Greetings from the Garden

I had a pretty quiet Friday working on cleaning up the black and white Tarot cards I found yesterday, plus enjoying the beautiful weather, though we saw a dead bunny on our walk in a spot where we've often seen him munching the grass, so I'm sad about that. The trees are starting to change and I'm not ready for that; I feel like we barely had summer. 

I watched Strange New Worlds again with Cheryl, then we watched Supergirl, which was okay. I didn't dislike it as much as some of the internet did, but it made me miss the early seasons of the TV show, which had a sense of humor along with the pathos. We saw some animals at Washington Park Arboretum but the dogs were sad not to get to chase them:

Poem for Friday and Sammamish River Trail

On His Reluctance to Take down the Christmas Ornaments 

By John Ashbery 

A nice, normal morning:

feet setting out as though in a trance,

doubling the yesterdays, a doubled man

under the stairs, and strange surrealist fish

from so much disappearance, damaged in the mail.

Or the spry cutting edge of another day.

Here, we have these in

sizes and colors

day goes fluttering by.

Like ivy behind a chimney

it grows and grows in ropes.

Mouse teams unslay it,

yeomen can't hear yet.

A shadow purling,

up into the sky.

Silence in the vandalized vomitorium.

It's great that you can be here too.

Passivity rests Its case.

-------- 

I spent Friday morning finally putting the last of the trip laundry away, then I did a bunch of computer work, ate lunch, and did some reading. I had to pick something up at CVS, so in the late afternoon we went to the Sammamish River Trail and walked until it was nearly dark, then went to a couple of stores -- it was free ornament day at World Market, so now I have a little squirrel to hang next to the owl I got last year, yay.

 

We have spent the evening watching the second and third episodes of Heated Rivalry, which contains almost no hockey and lots of men in love -- this absolutely started out as fan fiction with the names of people and the real teams changed, but it's entertaining -- followed by the French film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, which is less slick than similarly themed movies I've seen (Austenland etc.) and quite well-acted.

Greetings from Renton

We had rain again all day Sunday, but it was typical Seattle winter rain, more mist and drizzle than a hard storm, so we watched some football and did some reading in the morning, then ate lunch and went to Gene Coulon Park on Lake Washington in Renton in the afternoon. We saw a wide variety of waterfowl -- mergansers, buffleheads, ring-necked ducks, mallards, grebes, coots, gulls, Canada geese, Rouen ducks, cormorants, great blue herons, possible gadwalls, and several white-chested mallard crossbreeds -- plus smaller birds and crows as well as a big turtle that didn't seem to mind the cool weather. We also saw Pokemon Wild Area spawns and I caught some of the Mighty Pokemon released for the weekend event. 

 

We stopped at Kohl's on the way home because I had a 40% off coupon for the weekend and they had long sleeved t-shirts on sale, plus we went to Safeway for food for the week. After dinner, we finished the first season of the most recent incarnation of Maigret, which I really liked; this last episode had a weird inconsistency with the previous two-parter and a setup out of a much older story that I thought was going to irritate me, but it flipped a damsel in distress scenario on its head, which I appreciated! Now we're watching Talamasca, which continues to be sort of mediocre except when William Fichtner is onscreen, particularly when he's being a wicked homoerotic vampire; then it's huge campy fun worthy of Anne Rice.

Greetings from the Fish Ladder

Quick post! We had rain again all day Friday. I spent the morning reading Adam Louis-Klein's articles on the history of antizionism and watching towhees and Steller's jays, both of which are too big to land on our little seed bell, try to eat the seed. Then younger son and his wife called and we talked to them, plus her mom and sisters, before we ate acai bowls for lunch and went to walk in the rain to the park. 

Our evening TV was the PBS broadcast of Shakespeare in the Park's 2025 Twelfth Night with Lupita and Junior Nyong'o, Peter Dinklage, Sandra Oh, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson among others. I've never seen actual lookalike siblings play Viola and Sebastian before and it's quite effective! Now we're watching the new Maigret, whose first episode is very good. The Issaquah salmon hatchery last weekend: 

Poem for Monday and Idylwood Trees

Fire Walk With Me 

By David Lynch 

Through the darkness of future past, 

The magician longs to see. 

One chants out between two worlds... 

Fire walk with me.

This is the water and this is the well. 

Drink full and descend.

The horse is the white of the eyes

And dark within.

-------- 

We had rain forecast for Monday, but it stopped early in the morning and didn't return till after dark. I had laundry and chores to do in the morning, plus I was on the phone with my sister for an hour -- she just got back from Israel and I wanted to hear about her trip. Then we had lunch, I did some work and chatted with a friend in London, and watched woodpeckers and chickadees come peck at the seed bell we got at Wild Birds Unlimited in Issaquah yesterday. 

It was a lovely afternoon to walk to the park and see how many leaves fell in last week's rain. When we came home, we had veggie apple sausages with mashed potatoes and watched Monday Night Football, then finished the second season of Twin Peaks and started Fire Walk With Me (even weirder than the show though what a great cast) before this week's Watson (shut-in syndrome terrifies me but I thought it was a good episode). The progression of autumn at Idylwood: 

Greetings from Evans Creek

Quick post after a nice day hiking at Evans Creek Preserve, which was a little muddy in the rainforest after all the rain we had last week and we had to go the long way uphill to avoid the stream across the trail, but the paths were almost empty and we saw slugs and mushrooms on the wet wood, though it was also so clear that we saw the Cascades behind the hills. We also stopped at CVS and Safeway for necessities -- I know a lot of local people miss Bartell's, but I'm really happy to have a CVS that's easy to get to and the new one in Redmond has been a pleasure, both the pharmacy and the store in general.

 

We saw football intermittently when we were home (the Seahawks and Ravens both won, yay), and after dinner -- samosa chaat -- we watched Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. Everyone reading this probably already knows the ways it's not faithful to the book, which did not bother me -- Elizabeth is a great character in this reimagining, and her fate is less atrocious, plus I love the way the Arctic framing story is constructed and woven through. The egotism of the scientist is very explicitly the egotism of the wealthy who can afford such experiments. I liked all the performances, and it wasn't as gory as I feared.

Greetings from Issaquah

Saturday was a gorgeous fall day. We watched most of the Indiana-Penn State game while doing chores in the morning and eating lunch, then we went out right as the Maryland-Rutgers game was starting (the Terps blew it) to go to Issaquah. Our first stop was Lake Sammamish State Park, where there were lots of colorful leaves, lots of ducks and coots, and a pair of seagulls having a huge fight over a dropped slice of pickle. 

Then we went to the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, where there are still coho in the stream and the fish ladder, plus mergansers and mallards over the dam and rainbow trout in the holding tanks. After that we drove into town to Wild Birds Unlimited for hummingbird nectar defender, to Bricks & Minifigs just to look at Legos, and to Legendary Doughnuts also just to look...right, that's an absolute lie, we got pistachio and pumpkin donuts. 

When we got home Cheryl and I had plans to watch Thunderbolts because we'd never seen it together, which we realized last night while watching Fantastic Four: The First Steps, and after that, Paul and I watched Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which was pleasantly nostalgic, a little ridiculous, and absolutely no strain on the brain. Photos from Issaquah all afternoon: 

Poem for Wednesday and Witches' Market

From "Poems for the Sporting News" 

By Jack Spicer 

God is a big white baseball that has nothing to do but go in a curve or a straight line. I studied geometry in highschool and know that this is true.

Given these facts the pitcher, the batter and the catcher all look pretty silly. No Hail Marys

Are going to get you out of a position with the bases loaded and no outs, or when you’re 0 and 2, or when the ball bounces out to the screen wildly. Off seasons

I often thought of praying to him but could not stand the thought of that big, white, round, omnipotent bastard.

Yet he’s there. As the game follows rules he makes them.

I know

I was not the only one who felt these things. 

-------- 

I spent a lot of time on Zoom on Wednesday, starting with my three high school friends in the morning -- always great to catch up. Then I did a couple of chores, ate lunch, and watched the final third of the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring with Kristen and Laurie, which is always awesome and even more so watching with people I've been friends with since the movie came out. 

We walked to the beach, saw lots of ducks, geese, and leaves, then came home for the Blue Jays-Dodgers game, which Toronto somewhat surprisingly won easily after leading off with two home runs on three pitches. We ate sandwiches in front of the TV for dinner, then we watched the end of the first season and start of the second season of Twin Peaks, which is still playing Good Girl, Bad Girl. In the drizzle at the PNW Witches' Market: