I'm not sure how it got to be the end of May... or even the beginning of May, for that matter. Nevertheless, things are growing, as they are wont to do in this greenest of months here in western Oregon. We had three weeks of dry, sunny weather at the beginning of the month, which was extremely unusual (we're usually on umbrella schedule until the last week in June), so the things in the garden beds got an early start. In the picture above, you can see the last of our Swiss chard harvest from plants put in last fall, and rhubarb that's already started to come on from our now three-year-old plant. I've been picking it weekly or so, stewing it up and putting it away in the freezer. The raspberries have all been pollinated (handily, the neighbors behind us have bees, so we have no pollination problems), and I have a 4'x8' bed of potatoes where the plants have nearly reached full size already. Of course, the crab grass, which has aggressively invaded parts of the yard that were grass-free when we came here (nearly 6 years ago--imagine!) are sprouting huge seed heads everywhere, and I'm trying to pull them off before they add to the problem. But that's another story entirely.

I've been working away at Topaz since the beginning of the month, and am three chapters and about 53 pages into it. So far the writing is going smoothly, if predictably slowly, and it feels like the story is leading rather than me, which is always a good sign. Writing always seems to me like the process of being in labor (not an odd analogy, I guess, if you've gone through it as many times as I have). Not a hard, jarring labor but a steady pressing ahead, with more of the child/story gradually making its appearance. Some mythology elements of the story that I was sure would end up giving me the plotting equivalent of roadblocks (or at least speed bumps) have resolved themselves smoothly, and there have been the inevitable and always welcome surprise happenings, all signs that things are heading in the right direction.

( In other news... )

Any number of times I've thought about moving ahead and writing Topaz, the sequel to Sanctuary, and either been intrigued by the possibilities or, alternately, put off by the fact that a) I know it will take a huge investment of time, and do I really have it to give, and/or b) who will want to read it, given the current depleted state of the fandom? Then of course there's "c" (Am I crazy to want to write anything at all in a fandom that's this many years out from broadcast?) More than letting reason duke it out between the above-listed reasons, though, I've been waiting for some sort of sign. Do I give up this story that I've had bits of floating around in my head for years now and let it die quietly, or do I go ahead--for whatever reason--and take a stab at writing it because it seems to fall into the category of "my story to tell"?

Apparently, finishing A Rat's Life (and then making a quick trek through Sanctuary, tweaking and cleaning up) gave me a running start, because I finally seem to have gotten the go-ahead. So I've started writing--the first chapter is done--and am moving forward, taking it one step at a time. Of course, I've already reached the point where I'm losing the ability to experience the material from the reader's POV, so if there's anyone out there who is familiar with the Sanctuary universe and would like to play guinea pig, you can get an early preview of the story (warts and all) in exchange for sharing your impressions and answering some of my questions like "Is this actually working?" or "How do you see Character X's arc?" If interested, let me know. (Remember it's a sequel, not a stand-alone, so you need to be familiar with the preceding material.)

A sure sign of spring, new goose families at a nearby pond. One parent is always
on guard while the other eats with the goslings.

Spring is flowing along here, and as far as that goes, we seem to be a few weeks ahead of schedule. The trees are full of new leaves in that delicate yellow-green, lilacs scent the air as soon as you open a door or window, apple and cherry blossoms are heading for the end of their show while the rhodies and azaleas and wisteria are just coming on. Already we're seeing that intense, vivid green that characterizes May in this part of Oregon.

( Click for more )

Dad out in the orchard, holding Paul (1985)

A few days ago was my dad's birthday, which got me to thinking. It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that he's been gone nearly 18 years now. Every once in a while I'll think about how things have changed since then, and what Dad might think of, say, the prevalence of ATM card usage over cash ( in 1994, the cards were used almost exclusively for accessing cash or making deposits at ATM machines), or everyone walking around glued to cell phones, or the fact that so much of life these days takes place in front of a computer screen. What would he think of 9/11, or Skype, or the price of college? Or the price of groceries, for that matter?

There are always the personal life-changes, too: my divorce, our move to Oregon and the great place we have here, the kids and the adults they've grown into, Aaron's marriage and family, Annie and Beth.

I do think I've gotten better, over time, at carrying departed loved ones with me. It's always seemed to me that life (in a larger sense than just this earth existence) is a lot like traveling on a bus. You may be looking out one window, but the person seated next to you could be looking out a different window and seeing a completely different scene. Or he might have a headset on, and be listening to something you can't hear. You're in different worlds--different states of consciousness--and you can't really communicate. But you're still sitting next to each other, and you can always reach out and give that person a hug.

And in the end it's that love, not the mundane details you might think to share, that's the important thing.

Came across the following while rooting through my [lots and lots of] files of fic material, and liked it. If only there were a good format for putting together a patchwork or collection of the lines you write that seem to come out well even without conscious forethought--the kind you read back over and think, "Whoa, I wrote that?"

Mulder looks again at the note on the coffee table, the way the bands of light from the street lamp lay wavy strips of shadow and light across its surface. One little piece of paper--the one responsible for blowing his convenient, temporary belief in the non-existence of aliens to smithereens.

It was classic Krycek: Here goes your world, Mulder. Boom!

Spring along Merry Lane

Spring has been getting, well, springy around here, though that's included lots and lots of rain. Whenever it stops and Ben and I go out to pick the blooming dandelions out of of the lawn, it sounds like you're walking through a bog. Every once in a while the rain lets up, though, and as soon as it does, you see people out walking dogs or riding bicycles. People here know not to wait when the sun deigns to come out, even briefly. Last night I rode over toward the river and took the above photo on quiet little Merry Lane. The red barn is now an auto repair shop.

Daffodils and tulip trees (magnolias) are on their way out now, but there are tulips blooming everywhere, and the cherry and apple trees are starting to bloom. Below you can see tulips and wood hyacinths (bluebells) blooming below the apple trees in my neighbor's backyard.


( More... )

At this point, so many years after The X-Files finished its run, it seems almost like bringing someone back from the dead, but after all this time--and many stops and starts along the way--I've finally finished my Alex Krycek backstory, 'A Rat's Life'. For those of you die-hard Krycek fans out there who have patiently read along as I've sporadically cranked out the various parts (or, you know, for any of you who may happen to find yourselves completely without reading material and mildly interested in reminiscing about the show), you can find the whole saga, including the latest parts (marked "NEW" in yellow) from the story's main page. These final sections cover the period from FTF to a point later in Season 6 where the Sanctuary narrative begins.

It's been a long trip, but a fruitful one. ( Editorial ramblings behind the cut. )

Springy things on the table

Yesterday when I went over to Aaron and Jenny's, Con (the six-year-old) greeted me with much excitement. He had something for me, he said, and led me to the front porch where two potted plants awaited: a pink primrose and a deep purple hyacinth. (Both are visible in the pic above.) Turns out he'd gotten money in an Easter card from his other grammy, and had immediately decided that he could use some of it to get me something.

What a totally cool surprise! And this morning I went out to the kitchen to find it scented with hyacinth. Lovely.

Slalom in the mall parking lot

Though we've had drenching rain the last half-week or so, on three of the last four days I've managed to discover a break in the downpour and have wasted no time in pulling the trike out of the garage and setting out for somewhere--anywhere--just to move and stretch myself outdoors. This morning, noticing that it hadn't rained in all of fifteen minutes (!), I got the trike and set off for the little Goodwill on River Road in the hopes of finding a chair cushion. Which I did. When I came out of the store, I found it still wasn't raining, so I decided to go a few blocks farther to the bicycle repair shop and see if Mike had any new native plants for sale (raising them and interesting others in growing them, too, are his hobby.) Mike wasn't in yet, so I decided to go a few more blocks to an intersection with a traffic light where it would be safer to cross.

But when I got there, I decided to do a loop on a side street that leads to the bike path. Of course, once I got to the bike path, I decided to take it and see how high the river level was. One of the things I like best about the trike is that I almost always end up going farther on any given ride than I'd intended when I started out; it's that much fun. As I approached the bike bridge, I caught the sound of a car engine and imagined someone hot-rodding it around in the back of the mall parking lot. But no, when I'd crossed the bridge, I discovered that what I'd heard was not just one car, but an organized slalom being held in the vacant parking area behind the stores.

Just hearing the roar of the engines brought back an unexpected flood of memories. M, my ex, had been a car junkie since his early teens, and when I first met him he had an old 1954 Porsche in which I was introduced to precision handling and the basics of performance driving. At one place where we lived in the early '80s, the neighbors across the street had a stock car, and it became a ritual for all the men in the neighborhood to converge on the neighbor's car after work and tinker with it until late at night, getting it ready for the weekend's race. And since some sort of major disaster seemed to happen to it on each and every race night, this process was repeated week after week. On the weekends we'd all head up to the track in Santa Maria, watch the sprint cars race (one of the neighbors owned one, and it's much more fun to watch a race when you're rooting for someone you know), and then watch the main event with the stock cars, including our neighbor's. It was an oval dirt track, which meant mud part of the time, and I remember Annie at seven years old or so coming home with dozens of tear-offs (clear covers for a driver's helmet viewing area, necessary when mud is splashing up and obstructing your view) that she'd collect on the track after the races were over. (This may also help explain Annie's lifelong interest in cars, and why she drives a Lotus now.)

Hearing the sounds of racing today, I was instantly taken back to the low rumble of cars slowly circling an oval track, tension ratcheted up as everyone waited for the starting flag to be thrown, and then the overwhelming, deafening roar when the flag dropped and the cars shot down the straightaway. We used to say that we could always tell newcomers to the track because they were the ones who covered their ears when the racing started; the regulars had become accustomed to the noise level. Today, though, I was surprised to realize that I could tell almost from the start which cars would have a better run through the cones just from the sound of the engines, because I can still tell a well-tuned motor from one that's not so well adjusted. It was interesting, too, to watch the drivers, a few with a fair amount of experience and some with very little. You could tell the newbies because as soon as they hit the straightaway, they'd floor it and go as fast as they could... and then not have the necessary control to maneuver the turns. The better drivers knew that being able to work the corners was what would bring them a winning time.

M still races in her spare time; in fact, she bought a house not far from Willow Springs just to be close to the track. Steve, my second son, also races, and takes advantage of M's tools and the lift at "the track house". It seems to be in the blood, though I'd thought, having been away from it for so long, that it wasn't in mine. After today, I'm not so sure.

For as much as I've wanted to get out on the trike recently, it's just been too a) rainy, b) cold and wet, or c) snowy to make doing so very viable. So today when I woke up to find it basically dry outside, above 45 degrees and with no particularly rainy-looking clouds on the horizon, I pulled the trike out of the garage and headed out toward the bike path to do the loop over to the Delta Ponds. The first thing I noticed as I hit the path (aside from the high level of water in the river due to the melting of last week's snow) was the greenish tint to the trees (above), caused by tiny new leaves starting to sprout.

( Come on along! )

It's been three years since we've gotten our annual Token Day of Snow, and it seemed that we'd missed out again this year... until I rolled over in bed early this morning, about 6:30, and noticed an orangy glow outside. It was brighter than it should have been at that hour, so I got up immediately, thinking "Can it be?" And sure enough, the yard was covered with a blanket of about 3" of snow. And it kept on falling until we had about 5.5". Which was cool because the few snowfalls we've had here have been at night and I've missed out on actually being able to watch the snow drift down, a particularly pleasant activity.

Some of it started to melt in the afternoon, but there's plenty of snow out on the lawn, and Ben has begun to shovel it together into the boys' traditional snow crag, which will eventually look something like a mini-Matterhorn in the backyard. Tonight more snow is predicted, but Friday is supposed to have a high of 50 degrees, so I'm guessing it won't last long.



( More traditionally springish stuff... )

"Have you clicked the shutter yet? I don't want to stay here all day."

Hmm, maybe it says not much is going on here in my neck of the woods, but since I haven't posted anything in a while, I figured I'd put up a few more squirrel pics. They do make for good, wholesome amusement, especially when the deck has slush on it, as it did last week, and the boundy little creatures were skittering all over it in their attempts to reach the food dish. Luckily the zoom and the handy feature that compensates for my sometimes shaky hands makes capturing these guys possible.

( More fuzzy creatures... )

Crocuses sprouting in the founder's plot, Eugene Masonic Cemetery

We've had a few gorgeous, sunny stretches in between the clouds and rain lately, and since these bursts of brightness don't always last long, I've been trying to get out and enjoy them before they disappear. This morning I trekked over to the Masonic cemetery with Grandson #2 (which meant our excursion was a little like when a large dog is walking its person rather than the other way around), but we did see a few early flowers--snowdrops, hellebores, osoberry, crocuses, violets--and signs of the imminent blossoming of others, like daffodils, fawn lilies, trilliums and red currant. In the sunny patches between the trees, the sweetness of violets filled the air, one of the best simple touches of luxury anywhere.

Last night as the sun was starting to set, Ben and I drove over to Maury Jacobs Park so we could walk across the bike bridge spanning the river. The two pics below were taken there. Below: taken from a landing at the river's edge.



Below: Sunset across the river. Nice added touch: a small flock of some type of bird that kept swooping in circles overhead.

A brief pause in the morning's industriousness

Jack woke me up early this morning with his constant trilling, so I rolled out of bed about 6:20. I did the usual: filled the cat's food dish, checked the water, opened the blinds, etc. It was surprisingly warm, so I decided to check the weather report online, which I often do from the workout room computer. As it was powering up, I figured I might as well go ahead and put out the squirrel food for the morning (generally I do this about 8 a.m.) At any rate, I was sitting at the computer, right next to the window overlooking the deck, when our first squirrel of the day bounded onto the deck and up to the food dish.

I noticed right away that she was smaller than most of the squirrels who come to the dish, and suspected she might be a female (later observation seemed to bear this out.) Since squirrels are territorial about feeding, she probably wouldn't stand much of a chance against my later, heftier comers, and she seemed to know it. She quickly took a peanut, bounded off the deck and over to the tulip poplar, and disappeared into the foliage at the base of the tree. A minute later she reappeared on the deck, took another peanut and quickly ran off, out onto the lawn this time, where she proceeded to quickly dig a hole and bury the peanut. Then she returned, took another nut and headed for a new storage spot.

She buried five peanuts before allowing herself to stop and eat one. Then she went back to ferrying the rest of the nuts, one at a time, to hiding spots. Eventually she ate three or four, but most were stored for later, and long before the usual time there's food in the dish, all the peanuts had been carried away. She reminded me of the third little pig going an hour early to pick turnips, or early to the fair to avoid encountering the big bad wolf.

Jack was at the window with me, watching all this, striped tail waving rhythmically. But our busy squirrel was very curious herself. More than once she bounced onto the deck, spotted Jack behind the glass and came right over to look at him. Then she'd turn her attention to the food dish. Perhaps she's as industrious and far-thinking as she appeared, and later this spring, possibly with a brood of babies, she'll be ready for a quick trip to one or another of her hiding spots to pick up a quick snack--squirrel fast food.

Heading into town with the trike along the bike path last Sunday. Frosty and cold!

We've had a strange winter here. There's been much more sun than usual--no cause for complaint, believe me--and much less rain. At times the temperature has gone up and down unpredictably, with odd consequences. At the moment, for instance, daffodil foliage is already up in many areas, and I've even seen some buds swelling. Day lily foliage is 4-5 inches high. Primroses are starting to bloom. The past two days have seen spring-like weather, meaning a revolving sequence of sun breaks turning to clouds, morphing to sudden dark skies and downpours--some with hail--followed by a general lightening and perhaps more sun. Cycle and repeat.

( Continue... )

Geese feeding along the bike path near the river bank.

As you can see above, the clever sinkwriter has been hard at work on a project. I knew she had been taking a graphic design class, but I had no idea I'd turn out to be the beneficiary. Her assignment was to create a book from scratch, and to make the entire thing herself, from content to binding. Imagine my surprise when this arrived in the mail yesterday.

( Check it out... )

Rye bread made from a recipe in "Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day"

This post may lack a unifying theme (aside from 'update'), but this is what's been going on in our world since the holidays:

I discovered the cookbook noted above, and I have to say that the breads are as easy to make as they claim. I had to invest in a pizza peel (the paddle you use to transport the bread from rising to oven) but like the friend whose bread I first tasted from this book, I've bypassed the pizza stone--the only pricey part of this enterprise--and just use an air-bake cookie sheet. Super simple, super tasty and you can make the equivalent of those pricey $5+ artisan loaves at home for less than a dollar.

( More... )

Yesterday: McGowan Creek, north of Springfield, rushes headlong downstream

When it came time to write Christmas cards, I couldn't think of much to put in my traditional seasonal letter. It seemed like I hadn't accomplished anything, really, in 2011. At least, not anything of note. Which was quite discouraging. So this morning I sat down and made a list of stuff accomplished last year, and another with stuff I'd like to get done this year. Because my built-in default is to go with the flow--and because doing so has so often carried me to very propitious places--I tend not to make the kind of specific (or even general) structured plans that I know would be helpful in many areas of my life. So I'm going to give more careful--though not constrictive--planning a go.

( More... )

Sun shining between the bare branches of the hazelnut tree

Climbing up out of my hole in the ground...

Like most of the people on my flist, this year I've occasionally glanced at my last LiveJournal entry only to discover it was made in the preceding month. And it's happened again. What's been going on since then? Website work, Christmas prep... and a surprising amount of sunshine. We've had barely any rain this fall, though some fell this morning and if you have any confidence in the weather reports, we'll be getting more as the week moves ahead. We certainly need it. Local ponds have continued to shrink, and the two main ski areas on this side of the Cascades, Hoodoo and Willamette Pass, still aren't open because there's been virtually no snow.

But we've had sunshine. Not non-stop, of course; this is Oregon, after all. But any number of days that were predicted to be non-stop overcast have seen blue skies break through for a few hours or even most of a day. It's been glorious.

The birds have been around, too, recently--flocks of robins making berried bushes jiggle with life while beaks peck at their red targets; cedar waxwings clustering in the high, bare branches of the birch tree; groups of fat little chirpy birds pecking at something tasty in the grass beyond my bedroom window. And within the last few days--a sure sign of winter--rowdy flocks of juvenile starlings flitting from tree to lawn to another lawn, gobbling whatever they can find and then soaring upward en masse at the slightest hint of threatening movement. Makes me think I should make the drive, once another of these sunny windows of opportunity comes along, to the Findley wildlife refuge, where thousands of geese overwinter.

The anticipated Christmas visitors from SoCal didn't materialize, but we got together with Aaron and Jenny and the kids for Christmas eve, which was fun (and now there are lots of leftovers in the fridge for ready meals--a nice bonus.) Also, I received a Kindle for Christmas, courtesy of my son Paul, something that had been on my wish list for a long time.

Perhaps one of the best gifts of the season has been a palpable sense of peace while going about my work and Christmas gift preparations. Admittedly, I tend to deliberately stay away from the rat-race of malls and associated overt commercialism. But a sense of quiet has seemed to accompany me pretty much throughout, and small things like frost patterns, birds passing by overhead, the sight of squirrels munching on the peanuts I've left on the deck, or simply the brightness of sunlight pooling on carpets or backlighting leaves in the yard have seemed like unexpected riches. If, as they say, happiness is wanting what you have, then I've been blessed with an abundance of it.

Here's hoping all of you have have encountered some of life's small, understated gems during this holiday season.