It is done

 

No turkeys were injured by the creation of this update

 One way or another, today was even less Thanksgivingy than planned, but it's been a fine day nonetheless. I baked pumpkin pie last night while Scott made potato leek soup, so we were able to have pie for breakfast and leftover soup for dinner. Between the two meals, we went on an occasionally frustrating expedition.

The original plan was to go to Camp Long and we set out, with sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, after checking the Seattle City Parks website to make sure it was open.* We marched up the hill to find that, in fact, the front entrance was locked up tight. There was a sign on the gate saying that the park was closed when it was icy or snowy but as it was, in fact, a sunny, dry day, that didn't seem so relevant. We went a few blocks farther to check the other entrance but it was also locked shut. A man with his dog asked if we knew if the park was open because someone had told him it was, but we couldn't so much help him.

We retraced our steps back down the hill to see about getting in via the golf course as we've done once or twice before. There was a new fence where we used to enter. The golf course itself was open, but since we'd read on the parks website that golf courses would be closing at 2:00 and it was already well after noon, it seemed like we might end up locked in if we entered that way so we finally abandoned the Camp Long plan.

But we had sandwiches and coffee! After some discussion we decided we'd do the Longfellow Creek Trail since, when we attempted it some years back, we'd quit partway through. Today we reached the headwaters, but we also realized it wasn't just the bitter cold and challenging routefinding that discouraged us the original time: it turns out the route is a lot of walking through neighborhoods on sidewalks with very little of the trail anywhere near the actual creek. But, good fabulist that I am, you'd never guess that from the photos I took (interwoven above).

Okay, maybe the route through Westwood Village is a little less faux wilderness. But it's there that we found not only a public restroom at the QFC but also what we deemed the headwaters:

Not that we didn't cross the Westwood Village parking lot and continue to the south end of Roxhill Park, the destination referenced on every bit of trail signage and reputedly the home of the true headwaters of Longfellow Creek: Roxhill Bog.

While it was downright weird to be out exploring without Bessie, it was good to find that we were still capable of walking eight or nine miles while lugging about camera, binoculars, and lunch. Not that we weren't pleased that the trail ended just beyond a Metro stop where we could catch a bus to take us home.

*Full disclosure: Now that I look at the parks website again, I see that the "closed on Thanksgiving" list includes "environmental learning centers" (tucked between "teen life centers" and "swimming pools") and--damn it--Camp Long is considered an environmental learning center. Predictably, I'm now doubly annoyed.

Not Moby-Dick

 I have a draft post that consists of a few quotes from Moby-Dick, the book I am currently reading, but that's just going to have to wait because this evening my plan is to toss some photos from (mostly) today's bike ride onto blah-de-blah-blah and then do some more reading. About M-D (as I'm sure no one so irreverently abbreviates it) I will say only that it's much more fun than I'd expected, though the middle is bogging down a bit. 

Today's bike ride started later than planned but I insist that since we were out and about before noon, it was still "early" by my Saturday standards. I was feeling anxious, god knows why, so we stuck to West Seattle--which was fine as I wanted to twitch the giant Steller's jay that had been reported in the West Seattle Blog. It was, handily, practically en route to Fresh Flours and not that hard to spot once we were on the right corner:

First sighting!

Naturally, we had to get a little closer and then, just in case Scott had somehow lost sight of it, I helpfully pointed:

Bessie and I provide some scale

We continued on our way to a surprisingly well-stocked Fresh Flours and then looped about back homeward, taking in the sights along the way.

Scott agreed that the Airstream planter attached to the Airstream was worth looping back to see.

I failed to take photos of the many fine trees so this one will just have to do.

Not usually my sort of thing, but the fairy garden of gnomes kind of charmed.

I'll never fail to be captivated by this view of the Sound from West Seattle.

Jesus wept, but I've got photos

Decisions . . .

 I've been sick the last few days with what I'm assuming was/is the flu--more than once I found myself muttering to myself that before COVID, there was the influenza epidemic of 1919 and maybe I shouldn't keep saying it was "just the flu" that was troubling me. But I am feeling somewhat better now which means I am probably up to starting a new book. That I've been binging on re-reads of Louise Penny's "Gamache" novels says something about how unambitious I've been in my reading options of late. The world is a miserable thing, and some of us like to escape into fiction, okay?

 So pictured above are my options. It turns out that Sun House has a lot of weird typography and it weighs a ton (why was it printed on semi-gloss/slick paper?) so I'm leaning towards the impulse buy of the three: What Napoleon Could Not Do though maybe Democracy Awakening would be, as the Kirkus Review suggests, empowering?

Before the illness, I snapped a few shots of Halloween decorations around West Seattle. I'm not sure that the first one captures the full creepiness of the dolls, while the second was just darned amusing. 

This house always has some pretty creative stuff happening

I don't know--maybe this one only works in Seattle

I no longer remember what put me in Pioneer Square early one evening a few weeks ago, but the light was quite lovely, there was a jazz duet performing outside of an art gallery, and it just seemed such a fine place to be. In another case of the "cell phone snap didn't really capture it, but here it is anywhere," I present a Pioneer Square alley that apparently contains a bike repair shop I should check out:

Perhaps overadjusted photo of a picturesque alley that probably shouldn't be looked at too closely.

Continuing with the way-back machine, I was late with the fall equinox installation on the green man, but I insist it was worth the wait:

Meanwhile, a million people are supposed to shift themselves when they really have no place to go, so that their homes can be blown to pieces in some sort of show of god knows what. What the fuck, really.

Activities Appropriate for the Equinox

I didn't get to Solstice Park for Alice Envoldsen's Equinox event yesterday, but it's not like the day passed entirely unnoticed. There was, afterall, the semi-annual hanging of the Equinox Laundry early in the morning:

Followed by a pause to admire the fennel, all flopped over and gone to seed:

 But most of the big activity was today, the first full day of Fall, for today I picked tomatoes, beans, and basil, 

Basil hiding tomatoes, beans, and cucumber with sweet pea and gardenia garnish

 

The means of production, fall edition

and then we spent the entire damned afternoon flirting with death and dismemberment using the pressure canner. One jar, alas, broke in the canner but no harm was done to the rest of the production run which, while modest, fills my Caroline Ingalls heart with joy:

Rounding out the day's festivities was the annual packing up of the mason and leafcutter bee blocks for return to the Rent Mason Bees people. 

I'd say it was neither our best nor our worst year for fostering the next generation of bees. Regardless, I insist it's the native bumblebees that handle the bulk of our pollinating.

Though, on the topic of pollinators, there was this fellow from several months ago:

No idea who this is, but it was impressive.

 

Later that same day

 The basil plants have been very productive, the plums are also ripening, and last week's market purchases of tomatoes and cilantro weren't getting any younger. And while the forecast for tomorrow has been revised from hella-hot and smoky, to just smoky, I didn't know that a few hours ago when I decided I should actually deal with some of the abundance before it got too hot to go near the kitchen. I'm quite chuffed about the results:

Clockwise from top: tomato basil pasta sauce, fresh basil to be dried, two jars of basil-cilantro pesto, NYT plum torte.

Traveling without leaving Seattle

The first of the "I have to take a picture" stops; he looks so happy up there!

Scott's so modest; you'd never know he had a street named after him.

Today Scott and I biked to the exotic Georgetown neighborhood in Seattle, a destination less than six miles from our house but a part of town we'd not really explored before. (I went there for a work lunch during the height of the pandemic and have been wanting to return since, but there's always someplace else calling more strongly.) It was just a coincidence that the day we chose for Georgetown was also the day that the Hopped Up Vintage Chopper show was happening, on the very street our route took us. That the show backed up to the restaurant we ended up eating at and that our meal was timed to coincide with the first band taking the stage was also happenstance. Scott noted that the guitarist's A string was a little flat but opted not to go tune it for them. I sort of wish we'd checked out the booths at the show, but alas--.

I don't think we stopped by here. Next time.

 Instead we walked the strip of intriguing shops and restaurants along Airport Way. We visited Fantagraphics for the first time ever--it's always a shop we skip on Seattle Independent Bookstore Day because it seems so out of the way--and we explored the trailer park mall where I, at least, found many treasures I could not resist. Sadly, neither of us took photos of the charming Adler-and-Sullivan-inspired (according to Scott) old brick factory buildings, but I assure you they were lovely and pretty uncommon for Seattle. 

I think Scott said this was the soundboard of an upright piano. I call it pretty.

Terracotta pot not for sale at the mall, but fetching anyway

These were for sale, but I didn't think they survive the ride home so I just asked permission to photograph them.

Close-up so you can appreciate the gobsmacking nature of the arrangements

I was ever so surprised to spot the Buckaroo neon that used to be signage for a Fremont bar in Georgetown. And--bonus--a bit of reflected old building.

Not so much Georgetown as along the route: I've been meaning to get a snap of this coffee spot for years now and Bessie was eager to pose. A recorded voice kept telling me I was being recorded. Hmmm.