Wet and windy : January 2

Louise Penny and Magda Szabo are known quantities; I heard a snippet of Elif Shafek on NPR and it was intriguing. (Candle was an impulse buy at 40 percent off)

 

Today was, as the subject line suggests, ideal for cycling only if you're a little bit mad--or maybe if you live in Seattle and don't want to spend all winter indoors.  Paper Boat Booksellers had all three of the books I wanted in stock, and Scott was more than game for a ride in the wind and the rain so we headed out. The "drops" hitting our face as we headed south felt like handfuls of small gravel, but the tailwind made the return ride pretty easy and it felt relatively dry, though that's just because the wet was at our backs. As I noted yesterday, I really need to treat my cycling jacket with some sort of water-repellent; even on this short ride my arms got soaked.

It felt a lot more intense than this, I assure you.

For the year--woohoo!

Bicycling, 2021 edition

 

Scott, Bernardo, and Bessie at the misty overlook

I've no idea how long I'll keep this up, but today I'm posting today's mileage and a snap from the outing. The first day of 2021 was damp in Seattle. It was just starting to drizzle as we set out and developed into a serious downpour by the time we returned home. My coat is still drying. I need to find out how to re-waterproof it because my arms are just getting soaked when it rains these days.

New Year, New Start

 

Cycling Victories!

 

There's not a lot good to be said about 2020; in fact, I'm not going out on any limbs saying it's been one of the crappiest years of most of our lifetimes. But there have been some highlights: the outcome of the presidential election is one that far too many of us take for granted, perhap. Maybe we've been distracted from recognizing the actual results by all the idiocy emanating from what I follow Stephen Colbert's example in referring to as T****.  

But, far more personally, a few months ago I was looking at my bike mileage for the year and thinking that I had certainly chosen a bad year to set a public goal of riding 1500 miles. The second half of March, April, May, and June I rode a lot less than I had in most recent years. I wasn't commuting to work. There was no bookstore day. There was no garden tour day. There was no backyard farm day. There was no yard sale day. There were no tulip fields to visit. I wasn't even going to the grocery store. I'm not sure I  left West Seattle between mid-March and mid-July. My riding was essentially limited to deliberate exercise periods during which I anxiously worried about encountering anyone else on the street.

 Somehow, publicly declaring that I wasn't going to achieve the goal turned things around. After that we just started riding more. Oh, the week or more of the weather being "very unhealthy" thanks to wildfires threw a wrench into September and then we both got sick (not Covid) for a week in October, but after each setback we just got back out and biked. Still mostly in West Seattle and with only one serious all-day ride (to Whistling Train Farm in Kent). And so I rode just over 800 miles in the final five months of the year and--woo-hoo!--hit 1504 miles on Boxing Day.

 It's a tiny little thing, utterly meaningless in any way. But this year, I'm taking it as something to celebrate. 

The moon smiles sweetly and unperturbedly

"I blew out the lamp," wrote Rabindranath Tagore, "with the idea of turning in to bed. No sooner had I done so, through the open windows, the moonlight burst in to the room, with a shock of surprise . . . [I]f I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed this vision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protest against the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all my life--letting the lamp triumph to the end . . . even then the moon would still have been there, sweetly smiling unperturbed and unobstructive, waiting for me as she has throughout the ages."
                           --from page 263 of All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy

Rabindranath Tagore is an actual poet--many of the characters in Ms Roy's latest seem to have been real people--and I'm not sure if this is her own translation or someone else's. I just know that it's a fine bit of writing, as is the rest of the novel.

Book Bingo 2020

Sadly, I didn't manage a blackout this year, but I read some good books I might not have otherwise picked up. None were real stinkers, either, though more than one has already been essentially forgotten. Honestly, Charlotte's Web might have been the most enjoyable of the bunch, though A Burning and The Yield were also pretty decent. And I am amused with Scott's recommendation of The Gospel According to Mark as the "set at or by the sea" entry. It was my last book, meaning I read it last night, and I can attest that they are constantly jumping into a boat and sailing across the sea in their travels. Who knew?

The last half year in photos

 

The Covid Times have been weird and not just for me, I know. In truth, I don't know how much it's Covid and things being weird and isolated and shutdown and how much it's just the state of the nation and state of the world. I've been so absent from blahdeblahblah, but it's certainly not like I've been traveling or socializing elsewhere and I'm also lagging horribly on book bingo; there will be no black-out bingo card for me this year though you'd think I'd have more time for reading.

 So where has the time gone? What have I been doing other than discovering just how challenging, but also pleasant, "working from home" full-time can be? This afternoon, after a week of furlough, I decided to download the photos from my camera for the first time in months and also breeze through the images on the iPad to see what I'd recorded of the last several months. Food, it seems, and bicycle outings, and the sights of West Seattle. Sadly, Photoshop is on the list of things I've lost this year so the photos that follow are all pretty raw, minimal cropping and essentially no adjustments. C'est la vie/guerre/covid/temps.

Cookery! Baking has been a popular pastime for many a housebound Covidite this year and we have been no exception--though I eschewed sourdough, having gone through that back in 1970s. My rule is that you don't have to repeat a fad if you don't want to. Instead, I've spent some quality time with Julia Child, attempting to improve my tart baking. I admit that the simple plum torte, using a recipe I found online, has been just about as rewarding and a lot less stressful. Most of my kitchen activities have been related to using up produce.

Baked plum torte

 

Basic English muffin bread

Birthday cake! (Scott made it using his favorite Fannie Farmer recipe. It was delicious.)

Apricot (and blueberry) tart from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, ready for the oven

I don't swear this is the same tart, but it's based on the same recipe

We got a *lot* of peas this year, and more beets than we could readily use so I learned to make spreads from them. (The recipe calls it "pea hummus" but commenters insist that only garbanzo beans make hummus, so I call them "spreads.")

Say, here's the pea stuff in the mini-chopper. Easy-peasy, aside from the time-consuming business of shelling the peas.

Biking! Since I wasn't getting any miles traveling to and from work, Scott and I got into the habit of taking a bike ride most evenings and weekend days. I've driven him mad asking him to take photos with his cellphone for me. I'm finally sharing them here.

Rainier, looking far less impressive than it does in real life

The one day that really felt like summer; the afternoon I took an impromptu swim at Lincoln Park during a bike ride. I dried off on the ride home.

We rode by this a number of times before I finally insisted upon a photo. West Seattle, I love you!

You would not believe the number of photos we have of Jeb, the West Seattle pony. Did I already say I love West Seattle? Well, Jeb is another reason why.

Not too far from Jeb is a yard with two "rescue bunnies," whose names, sadly, I can't now remember. Buttercup, maybe?

There are a ton of gobsmacking views to be had in West Seattle though this untweaked photo really doesn't do this one justice.

We have stayed almost exclusively in West Seattle for months, but we went farther afield just this last weekend to visit the Whistling Train Farm (aka WTF) in Kent. Partially, it was to boost my bike miles for the year, but we also wanted an adventure.

Not yet at WTF, this charming trompe l'oeil signage is at an as-yet unnamed park not far from South Park.

The U-Pick sunflower field at WTF

I didn't know there'd be donkeys!!!

This should be the first photo in this section, but Blogger has changed enough since I used it last that I don't trust myself to try to move it.

 

Garden! We've hung around home, pretty much, allowing lots of time for gardening--and yet, if I'm to be honest (and what else is blahdeblah for?), the yard kind of looks like hell now. But earlier in the year, my old photos suggest, it was quite lovely.

The apricot produced this year and some of the fruit survived long enough to be picked. (Scott built a clever device to allow us to reach the higher fruit, but I didn't copy that image over so it's not shown here.)

The Harvest (don't scoff!)

Bleeding hearts etc., from earlier in the year

Flowers, broccoli, peas!

It was a good year for the lavender.

More Harvest. (The purple peas were pretty on the vine, but the pods aren't so edible so, really, green is the way to go.)

The purple peas were also more regimented and a bit less round.

Some years the plum tree produces, some years it doesn't; this is a productive year. We've been making jam.

I wish I could remember what this flower is called--maybe it's a sort of fuschia?

Early days for the new veg garden; here we had to add little umbrellas for the tomato starts because I failed to harden them off properly. They are now gigantic but the fruit is still all green. Sigh.

This is a spot we've been eating at. Frequently.

It's been The Year of the Jay; shown here and below are Steller's jays though we've also had scrub jays.

That's some bad hat, Harry.

 

Gradka rests atop the back step

And generally encapsulates the ennui of existence.

 

Goat Circus! Jennie Grant brought her new goats to West Seattle for my birthday:

Charlotte in the blackberry patch

Chloe in her fancy harness

Chloe, looking shy

If it works, this should be a video of a young goat doing a stunt!

Demonstrations and other life-changing events!

Visiting the Farmers Market now means waiting in line and marveling at the density of one's fellow shoppers.

We ventured to Beacon Hill for the silent and masked George Floyd demonstration one cold wet day.

And we stayed home for the "shelter in place" protest

Why limit yourself to "something old" when you can have it be "something wacky" as well?

Scott and I dressed up for an event featuring an officiant and two witnesses in our backyard.

How often does a jacket like this get a chance to go out?

Just about the most charming card ever.

 I cannot explain the absence of cocktails shown in this post.