I haven't been on 1st street, Snohomish to photograph in a while. I do traverse a good bit of it on my morning run everyday, but seeing it in the dark (yes, I start early) doesn't really tell me much about what is happening there.
On the way, I frequently pass a set of four, small identical houses on C avenue just before crossing 2nd street. It really is a "if you seen one, you've seen them all" kind of situation. So, there's one of them above.
But today, it is really raining hard. Cleaning the air and giving us the smell that we all know and love of a fresh rain storm. Washing the dust off the trees that accumulated when the Oregon smoke settled over us. Thankfully giving the vegetation and earth a good soaking to reduce/eliminate the risk of wildfires. Perking up the fall flowers.
Welcome to life in the PNW where rain is not the hassle of many places. It is the problem solver, a comfort to those who grew up here. Not just part of life...it is life for this temperate rainforest.
Enjoy.
Since you really cannot walk outside the house now without getting tangled in a spider's web at some point, I bring you today's required spider. this one is actually busy adding to the web in hopes of eating soon.
This coneflower in our front yard is still in full bloom. While many of the blossoms are past their sell-by date, there remain many, such as the one above, that are cutting a fine figure.
Starting the first day of autumn, it has rained every day. Some days, it just rains all day, others we get intermittent showers. Once, it even seemed squally and we got sudden downpours that came and went abruptly as we drove along the road.
But this day was one of less frequent showers and I was able to get out and have a look about. the topic today is gates and doors, mostly.
At the end of 2014, we headed back to London (after our spring semester there) and stayed at a strange little AirBnB in Brixton. While there, we went to Hyde Park to the extravaganza that passes for a Christmas market on steroids in the UK. It was filled with places to eat (lots of German sausages and American hamburgers) and things to buy (including a young woman in a headscarf selling Christmas ornaments!). But the big draw was the carnival rides. I took a few shots to try to capture the motion of the rides.
The above spider in our front yard is clearly working hard to get in a few lst meals before the weather gets too cold for survival.
We've had some rain and a little breeze and now the smoke is basically gone. The meteorologist assures us that the fine particles are still about and with the fires still raging, we could see more smoke, but for now, we are pretty much back to normal.
We've been mostly hidden away in our homes waiting for the smoke to clear. This is the view in front of our house on Sunday morning. It may have been cloudy, I don't know. Couldn't tell. It is possible there was some fog mixed in with the smoke. Can't really tell that either. There were times on Saturday when one could see ash falling.
We currently sit at home more isolated than ever. In addition to the virus limiting our movements, we are suffering severe smoke from the Oregon fires. Not really any sunlight today, just a brighter yellow sky filled with dust and smoke. We sit in side with all the windows and doors closed and wait. It is not even fit weather to wander around the block in search of a few small things to photograph. There is no sound outside or man nor beast and hardly a breath of air is stirring. No one walking along the sidewalk, no pets abroad. Just dust covered trees and an eerie yellow light filling the world.
In the meantime, we remember better times. Today, we make a short journey back to March of 2014 during spring break while on our London semester. Since everything now feels so alien and foreign, it seems fitting that we explore for a few minutes a place that, compared to Snohomish, really is.
With all the restaurants seating people on the street among the parking spaces, most place are open in Snohomish even if it is only by appointment.
The spiders seem to be making the last push of the summer and spinning large, in-your-face size webs everywhere. It is hard to walk between two trees and not get web in your face these days.
About the only thing to do at the beach was to notice that we could see prominent mountains from here. Looking back toward Mukilteo, we can see what I'm pretty sure is Glacier Peak in the distance. It is the one with snow still on the top. It is the most isolated stratovolcano in Washington and one of (if not the) most active. Calm down, this is judged based on past performance not current activity.
As we made a short exploration of Whidbey island near Langley on our way back to the ferry in Clinton, we found birds! This is the first time we've found a collection of water birds since we've been in Washington. Above you can see a gathering of ducks and a swan.
We visited Leavenworth on a bright, sunny day and had a stroll about. As you can see, there are people about, but it is by no means crowded. Most of the restaurants are in business, but the majority of eating is moved outside. For those of you who are interested in such things, we are right at the foot of the Cascades, looking west.
We are finally taking some short trips to see something different than the view out our front window. On this day we drove along Hwy 2 east to Leavenworth, WA. Along the way, the road eventually follows the Wenatchee River out of the mountains. We stopped a few places to have a look. Summer is a terrible time for landscape photos here since we switch from all clouds all the time to all blue sky all the time. This makes for harsh light and uninteresting skys. Nevertheless, here we go.
In keeping with our plan to visit nurseries in what would normally seem to be the off-season, we stopped by a hydrangea nursery to pick up a few additions for our (portion of the) yard. Who knew that they come in such a wide variety of colors? I guess, everyone but me. Here, we see that even the leaves and stems are in colors no normally expected.
Found a small oxbow lake beside the Snoqualmie River, not far from Monroe and decided to visit one morning to have a look about. Seemed like it might be a place to see a few water birds. No such luck. Lots of lily pads and a good bit of morning fog, but almost no birds at all. We saw one duck as we were leaving and heard one or two sparrow-like creatures that we could never get a good look at. Other than that, all was dead silent and still. Didn't even see insects on the surface of the water.
Today, we see a few of the flowers that remain at the Flower World nursery.
Naturally, since the flowers for this year are nearly done, we headed out to Flower World in Maltby to see that there is. So today, you get mostly leaves.
