A Poem and my BIRTHDAY!

Coneflower or echinacea. I love these.

Cute Mr. bumblebee that was cold from the fall night temperatures.
You can pet them, you know? I pet him and he waved his little feets at me.

Nasturtium. I love this buttery yellow variety

Love the antique color of this hydrangea in my old driveway.

This is a garden I re-designed and cared for for 8 years in MA.
It was a glorious shade garden. SO lush and happy.

So, it's officially May 6th. That means it's only 24 days until my beloved birthday. I turn 50 this year and I personally do not understand people who do not love their birthday and who are afraid to say how old they really are.

I'm proud of my 50 years. I've had friends who didn't make it to their 50th, so I am thankful for that large number with the zero on the end of it.

Who cares?

There's that cliche about age just being a number and that your TRUE age is how you feel and act. I think it's true. I have known people who are in their 20s and they are FAR more responsible than I'll ever be. They are "adult" in their actions and their sort of staid manners.

I'm not "adult" if you wanna use those terms. Staid? Moi? Nope!

I find "adult" humans to be rather boring and most times they take themselves far too seriously.

On the other hand, they are the people who have those steady jobs and incomes and a big, fat retirement waiting for them the moment they decide to do that thing.

On the other other hand, I've had a fun and interesting life. I don't have a big, juicy paycheck. I don't have a big fat retirement waiting for me. I will tell you this, though, I've got no regrets. I've never stayed in a miserable job, working in a cubicle, making myself miserable with my 2.5 children and a job that pays just the right amount for my mortgage, food, bills and putting my 2.5 kids into the "right" school and blah blah blah.

Oh, I find the whole idea of living like that completely suffocating.

Never have I wanted to work inside a building. Ever. Ew.

The moment I had a "break" or lunch or whatever when I was working my few short stints as a working stiff, I'd get outside as quickly as possible. If I couldn't be outside, I'd be near a window at least gazing out at the birds or trees or whatever.

I HATE hate hate being in rooms where there are no windows. Ugh. I don't know how people do it. I really really don't.

My days start here in Alaska with the window behind my head cracked open for fresh air and also so I can hear the little cheepy birds start singing at about 4am. They are rose-breasted nuthatch and a couple different kinds of chickadees with their chick-a-dee dee dee dee dee songs and calls.

Upon arising, first thing I do is look out to see the birds and the greenery of the trees. Alaska is amazing in that when spring arrives, it does so fiercely and SOOOO quickly. We already have nearly 17 hours of sunlight. Incredible.

The birch trees have already leafed out with their bright green new leaves. Stunningly bright and beautiful. My Chinese poppies out front are over a foot tall and I just saw that my bleeding heart is about ready to bloom! WOW!! And it's only May 6th! Yeesh!

Generally my puppy dog and I head out into the back yard quickly so she can do her business and I can watch the birds flitting around the yard. SO many of them. Several pairs of chickadees, nuthatch, robins, starlings, warblers, Stellar's jays and more.

It's really quite loud, but so glorious to hear them and to see the amazing growth of the plants and grass back there even in a 24 hour span.

So, the big and little natures have sort of ruled my life. Animals and plants are my gig. People are okay sometimes, but I like most people in sort of smaller doses and I loathe small talk, so it's kind of a weird measured way I lead my existence.

My husband (the current one!) finds me to be extremely flamboyant and overly trusting. I will take both of those adjectives as major compliments.

The opposite of flamboyant?

Dull
Plain
Restrained

Yuck!

The opposite of being trusting?

Distrustful
Suspicious

Again, YUCK. Who'd want to be running around like that?

There it is. Fine. I'm okay with being flamboyant and trusting. 100%. No issues with that.

And I tend to make friends who are just like that. My bestest friend, Karen, is TOTALLY flamboyant - she makes me look like a shrinking violet! I adore her crazy, out-there-ness. Love it. I love that she doesn't apologize for how she is. If you don't like it? You can lump it.

I was told, by another really good friend, that there comes a time in a woman's life that she just basically doesn't give a sh*t what other people think of her or how she dresses or any of those things. I am exactly who I am and seriously, if you make me monitor myself and how I do my stuff and how I dress and how I speak and my opinions on certain things? Well, I'm just not gonna play in your sand box.

Of course there are social tenets like not swearing in certain situations and having a sense of decorum near children or certain others and not breaking laws, etc. - I get that and you know what I'm talking about when I say things like not giving a rat's *ss about others...

I'm nice to people even sometimes when they don't deserve it. I choose to be nice because it makes me feel better about life. I'm not a nasty person - never have been and never will be. However, if you make the mistake of being icky to me over and over, well? Then you've just gotten yourself kicked out of MY sandbox!

Homie don't play dat. (That's a blast from the past - thank you In Living Color!)

So, all in all, I guess today's rant is about that same stuff I've been touting for months now. It's the thing about being nice to others and frankly, if you don't have something nice to say to me? Then ZIP IT.

Certainly I've done my share of speaking ill about others. I'm not immune to it. And, in particular there was that young person who scammed me out of a bunch of money and caused a lot of heartache. But I don't think that constitutes gossip. I wasn't making up stories. I was talking about what happened to me and I didn't want her to scam any of my other friends she knew. So, I do have room for people explaining their own experiences - especially when it involves a schmuck.

In closing, I will leave you with two things.

First, yaaaay for our new Mayor of Anchorage, Ethan Berkowitz. Major yaaay there! Phew. Dodged a proverbial bullet with the other candidate.

Second, a poem by one of my favorites, Robert Frost. It's called "A Passing Glimpse"

I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.

I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.

I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt -

Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth -
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.

Was something brushed across my mind
That no one on earth will ever find?

Heaven gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.

My bestie during our "princess" Halloween phase!

Montauk daisies I grew in MA.

Celebration of Earth Day

Sunset in Martha's Vineyard a few years ago.

Evening camping in Homer, Alaska

Sunset over the Alaska Range near the mouth of the Kasilof River.
We caught 9 beautiful sockeye salmon the next morning.

Hi everyone! Happy Earth Day!

Despite the gray day we're having here in Alaska, I'm feeling good. Slept like a baby and my arm is feeling better a bit today after I did WAAAY too much with it yesterday.

I have a fractured bone in my wrist - an injury I first sustained when I was like 7 or 8 years old - and it never healed quite right, so I've re-fractured this same dang bone probably  5 or 6 times over the years. It doesn't take much. I was digging in the garden and heard the distinct "snap" when it came apart.

There's nothing anyone can do except immobilize it and try to rest it. But, for those of you who know me all too well, I'm kinda gung-ho about cooking or moving furniture or gardening.

Kinda like a bull in a China shop when it comes to my body. I'm always and forever bruised, cut or hurt! Right now my right groin is not quite right again, my index and ring fingers on my right hand are all cut up and my wrist is bad and my back is all tight from vacuuming and moving couches yesterday (don't ask).

Ugh.

I cannot sit still. I'm sure I've got some form of ADHD or some such thing. I'm definitely a whackadoo. I know that for certain.

Today started very nicely with blue sky and birdies tweeting all over the place. Right now I've got juncos, red polls, nuthatch and chickadees chirping and beeping outside the window!  The Stellar's jays come through later, magpies are always around and then my Raven friend who makes the sounds like a dripping, echo-y faucet is never too far away.

Eagles circle overhead all the time. Gyrfalcons, Marsh hawks, owls, a million duck species, ring-necked pheasant, Sandhill cranes, falcons, osprey (in MA), kestrels (in MA)...

I've also seen some HUGE starlings in the yard, Mountain chickadees, pygmy nuthatch (so cute), brown creepers, yellow flicker, warblers (of some variety), white-banded crossbills (amazing), some sort of small swallows, Plain titmouse, Winter wren, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

So fascinating the different critters that inhabit this part of the world. We get these interesting accidentals, too, like the Asian Waxwing that were mixed in with a BIG flock of Bohemian Waxwings we had here in January and February. I've not seen a lot of them lately.

In the course of the last year, I've seen well over 100 new animal species (in the wild, of course) including a LARGE red fox, caribou, many moose, 1 grizzly bear, 30+ black bears, many Beluga, a Pacific white-sided dolphin, a Dall's porpoise, several Stellar's sea lions, river otters, sea otters, giant Sun Stars, GIANT jelly fish, harbor seals, Dall's sheep, mountain goats, and on and on the list goes.

All the changing landscapes as I traveled from The North Atlantic to the North Pacific were so interesting. Seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time? Crazy. Absolutely overwhelming.

A quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I worked and lived across the street from the House of the Seven Gables.

Black bear Momma.

Canadian Rockies in Banff.

Kayaking with icebergs in Portage Lake.

All the different trees I've seen - Alders, scrub willow, scrub sage, huge redwoods, Sitka spruce that are GIANT, Aspen, HUGE birch. I've got a spruce tree in the back yard that is only about 50 years old and he is just gigantic. Made thousands of spruce cones for the birds and squirrels this past year. Still has cones up top!

I've also met people from every corner of the Earth. Native Alaskans that live in the Pribilof and Aleutian Island chains. People who herd reindeer, people who live from the Earth and respect the Earth and all of its wonders.

People who would never, in a million years, litter and leave their trash behind.

People whose spirit is so strong it sometimes overwhelms me.

People who have recognized my love and reverence for animals and plants and even little natures like spiders and beetles.

People that tell me I am a whisperer of animals. Which I find to be the highest compliment you could ever give me!

Since I was a kid (and my Mom and Dad will attest), I've had a probably unhealthy attachment to all of my animals and even the ones that are supposed to live outdoors. I go to Switzerland, for instance, and come back with a million pictures of the Swiss Brown Cows!

Mammals are not in my diet now, either. The very occasional piece of bacon may jump into my mouth, but 99% of my protein intake is seafood and organic dairy. I can barely even eat chicken anymore. I love chickens. I love their personalities!

I never wanted to kill any of the animals I found (except maggots and slugs - they give me the heebeejeebees!), I only wanted to understand them and talk to them.

For a long time when I was a kid I thought I was a fish - I'd be in our pool or in the lake or in the stream pretending I was a fish. My poor parents would have to basically drag me out of the water to get my skin to un-pickle! Ironic that I hated taking baths, right? I was a grubby little thing.

My Mom would have to sneak into my room to wash these disgusting blue polyester pants I had that were my favorite. Those pants probably could have walked out of my room they were so dirty and disgusting!

Now, of course, I'm a neat freak. Organization is EVERYTHING to me, from my work stations, kitchen, bathrooms, garden equipment.

The only thing I allow to get messy is my car. It's the dog car and gardening car. Why clean it all up when Beebles is just gonna snot it up, get it hairy and then I'm gonna throw dirt and 8000 plants in there? Silly to clean it.

Man, I've still got hair in there from Lady, Koty and Sadie! It's basically a time capsule with wheels.

Tangent there much? Yeesh. My brain. Gotta wonder what the hell happened to me that my brain is so bazonga.

Right now I'm texting with a good friend, Kari. She's gonna come by for lunch. I love feeding people. In the fridge I've got fresh, homemade marinara, crab/vegetable chowder, Dungeness crab legs, turkey breast, croissants, sourdough bread, cheeses, salads, vegetable lasagna (no noodles) and lots of juices like V-8, San Pellegrino Arranciata and Limonata, Orange Juice, 9-berry juice from Costco, Limeaid...

So, what better way to celebrate Earth Day than to have lunch with a friend, play with my pooch in the back yard, watch some birds (and chat with them, of course), then will go out to Balto Park and Point Woronzof and pick up trash.

Sending love out there to all of my peeps near and far. Love you all and miss you.

Ciao for now.

xoxo

A public garden in Seville, Spain. Amazing.

Gardens at an amazing Hotel called Barcelo de Bobadilla in Loja, Spain.
One of the most incredible places I've ever been.

Oleander is everywhere in Spain. Luscious.

Snorkeling near Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands.

Parrot fish smiling at me! He's actually at a cleaning station - see the fishy on his back?
He's got more in his mouth that clean his chompers. This was in Roatan Honduras.

Puffer fish. I love these guys.

Aiming for 50,000 page views!!! WOO HOOO

Almost there. I cannot believe that many pages of my silly blog have been looked at since I started blogging! I know for some people that's not a lot, but for little ol' me over here in Anchorage Alaska? I'm outta my mind so proud and thankful.

Thank you my peeps that I love and who support me. Even during my dark days. Much love and gratitude.

So, I was getting ready to log on here and do my usual blah de bloo de yadda yadda yadda.

Well, I get this alert from my Dropcam that I've got "movement" detected in my back yard. I turned that on because we had that problem with the person with the sticky fingers and my credit cards sprouting legs in the night.

SOOOO, I got this little beauty for half price for a new promotion they were doing (Thank YOU Dropcam) and what movement did my little sweet camera find for MOI?

https://www.dropcam.com/c/d23f73d2c3d54b3889202fe976c3af00.…

I KNOW, right?

HOLY HOLY MOOOOOOSSSIIIIEEEEEE girl. She's only about 7 or 8 months old.

A Baaaayyybeeee mmoooosssieeee to go with my baby dog, baby squirrel (living in my garden shed) and my baby mowse that will NOT stop eating the butter. It's on TOP of the fridge and this little fart will not leave it alone. Finally had to store everything in a cupboard above my microwave and in the other cupboards up high that he can't reach. Little shit.

Anywho, yeah.

That's Alaska. They stop traffic, they wander into yards (even ones like mine that are fenced-in!), they wander onto porches and even stick their heads into open windows! One friend of mine had his front door propped open in the summer as he was working in the yard, well, this young moose just helped himself and went right on into the house!! Steve had to open his back door to entice the moose out of the house and into his vegetable and flower garden!

Oh, these stories are sooooo damn cool. Amaze-balls, as my friend Kristen would say!

Anyway, enjoy the Moose Cam - I've got it in my kitchen window looking out over the back yard.

From helping to thwart crime to recording the critters of Alaska. Yeesh.