W.O.W. (Wildflowers of Washington)

A photo tribute to the beautiful flora and fauna of the most northwestern State of the contiguous 48.  Never have I had the opportunity to capture so many of God’s creations… every color, well almost.  My favorite colors were all covered… and that’s all that really matters, right? I don’t pretend to know what all of these flowers are named, but I do know some of them…. having lived in the great Northwest.  Please help me out if you know any missing names. 

Yarrow:

Daisies, duh:  (and grass seed)

Foxgloves:

???:

Roses:

Different Roses:

Different Roses #3:

Bachelor Buttons:  (these were our wedding flowers!)

Columbine:

Not sure, but could be the flowers of blackberries??:

???:

Unknown to me, but the blue ones look similar to Lobelia, the white similar to Star Jasmine, and the little yellow ones are shaped like Violas.

Lilies:

There you have it.  See?!  I need to do a W.O.W. scrapbook album and give it to Rick so that he will have fond memories of our hiking in Washington.  Please, take time to smell the roses!

A Rough Re-entry

It’s taken me several days to get back into the swing of things after three weeks away from home.  Re-entry was rough.  We arrived home at 1:00 am Tuesday morning after taking a “short cut”… yes, the infamous short cut… that takes longer and is curvy and bumpy and narrow and all the truckers know about it too.  I can’t remember the last time I had to get out one of the gallon size zip-lock barf bags for myself.  Thankfully I didn’t use it.  I just held it in my free hand… the one that wasn’t clinging to the door handle…. and I breathed deeply for a LONG time.

I felt sorry for Rickey, by husband, because I knew he was only going to get about 4 hours of sleep before having to go to work.  But I was in no shape to drive.  I consoled myself by noting that HE chose the “short cut” that made me sick.  Not the nice wife, I know.  But still, I could have driven the other route and he could have slept, but no.  That old hind sight saying is so true.

Five a.m. Rick’s alarm went off and I was a sweaty mess lying in bed with no covers!  Welcome back to Phoenix, the Valley of the Scorching Sun!  110 degrees…. not hot enough to boil water… only people.  Our bedroom is the hottest room in the house, and that morning it was worse than usual… because of re-entry.  I had to escape… and headed for the loft, just outside our room and turned on the ceiling fan.  Ah, the cool breezes. 

As I sat there cooling off, I glanced over to the homeschool bookshelf and a feeling of dread passed over me!  I have planning to do… for the whole year ahead.  I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to be awake.  I didn’t want to be hot.  I didn’t want to live in Phoenix in the summer.  Then I realized that I had only been home from vacation for four hours, was over tired and irrational and I had six weeks before I had to plan anything… and I didn’t need to think about it now.  Or this month.  And I always get pumped back up to homeschool with glee at the annual convention in July.  Whew.

Back to sleep I went and did feel much better when I awoke in another four hours.  I thought my attitude had improved since 5:00 a.m., but then I went into the kitchen and looked out the back window.  Dead, tall grass with weeds that had yellow and purple flowers blooming greeted me.  Not the nice wildflowers of Washington.  Annoying weeds.  And four pots with dried out dirt and dead flower plants.  I didn’t want to look at brown.  I wanted to still be seeing green trees and green fields and green ferns and wild blackberry bushes bursting with fruit.  I didn’t want to be in Phoenix.  I didn’t want to be hot.

We are now on day four of re-entry.  I have adjusted slightly better each day.  Part of day three was spent sitting in the coolness of the ice rink while my boys skated, planning trips to leave Phoenix this summer.  It made me feel better to have escapes on the calendar.  Nothing extravagant, but trips to cooler climates with pine trees.  Trips starting next weekend!  I like the ice rink in summer!

Damping… Camping in the Rain

 

I made that up myself.  The creativity must stem from four straight days of fresh air stimulation.  A friend called on Tuesday and asked if we wanted to go camping for the rest of the week at a lake that is only 22 miles from our house.   “YES!”  And thus brings you up to date on our week right until last night when we dumped loads and loads of campfire-smelling articles into piles in our garage.  They are still there.

Funny thing was, I checked the weather report for the week on Wednesday morning AFTER I had shopped and packed and hauled and directed.  It reported “Major thunderstorm warning!  Avoid outdoor activity!  Stay indoors!  Unplug electrical appliances!”  Does anyone really do that?

So off we went to the lake.  All seems pretty normal, well, for homeschoolers who spontaneously school at unpredictable locations.  Why not the lake?  I read somewhere that camping is nature’s way of promoting the hotel industry.  HA!  That’s true for my mother, my sister, my sister-in-law and many others, but not for me.  Camping promotes wonder and awe at God’s creation…… wonder in the dark inside a flimsy nylon tent that is your only protection from those strange noises…. and awe that Lewis and Clark did this for a living (minus the nylon tent)!  I truly feel at home in front of the Coleman stove with recently caught and be-headed fish in the cast iron frying pan.  My kids have never caught fish while camping.  So I didn’t leave openings in the meal plan for freshly drawn bass.  After my sons snagged seven scaly specimens the first day, I casually mentioned to my friend that I had never cleaned fish or lit a Coleman propane stove before.  Proudly, I can check those off my bucket list now.

The thunderstorms didn’t materialize… however it did rain three times for 27 seconds each time.  We had a daily wind gust that blew anything and everything not tied down toward the lake.  The clouds made me wish, more than once, that I had a folded copy of the Cloud Formations poster that my husband memorized in flight school.  Cumulonimbus…. uh….. stratus….. cirrus…..

Wildflowers bring joy to my heart.  God made them especially for nature lovers like me.  Pink, yellow, purple, orange… LOVE IT!

This was my first vacation ever where I actually read through every book and magazine I brought and still had a day and a half left over.  I didn’t stress about it…. I just stared at the lake.  The kids stayed busy kayaking, swimming, fishing, riding their bikes, gathering wood, building fires, playing games and laughing.  I never once heard, “Mom, there’s nothing to do!”  What an awesome week!