tall clover farm

Whether praising peaches, exalting raspberries or ogling apricots, I’d have to say I gush over seasonal fruit. What I don’t grow well (and that’s a big category this year), I try to buy locally. I just received a box of fruit from the Washington Sate Fruit Commission, a cardboard treasure chest layered with summer’s finest jewels: peaches, plums, and Italian prunes. [...]

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Yesterday, I stood on my porch grousing about the legions of dandelions encamped on my lawn. Hours later, my goddaughter Isabel stood among them, delighting in their presence.  Where I saw weeds, she saw limitless bouquets.  Where I decried a villain, she beheld a beauty. Sometimes all you need is a bouquet of perspective to transform the irksome into the acceptable (but I’m still getting out the mower), and truthfully, sometimes [...]

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Summer is a powerful elixir for most Seattleites. We drink in summer (i.e., July and August) like a tonic that cures the ailments brought on by the previous ten months. We cling to it. We exhaust it. We mourn its loss and revel in its memory.  On one such summer evening, I was enjoying a [...]

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Mt. Rainier tops the view of Tramp Harbor and Maury Island. Summer showed up yesterday with a hearty and heated hello. With temperatures on the island reaching 95 degrees, Boz hit the pool, Gracie found some shade and I pondered taking a plunge in Puget Sound. My only complaint about Vashon Island is the absence of Lake Washington, undeniably Seattle’s best place to [...]

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Boz, British Bulldog and expat, says “All is forgiven, Happy Fourth!” The Fourth of July comes abruptly to Vashon Island. Anyone on the island with an open window and who’s not on life support cannot escape the approaching drone of the hydroplanes circumnavigating the island like furious wasps. It’s a Vashon tradition I love–if nothing else, but for [...]

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Boz is quick to point out that chest-high grass is no dog’s friend. Rain or no rain, it’s time to mow. If weather was a game of rock- paper-scissors, I’d have to say clouds trump sun in our neck of the woods, just as paper covers rock. Every year, we await solstice and the arrival of summer like [...]

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 Miss Olivia does not regret she’s able to lunch today, Madame. Last Sunday, Miss Olivia came to Vashon for brunch, Though our activities lead us to dine well past lunch. There were gardens to explore, Bulldogs to not ignore, And raspberries to pick by the bunch. Mom Leslie and Ms. Joan rounded out our party [...]

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Seattle Reaches Its Hottest Temperature Ever Recorded A day when candles and people shared the same posture.  The leaves on  my Kiwi vines were as dry as Doritos Yesterday a record toppled; Seattle’s temperature reached 103 degrees – the hottest daytime temperature ever recorded in the Emerald City (this year a moniker better suited for October thru [...]

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Anyone who’s spent a summer in Seattle, knows the season really begins the fifth of July, when the sun begrudingly shows up for its abbreviated run.  A sunny Fourth is rare. In fact the last time I pondered it was 2001, when I wrote a letter to the editor, providing my tips for a sun-safe Fourth of July. [...]

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Black locust trees anchor my house. They are a much a part of its history as the wavy glass windows and half-wrap porch. Even in a photo taken in 1900, they were relatively large trees.  Where three once stood, there are now two. A large weathered stump tells the tale of a sapling’s fate—its robust nature [...]

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  Summer returns to Vashon; the Olympic Mountains sign off for the day I began my day in a sweater (cotton) and my day ended in a sweater (wool), a fitting and not unlikely costume change for the first day of summer in the Pacific Northwest. The varying degrees of chill here require you to choose [...]

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By summer’s end, a bramble’s reach knows no boundary. What my eyes witnessed my brain denied. The shadows were not lengthening; the mosaic of honey locust leaves did not litter the ground or create an artful flotilla in the fountain.  The sun did not rise and hang on the horizon complacent that it had reached its roost [...]

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