Wildlife

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sunday, September 16, 2001
One year ago: Battle of the Bands
Two years ago: More Digging
Three years ago: Crunch Mode
Four years ago: Pressure Produces Diamonds

I asked Jack if he wanted to go to the West Seattle Farmers' Market this morning, but he preferred to stay home and make himself coffee. This time I had a list! I was restrained, and only bought organic salad mix, a few tomatoes, gala apples, and a few peppers. At the regular grocery store I bought olive oil (the old bottle had been used up roasting the garlic yesterday), ginger, and dill pickles, but did not buy freezer tape. When I asked the cashier if Safeway carried it, he'd never heard of such a thing! but claimed it would be in the stationery supples, next to the scotch tape or masking tape. Hmmph! I did feel virtuous, buying all these good things and not using the car. (I've heard of "laundry list" journal entries; is this a "grocery list" entry?)

I got busy making pear chutney. The food processor came in handy for slicing the fruit after I peeled and cored it. While I was preparing the fruit, Jack had me come and help him mount the bulletin board on the basement door, which went relatively smoothly. We had a tougher time with the whiteboard in the office, since it wasn't flat and neither was the wall. I suggested marking where we wanted it to go, since the board tended to slip while we were drilling the holes, but Jack didn't think it was necessary. But the whiteboard was so heavy and awkward that it did slip! Argh! Jack was very frustrated. We took a break so Jack could sit down and figure out a better way to do it. Finally, we just put a bunch of drywall screws along the top of the board, which seemed to work satisfactorily.

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I sat at the dining table and used the p-touch labelmaker to make file folder for all the papers I'd been saving for the Home Information Center (caps make it offical and impressive). Some for Jack's daughter H---- (school stuff, C.A.P), some for bills and financial stuff, some for maps and bus schedules. I'll make more as I see a need. Some of this might go in a household notebook, instead.

In the late afternoon, we drove down to Olympia to pick up H----. But we made such good time that we were early, and H--- wasn't there! (I'm still a bit confused on whether we were there before the time H--- was supposed to be ready to be picked up, or not.) We decided to go to the nearby Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, since I'd been wanting to see it.

As we drove over there, Jack told me about a previous attempt to visit -- his older daughter A---- had been pitching a fit about how she absolutely didn't want to go, and when he saw there was a charge to visit, he turned around and left in frustration. But when we got there, we found it was only three dollars per family group, which seemed reasonable to me. We parked, and I put the three bucks in an envelope provided for the purpose, and dropped it in the slot at the visitor center.

The visitor center was already closed, though the gates wouldn't be closing until sunset. We walked out on to the balcony and observed some birds, then decided that we did have time to do the one-mile Twin Barns loop trail, and Jack's knee could take the flat boardwalk walking.

They are doing a lot of habitat restoration, getting rid of blackberry and other invasive plants and replacing them with native species (I approve since I despise Himalayan blackberries, the scourge of the Northwest). We went to each little outcropping on the trail, looking at riparian forest (that means, near a river), overlooking the Nisqually, and the open fields near the twin barns themselves. A falcon flew quite near to us at the barns! Jack mistook some maples for oaks, understandable since they were very substantial trees.

By the time we got back to Jack's ex-wife's place, it was getting dark. The days are getting shorter! On the way back home we stopped for dinner at Zoopa's. Hey, when we brought H--- down we were told to make sure she'd eaten, but she didn't get fed before we picked her up. What's up with that?

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When we got back to West Seattle, I dropped Jack and H---- off so I could swing back to the grocery store. I'd forgotten one ingredient I needed for rice pudding: sweetened condensed milk. I also spied, hanging on a high hook, the freezer tape I'd been denied earlier. Hah! Now I'll be able to mark the stuff we store away -- no UFOs (unidentified frozen objects).