the manuscript, and I hope to have the book published by late spring.

I hope you enjoy this preview.

34F at 500 feet, 64F at 5400 feet

Or, to put it in non-American terms, the high temperature for yesterday was 1dC at my home at 470 feet/143 meters altitude in the Puget Sound lowlands, and almost 18dC at Paradise at 5400 feet/1646 meters on Mt. Rainier.

The cause of this?  The technical term is temperature inversion.  If you want to know more about it, you can read this entry in Cliff Mass’s weather blog.  He’s a meteorology professor at the University of Washington and an expert on Pacific Northwest weather, and writes an interesting and entertaining blog.

But to this layperson, what it means is that my neighborhood has looked like this for most of the last two weeks:

My neighborhood in the fog yesterday.

So my friend L and I decided to go up to Paradise, which literally was a paradise in comparison, yesterday.

We got to Longmire, at 2700 feet, late in the morning.  It was already clear there, but still pretty cold, and more snow than I’ve seen there in most winter visits I’ve made (we had a lot of precipitation — rain in the lowlands and snow in the mountains — in December).  However, there was some evidence of melting and freezing in the form of these icicles hanging off the museum roof.

Icicles at Longmire

The gas station at Longmire is no longer functional, but contains an exhibit about the changing modes of transportation in the park in its 100+ years of existence.  It was actually colder inside the building than out, so we didn’t linger there.

Antique gas station and transportation museum at Longmire.

The melting and freezing resulted in some seriously beautiful ice crystal formations, too.  The crystals on this rock were almost an inch long, and the expanses of them on the snowbanks looked almost like fur.

Ice crystals on rock.

Snow covered in crystals at Longmire.

After wandering around Longmire for a little while, we headed on up to Paradise.  The road from the Nisqually Entrance to Longmire had been more than a bit slippery — plowed but icy — and I’d been a bit concerned about going on, but another effect of the temperature inversion was that the higher we went, the better the road conditions were.  By the time we got halfway to Paradise, it was bare and dry most of the way, if hemmed in by plowed snowbanks higher than the car.

Plowed road at Paradise.

We ate lunch at the visitor center, then went out and walked around one of the several snowcatted trails.  The one we took went around behind Paradise Inn, which is closed in the winter.  The cornices and other wind-blown snow formations were spectacular.  The sun beamed down and it was warm enough that a jacket was almost too much.  Just absolutely glorious.  I could feel the funk I’d been in since we’d first gotten socked in just evaporate.  It was wonderful.

Sledding at Paradise.

Paradise Inn half-buried in snow.

The Mountain, as we refer to it in this part of the world.

The Mountain behind the Inn, and the snowcatted trail.

It was very hard to come back down to the gloom when the day was over.

But it was one of the best things I’ve done so far this year.  I love living two hours from Paradise.