Default: Procrastinate

Before I rant, have a bird or two. I haven't taken the time to figure out what they are yet.

You may not know this important tidbit yet, but the internship I currently have ends in a little over a month. That means the hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing frustrating process has come to the fore full force: Hunt the jobs! Finding jobs isn't hard, its true. Finding jobs for which you are qualified, have a sliver of interest in and fall in the geographically desirable area however... are few and precious. I managed to get one letter of interest completed and another started (and what a miserable woeful start it is) before the old beast reared its fuzzy reassuring head. Procrastination always tells me I'm intelligent and resourceful enough to get what I need to do done just under the shaving wire of time deadlines. Its generally true, but it always leaves me wondering what I might accomplish if I actually applied myself. Enough pondering my psyche. Lets talk instead about thrift stores, the Elwha and food.

There's a surprisingly fruitful Goodwill in Port Angeles which has provided me with several hours of entertainment, some clothes, kitchen tools and decorative items. I'm most proud of the posters and paintings I've managed to scrounge up at Port Angeles thrift stores, there was a sample earlier with the Yosemite painting Otherwise I've found these pretty little abandoned things.

Is it obvious yet that I like plants? And insects? I don't have a  mushroom one (with me) though.
That's sort of surprising.

As usual I've spent a little time making things.

A year or so ago I got really enamored with the idea of making my own deodorant. I finally did that last summer, it wasn't that great. I'm just too stinky I guess. I did however make some lotion and chapstick I like. So I made another round this weekend.
I owe my success to this blog right here:  http://asonomagarden.wordpress.com/
I stumbled across it and decided, hey, why not?
 

Made some cornmeal blueberry muffins for breakfast this week from one of my delightful baking books. The texture probably would be better if I had the finely ground cornmeal the recipe called for, but they're pretty good as they are. 

Also have been craving red meat, so I quelled the desire to fill my craving with fatty fast food and made my own less fatty slower food. Finger licking goodness! 

The nursery has had bouts of extreme productivity intermixed with pot washing. I thought you should experience that  glory so here. This is Leonie rinsing pots. Leonie is having fun. See how excited she is?

We have also been taking cuttings willy nilly of things like cottonwood, snowberry, nootka and baldhip rose, red flowering currant, red osier dogwood, scoulers and sitka willow, more snowberry and so on and so forth. The end result is dozens of trays full of sticks that have been chopped, bleached, dipped in rooting hormone and shoved in tubes.

I don't know how many thousand we're supposed to end up with, but we ran out of trays yesterday and a personal supply had to be utilized (not mine, my boss's) to meet demand.






Today was a hauling and planting day. We loaded up Thor (the silly superduty F250 beast), and off we go to the Mills no-longer-reservoir site that everyone still calls a reservoir. Or lake. We hiked in to where a zip line had been set up to move plants down a slope.

The hope was it would be less destructive to hike the plants in on an established trail and zipline them closer and then hike them the last hundred or so yards over the reservoir sediment than hiking them all in across the terraces and slopes. Safer and less treacherous too. 

The zipline in action. The two WCC crews built this whole thing, which I find pretty impressive, considering I wouldn't have a clue where to start.

Maybe you'll recall me writing about a helicopter moving logs down off the slope onto the terraces. If you have a moment you should go back and look at those pictures of the valley floor in comparison to this one. You can see the massive volume of sediment that has been moved out of the system in just a few months. If you look closely in this picture you'll see some yellow dots. Those are people and a nice scale to consider.

 The seeding also seems to have worked well in some areas. In the site we planted today there were oodles of these little guys popping up.There is hope yet!

The daffodils are actually daffodils!

Tootle pip, have a simply splendid week!

Frustration and a Sudden Hair-do

 But first, more birds!
The aforementioned feeders attracted all kinds of flighty flappy  little things.
Brandon and I watched them for a while.Yep. Exhilarating. Anywho, I tried out another tart from the book Rachel gave me, this one a savory.
Roasted peppers for the first time and was surprised at how easy it actually was. Goat cheese roasted pepper and parsley, it got a bit overwhelming after eating slices for lunch four days in a row... But in small doses its delicious.

 Other crafty things. Socks for a friend's birthday, I'd like to think that she was thrilled to get them. I love that hat, its so delightfully warm and the pattern looks way more complex than it is.

The mystery bulb looks to be a daffodil, that would be exciting. We went thrift storing and found (among other nifty things) this amazing painting of Yosemite Valley for a couple bucks. Might try to get it matted. We'll see.

Went to the Bham land for the long weekend to hang out with the otter, see a few people and go to a volunteer event. There was a one weekend in January farmer's market so we went, we saw, I bought tulips, and this is what they look like.

All my life (as many of you know well) I have had enviable thick blond hair. I'm not being vain, its genetics. More often than not, it's rather long, and at some point I lose patience with it. That happened on Sunday after weeks of getting particularly staticy wisps of super fine hair stuck in my mouth, eyes, ears, nose, glasses, doors, trees, bushes... Snip snip. More like sawing with office scissors, but off came 11 inches, now bound for Locks of Love. And I sport the shortest do I've EVER had. I've already got a couple comments on how I look more like my sisters/mom with it off, so feel free not to mention that to me.

Brandon and I went the NSEA's MLK Day work party. We got truck duty for a while, until the truck was full of pulled ivy.How exciting! Cheerio for now! 

Snowshoeing and Such

Its possible that I ought to be writing cover letters now. Its also possible that writing blogs is much much easier. How do you write a freaking cover letter anyway? (I got a library book out on the topic, we'll see how helpful that is.)
Brandon came to town this weekend, I fed him some highly fattening and delicious food. I used my fire and light bowls for the first time. The next morning we went snowshoeing with Nico and Aaron (another volunteer). Leonie decided to hang out at the Hurricane Ridge visitor's center and knit since she had a cold.

Nico was kind enough to drive. He also is the only one who owns tire chains I think. Although we didn't need them. I got the choice middle seat...

I got real excited about all the shiny pretty icicles on the rocks along the roadside.

The landscape looked, you know. Nice.
Some of the icicles on the visitor's center had formed sideways because of the wind.

Oh and if you are wondering dear sisters, yes, those ARE the hideous green rain pants we had for New Zealand, they look far better on him than they ever did on me.

Way in the back there, you can see the snowy Cascades.

Snow boarders are crazy. That's my old lady two cents.

The lads snacking along the way. Thankfully Leonie lent me her sunglasses. I think my clumsy feet destroyed my last pair... It was rather bright.
 I don't really have a whole lot of words right now, just pretty pictures.

I thought it would be nice and cheesy if we recreated our summer Hurricane Ridge picture. Well with all the snow it wasn't easy to recall the exact location, and this ended up being the best picture. Don't I look like a good bossy Phoebasaurus? Oh oh I knit the hat I have on!

And that fog is where Port Angeles is, pleasant looking place, no? You can see Vancouver Island in the far background I think.

When we got up, it was mostly clear. Then the clouds rolled in. And then they kind of wandered out again. Anticlimactic, I know.

Photographic proof that I didn't make Brandon carry the pack all the way (just most). A few minutes prior to this I sort of fell in a giant snow-air pocket and he pulled me out via the pack. Whoops.

At one point there was a rather steep hill. We scrambled down it on the way out to the destination view point. Obviously, we had to scramble back up it on the way back...
Here is Nico demonstrating how to ascend.
All I could think was
ARRRGGGGHHHHH!

Clearly I made it since I'm sitting comfortably in from of the time-sucking computer safe and sound but... I have no desire to make that climb again. In the summer that descent doesn't even exist. Coincidentally the summer trail was more dangerous than doing this with the snow. Funny.

I imagine him thinking "Phoebasaurus, hurry up! We're almost back, come on!" But he's probably really thinking "Oh this will make a cool picture."

Aaron is manly, and I'm not sure he wanted to be in the group picture. Too bad! His soul has been captured now! Mwahahaha..... etc. etc.

I made the flan! Having never seen a flan in real life much less tasted one, it came out pretty well, if maybe a teensy bit overcooked.

I bid you adieu, but I'll leave you with a cheesy picture to ward off solemnity.