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| Bo surprised me with a puppy, one year to the day after our dear dog Kinsey died. We named our new puppy Matia (pronounced May-sha) after a remote island in the San Juans, north of the island where we bought our cabin last year, and where we buried Kinsey. Matia means "Gift of God," and that's exactly how this little pup feels.
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| I ate the first cucumber from our garden tonight. Where last year we had a lawn full of weeds, we now have tomatoes, corn, squash, pumpkins, blueberries, strawberries and cucumbers. I could tell you all about the moral fabric of removing a lawn to grow vegetables, the lessening of my carbon footprint, the message we're sending to our neighbors, but instead, let me tell you how good that cucumber tastes.
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| “A fishing pole, tennis racket and guitar – I’d say you guys are all set” Bo and I were standing with our stuff at the bus stop in Roche Harbor on San Juan Island, when a man pointed out our good fortune. We’d just spent a few days with friends on their yacht cruising around the islands, hiking, eating, drinking and generally embarrassing ourselves at little island resorts. Now Bo and I were on our way back to our cabin on a smaller island, just the two of us, to finish out our week’s vacation with rest.
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| I have a rhythm problem. A few weekends ago I was sitting on a log on the beach in front of my partner Bo's family cabin in the San Juan Islands. The light was fading on a long summer evening, and we were all a bit lit up too. I was playing a new song on guitar and singing to a sympathetic audience of friends and family. I sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" - not the Judy Garland version (even I wouldn't tempt that), but the one by the late Hawaiian singer, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. His version is more up tempo and cheerful.
My rendition started out OK, but as I got into it I started playing faster and faster to the point where Bo felt it necessary to intercede. Bo thought he was being hushed and subtle, but happened to speak up just as I took a much needed gasp for air: "Sweetheart, slow it way down!" Out of mild embarrassment, I overreacted to his suggestion and slowed way, way down, slower than Judy sings it, and yet, still with the Ukulele sound of the Hawaiian version. Hilarity ensued from the crowd so I sped back up again, trying to find that perfect rhythm, but whizzing past it into high speed again. I could tell it was time for me to stop, so I exercised artistic liberties and finished the song a verse early. The crowd went wild, but clearly I have a rhythm problem. |
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| This Saturday is the Magnolia Green Garden tour and there may be as many as 100 people coming to our house. Bo suggested that "we" write a story about our garden to share with tour visitors. By "we," Bo means me, so while he's out watering the vegetables, let me tell you our garden story. |
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| Gardening seems like a placid, peaceful activity, conjuring up images of smiling older folks with wide straw hats and glasses of lemonade, holding baskets of flowers they leisurely picked that afternoon while hummingbirds sat on their shoulders and ladybugs landed on their hats. But there's a shadow side to gardening, what I'd call Angry Gardening. Angry Gardening happens when you're faced with deadlines and attempting perfection. |
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| It begins with an invitation. Let's go out and have some fun, sing a song, make fools of ourselves for a chance moment of connection - that perfect song that makes the crowd go wild and join in.
Joanna emailed a bunch of us to show up at a city hearing to voice our support for a parks levy this fall.
She wanted her Green Seattle Partnership forest stewards to tell the city's committee that we need more money to keep the trees in our parks thriving. She needed us to bear witness to this esteemed panel.
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| Saturday was Seattle Works Day and for the second year in a row I was leading a crew of volunteers to resuscitate a former blackberry thicket into a native forest "buffer zone" for nesting herons. Last year's crew cleared a patch of land of the noxious weeds and now we were back for more punishment - removing the inevitable weeds (this time bindweed) that replaced the blackberry.
But this is not a Sisyphus story of the monotony of repeated tasks or the futility of it all. This is a story of the utility of all of this work and the small rewards that lie in wait for the persistent and the consistent. As we pulled fistful after fistful of bindweed from this bizarre, undulating weed carpet we encountered little treats, the tree hugger equivalent of Easter Eggs on a hunt. Underneath all that bindweed stood many little native plants. I had forgotten we'd planted them the previous year. "Surprise!" Their little strangled branches tried to say, or perhaps "Where were you and how about not forgetting us again!"
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| When Bo and I found out our garden would be in this summer's first ever Magnolia Green Garden tour we were elated. Then a bit of panic set in. We spend a lot of time in our garden, but not the time you'd expect for a tour. Add to our busy work and social lives, our weekend adventures in the San Juans, and we've got good reason for a little concern. But fear not my little flowers, as usual I've found a way to use my environmentalism to justify my inadequate time commitments. I'm cultivating weeds.
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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| My partner Bo brings adventure into my life. This is nowhere more evident than in the island cabin experience we share. Bo's family owns a house on an island in the San Juans that is so remote, it's inaccessible by the WA state ferry system. Bo grew up braving five miles of cold salt water in a small ski boat with his sister, mother and father, only to tie up to a buoy fifty yards offshore and then climb into an even smaller boat, before rowing onshore with all the family's food and stuff for a week.
Adventure runs deep in Bo's genetic code. I witnessed his Grandmother, in her eighties, make this same trek - the family carefully lifting her out of the boat onto the shore without getting a drop of water or sand on her (not that she would have minded much). Bo's family adventure is a small price for the spectacular beauty of a perfect bay, water and forested islands receding into the distance as far as you can see. |
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| Posted by derek eisel at | | | |
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