Turkey Day Approaches! (And I am caught slightly unawares)

Its true, I let the whole Thanksgiving thing sneak up on me, but there are other things to discuss first!

Such as the reason I moved to Port Angeles....

  I went out for a planting day last week, and let me tell you, it is not as fun as any of us imagined. Well maybe you didn't ever imagine that it would be an exhilarating experience, but I did! I am optimistic!

That sunny optimism began to slip as it started to rain when we arrived at the site. No big deal, it rains here... like a lot. Keep in mind that I am, and have been, battling a damnable head cold for the last two weeks. So there I am, snuffling in my baggy man-sized rain gear, absolutely sexless to the casual observer, crawling along in the mud clay. And by I, I mean myself, three coworkers and 4-5 volunteers in the 50+ range were out there in the rain (which stopped after awhile, thankfully) and chill for 6+ hours.

Where I was planting was effectively a mud flow. Think glacial ice; flowing, melting, cracking... and transform that ice into blackbrown claysilt muck, and that's what we had. Much like the toe of the slope on the left in the picture below. (Fun fact, if you click on the pictures, they will switch to slideshow mode for all the pics in the post)

 I got increasingly frustrated as the day progressed. Every plant put in the ground in that land form is likely going to slide down, be uprooted, or washed out completely into the floodplain below. Not the greatest feeling, especially knowing how much time, energy, and taxpayer money is going into this project. Slopes like that are good for grasses and forbs to colonize... not woodies straight out. But that's just my under-educated opinion.

Keep in mind, the landscape out here is VERY dynamic and unstable (which is the whole idea behind putting in woodies immediately, to encourage soil development and hold sediment in plant). There are terraces that are perfectly suitable for woody planting,but the extent to which some of the highly unstable (in my view) slopes are being... handled... seems inefficient to me.
Please take this as my scientific brain working through the nuts and bolts of this project, not me being a pondering pessimist.

I was pretty drained by the end of the day, in a nutshell, I am a weakling.

Snow on the far mountain, winter is descending...

 Otherwise we have been at the nursery, repeatedly testing our rudimentary math skills as we count out 4 of this, 16 of that, 710 of those things...On a few occasions when our boss has been trying to walk in three directions at once, we have received plant lists calling for 9.5 of these and 13.5 of those... Silly silly... There's usually a few WCC (Washington Conservation Crew) folks around to speed things up, or as fate would have it, wash pots. There are two crews currently working for/in the park.

Anywho....

Token Ferry picture, thanks Nico

This past weekend I went to Bellingham. Cool story I know, what a wild adventure, Bellingham! But this time... I brought some foreign invaders with me. That's right, Leonie and Nico have now experienced in a short-quick-tour of a way the beauty that is Bham.

We caravaned. They were continuing on to Vancouver BC, and I was staying to spend time with my dear Brandon, so for the first time in my life I led a caravan. You'll all be delighted to know I can make the Bham drive sans a GPS navigator...

A couple of old friends put them up Friday night and we spent Saturday morning wandering around Bellingham.

Esci pterodactyls...

 

We started out at the Arboretum, progressed to the university, and then went downtown. Got coffee, wandered around market, then went to pester Brandon at his NSEA work party.

They got to see some live, but captive, salmon in the breeding pools at Maritime Heritage Park. They were entranced for a while. 

Watching the salmon....

Having mentioned on multiple occasions the yarn store in Bham, it was necessary to visit it and drag Nico along. He was thrilled. So to cheer him up we took a wander out on boardwalk at Boulevard Park. Not before we ran into this guy raiding a horsechestnut tree. 

Almost-Ninja squiggel... really is brown-black morph of an eastern gray

Had lunch in the little cafe over Village Books in Fairhaven. To this day I have no idea what it's called, but the food is scrumptious!

Then took a quick jaunt to Teddy Bear Cove to show them the coast I am more familiar with.

I was praised for the mixture of activities in my little tour. Not going to lie, was pretty pleased with myself.

They continued on to Vancouver that afternoon, and despite lots of worrying(for no reason), had no issue at the border in either direction.

But Phoebe, what about your misleading Turkey Day title...?

It was one of those shameless catchy titles that invites you to read even though the content is sub par  And you keep right on reading because you hope that somehow, eventually, the author will get back to the point...

Gratuitous gobbler picture (Stolen from the interwebs)

Well on Tuesday a coworker asked if I was getting excited about my family coming this weekend. Somewhat dumbfounded I counted days in my little head and arrived at the magical number 4.5. They would be arriving in 4.5 days. We're down to 2.5 days now. 

Yesterday I called the mother and siblings coming to plan the menu, ask for any food requests, and remind them to bring their slippers, this being a dirty shoe free zone and all. So today Leonie and I went grocery shopping. Leonie patiently pushed the cart while I largely ignored her (rude I know, she pushed my cart for me!) and mumbled over a carefully constructed list that was doubtlessly missing a few things.

 This is the end result, I got pretty damn excited. I've never been in charge of this much food. Also we got an 18 pound turkey for free because we (I/my mother) spent so much money.

The receipt was a good 2.5 feet long

Because I highly doubt I'll be back before then...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

 HAVE A BLAST, EAT LOTS OF TASTY FOOD!