It rained all day— but late afternoon it was suddenly all blue with bright sunlight.
The yellow poppy is from Thomas Street Gardens.
Mother’s Day 💐
Flowers— for Mother’s Day.
Sunday/ here’s May
We’re coming out of the coldest Aprils in many years here in Seattle.
It should start to warm up, though. We are halfway from the start of spring to the summer solstice.
These flowers are from all over Capitol Hill: back alley poppies, rhododendron, florist’s cineraria or common ragwort (genus Pericallis), and a lovely pink tulip, of course.
Friday/ Earth Day 🌎
Mariette (looking at a picture of a tree) : What’s that?
‘K’ (the Blade Runner) : A tree.
Mariette : I’ve never seen a tree. It’s pretty.
– from the 2017 movie about a dystopian Earth, ‘Blade Runner 2049’
The Prez was here in Seattle today. He talked about legislation to help the U.S. Forest Service plant 1.2 billion trees on national forest lands.
Writes Katie Rogers for the NYT: ‘He unveiled a plan to restore national forests devastated by wildfires. He promoted a climate agenda that has largely gone unfulfilled. .. The trip granted him a bit of a respite from Washington and returned him to the campaign-trail style of schmoozing that energizes him. In Seattle, Mr. Biden appeared before a group of big-ticket donors that included Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft.
Thursday/ do rainbows have seven colors?
Here is my picture of tonight’s rainbow that was visible just before sunset, now at 8.08 pm.
– Paraphrased from the Wikipedia entry for Rainbow.
Friday/ Easter Weekend
The lovely tulips are from 18th Avenue here on Capitol Hill.
Wishing everyone a happy Easter weekend.
Caturday 🙀
Reporter Matt Kaplan writes in the New York Times that a wildlife camera recorded a bobcat repeatedly eating eggs from a Burmese python’s nest.
It is not yet known if this is commonly done by bobcats.
It would be a boon if it were: the Burmese python is an invasive species and is decimating the mammal and bird populations there.
[Photo Credit: U.S.G.S.]
Friday
That’s a gargantuan piece of cake.
Tuesday/ tree blossoms
The blossoms on the magnolia trees are out, along with the cherry tree blossoms and those on the camellias.
Star magnolias are slow-growing shrubs or small trees native to Japan. They bear large, showy white or pink flowers in early spring. [Source: Wikipedia]
Sunday
Caturday
There is a Pallas’ cat in this picture.
From Wikipedia: The Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul), also known as the manul, is a small wild cat with long and dense light grey fur.
Its rounded ears are set low on the sides of the head.
Tuesday/ stop with the ‘springing forward’
So on Tuesday, with almost no warning and no debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the biannual springing forward and falling back that most Americans have come to despise, in favor of making daylight saving time permanent. The bill’s fate in the House was not immediately clear, but if the legislation were to pass there and be signed by President Biden, it would take effect in November 2023.
– From the New York Times
Most Americans (not residents of Hawaii and Arizona) lost an hour of sleep on Saturday night due to the adjustment to Daylight Saving Time. I have several clocks in the house that have to be adjusted manually. Every time I adjusted a clock, I thought: ‘This is stupid’. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Tuesday
Thursday
There was a big, billowing cloud in the sky as I made my way down 17th Ave today.
Caturday
Mountain lions were extirpated in the eastern and midwestern United States after Europeans settled those areas, but they are making a comeback in some states outside their known range around the Rocky Mountains in the western Unites States and Canada.
[Picture by the Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife Conservation @OKWildlifeDept. The little joke line is mine. @OKWildlifeDept did not say where the picture was taken, but I assume its Oklahoma, since sightings of mountain lions there are reported from time to time].
Sunday/ sunny and ‘cold’
It was sunny and ‘cold’ (I guess one could say ‘brisk’) today with a high of only 42°F (5.5°C).
*Not the highest peaks in the Olympic Mountains; Mount Olympus peak is at 7,963′ (2,430 m) elevation.
[Information from Wikipedia]
Caturday
The Norwegian Forest Cat (or Wegie as it’s often called) is a sweet, calm, and gentle feline who’s often shy around new people, but is known for being sociable and affectionate with those they know well. During World War II, the breed became nearly extinct.
Tuesday/ Snoqualmie Falls
I drove out to Snoqualmie Falls today.
The falls are only some 30 miles east from Seattle as the crow flies, but a 40-minute drive.
Snoqualmie Falls has a 268-foot (82 m) drop, and is by far the most famous waterfall in Washington State. It draws a million visitors a year.
[iPhone 13 Pro picture, standard lens]
[Canon EOS 7D Mk II, telephoto lens]
[iPhone 13 Pro, Wide-angle lens]
Saturday/ a mushroom, very fly
fly3
adjective
INFORMAL
NORTH AMERICAN
stylish and fashionable.
“Where’d you get that fly shirt?”
The fly agaric mushrooms popping up in my back yard were smaller than usual, this year.
Saturday/ Daylight Saving Time: does not save Time, does not save Daylight
It’s that time of the year again in the United States, when we attempt to outsmart the universe.
We have to set our clocks back by one hour tonight.
Can we please pick one time and stick to it?
As David Policansky writes in The Washington Post: “The people of Fairbanks, Alaska, show that it is possible to adjust to very early sunsets or very late sunrises. There just isn’t much advantage in shifting daylight around when you have only three hours and forty-two minutes of it on the shortest day. But in the Lower 48, in the mid-latitudes where most of us live, we complain”.
[Infographic by the National Geographic at nationalgeographic.com]