a classic northwest activity

AJ and I joined some friends this weekend for a jaunt into the Cascade foothills in search of edible mushrooms.  This season is apparently the best in 10 years for hunting mushrooms, and lucky for us we live in one of the best places on the planet to do so.  The forest was a mix of cedar and fir and was spooky-dark under the canopy.  The forest floor was covered with sword ferns and spongy from excess water and mossy mosses.  This environment yields the most bizarre fungi.  We searched in a few places with no luck, but then AJ found the mother-lode on a  steep ridge descending into the Nooksack River.  It was very cool - they shall grace our pizza tonight!

The Nooksack River

Searching for Chantarelles

forest loot

drying before eating

restoring sanity

AJ and I we among the masses attending a satellite Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, sponsored by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  Being in DC would have been a dream, but we agreed it was more sane to stay local - so we went to downtown Seattle.  Several thousand folks were there, all polite, all with diverse political views, all with funny signs.  It was awesome - and a breath of fresh air in this nasty political climate.  It made me proud to be an American.

Congressman Jim McDermott

Jon Stewart makes his entrance! (note funny sign in crowd...)

AJ taking a stand for civility

JJ states his view on taxes

Funny signs everywhere

JJ and AJ exercising their civic duty

our love floweth like the wine....

...which means there's a lot of love around here.

Adrienne and I enjoy our vino.  How could we not?  Its liquid gold.  Gold that's drinkable.  I digress...  Because of our various wine tasting trips and a great wedding where folks brought us TONS of wine (as we humbly requested, thank you), we now have a collection pushing triple digits.  Another great wedding gift, we received a wine fridge - so now our favorite bottles have a good home for the long term. And as part of our kitchen remodel this summer, we left an empty space in the cabinetry for an integrated wine rack - which I built this weekend as you can see below.  We're pretty stoked how it turned out - nothing special, but it needed to be custom for that space!

Space left over for a wine rack

Built, stain drying 

Installed

Stocked!

new wine fridge - stocked!

its a bit cheesy....

...but I have to say Adrienne and I live in amazing place.  Today I rode the ferry to work.  No commuting in traffic, not buses, no trains.  Instead I rode a boat to work.  And from the boat, I could see in crystal clear imagery two ENORMOUS volcanoes capped with glaciers, a city's skyline graced with mountains in the background and an ocean in the foreground, islands dotting the seascape, and sailboats taking advantage of both the sun and the wind.  And my meeting focused on developing strategies to protect and restore the Puget Sound, one of the world's most biodiverse and unique waterways.

Adrienne's day wasn't entirely different.  She spent the day educating community college professors as an invited speaker at Western Washington U about ocean acidification, its implications, and how these educators can share stories and lessons with their students.  She just called me and told me she's on her way home, and that the moon is full and rising over the islands and the mountains of north-western Washington.  I stepped outside to see if I could see this moon and snapped a photo of it rising in the east over our neighborhood.  Not a great picture...but conveys the moment.

all you need is 1000 corks!

If you were to tell me that Adrienne and I are the most creative people in the whole wide world, I might just believe you.  Check out our super cool new corkboard that we just made!  We've been saving our corks for years (yes, years) without a grand plan of what to do with them.  This is what we came up with - and we didn't even get the idea from Sunset magazine.  We figured it out all on our own.  What makes it even cooler is the frame was made from the old hardwood floors from our house.  Some of the boards were beyond repair and needed replacing - so with the old scraps, we made this frame.

We're pretty proud, I must say...

another (multi) weekend project

What drew us initially to the Centenarian was its amazing backyard.  It was the perfect amount of space for what we wanted to do - which in the end will include a deck, vegetable garden, potting station, patio, fountain, fire pit, outdoor kitchen with BBQ and wood-fired oven, a fern grotto, split rail fence, native garden demonstration...and maybe even a vineyard if we can find rain-loving grapes.  

But the one thing we didn't like was the crummy chain-link fence separating us from the neighbors.  Its no big deal when no one's hanging out in the backyard - but now its summer, and our backyard BBQs were clashing with their backyard BBQs.  It was about to get ugly in the urbs.  So we collaborated with them to build the beautiful 95 ft long viewing obstruction you see below.  Garden before-and-after pics only add to the dramatic effect.

Before

After!

research diversion...

Follow the link below to read an article I (Adrienne) wrote for a scuba magazine - Sources: The Journal of Underwater Education.  Nothing like a little light reading on ocean chemistry for the weekend!

ftp://ftp.pmel.noaa.gov/OCRD/sutton/Pages%20from%20Sources%202010-2ndQtr.pdf