GPE #3 : Melanie's Native Beauties

I'm afraid I've been tearing up the pavement between my home in Woodinville, WA and my parents' homes in the Spokane, WA area. If I win any award it should be for my knack for avoiding the worst of all the road construction this year! I suppose the hours of saved time was reward enough. I can't remember the last time they did such an extensive year of road construction, not since the 1980's at least!

 

So, since my garden this year was rather sad, and indeed, some of the beauties that graced the Garden D'Lite in the past are sadly no more, lets just give you a gander of what the other end of this big ass state has to offer. If you were to drive from the ocean to the very edge of the Washington State line bordering Idaho it would take you 6hr 19min with no traffic delays at the freeway speed limit of 70mph (112.65Kmh). Like most Washingtonians I go 5-10mph above that.

 

 Without further ado..... 

 

the visited greenery of

P R O X I M A B L U E

 

Dad's house overlooks a small valley surrounded by wheat and sunflower fields. Unfortunately, the sunflower fields were past their prime.

 

The view of the hill behind me, a well-maintained Ponderosa Pine forest. Forest fires are the biggest threat to living here.

 

 

Three Native Beauties - 

 

Glacier Lily (Erythronium grandiflorum)

 

 

Lanceleaf Springbeauty Claytonia (Lanceolata spp Claytonia)

 

 

Yellow Fritillary (Fritillaria pudica) A little blurry, sorry. 

 

 

What's been lurking in the silty sand above the water discharge pipe?

 

 

Something A Fowl! 

 

I woke up one morning to find this mob of turkeys harassing a pair of rural kids waiting for the bus at their stop. This is why you always carry a walking (ahem, chasing stick) with you. The younger and older boy were back to back swinging their sticks to keep the turkeys at bay. I was about to head out to help charge off the turkeys myself when the school bus showed up and the bus driver starting honking to scare the birds away. This doesn't happen every morning, but one should always be prepared to battle turkeys! This is a new normal. These turkey mobs used to be regularly shot, cleaned, and frozen for year round consumption that it was rare to see them anymore by the 1990s. 

 The secondary prints, as some my guess, belong to a large raccoon. 

 

 So there you go, a brief trip to sunny Eastern Washington. Not pictured is the crazy dust storm I had to fight through one night. The emergency alert on my phone almost gave me a heart attack! ("Take shelter NOW. Imminent threat to life and property!" it said.) 

 

First you see a giant wall of swirling brown coming at you blotting out the sun and then it hits you! It's like being put in a blender with dirt and rain, but they're moving so fast they don't mix. The ground was so dry the streets turned into rivers and you hoped that it wouldn't get high enough to lose traction between the road and your tires. A falling tree tried to take me out but I hit the brakes fast enough and thankfully managed not to get rear ended by the person behind me. I was half there through my half hour journey when I came upon powerlines on the road. A string of us then had to carefully backup for over a half a mile without going into the ditches on the side. 

 

 I wanted a hot shower when I got to dad's house but NOOOOOOO, instead there were a bunch of turkeys in my parking spot and the power was out, which meant the well pump was also out. So SOMEONE is getting solar panels with a back up battery schematic specifically outlining the parts they need to fix that nonsense so the pump can operate for up to 3 hours after a power outage! 

 

Well that's enough of that!

 

☙❧

 

 I'm so glad you found time to snap something on your to-ing & fro-ing, Melanie - and hopefully next year your garden will return to its "D'Lite"ful status.

 On Sunday, the Garden Photos Event will be in Devon for Ms Scarlet's display, so please stop by to take a gander at her bush.