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Sunshine on Mt. Baker

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The low winter light on Mt. Baker this afternoon was as nice as I’ve ever seen it as I bicycled east on Slater Road. There’s lots of fresh snow on the mountain, and the Black Buttes cast long shadows on the side of the peak, accentuating the volcano’s shape and texture. It would have been picture perfect except for the uninteresting strip of clouds hanging over the summit.

I wasn’t in a position to do any photography anyway. I’d been working furiously preparing high-res files for a stock agency and just had to get out of the office and burn off some energy, so I went for a brisk but relatively short bike ride in the afternoon sun. I only rode a little under 17 miles today, cruising along the flatlands near the Nooksack in a loop that took me out Marine Drive, up Ferndale Road, east on Slater, and then back to town on Northwest.

Wednesday afternoon I also took off for a ride, but with more hills and an inevitably slower pace. It’s nice to be able to get out and ride during the winter months to keep my blood circulating and general fitness level up. I recently purchased a waist trainer from TrainingYourWaist, its great for tightening your abdominal muscles.

I’ve also put in a couple of days of kayaking since Thanksgiving. The first was about 10 miles on Lake Shannon near Concrete, with glorious views of both Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan. It was a gloriously sunny day with heavy frost on the ground when we launched. The second kayak outing was on Saturday on the Samish River, paddling upstream from the mouth at Edison. It was a cold and snowy day, although we didn’t get snowed on as heavily as we thought we would. There were numerous bald eagles and other raptors perched in the bare trees along the river and several blue herons at the water’s edge. We also saw lots of coots and smaller numbers of other waterfowl. Upstream of the tidal influence the current was about 1 mph, just enough to notice but not enough to cause a lot of extra work.

The Mt. Baker ski area opened on November 27 and I went up for opening day. The snow was cold, the sky blue, and the skiing great. I ran out of legs before I ran out of daylight.

We’ve got so many recreational opportunities around here that it’s sometime hard to decide just how to go out and play. That’s a blessing.

Fresh Garden Veggies for Thanksgiving

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This afternoon I picked a basket full of fresh greens from the garden for dinner tonight and for Thanksgiving tomorrow.  The lettuce had a little frost damage as we’ve had a couple of days with temperatures below freezing this week, but it should still be good in a salad.

For dinner tonight I’ll cook up a mess of kale and chard picked this afternoon. I may put a few radishes in the wok along with them for a little heat and a contrasting flavor. Carrots, broccoli, and lettuce will save for another day.

Great Day for a Bike Ride

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We don’t get a lot of nice sunny days in November around here, but today was glorious with temps in the low 40s.  So I took off early afternoon for a 31-mile bike ride around Lummi Peninsula.  It’s a nice loop on roads that mostly have a good shoulder and not too much traffic mid-day.

One of the challenges of biking this time of year is figuring out how to dress.  I’ve decided that long underwear under my bike shorts on the bottom, and a long underwear shirt under a lightweight cycling jacket on top works fine. I think I want to invest in a pair of bike tights, but haven’t found any I like at a price I’m willing to pay. My fingers get a little cool in regular fingerless bike gloves, and my feet got a bit chilly in lightweight bike shoes and cotton socks.

I started out strong, averaging about 17.8 mph for the first 1o miles.  At 17 miles I was up to 18.3 mph. Then I started to tire as I rode along the gently undulating Lummi Shore road, enjoying the view across Bellingham Bay to Bellingham, Mt. Baker, and the near-full moon a few degrees above the mountain. By the time I got to Marine Drive, about 27 miles in, my energy level was really sagging. I kept going, but riding slower and slower, and made it home. My overall speed was 16.7 mph, about one mph and 7 minutes slower than the last time I’d done the same ride.

I’m wondering if I just ride slower when it’s cold.  I decided I hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast and lunch today, so simply running out of fuel was part of the problem.  I tanked up on a cup of hot chocolate, an energy bar, and a bowl of raisins and nuts when I got home. Proper nutrition will fuel you better and longer than if you just “go with the flow” I suggest you visit website here regularly, as I will be giving vital advice for keeping your energy level high.

In any case, vigorous exercise for a couple of hours is a great antidote for sitting at the computer captioning photos.

Fresh Salad from the Garden

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It’s mid-November and we’re eating all the fresh lettuce from the garden that we can handle. So far, we haven’t had a hard frost (just a couple of very light frosts) and the rains have been moderate. We also have fresh sugar snap peas, and combined with the garden lettuce mix it makes a great salad.  The last of the tomatoes, picked some weeks ago, are ripening up on the kitchen counter, so we may have them as part of Thanksgiving dinner later in the week.

We’re not eating the kale as fast as we should, and the slugs seem to have found the chard. Some of the carrots are getting big enough to pull, but the beets are still pretty small. The broccoli planted at the same time is still pretty small, but starting to form heads. Last spring’s broccoli is still producing side shoots that we can cut every two or three weeks.

Our fall veggie garden was planted in mid-August.  That seems to be about right for the lettuce, chard, and kale but the other crops should have gone in earlier.  Maybe next year.

Captioning Marathon

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This is the dark and rainy season in the Northwest, so it’s a good time to get caught up on captioning.  That’s a good thing since I have a backlog of around 5,000 images to edit and caption from mid-September to now. I didn’t have time after my Kelowna trip in September before going to Oklahoma and then immediately to Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

Captioning is a somewhat tedious process that requires identifying as many of the plants in each photo as possible, checking proper names and spelling, and entering the data both in my master database and in the metadata fields associated with the digital image files themselves. My record for number of photos captioned in a day is around 600, but most days I don’t hit that figure.

One of the challenges is simply forcing myself to stay in my seat in front of the computer. Sitting for long periods is tiring and definitely isn’t good for my body. But there’s no way to get captions written without sitting and concentrating on the task.

Back in the Swim

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I may have written this before, but I’m a sporadic exerciser.  I like to swim and do it more during the winter months in an indoor pool. Last week, after not swimming for perhaps a year or more, I decided it was time to get back in the water.  I go to the Arne Hanna Aquatic Center in Bellingham for the discounted noon lap swim. It’s a good mid-day break from working with images on the computer and its cheaper then.

The first day back in the water I was only able to swim 100 yards at a time (4 lengths of the pool), with a 60-second rest between. I swam 8 sets that day.  A couple of days later I could do 250 yards (10 lengths) with a 60-second rest. The next time in the water I was back up to swimming a mile (74 lengths) of crawl without resting. My time of 40.5 minutes won’t set any records, but I’m still amazed at how quickly I get back to the distance I’ve swam in the past.

Hopefully I’ll keep myself motivated to get to the pool two or three times a week during the winter months. I also want to keep bicycling, although I may not make the 100 miles per week I was doing in late August and September. Short daylight hours make it harder to get out and ride. I bought a new bright yellow cycling jacket so I’ll be more visible, but riding distances at night just doesn’t seem either safe or fun.

Autumn Rain

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Japanese Maples on Rainy Autumn Day

Rainy days in the garden can yield intensely rich and saturated colors. Last Friday I went up to VanDusen Garden in Vancouver, BC, which is one of my favorite public gardens. After a lengthy strike which closed the garden (as well as libraries and halting garbage service) for 12 weeks, the garden was once again open. The weather forecast for the day was mixed and I hesitated about going out. But I checked the weather radar and it looked like the biggest part of the rainstorm had already moved through.

Soon after I arrived in the garden it started to rain, so I pulled out a plastic rain cover for my camera and continued working. Some of the fall foliage was past its prime, but there was enough lingering to make it worth my time to explore and photograph.

The photo above was made during a break in the rain, but under heavily overcast skies. It’s one of my favorite Japanese maples in a grove along the shore of one of the ponds in the park. I’ve photographed it many times, in most seasons, and under many weather conditions.

Working in the rain is certainly more challenging than photographing in “better” weather. Keeping the camera dry is the big issue. An umbrella works, but can be hard to hold while setting up the shot. I’ve used a cheap plastic grocery bag, but inevitably the camera still gets wet. Currently I use inexpensive rain covers from Optechs. My camera still gets a little damp, and changing lenses is slightly inconvenient, but overall this clear plastic cover works pretty well. I hang it up on a doorknob to dry when I get home.

Besides keeping the camera dry, another issue in the rain is low light levels and moving subjects. Raindrops make plants shake, and rain is often accompanied by wind. Like any windy situation, there’s often a brief pause between puffs of wind so I set up and wait. I think the results are worthwhile.

Awash in a Sea of Data

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I finished backing up the last week’s camera raw files this afternoon.  It’s a process that takes the better part of a day to make DVDs.  In this case, twelve nearly-full disks of data.  Then after I edit and caption the photos I need to back them up again.  That’s one of the downsides of the digital photography revolution.

I’ve also completely filled two 200GB hard drives with raw images in 2007. I think it’s time to shop for bigger replacement drives so I can keep working.  At least with increasing drive capacities and falling costs per megabyte of storage it’s not an unreasonable prospect.

When I was shooting film I began running out of shelf space to store notebooks full of slides.  Every wall of my office that doesn’t have a window or a door is covered with shelving. I don’t know where I would have expanded my slide storage if I hadn’t gone digital.

In the last 30 days I’ve been shooting more days than not and now have over 5,000 frames to edit and caption. That means looking forward to a lot of hours in front of the computer screen in the coming weeks.

The Shortest Season

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Burning Bush in Finch Arboretum

I’m not sure why I never thought about it before, but I realized the other day that autumn is our shortest season.  Not according to the calendar, but in the way we perceive it. When we think of fall, the thing that comes to mind is brilliantly colored foliage, like the burning bush in the photograph above. However, the time span when any individual tree or shrub is in its colorful glory is disgustingly short — often measured in mere days and almost never more than a couple of weeks.

For the serious leaf-peepers who make the pilgrimage to catch the best color in New England, the Appalachian hardwood forests, or the aspens in the Sierras there are websites that track the color change. The timing of the season depends on several factors, including recent rains and whether there’s been a frost. It’s hard to predict far in advance.

I am in Spokane and vicinity for a few days to catch what I hope will be the peak of color in gardens on the east side of the Cascades.  This afternoon I stopped at Finch Arboretum on my way into town and photographed a handful of specimen trees in the low sunlight. Golden rain tree, catalpa, honey locust, crab apples, and some of the maples were all putting on a fine show.

Tomorrow is predicted to be cloudy and possibly rainy, which will give a very different feel to the gardens I plan to visit and photograph. I actually hope there is a little light rain, but no wind, to accentuate the colors.

Gardening in the Rain

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What a difference a couple of days and half a continent distance makes!  I left Oklahoma City Friday afternoon, where it was a humid 88°F, and returned to Bellingham where it had been 37°F that morning. My body still hasn’t completely adjusted, but I’m back to wearing a wool sweater.

Yesterday I tackled a long-delayed gardening task — digging up a crowded clump of Crocosmia and the mass of large yellow daffodils that were mixed in. I ended up with a large pile of Crocosmia corms and a big bucket of daffodil bulbs. Today I dug out a clump of Miscanthus that was too close to a big variegated Ceanothus. I divided the grass and Natalie replanted the bed.  We put half of the Miscanthus back in, but with better spacing.  Then she planted lots of daffodils where they’ll once again make a brilliant show in the spring.  We decided there wasn’t really room for the Crocosmia so we put it in the back of the car to take to her mother’s garden.

After lunch we headed up the street to do more planting. By then it had started raining lightly, so we donned raingear. In addition to the plants we divided from our garden, I also had several pots of plants I hauled home from Garden Writers. These are mostly new introductions that we’ll test to see how they do in our climate and whether the deer like them.

I planted a ‘Pinky Winky’ Hydrangea in the back bed, a couple of clumps of Miscanthus toward the back of the garden, a ‘Rozeanne’ Geranium near the front of the wide border, and a couple of new cultivars of Baptisia on top of the berm. I put a clump of little bluestem grass nearby. Natalie planted two big clumps of Crocosmia near the back near a big rhododendron and I put in a couple of clumps of Amorphophallus that I’d dug from our garden a couple of weeks ago.

By this time the rain had really started coming down, no longer a mere drizzle but a real soaking rain. We were getting rather damp so we decided the daffodil bulbs could wait for another day. Gardening in the rain is OK, but keeping at it until completely soaked just seemed foolish.