Blog Archives

Safely Home!

9/30/2015

The author has safely moved back to manage the farm on the wet side of the Cascade Range. Oddly each and every farm hand welcomed her back with the exact same greeting.

"I am SOOOOOO glad to see you. Ever since you left I have been doing ALL your work!"

Yup, all four think that they alone have been shouldering all the work the author does...." :)
It is good to be back.

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Hitching a Ride

9/29/2015

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Piggy back has nothing on grasshopper back!

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Friendly Advice

9/28/2015

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This guy/gal was hovering over my shoulder while I was trying to get some writing done today. It is not that I mind having an audience exactly but he/she really didn't have a lot of good advice.

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Bicycles and Bears

9/27/2015

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Family is always a great source of material for story ideas and dialogue starting points.

Female Relative: "It is so awesome riding Dad's bike on the roads around the cabin at the mountain. I can get up to twenty miles per hour!"

Older Male Relative: "Just remember bears can run thirty miles per hour..."

Laughing hard enough to choke on an apple maker it hard to point out that there are probably no grizzles around Mt. Rainier.

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Great Mt. Scott!

9/25/2015

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Some very interesting clouds fold in around Mt. Scott.

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September 24th, 2015

9/24/2015

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It is not uncommon to see a happy cat or a happy dog, but I got to see an ecstatic dog. The day had been long and hot and was winding up with the work truck stuck in a construction zone. I was not in the best of moods. But then the pilot car drove by and I wasn't sure what I was seeing at first but I smiled and dove for my camera. I couldn't get to it in time to catch a picture of the giant Great Pyrenees with his paws on the front seat of the oncoming car, his hind-paws on the rear seat, and his head a good three feet out of the sun roof. That dog was enjoying the park.

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Not What You Expected

9/23/2015

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Science: knowledge gained through observation.
It is a constant field of discovery where your expectations are turned on their heads daily. For instance I was trying to figure out what the seeds of Rock Spirea (Holodiscus microphyllus) above looked like. This was no idle search, my job is to collect certain seeds from plants native to the area so we can repair the damage done by necessary road construction. I had yet to observe viable seeds from this plant and needed picture for documentation. I discovered that they were small (read invisible), light, and scattered in the wind. Now most seeds that match that description, at least the ones at this location, tend to have flat sheaths that act as a sail to catch the wind for dispersal. But when I finally got one of the seeds under the dissecting scope this is what I found...

Not a sail. What do you think it looks like?

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Patterns

9/22/2015

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Much of writing a novel is about controlling patterns. The story must follow a pattern that the reader can recognize and yet not follow it so closely that the reader gets board. It is essentially the creation of a written fractal.

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