May 14, 2003

• Enough Kansas for now, back to Alaska for a while…

  
  

  This is what started it today.  I noticed that the chamomile seedlings were starting to get leggy.  I knew if I didn’t take some pics soon, the stuff would be all grown up, spread out, bloomed and gone to seed again soon and I would have missed another spring shot.

  
  

   

  
  

  I was out there in the yard, talking to Greyfox as he inflated a low tire on my car.  He’s home on a fairly decent day because the new borough zoning ordinance ran him off the public right of way in Talkeetna.  He is waiting for word on some possible options, new locations to set up his stand.  He’s noticing things and fixing stuff.  I didn’t even know I had a low tire.  I did, however, notice things greening up.

  
  

  

  
  

  This caused Greyfox to give me that worried look that tells me that some expression on my face has concerned or alarmed him… he’s very good at low-key alarm, controlled panic.  I just tend to look worried or mad when I’m only concentrating or spacing out.

  
  

  I assured Greyfox that I was only wrestling with a not-momentous decision, whether to haul out the Fuji and all its lenses and get some closeups of plants and bugs, or grab the Kodak and get some good longer shots.  I brought up the battery issue:  the Fuji is a glutton.  But it really made more sense to get it out now that it’s warm enough not to freeze my fingers or void the Fuji’s warranty, get used to it, learn its limits.  So I bit the bullet and put an extra set of batteries in my pocket and started looking for fireweed shoots.  They’re red-purple, tender and sweet now.  When they get a little bigger and turn green they are coarse and bitter.

  
  

  I found these and lots more fireweed shoots.  I shot these and one more big purple one.  I’m going to get a basket when I’m done here and go out and pick a bunch.  Then I will have a salad (with romaine) as soon as I get back in, and steamed fireweed (with something, probably something different for each of the three of us) for dinner.

  
  

  

  
  

  I saw and heard some birds, but nothing that would sit still and let me shoot it.  Gotta learn how to make this thing do movies…  The first stationary wildlife I spotted was this spider.  Can you spot it?  I took three shots here, and all looked sharp, in focus on the digital display, and this was the closest to in-focus of them all.  I’m starting to get a sense of the camera’s limits.

  
  

  A lot of leaves were bronzed like the spider’s leaf and this new growth on some lowbush cranberries.  We had a sharp frost last night, a new crust of ice this morning where it has been water for a week or more.  The combo of early thaw and late frost is giving the woods color that looks more like fall.  I like this shot, because it shows both green and bronze leaves, new flower buds, and last year’s berries still there for the birds that are migrating in.

  
  

  This is Pidney, trolling for belly rubs as usual, showing her flashy side to get attention.  She is the one of our three cats who sleeps with our dog Koji and me.  I’m usually between them, but when I have a restless night they both get on the back of the bed and try to push me off the other side.

  
  

  Muffin, the cat who picked Greyfox as her primate, was using him for furniture in his room while Pidney and Grammy Mousebreath were escorting me out the cul de sac.  Granny, whom their original primate Mark called Sassy, and whom we sometimes call Sassafrass the dancing cat, or Your Majesty, or the Catriarch, sleeps alone, but often curls up on Doug’s lap for companionship and warmth when he is here at the computer.  He’s hers, heart and soul.  Right now, he’s in couch potato heaven, stretched out under a blanket on the couch playing GTA3 and Granny is asleep on his shins.

  
  

  In a part of the muskeg right next to the road, where ATVs have left deep water-filled ruts, I saw several mosquitoes skipping on the surface of the water.  I approached and they all went still to hide, so I shot this one.  Nothing else wanted to hold still and get its picture taken this trip.

  
  

  

  
  

  Those spring-green birches in the distance look SOOO good to me.  And the spreading out and deepening color of the leaves will be happening so fast now, absurdly, obscenely green all at once.  It’s not dark at midnight now.  I noticed that a few nights ago when I was awake late reading.  Staying up later and later just sorta happens to me this time of year.  I keep waiting for the dark that never falls.

  
  

  

  
  

  Out near the end of the cul de sac, I saw the hawk, winging out toward its roosting tree, far out in the muskeg away from both road and railroad tracks.  I hear a hawk almost every time I’m outside for much time, and last time I was out, I startled this one away from an area at the end of the cul de sac where there’s a lot of cover for small prey.  The cats like to hunt there.  Neighbors have dumped the stumps there when they were clearing land–now it is Voleville, Lemmingland.

  
  

  I took two shots of the hawk, but my lens isn’t long enough and the shutter isn’t fast enough to catch it that high and moving.  One was a blob of pixels when I zoomed in just a little, and the other could have been a seagull for all you could tell by that image.  I either have to learn to lead the bird so I get the shot I want when the camera’s endless pause is over instead of missing it during the delay, or else I need to go back to using the 35mm SLR with a long lens and fast film.  I pictured myself a sort of demented subarctic suburban paparazza, out there roaming the cul de sac with the Kodak dangling from its wrist strap, the camera bag flopping against my ribs on its shoulder strap, and the Fuji and the Minolta rattling around on my chest as I search for the current shot and decide which weapon to use.

  
  

  This shot, to the north from the road out to the circle, shows a scattered stand of beetle-killed black spruce.  This stuff is why many of us around here appreciate rainy weather.  Wildfire loves those dead trees.  I hear chainsaws sometimes, coming from several directions at once, now that the snow is all gone and the mud is starting to dry up.  We’ve had red flag fire alerts around here since mid-April.  There is one near the corner of our house that Charley has said he will cut down for me as soon as I get my chainsaw sharpened and tuned up, fueled and oiled.  It’s get-busy time, time also to take a look at the roof and try to decide what has to be done up there this year.

  
  

  The cats led me back around the corner toward home, and waited restlessly as I changed lenses to get this shot of my favorite grove of trees.  The tall birch in the foreground is covered with long dangling catkin panicles, and a few leaves at the ends of some big branches are open. 

  
  

  I keep thinking about this pile of beadstrands lying on my worktable, and the boxes of paired stones I picked out for earrings.  As soon as it stops freezing at night, I’m going to take the poly sheets down off the windows and put the screen in this window nearest my table, for ventilation so I can do the gluing.  I’ve got lots of beading to do, meanwhile, and some designs that came to me one day as I looked at the piles of components.  In a week, Mercury will be direct again.  Now comes the Full Moon….

  • 10:37 pm
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