Every home has its traditions and when families are assembled from different backgrounds, there are multiple traditions to follow. As a result, there are things to open and food to eat on Christmas eve as well as Christmas day at our house here in Snohomish.
Another Christmas in Staunton, I think one of the last we spent at home, Cathy and Robert visited as did Jeanne. Roo, of course, had to be in the middle of everything.
Back when we owned (well, us and the bank) a house and had a dining table that was clear, we celebrated Christmas with lots of food, friends and family.
The arcades in Melbourne are always decorated for the season. It is just like being in, say, England, except it warm outside (and the accent is different, the age of the building is much younger, etc.).
Today is a special day in many places around the world. Unfortunately, we are not able to travel as we once did to see the many ways that Christmas is celebrated. So, I thought I'd bring you a few recent memories of our trip to Budapest so that we could all, once again, see what the world is supposed to be like. To celebrate Christmas, we will take a bit of a stroll through the Advent market that surround St. Stephen's Basilica.
Down the street a ways is this curious plant in a front yard. Not only does it have hydrophobic leaves giving us interesting water drops everywhere, it is also multicolored in an unusual way.
While it is chilly outside, it is not really cold... mostly in the 40's. I suppose that this is the reason that we begin to see evidence of new growth coming so early in the season. This tree was full of these buds.
Driving back from the grocery I noticed that there seemed to be a cap cloud forming over Mt. Rainier. So, once we got home and I unloaded the groceries, I scampered around the corner to where I know from previous photo shoots that I have a good view of the mountain and snapped a few.
We have a platform bird feeder attached to one of the kitchen windows where E can watch the birds while she cooks. It turns out that our living room has a bay window allowing me to see it from the side without scaring the birds away. So I set of the tripod, got out the long lens and snapped away over the space of a couple days.
With a little break in the weather, we begin today with an exploration of what remains after 2.5 months of near perpetual rain. As you can imagine, this will involve lots of leafy and twigy bits with water drops on them.
In Everett there is a small arboretum on the cliff near the shore. It is a bit of an afterthought since it is bordered on one side by backyards and on the other by a golf course. None of that silly wandering-in-a-serene-place,-isolated-from-the-rest-of-the-world-while-you-enjoy-nature stuff here. Just be sure that you aren't in the line of sight of the golfer and try not to stare too much at the neighbors back yard.
Among the most colorful flowers are orchids and it common for a nursery to have a few inside even in the winter.
Inside where it is warm, the nursery has a variety of flowers in bloom. Here are a few of them.
So we decided to make a short road trip to the Skagit Valley to visit a nursery that sells great plants and has a good collection of holiday items to browse. When we arrived E noticed that there were hummingbirds finding food among the flowers. So I grabbed my iPhone and snapped a few images.
That the water drops act as lenses is always a great thing. Not only does this add to the visual interest of the composition be begin able to see beyond the range of things in focus, it reminds me of a bit of science history. In the late 17th century/early 18th century, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek made his drops of glass rather than water and used them to produce the first microscope with reasonably good magnification and clarity. He was invited into the Royal Society in London in 1680 for his ability to make these lenses and see and describe the small bits of the world he saw.
What you see in my drops are mostly more bits of the bush. No animalcules to be seen here.
The Snohomish river has receded a bit from its recent high water mark but it is still rushing by at a startling pace.
As you can see, there is still a murky sky over the turbid waters under this trestle. We did get a few brief glimmers of sunshine but it ain't over yet. More atmospheric rivers are coming. More days of sitting inside and waiting for the rain to end. Noah would be envious.
Sometimes the thing that catches my eye is not so much the composition, and this one is not amazing, it is the combination of colors. I like the yellow in the background with its almost brushed in appearance.
Just outside our front gate is a bush I cannot name that was covered with rain from the many days we've been getting it here. All it does this fall is rain...endlessly. We are close to breaking a record here. Just to putting this in perspective, Snohomish averages over 50 inches of rain a year.
Thanksgiving is a time of traditions for most families and we are no different. Since this year, in celebration of vaccinations all around, we here in Snohomish hosted at total of 18 people for the big meal. This meant that Seth and I made a trip to the rental place and fetched a couple large round tables and folding chairs to seat them all.
This broken limb, standing out as an open wound is slowly be healed over by the moss and lichen growing around it. Perhaps this sort of thing is where we get the expression of "time heals all wounds". Perhaps not.
There was another break in the weather and I ventured out with camera and tripod in hand to explore the neighborhood. Today I focused mostly on mosses and lichens. There is a peaceful elegance to the chaos of the tree limbs and the burst of epiphytes that grow on them.
As the day progressed and the sun rose higher, the fog gave way to some clear skies and we could see a few of the snowy mountain peaks on a drive back west toward home.
The Skykomish river flows near the highway in sections of the route and there is a place to stop and have a look near the town of Index. Since there was a dab of sunlight peeking through the trees and around the rocks, this seemed like a good place to make a few long exposures.
As you can see above, there is a lot of green in the water. I suppose this is partly due to the silt lead the stream is carrying and partly due to the reflected light of the trees. Whatever the source, it give the river a delicate pastel color.
Once you leave the floodplains of the rivers near the Puget Sound where we live, you enter seriously wet areas that really represent the temperate rainforest that this portion of the state is known to be. Here we find trees with branches covered in moss everywhere. I periodically try to photograph the way the sun lights the fringing moss along these leaves and am never happy with the result. At least in this image you get the general idea.
With all the rain we've been having lately, when there was a break in the clouds, E and I took the opportunity to drive towards the Cascades to see what we could see. At the beginning of the trip, before the sun (ha, ha!) had a chance to burn away the fog, we got to see some extensive fog on the mountains.
One of the few places in Snohomish I can go to get a reasonable view of the mountains to the east is a small park along the shore of the Snohomish river just outside town.
One of the things we do a great job of growing here is moss. there are companies that specialize in removing moss from your roof or sidewalk. ut no one removes it from trees. It just looks natural.
There are still a few flowers to be found out and about. These, as you would expect, are getting long in the tooth, but they still possess their charm. Just like me I suppose. Older may not be better, but it is at least different in a good way, Right? Besides, older is always better than not getting older.
After all the rain we've had lately, the Snohomish river is bursting at the seams...er, banks. Above you can see the swirling eddies as a tree is carried downstream.
When I go out for a photowalk these days, I find that I have to work pretty hard to find something that I haven't already photographed (a lot). On this particular outing, I spied some trees and a fun gate.
At some time in the past, there was a movie theater in Snohomish named Pegasus. This was well before we arrived. When we moved here, this building was a nostalgia store and tried to sell lots of junk. the folks that owned it retired and sold it. Now it is coming back as a couple much more upscale stores. While I'd still prefer it to be an art house theater, I'll take what I can get.
We've been having a torrent of rain here for the past couple weeks. Much more than usual. the rain let up for a few hours the other day and I got as far as the front porch to see if I could find a few things to photo. Perhaps the most interesting is to see drops of water on the bare twigs.
You likely recall my poor attempt to get an image by the waterfront in Everett. This spot is hardly a park since it is only a parking lot next to Port Gardner Bay. But it is easy to get to and seemed to have a bit of potential. Rather than suffer in the rain for almost nothing, I've returned when there is a bit of sunshine and no rain to see what I can do.
I realize that the hard drought of this year was not in the portion of Washington where we live. Yet, things did get a bit dry toward the end of the summer. Well, rest assured that this is now over. In October we had two months worth of rain, and we are getting more in November. The shows at higher elevations are well and truly underway.
Rest assured that we are near the end of leaves-on-the-ground season. Today I thought I'd show a few that were doing a nice job of showing off beds of water between squalls.
Out by the sound, there is a small park...well a parking lot next to a sidewalk at least. Here, in the rain, I attempted a photo. It sucks but it is all I got.to show for standing in the rain for 5 minutes. The plan was to get a nice smooth milky water in a long exposure, maybe a few of the clouds streaking across the sky, and showing off the distant break in the clouds. MY exposure was too short for any of that. But I did not want to stand in the rain for a 2 minute exposure so I took a 25 second one. Not enough.
And this post is not enough either. Sorry for my poor showing. Today. Some days the bear gets you.
