The Heat Brings Bees And Tourists

It got up to 103F in Seattle yesterday, setting a record. Here on the island it "only" got up to 90F. It still cools dramatically at night, though, so if you open the windows and get a cross draft going the house is cool by morning.

Maybe it's my imagination but it seems my lavender is buzzing with more bees than usual. The rest of the island is complaining about the tourists and it isn't just the traffic. There are some public boat launches in residential areas and it seems people are overloading parking areas and being rude to residents. Crab pots are being robbed and boats are launched at odd hours when most people are in bed, with little consideration given to those who might be sleeping at 5:00 a.m. I'm thankful we don't live in such an area.

Our only access to the beach is down a steep road--one that washes out periodically when we have a particularly wet winter--and then down some steep stairs to our private beach. Our homeowners association owns the beach lot, which isn't very big, but at least it's there if anyone wants to use it. Last time I was down there a huge tree trunk had washed up during a storm the previous winter, and while it offered a place to sit it took up quite a bit of the beach. When I suggested we have someone in to float it away I was told island residents did not, as a rule, remove driftwood from where it washed up, preferring to leave the beaches as natural as possible, so that was that. On the other side of the island, where there are fewer gale force winds, there is actually a small cove named Driftwood Beach because it consists mostly of washed up trees. The cove acts as a natural collection point for them. An aerial photo of the beach was on last year's telephone directory. It's very picturesque.

Last month I was stung by a bee while I was cutting flowers. I felt something on my back, and assuming it was a fly I shooed it away only to get stung in between my fingers. Wow, did that hurt! I'd forgotten how painful a bee sting was, but a baking soda paste relieved the pain. Now I'm afraid to pick some lavender with so many bees buzzing around.

Harriet & Charles Raise A Family

Harriet and Charles are our resident robins. For weeks they had been trying to build a nest on the window trim on every single window of the house. They started on my office window. I noticed it when, out of the corner of my eye, I became aware of bits of dried grass constantly floating down from somewhere above. I finally stepped outside to see what was going on and found a very frustrated robin going through the motions of gathering dried grass and string for a nest, only to see it drift downward when the slightest breeze came up. This was becoming a drama we couldn't help but follow so I named our uninvited house guests Harriet and Charles.

Harriet tried the dining room as well as windows at the rear of the house only to meet the same futile result. Then, coming around the side of the house on the far side of where she had begun, she really set her mind to it. We watched her progress & kept shaking our heads as stacks of dried grass piled up underneath the ledge where she'd decided to build. But this time nothing discouraged her. It was going to be THERE and that was all there was to it! Each spring for the past 3 years we've seen robins attempting the same futile task, but of course we don't know if Harriet was "it" or one of several. In any case she finally succeeded. And the truth was, it was rather ingenious because it was nearly invulnerable and invisible from a bird's eye view. Branches from nearby trees hung over the roof in that area, but not close enough for predators to attack from above, nor could they crawl up from below.

She settled, she laid her eggs, she incubated them for 2 weeks, then one morning we saw 3 small beaks sticking up from inside the nest. A few days later they had grown enormously and started perching on the edge of the nest, waiting for Harriet to feed them. She finally got a little impatient and pushed the biggest one off. He fluttered to the ground, peeping and hopping around, finally finding his way around the side of the house to the edge of our bank overlooking the sound, and then over.

David was concerned and tried to reach the poor thing, but Harriet seemed to oversee it and the 2 others who followed soon after. David was highly critical of what he considered the cavalier treatment she gave them and sure the little ones were doomed. They disappeared for a few days, but one evening I looked out at a patch of new grass that David was watering and saw a family of robins looking for worms, the speckled breasted ones waiting expectantly to be fed by the adults. It looked as though they had all survived--at least for now. According to an article I found in Wikipedia, only 25% of young robins survive the first year.

Record Setting Hot Spell

I picked these daisies from my garden early this morning before they had a chance to wilt. The temperature today, and probably tomorrow, is expected to get up to 90 F in Seattle. It rarely gets that hot in Seattle and here on the island almost never. We have that wonderfully cool breeze off the the sound and no one, except businesses, has air conditioning. It's what I love about the Northwest. It cools dramatically during early evening and, leaving our windows open when we go to bed, we sleep under down comforters.

David is helping me more in the garden this year since so much of the work wreaks havoc with my back. Up to now I've forbidden him to do anything except under strict supervision because in total ignorance the first summer we lived here he pulled up all the lilies of the valley I had so laboriously planted several weeks before, thinking they were weeds. As calmly as I could--for he meant well--I asked him never to touch the garden again!

We are experiencing almost total quiet since Harriet and Charles, our resident robins, launched their fledglings from our window sill. Whether the youngsters made it in the wilderness is anybody's guess. More on that later.

Dog Days Of Summer

We're heading toward the end of July--about the time I usually decide next year I won't have a garden. Too much trouble for just a month of beauty, I find myself saying. However, I think most gardens look bedraggled by July & mine is no exception. Roses are about the only thing left blooming but it's nothing like the profusion in June. The lavender is blooming by the garden house, as well as the impatiens in the window boxes, altho I've trimmed everything else back since it's through flowering.

Our new sand filter is in & we're $7,000 poorer; then there's our new dishwasher which set us back over $1,000. The old one was 15 years old & would have cost about the same to fix, so it was a no brainer. It's a Blomberg--a European company I'd never heard of, but it's very silent & uses only 3 gallons of water per load. I'm liking it!

Hummingbirds Short On Flower Nector

Keeping my two hummingbird feeders full takes more time this year than ever before. Very few flowers are out--none in our yard, with the exception of iris, which aren't a favorite of theirs, so they have no nectar. The picture of the feeder on the right

(which was taken through a screen and is not very clear) was filled 10 hours earlier. The whole jar lasts about 24 hours. Can you imagine those tiny little things drinking a whole quart of food a day?!

We have so many hummingbirds here on the island. Most are Rufus and hang around until the end of June, and then all of a sudden, it seems they disappear. Right about now is nesting time and the males are very aggressive and try to keep other birds away when they're feeding. In ordinary times one bird can rule the whole feeder, but they seem to be so desperate now there are usually 4--one on each feeding trough. My other feeder is a different kind--one that is not nearly as popular, but I can't figure out why. The holes for feeding are different, so maybe that's it, but even this feeder will usually have 4 birds feeding at once, which is very unusual.

It's Mid-May & Spring is Dragging Its Feet

Quite a difference in the garden in one month (see photo below), but we've still had only a couple of days where it's been nice enough to work outside.

Our septic tank alarm went off again yesterday so we had to call for service again. Look, if we're going to have to pay for a new septic system I wish to hell they'd get it in. Every time this happens with the alarm I picture something drastic is happening to the drain field. If that goes, too, it's a major problem, not only for the system but for our bank account. A new sand filter (which is what we need) is only about a third of what a completely new system would cost. But they tell us the drain field is okay, it's the pump acting up again, basically not pumping when it should. When I asked when they would get around to installing the new system they said as soon as it dries out, and around here that probably means a long wait!

Then the dishwasher started making a loud noise and I braced myself for the news that it would cost as much--or almost as much--as a new one. Of course it cost almost $100 just to have a repairman come over to the island to determine what it was, and since it's a Swedish dishwasher he had to call the manufacturer to find out what was wrong and then order the parts.

I guess once you've lived in a house more than 10 years you have to expect some major repairs. I'd been fussing about the moss growing on the roof, too. David tried several moss products that didn't perform all that great, so when a man at the hardware store on the mainland told me he scattered Tide with bleach all over his roof, David decided to try it. It worked like a charm. The next time it rained it washed the soap down and the bleach killed the moss.

Mid-April & We're Still Waiting For Spring

Some days start out sunny and then turn cloudy and we've yet to have a day that's shirt-sleeve weather. My camellia , which usually blooms in February, just bloomed about a week ago. Spring bulbs were late too. Denver has 2 feet of snow, Phoenix is 94 F. If I were in Phoenix I could believe in global warming, but in Denver? I can believe in climate change as a natural phenomenon (perhaps nudged by greenhouse gases), but I certainly can't believe all this can be caused by man.

Gray whales have been spotted in the sound right near us on their way from California to Alaska. They feed on ghost shrimp close to the shore. So unless you're on the beach or are standing at the edge of the bluff you usually can't see them. I was lucky one day because I happened to glance out the window and saw a sightseeing ship stopped dead in the water. This usually means the ship has spotted a whale and is just waiting to see where it's going to come up again. Sometimes they're lucky and the whale will breach, but most of the time gray whales are reclusive and swim in a sort of wave, rising out of the water only slightly for air, then submerging again to swim away. I grabbed some binoculars we keep in the kitchen and was lucky enough to see it rise out of the water once, but then it disappeared and the ship apparently lost track too, for it left.

Orca whales behave a bit differently. They are naturally inquisitive and will frequently approach a ship, rise out of the water and gape at the people watching it. This is really a thrill.

This Is Global Warming?

We've just returned from 6 weeks in Arizona. It's a luxury in this economic climate to be going anywhere--to be spending money on travel when you don't know what even the immediate future is going to bring on. I'm so concerned about finances I'm canceling a trip to Italy later this fall; it just seems frivolous at this point.

The climate in AZ--weather climate, that is--was very pleasant, with most days in the mid-to-high seventies, nights quite chilly. If anything the weather seems to be warming there, for I don't remember it being quite that warm in years past. But here in the Pacific Northwest the climate seems to be cooling. We had a rather short and cool summer last year and if our weather so far is any indication of what's coming this summer it bodes for even cooler weather. We had sub-zero temps for quite a few days this past winter and that's practically unheard of. We see also that we've lost several bushes to the cold so it will mean new plantings--maybe with hardier ones.

Snow, Rain, And Now Floods

The same thing happened about 10 years ago. First we get too much snow in a part of the country where we rarely get snow. Then it warms and starts raining, triggering landslides, avalanches in the mountains, and flooding in the lowlands. When it happened 10 years ago it also triggered a neighborhood lawsuit in which the people who lived on the beach sued the people who lived on the bluff above, citing negligence that caused a landslide which not only wiped out the road down to the beach, but damaged homes when the slide rammed into them. We were lucky not to have been included in the lawsuit since our portion of the bluff did not collapse. On one of the other islands several people were killed inside a home that was hit with a sudden landslide in the middle of the night.

The rain is not heavy here, but I heard on the radio that in Seattle and areas farther south it is pouring, which will surely mean trouble. At the very least the rivers will flood, and at worst it will cause more landslides. Some of the most expensive real estate in Seattle was rendered uninhabitable when the soil shifted and people had to evacuate their homes overlooking Elliott Bay.

Although worrisome it's not as dire as the Californians who live with the constant threat of earthquakes. 

It's Bad News: A New Septic System

We seem to have had nothing but bad news lately. The latest came from our trusty island septic installer who, in reality is kind of jack of all trades, but I won't go into that now. He lives on the island, has installed hundreds of septic systems here, & is a bit of an island fixture. If he were older I could say he's a legend. He's honest & he's good, so we've stuck with him & had him do a variety of jobs. Sometimes he operates on "island time", but when he knows it's an emergency he's there for you. We got that awful loud buzzer in the middle of the night Saturday, so David called him about 7:30 Sunday & left a message.

Emergencies, even medical emergencies, always seem to happen on weekends, so we didn't hear back until Monday morning; he came Monday afternoon. The immediate problem was a pump wire that had shorted out, but when he opened one of the tanks on our sand filter septic system he gave us the really bad news: the system was failing & needed to be replaced. Why? Naturally we asked. 

Sand filter systems are used only when standard gravity septic systems can't be used, such as, in our case, there is not enough soil to properly install a regular system. Most of the island soil is glacial till & hardpan, so it's practically impossible to install a gravity system., although they were installed years ago before sand filter systems were used. Many have been replaced, however, because they, too, failed.

Donnie, our installer, told us the reason ours was failing was because when we built the house the county required a certain grade of sand be used for installation & now it's proved to be too dense to absorb the effluent properly, so the effluent has backed up into the tanks again. We've had the tanks pumped according to the requirements we were given, but even that wasn't enough.

He's recommending an aerobic system, which is supposed to be fairly new and designed for the same type of problem soil as a sand filter system. I spent yesterday & today researching on the Web & have come away convinced I DON'T want it! It requires frequent maintenance--probably about $500/year--& that's today's cost, which is sure to go up as the years to on--& many, many prohibitions on what NOT to put down your toilets & drains, such as: garbage disposal waste, oil, suds, bleach & the usual no-no's of any kind of paper or cloth except for toilet paper, but what threw me was "medications". Not medications that someone might throw down a toilet, but the residual of a medication that a person excretes. So if we're taking certain medications we can't use the toilets! Who knows what medications we may have to take in future? This just does not seem very practical. And I have to use those Clorox tablets that you put in the toilet tank to keep rust from forming since we have a lot of iron in our water. I couldn't use those, either.  So this is something we have to think over carefully.