Not enough words...actually no words

Skagit Valley, Washington Tulip fields 2010

Dentistry and the Dogs of Karma

I’m trying something new today and wanted to share it with you. My camera takes video but I have never bothered to use it. Why—who knows? Why does my camera shoot video to begin with? Why in the world does my phone take video and yet can’t make a decent latte`? These are questions I may never know the answer to. Just as I may never know exactly what Dr. Mengele, dentist extraordinaire, did to blind me and why he always offers me a blindfold when I come in. Sure they tell you it’s to shield your eyes from the bright light shining in your face but, he always seems just a tad too giddy when he hands them over for my taste. Why just this morning during my visit I was certain I heard him giggling behind his white paper mask. I reluctantly came back in for the final fittings of my crowns. I actually had to ask for a shot of Novocain. Bless his fool heart, he had suggested I wouldn’t need it. I wanted to be compliant, especially after the last visit, but when I jumped out of the chair like a first time nudist sporting a ruby red tush burn sitting on a cactus I had second thoughts about the wisdom of this choice. Who the heck did he think he was kidding with that anyway? Oh, that’s right—Me. The one peeling herself off the ceiling tiles and crying for her mother even though we all know I was raised by wolves. Now to clear a few things up. Dr. Mengele is a fine dentist. It’s truly not his fault that he’s an evil sadistic beast with sharp pokey instruments. I’m sure we can all agree that what’s important here is that he has found a fulfilling and meaningful career in the most frightening field ever invented. Most people of his caliber end up on America’s most wanted or wasting their superior talents in a concentration camp.

To date no one seems to be exactly sure of what happened on the last visit which resulted in an unfortunate absence of sight. Usually you don’t expect that sort of thing when you go to the dentist. Some pain and the usual weeping, sure but, blindness not so much. Of course it’s me and as Nutty Gnome has so elegantly phrased it, I am the Queen of Disaster. Now there’s a title a girl can be proud of. But she has a point. If there is a weird, deadly, unlikely, combination of bizarreness that will require several text books and a flock of desperate interns hopped up on double tall non fat soy milk latté’s and Peanut M&Ms to investigate, then I’m your gal. The last visit resulted in a hemotoma, an infection and a bad reaction to the Novocain. To make matters all the more annoying, the Novocain seems to be irritating the daylights out of the nerves and tissue around my eyes. I look like a raccoon turned peeping Tom at a chemical factory. (big red scaly burns ringing my eyes for those of you not up on your wildlife stalking behavior)
So far 2010 has had it out for me and though the year is still young, I’m wily and generally in a bad enough mood to put up a pretty good fight. If Karma really does exist then I’m pretty sure I must have been a real piece of work in my past life!

No matter. Currently I am going about my business like I actually deserve to live in spite of the broader message I seem to be getting. In honor of that blatant denial of the obvious, I have created a my first little slide show so can share with you how I spent most of my day after I snuck away from Dr. Mengele’s dental office and my eyes recovered. I’m glad they kept working for me because as you can see it’s spring here and there is nothing more beautiful to me than spring in the Northwest. The Saint and I went up to the Skagit Valley to take in some tulip viewing and latte` sipping. We were treated to some snow geese action in the bargain and I got some shaky video clips worthy of any drunken sailor during a high seas tumult. You might want to hit the Dramamine before viewing. I have zero video skills and you’ll not likely see me entering any swanky film festivals. As a matter of fact at this very minute I’m not sure I even possess the tech skills to upload this thing to the blog. Happy Spring and if we have met in a past life…I’M SORRY…for whatever it was I did—now call off your dog, Karma, I’m going to take a nap.

The Birds

Birds. I love them and I spend an inordinate amount of money feeding them. Sure I know they have a natural buffet built right into the landscape but I want their happy, chirpy, colorful, feathers flitting past my windows and through my gardens so, I feed them. A lot. They bring me joy and happiness. They remind me of the belief that my spirit was meant to soar high into the heavens. But freedom is not free. And this particular freedom requires bags of seeds, cracked corn, peanuts, suet cake and dog food. Yes, I did just say dog food. Dry dog food to be exact.

We have a rather wide variety of birds here and some of them have a distinct preference for dog food. I discovered this one fine summer day when upon researching a strange noise coming from the kitchen, I found Stellar Jays raiding the dog food dish. I shooed them out. They came right back. I closed that door. They tried to come in the front. Clearly they were fans. We feed our pets Hills Science Diet and it’s great stuff but it isn’t cheap and it certainly isn’t for the birds.

Every day I put out fresh food for them in about eight different places. I do this as part of my morning ritual, right along with having my extra hot latte’ and feeding the horses their morning treats. My little feathered friends literally wait for me in the trees. If I am late getting up, the jays will start squawking and tapping on the window. I don’t mind though. It gets me walking the garden every morning which is something I truly enjoy doing. I don’t have a bunch of specialized feeders designed for individual birds with price tags to match. Mainly what I do is sprinkle out a mixture of feed onto stumps, rocks and logs. They have been pretty comfortable with this arrangement and we get dozens of different species that seem to get along just fine. Trust me, no one is going hungry around here. The mixture that I have found to be the most well received is this: squirrel mix (corn, sunflower, peanut, etc.), no waste seed mix and cheap dry dog food plus several suet cages. And this is how we come to buy dog-dog food and bird-dog food.

So as you can see I love the birds. Maybe just not enough for Science Diet though. It is therefore also part of my yearly ritual to go viewing birds that don’t visit Bluegate Gardens. And that is where you find this post now. The cute little red farm house is in the Skagit valley. You remember when I told you about the valley’s great culinary abundance earlier this year in Trip to Bountiful? Well there is another special delight that the Skagit valley has to offer. Birds!

Every winter the Snow Geese descend upon the valley on their way up to Alaska and Canada. Bald Eagles can also be found in abundance but we come for the Snow Geese in particular. And the reason is this; you can truly experience an Alfred Hitchcock moment like no other. Now I can’t speak for anyone else but I did not grow up around this sort of flocking phenomenon and it can be quite spectacular. Seeing these huge flocks is one thing amazing in itself but the real excitement starts when they suddenly take flight flushing into the air with a great rushing explosion of white feathers. You feel them swirling around you lifting and rising into the sky and for a moment you can feel your soul rising with them high into the heavens. There is no Disneyland roller coaster ride that can compare with that feeling of living energy lifting you up out of your earthly confines.

Now of course there is the other side of this wonderful phenomenon which the great master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock displayed so disturbingly well. Unnerving enough to make every common House Finch look suspiciously like an evil minion from hell sent on a scouting mission, and a giant flock of huge Snow Geese surrounding your house is an active sign of the Apocalypse. If you can manage to get past that collective trauma memory it’s really a great bit of fun.

The other great bird watching event that we always make sure to experience is the Bald Eagles that flock to our northern rivers every winter to eat the dying salmon. The birds are on their way up to Canada and Alaska. Just like the Snow Geese the eagles are stopping off in Washington state to fatten up on the rich buffet before heading off for some long winter months up North. When I was a girl I remember learning of our nation’s dying Bald Eagle population and it saddened me deeply. Species do die off all the time but as I understood it these birds weren’t going naturally, we were killing them off ourselves. I also grew up in areas where I never saw Bald Eagles so they seemed even more rare than imaginable. They held a mystical quality for me, perhaps not too far removed from that of a unicorn. The idea of losing that forever was heartbreaking.

Humans do a lot of terrible things and we make a lot of mistakes along the way. We also do a lot of tremendously wonderful things and get an awful lot of stuff right. Bringing the Bald Eagles back from the brink was one of those things we got right. It renews my faith in the symbiotic relationship of living things when I see the trees full of Bald Eagles.

We drive out to Concrete and Marblemount to watch them flock along the river banks. They fill the trees in numbers I could never have imagined in my childhood. I can stand on the side of the road not five feet from a beautiful majestic creature that in my lifetime was almost lost to eternity. Seeing these birds free and wild in such numbers is a clear and true testament to life. An active display of life snatched back from the edge of total darkness. Some things go when they are meant to go and life ends and is reborn all the time. Sometimes however we get the chance to right a wrong. Sometimes we get to say no to death, not just yet.

A trip to Bountiful... aka Skagit Valley

There was rain again last night. Leaving the day full of sunshine and blue sky it waited until early evening to start. This morning it was clear and beautiful again with the gentle summer temperature the Northwest is famous for. We took a little drive up North to the Skagit Valley today. It is definitely one of my most treasured places to visit. I feel incredibly fortunate to live close enough for an easy drive through some lovely back roads that wind around McMurry Lake. That name of course always triggers my memory of the old TV show My Three Sons with Fred McMurry and the opening credits with the cartoon shoes. I just can’t seem to edit it out of my head. It doesn’t take away from the beauty of the lake but it does add a little humor to it.













Skagit Valley, Washington is one of the most fertile spots around. In the spring it is bursting in techno color with fields of vibrant and richly colored tulips along with bright sunny daffodils. Painters and photographers follow the field hands as they harvest the colorful rows. Tourists swarm the roads and fields, the clicking of so many cameras creating a buzzing sound as memory cards are filled with abandon.

In summer the fields come alive with all manner of crops to many to number. Grape and berry vineyards mingle with corn and potatoes, alfalfa and brussel sprouts. Fresh seafood is sold from wooden shacks and vans along the roadside and it is actually fresh seafood since the valley blends right into the bay at La Conner. The wonderful little town of La Conner is an entirely different post all together.





In early fall trucks with wooden slatted sides make camp along the edges of the farms to sell their harvest. Loyal patrons eagerly fill their bags with "Sweet corn, five for a dollar." My favorite spot sells roasted corn and hot dogs with a soda on the side. Driving through the back roads at this time is my favorite because of the wonderful farm houses that glow with fires in the hearth and the scent of hot cider mingling with burning leaves in the crisp autumn air.


With winter the valley is full of the most amazing array of birds you have ever seen. Snow geese descend like a blanket of snow on the fields and fill the sky like a blizzard. Great blue herons and bald eagles are so plentiful they are pests. Harriers, hawks, owls, and so many other species of birds I could never name them all reside in or migrate through the valley. There are designated viewing areas where you can actually find yourself swept up in a swarm of birds as they gather and swirl lifting up into the air making your heart race and your head swim with the excitement.

I love this little valley with its fertile land and collapsing barns. I love the commerce it produces and the families that make it work. I love the smell of the soil and the warm sweet aroma of hay. Ok, the cows can be a bit pungent but that’s what automatic windows are for.

There is something that sinks deeper than words can illuminate about a land that is teaming with life. It is something that reverberates deep within the soul and stirs the very DNA of you. On the surface it may appear to be lacking the vibrancy and urgent energy of the city but on closer inspection it is quite the opposite. A fertile land teaming with life is a cauldron of activity. There is incredible energy and activity creating entire universes within those little green sleeves. If you can consider string theory in physics for a moment you’d be amazed at the incredible amount of vibrating of energy that surrounds us all in a living and breathing environment. If you listen close enough I think you can actually hear the corn growing.