Susan’s sister DeAnn and her kids visited Seattle last week. We had a great time with them! Malcolm especially (OK, mostly) loved the “instant siblings”, and it was nice to have someone besides us to play with and entertain him for a change :).
Oh and the weather was fabulous. Come back any time!
Snaps are here.
our neighbor Judy designs sets for children’s plays (and has been doing so for around 15 years … since her kids where that age). Her husband Doug is often beavering away at wood projects related to her stage productions in the garage off of our shared alley.
They invited us and the Rathbuns across the street to a production of Princess and the Pea on Friday, which was great! The middle-school kids where surprisingly good, the sets were wonderful and our kids were enchanted. Pics are here.
man we are sore from removing 5-10 yards of fill and adding nearly 10,000 lbs of gravel, but our gravel garden path is ‘in’.
We have lots of lavender from the Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sale, including Hidcote, English and Spanish varieties of different heights, plus some herbs and other herbaceous border plants for along the path. By the time we’re done, none of the lousy grass sod we laid down last season will remain. And not a moment too soon… it is crap.
This is quite literally ‘laying the groundwork’ for our garden but hopefully now the more fun part of adding plants begins in earnest.
after seeing Penguins I spent the rest of the day digging a big hole and planting a Coral Bark Japanese Maple along our fence. That’s three new ‘anchor tenants’ in our garden including the ‘Everred’ Laceleaf Japanese Maple
and a Hardy Kiwi to grow on the trellis over the gate.
The kiwi produces grape-sized kiwi fruit without the skin, fuzz or seeds, I’m excited to see what it produces!
Our work for the weekend is far from over though: We have about 9000 lbs of gravel to set in for our garden path, and I’m going to pop by the Edible Plant Sale at Seattle Tilth up the road tomorrow to pick up cherry tomatoes for my friends. I’m also on the hunt for an olive tree as I’ve read that arbequina spanish olives do OK here, and I’ve got just the spot (a sunny, western, warm concrete wall) for it!
Tree snaps from today are here.
The new Humboldt Penguin Exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo up the street is pretty cool… more photos here for all of you that just can’t get enough of penguins… marching… ever marching, onwards…
we’re trying to make a Sunday tradition of taking a family bicycle ride together. Today we went out along the Burke-Gilman to the Chittenden Locks to watch the boats go through for a while.
I love going down to the Locks. It smells of the sea, there’s stuff to engage kids there and in summer you can watch salmon climbing the fish ladder on their way back to Lake Washington. Also it’s an easy ride along the Burke-Gilman to the Locks (the missing link from 24th Ave to the Locks is planned for the near future). We pass both the Fremont Sunday Market and the Ballard Sunday Farmers Market along the way, and crossing the locks is a much better way to reach Magnolia and Discovery Park on a bike versus the Ballard Bridge.
Malcolm has one of those trailer-bike thingies so I tow him on these rides. I want him to appreciate the sense of freedom you have on a bicycle… he loves it so far.
On an unrelated-family note: It was a week/weekend for my brothers too. My brother Matt and his wife Colleen popped into town from L.A. for some things they had going on up here this weekend so we got to see them briefly which was nice, and my brother Dave just returned safely to Oregon from a 5,000 mile motorcycle trip. I’m glad/relieved he’s back!
last Sunday 2/22 was the annual Chilly Hilly ride around Bainbridge Island. As the first ‘official’ mass ride of the season (that’s the ‘Chilly’ part – 40’s) in Seattle, It was an annual tradition for us before we left for DK in 2004 so I thought I’d pick up where we’d left off this year. Above you can see the ‘bikes only’ ferry with hundreds of riders. I remember the first time I rode a guy in front of me turning to his friend and saying “this is what it will be like when the revolution comes” (meaning: no cars :)).
Chilly Hilly has been called the “Best Ride in Seattle” by Bicycling Magazine. It’s 33 miles and 2,675 feet (that’s the ‘Hilly’ part) of elevation, including a few massive hills. It’s arduous but fun with beautiful views of the sound and the city along the route.
I was jet-lagged from the previous night’s flight and hadn’t trained but thought I’d have a go anyway this time, so I threw my bike on the front of the #16 bus which took me right down to the ferry terminal (convenient!). I rode with my friends Scott, Alex and Denis and a few of their friends. As usual, it was a circus down there with tandems, funny bikes, fixies, a few unicyclists and even a guy with a huge paper-mache frog riding tandem (?).
Maybe because of the lag and lack of training it was a bit tougher than I remember, but still fun! Next year I hope Susan Malcolm and I can all do it, although I’ll have to pull him on the bike trailer to do that…
why live anywhere else?
<cough/>
very Christmas-y right now with snow on the ground, visits with friends and a desire to get all hygge (roughly translated: cosy) @ home. Here’s Malcolm decorating gingerbread cookies that Susan made
and making a snow-fort in the yard
he and Susan went sliding in the park today… fun! But I had to work, alas, and watched from the window near my desk, like a pet in a petshop at springtime. But there’s more fun to be had yet this season!
a belated post on a lovely brunch at Volterra from Sunday 12/7. Pictured above are Malcolm (our chimpanzee, who wont’ sit still), Mike and Jackie’s daughter Anna and Susan and Alex’s children Charlie and Clara. Mike and Jackie just moved to Boulder and were back in SEA for the weekend, and while Susan and Alex still live in SEA we don’t seem them often enough, alas :(.
There are a group of us (including Andy and Tracy and their two boys.. not here this time) who lived in Capitol Hill circa 1999-2000. The ‘glue’ was our Seattle City Soccer League team, FC Krush (NB FCK in Copenhagen :)) . I was hopeless as a footy player but it was how my then-coworker Mike Gilbert and I met Andy and Alex and we all became fast friends.
Coincidentally we all had kids roughly around the same time, which was nice in that it made our bonds even stronger, but bad in the sense that each of us, in turn, moved from CapHill in search of a more kid-friendly (and affordable) place. Still: Nice to see them, every periodically.
As for Volterra: A nice place for brunch, supposedly good Italian food but will have to go back and try dinner here….
