Lake Munson Views

Lake Munson is still host to some favorite water birds. The hatchlings are beginning to grow and so you might see a great blue heron with a stripe of white down his back from earlier. Here is what seems to be a baby great blue rather than a little green heron.

Checking my fig trees and other Friday Stuff

I've been away from the homestead for the past five weekends this year and the yard is crying for attention. There is so much to do which I have set aside with all the traveling and this weeknd I'm going to focus on the yard, the grass, the fig trees, the butterfly garden, and maybe even the compost bin! I also have to have the front porch rebuilt but I need to finish paying off the master bath rebuild before I take on another debt!

I put in a load of wash and made coffee. I went out to check the fig trees last night and the crop is good but they seem to be growing more slowly than in years past and are still kind of puny. Too much rain splits the fruit, which was a problem last year. This year I will not have this problem with the fruit. Usually, by mid June they are ready to pick. I have three trees. Two are brown turkey and one is celeste, I believe.

Two are mature and very large and one is still relatively small. I planted them on the south side of my house to get the radiated heat from the brick and on the bermed land for good drainage. But one is too close to the house and is tall but not bushy. I have been meaning to dig it up and replant it but I am sure the roots will give me fits. The biggest tree had to be majorly cut back when Frances came through and the neighbors huge oak fell on my roof and smashed it! The roofers needed to get up close to the roof line to fix it on the south side and the poor turkey fig tree got a haircut!

There is also some kind of animal under the front of the house whch has to be tended to in some reasonably humane way. I can hear him scraping when I am at the computer...

I also checked the butterfly garden and filled the bird feeders which always pleases my resident cardinals. The milkweed is droopy and the old flowers have dropped off and new ones will bud if they get enough water. Of course the lantana is growing like crazy as it does with or without lots of rain! My front yard rosemary is so big that it is extra woody and probably needs a careful pruning which I have never done. I planted it there so neighbors could smell it if they brushed up against it and even pick some for themselves if they felt like it.

My side pond has gotten kind of muddy but the new fish are thriving and I saw them yesterday. I have three. They will probably have babies next year and I can stock my friends ponds again. The front pond was so difficult to manage being so close to the front porch that I dug it up this spring and the rocks are still in my backyard waiting to be made into a new pond. I may map that out this weekend as well.

I intend to cut the grass this weekend and plant calladium bulbs in the front garden around the oaks which I have had in the refrigerator since they went to sale in February. I also have to clean the rest of the leaves out of this garden. Then I may tackle the area where the old pond was which is weedy and very messy. I have to build up the new drainage wall and sod it. My sod from last year didn't do very well I think because it didn't get rooted into the ground too effectively. When I was young my dad used a roller on our sod on Belanger Rd. I just used my feet.

The back yard needs cutting and lots of weeding and I still have to get rid of the poison ivy. The blueberry plants didn't make any fruit this year which was a disappointment. I hope it was just watering but maybe I don't understand how to grow them very well yet. Plants are forgiving and they will often patiently wait until you learn how to care for them properly. My two new pear trees need to be examined and I have to tend them as well. Not sure if I have any pears on them...

I do intend to see "Prairie Home Companion" tonight.....Saturday night is supposed to be a singing session with the girls. I really think the best use of my time on Saturday night will be working with the Boss 532 digital four track to get some tracks recorded and mixed. I just haven't spent enough time with it. I have also intended to find an mp3 site to link to, so some of my music can be more easily shared. Linda and I have been meaning to book studio time. We both have mixing and recording equipment though, but it takes so long for amateurs to make recordings!

I will take some hammock time to finish my latest book and I'll include a list of books I have read lately in my next post. I am sending mom "The Stone Diaries" which I know she will enjoy.

I hope you guys have a productive day and that Jon's first day on the job goes well. Stay well groomed and dress nicely, Nathan. Glad you updated your resume. You need a haircut! I will also send the correspondence from UWF which instructs you as to the issue we discussed last night...

Now on to work!

Congratulations, JonP !

This guy knows a lot about auto parts! Let's make it 100% employment on Hillview Terrace!

Clam Creek

This is a view of Clam Creek and the driftwood which graces the mouth of this tidal creek on Jekyll Island.

Pileated Woodpecker on Jekyll Island

Of the half dozen or so pileated woodpeckers I have managed to photograph this past year, this one came out the most clear. I figure if I keep photographing them eventually one of them will be an ivory bill woodpecker and I'll die a satisfied woman!

The Lost Art of Tie-Dye

This is a tie dye design patented by the fellow behind it. Popular with musicians. He also has banjos, fiddles, mandos, and dulcimers. But he can't make an autoharp. Too bad....

Jekyll Island

I was out wandering again this weekend. I went up to Jekyll Island to meet the parental units at an old hotel reminiscent of The Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island. We went around the island a few times to see everything and I discovered Clam Creek, which is a tidal creek beloved by painters in the south. The little park surrounding it had resident pileated woodpeckers as well as tame rabbits.

On Sunday, I stopped at White Springs to visit . We took a dip in the Suwannee, made a jambalaya and yacked about music on the Satellite radio. I photographed another pair of pileated woodpeckers but of course the photos are blurry because they always seem to soar off just when I get them in focus.

Now I guess I'll hunker down for hurricane season. Nah, I'll play music, kayak, and spring hop all summer like usual.

54th Florida Folk Festival

Me and my pop

Here is my pop. I like this picture. We both look happy. Do ya think I inherited his nose? I will get to see my folks again soon if we meet up at Jekyll Island when they go to NC for a visit with friends. I wish they would go to the Florida Folk Festival which is this coming weekend. But it's a hot weekend with too much walking for my mother. At any rate, I'm performing with "Toss The Feathers" Saturday morning at 10 am in the Tower and Sunday at 10 am Under The Oaks. I MC the Azalea stage Saturday 1230pm to 3 and Sunday 3:30pm to 6. Ya'll come!

Drifting off Grand Pacific and Margerie Glacier

Over two hundred years ago Captain George Vancouver sailed down the Pacific Coast and turned east, searching for the Northwest Passage. While Vancouver remained behind, ill in his cabin, First Officer Joseph Whidbey lowered a boat and set out to survey the area. Pushing through the masses of floating ice, they made their way into a large open bay, blocked at its northern end by a great ice wall. This was the first descrption we have of Glacier Bay. By the late 1800's the massive ice glacier that filled what we know now as Glacier Bay had retreated 50 miles, opening up a brand new waterway. Few visitors, other than the Tlingit people, who hunted seal from temporary camps along the shore had seen this new world.

The first to bring it to the attention of the outside world was a man well-known for his adventerous spirit. In 1879 John Muir rode a steamer up from Seattle to the little town of Wrangell, where he hired a canoe and four native paddlers to take him north. From a vast wilderness of ice nearly a mile thick, the bay has emerged, now 65 miles long and filled with fjords and inlets. This park's 3.3 million acres were included in an international Biosphere Reserve, as well as a World Heritage Site that incorporates Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Kluane National Park and the Tatshenshini-Alesk Provincial Park in Canada.

On Tuesday, May 9th the Westerdam entered Chatham straight to the Cornwallis Pilot Station. With the pilots on board, we then continued north through Chatham Strait. This led us to Icy Strait which was first navigated by Captain Vancouver. We then sailed to the north of Sister's Island towards Glacier Bay. On entering Glacier Bay we picked up the Glacier Bay Park Rangers at 11am in Bartlett Cove. We then toured past Reid and Lamplugh Glaciers and held position off the spectacular Grand Pacific and Margerie Glaciers. The Grand Pacific had a calving while we were there and here are pictures of this Glacier. We were so close to the Glaciers I thought they would collapse on us, but of course, this did not happen. There were blooms of boiling water around the glacier and icebergs with gulls riding them,all around our ship.

As for global warming, it is difficult to get a sense of it in this part of the world since I have never seen this area until now. Global warming seems more evident to me from being subjected to so many violent hurricanes in the last few years and the generally more extreme and violent weather all around the lower 48.

I think I like the movies "Water World" and "The Fire Next Time" because they seem so likely to happen in the not too distant future. "The Fire Next Time"even begins with the destruction of New Orleans by a massive hurricane. People in the movie migrated north to Canada which was temperate and difficult to get into because they only took the very privileged. The area around the Mississippi had become an unliveable desert. If you read the CIA website, as I
often do, you discover that they believe that conflict over fresh water will be one of the great divisive issues on the planet in the future.

If all this ice melts from global warming, perhaps we will become a water world with only the tip of Mount Everest to be "dry land." It is more likely that coastal real estate will disappear and many of us will migrate north as the climate warms and the equatorial part of the world gets hotter. This has always seemed like a good reason to emigrate to Canada. Sometimes I wish my son would plan this for his own future because I truly do think that places like Florida will become unliveable in the very near future.

I want to see you dance again....

One of the great joys of my life has been watching my parents dance together. They danced together in the Crow's Nest on the Westerdam last week. I always think of this Neil Young song when I see them move together like old lovers on the dance floor. I love to sing it and here are the words....


Harvest Moon by Neil Young

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleepin
We could dream this night away.
But theres a full moon risin
Lets go dancin in the light
We know where the musics playin
Lets go out and feel the night.
Because Im still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because Im still in love with you
On this harvest moon.
When we were strangers
I watched you from afar
When we were lovers
I loved you with all my heart.
But now its gettin late
And the moon is climbin high
I want to celebrate
See it shinin in your eye.
Because Im still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because Im still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

Busking in Victoria: Dave Harris

One thing I liked about the Northwest was the busking in Victoria and Seattle, something far too untidy and threatening to the good citizens of the South. In a brief moment of respite from bus touring in Victoria, we stopped downtown by the Parliament which is across from the waterfront. Naturally , I went immediately to the dock and found Dave Harris busking. He was singing a Leadbelly song which I have done for many years, On a Monday.

I didn't know that it was a Leadbelly song when I first learned it from a Ry Cooder LP. Nor did I realize that not too many women sang such songs in those days. But I digress. He was so talented I was mesmerized for the brief time we had to look around before we had to get back on the bus...But his blues skill made an indelible impression on my musical brain and I took this picture. Of cours I also sang along. He played mandolin, a couple of national steel guitars, harmonica, and a one footed drum set. He is also reputedly proficient on fiddle which I did not hear him play.

Abkhazi Garden: Victoria, BC

One of the amazing experiences of the preceding ten days in my life was touring Victoria, British Columbia. We visited the Abkhazi Garden on Saturday and also trekked around the city. There were beautiful well-tended gardens and yards everywhere we looked. It was full-bloom spring in Victoria and the Abkhazi Garden was redolent with lovely flowering plants and trees. I brought back some souvenirs from this stop: Butterfly weed seeds, Black-eyed susan seeds, and Shrubby penstemon seeds...all native Canadian seeds. I hope I can get them to grow. . .If only I had an easy-to-erect greenhouse...now where would I get one of those? And how would I get one?

Happy Mother's Day!

This is my amazing mother on Mother's Day in Pike's Market in Seattle. She is a good sport. While dad went to the Boeing Museum, she took the 174 all the way downtown with me to see the market. She even agreed to pose with a fish! She is fearless and I am so lucky to have her. I was a bit nervous on the bus but she rode like a trooper and didn't worry at all. I want to be more like her!

See You Later, Alligator!

"North, to Alaska, we're going north, the rush is on!"

Remember, sweety, you can buy a lazy-boy at the Goodwill for about $49.95, and a long twin for about the same price....Hope you passed management fundamentals! ...eyeheartubest...