Not of My Choosing

We went on a short camping trip recently. We have a new-to-us pickup truck, and my husband got a camper top with a pop-up top. I haven't been camping in years - it became too much work for me, and then for quite a few years we didn't have a very reliable vehicle to take. Anyway, my husband wanted to get out in the woods, so we went to Wanapum State Park on the Columbia River. It's just a couple of hours from Seattle on I-90, dry and warm. Not many trees, though, or what I would call woods! We had a good time - the weather was great, the view of the river was lovely, the campsite was quiet. Most of the other campers had RV's or big trailers, and they mostly stayed inside. Almost all of them had little dogs, too. It's quite windy there, especially in the evening. The leaves on the cottonwood trees rustle and rattle almost all the time. While I was sitting under them in the afternoon, they almost sounded like raindrops. I kept looking around and at the clouds to see if I was going to get caught in a sudden downpour.


The colors of the river and the hills beyond were so beautiful, and change according to the light, cloud cover, time of day. I tried to capture some of that. I love the shades of blue and green alongside the brown.


I took some knitting with me. One of my good friends from the Achenblog had given me sock yarn when she visited, and she knits while camping, so I thought that would be appropriate to take. I got the heel flap and heel and gusset done one afternoon. Luckily it wasn't too windy or it would have been much harder. Toward the end, a gust of wind nearly took the ball of yarn away. I really love the colors in this yarn, and best of all, the socks fit!


I recently knit another pair of socks with yarn that someone on Ravelry had sent with a market bag swap. I didn't think I was going to like the colors so well - it was not something I would have picked myself - but I loved how the colors flowed. They reminded me of a Monet painting, soft, muted golds and greens and blues. They were a pleasure to make - even on size 0 needles - and they fit too!


So, I seem to be going through a time of things not of my choosing, but which turn out well.

May Flowers

Spring so far has been very cold and rainy, but we have had a few sunny, dry stretches. Flowers have been a bit a late, but I'm so pleased to have some long-spurred columbine in bloom. I have a lot of columbine that started with seeds from my Aunt Helen - mostly purple, some pinks, which have self-seeded all over the yard. I have tried to get the long-spurred McKana's Giants going, but with no success till now. I suppose I should have bought plants, but they always seemed so expensive. Somehow the seeds have been difficult for me. These are from seeds I started last spring, and I could not be more pleased:


I love the light shade of yellow, and the spurs definitely are long!

These are some interesting pink columbine:


The Therese Bugnet rugosa rose:


Most everything is doing well. The ferns have all come back, the New Zealand flax which took a beating over the winter is getting new growth. The mock orange, which my husband cut back severely and moved to a sunnier spot, even has a few flower buds (it has never flowered much at all).

Skagit Valley Tulips

Despite having lived here for over 20 years, I've travelled north to see the tulips in bloom only a few times. The first time was many years ago on a Sunday, possibly Easter Sunday, when the crowds were awful, and my small son had an ear ache. In subsequent years, work and weather combined to make the trip planning difficult. But I took a visiting friend a few years ago, and this year I have plenty of time, so last Monday, north we went. This spring has been cold, so we waited a couple of weeks in the hopes that the tulips would be "showing color", as the growers say. The day was gorgeous, sunny, dry, warm, windless.

The first field we came across was this - daffodils as far as the eye could see:



And here are tulips - there were also pink ones in a field farther back.



We went to the Roozengaarde display gardens. Most of the tulips there were out, and they were spectacular.




Traffic wasn't bad, although there were plenty of people in the gardens, and stopping to take pictures of the fields. All in all, a great way to spend a beautiful day.

The mountain was out:


And the tulips in my backyard are putting on a show, too: