Bearded Iris Time

Here in Seattle the beautiful weather of  last week has turned cool and rainy. Despite the weather this is the time of year we have many different colors of Bearded Iris blooming so I thought I'd add a little color to your day by showing some of the blooms that brighten our walk when Kuro and I go on our usual route.

This unusual iris is the first I've seen with variegated leaves.  

Aren't they beautiful? Guaranteed to brighten your day and bring a smile of appreciation to your lips.

Colors to savor when our weather turns dreary.

Durham (Bull City), North Carolina

I’m writing this from the east coast of our amazing country, where my wife, Iko, and I are visiting our younger son and his wife in North Carolina.

For those of you who travel, it’s no secret, but it always reassures me to travel to widely separated parts of our country and our world and observe yet again that people are pretty much the same wherever they live.

Here in Durham, there are friendly faces, distracted faces and faces racked by some private pain. There are young people, and those not so young, walking along oblivious to their surroundings while absorbed in private communication on their handheld device. As we approached a store yesterday, a gentleman smiled and held the door for my wife and me. He didn’t ask our political party, religion or economic status, he was simply one human, being courteous to others.

Sometimes in our world of instant news, alarmist headlines and finger pointing journalism where people are put into buckets labeled “Democrat, Republican; Jew, Gentile; rich, poor; Northerner, Southerner; good, bad,” I need to be reminded that people are people no matter external conditions.

Nice little brick homes a block down the street.

This part of Durham is a quiet neighborhood bordered on one side by a large county park and on the other by a long street of small businesses which reminds me of Aurora Avenue in Seattle.

On the west side of the street they get the morning sun.

  

Brick is a common construction material here in the low earthquake area.

Time out from the arduous but rewarding task of splitting wood for a winter fire.

Of course it's the same day and month as it is in Seattle but the flowers here are on a different schedule. I suppose it must have something to do with the southern latitude. It doesn't seems like it is so far south but here in Durham, if we were in California, we would be about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

I went for a short walk after a morning rain shower and found these flowers posing after a morning drink for their picture to be taken.

Roses abound in yards around here.

I didn't recognize this  flower planted along a fence line. Maybe one of you can help me out?

Around the corner this Prickly Pear is growing in someone's front yard. The fruit will be
ripe and ready to eat in a month or two.  

There are many deciduous trees and the occasional pine in these residential neighborhoods. When there are power lines in the same area the trees are pruned and allowed to grow around and above.

 Here's a mysterious foreigner for you travelers to identify. You would normally not see this flower in this part of the world but sometimes if you look hard you can find strangers in our midst.

I don't know how this interloper snuck (or "sneaked" for you traditional English speakers) into this area.

We’ll be leaving North Carolina soon to head back to our home in Seattle. I will remember the storefront gentleman for his courtesy and thank the rest of the NC people we’ve met for their reminder that down deep we are all the same.

Smell the Roses

As I've traveled through life the older (and wiser) folks have sometimes said, "Stop and smell the roses." I thought it was good advice. Now that I'm getting older and observe younger people bustling around multi-tasking (they say) and burning the candle at both ends, I give them the same advice.

Kuro is due for a haircut but meanwhile he is watching the dog across the street from the wild roses.

Earlier this evening, Kuro and I went for our walk and happened by the south side of a small park not far away where there is a patch of wild roses.

Wild roses, being wild are quite hardy and have been growing on this little stretch of hilltop for many years. Every few years some Seattle City Parks Department bureaucrat decides the wild roses don't fit their picture of proper park foliage and has them cut right down to the ground. A year or so later they are back up and doing their thing.

Many of the homes in this neighborhood have domesticated roses but they aren't in bloom yet this year. Many years they might be blooming by now but this year has been especially wet and cold so the only roses to stop and smell are these wild roses.

Wild roses have a delicate but sweet and distinctive fragrance. Once you've smelled these flowers on a warm summer day you won't easily forget the aroma. Not overpowering but when their perfume drifts by on the breeze it brings back happy memories of carefree summers of long ago.

As I look at the flowers going through their cycle of life I'm reminded of when I was young, when old people usually died at home. In the same house you might find a baby and young people, young adults, older people and those in their last days.

This patch of roses has a few white flowers, something I haven't seen in other places. There aren't many white ones but they bring a colorful (or is it lack of color) contrast to the pink and red of the others.

A few feet away we found some Scotch Broom just coming into bloom. Now there's an intruder the Parks Manager would be wise to eradicate, or at least try to since it's a hardy plant too, and invasive to boot.

Leaving the park we made our way north and found the old wisteria shown in another blog entry. It is in full bloom now.

The wisteria has a sort of dusty smell so my good friend and I retraced our steps and refreshed our olfactory memory of the wild roses before we went back home. 

I'll remember to come by this place again as summer arrives with warmer weather to enhance the smell even more.

Buildings of Vancouver, BC

There are contrasting building styles in Vancouver and those styles are changing quickly. It seems like the city has as many construction cranes as Seattle.

We were up there last week and I thought I would try out my Blogger app to see how easy it was to post from my phone.

Two years ago when we spent three weeks in Vietnam and Laos it was difficult to post from my phone. Well, now it's almost two years later so I'll try it again.

This is the building where our condos are located on the 18th-23rd floors. It's located on Hornby Street just a short walk from Robson.

In the foreground is the old Murray Hotel. It's not long for this world either.

What you see above is what I was able to post from my phone. 

You notice the photos are a little rough because they have to be reduced to small size or they won't post. There are so few pixels the edges of buildings and straight lines are ragged. I'll play with that some more but I suspect the only real cure is to change out the photos later when I have access to a laptop. 

This is the same photo taken with my phone but in this copy I uploaded
it to my computer One Drive then posted from there. Note how the building edge
lower left is straight here but a little jagged in the copy above. 

It will also take some practice to get the text spaced throughout the photos where it makes sense. I think I can play with that some more and get a serviceable result but it's a lot easier composing from my laptop. 

Next spring when I head for Nepal for the trek to Everest Base Camp, I won't have a laptop with me so I need to make some more of these practice posts from my phone. Please bear with me.