Sculpin

How early is the spring this year? I saw lilac blooms the other day. Just a few at the top of a bush, but still. This is nuts.

And if you want to go up north to see the tulip fields, this is the time. My mother and I do that every year, and while we’re up there we stop at the Rexville Grange for an exquisite arts-and-crafts show run by some of the nicest people you’d ever hope to meet. Seems like I always come back with something — a dragonfly pin, a beautiful little pitcher. This year I have my eye on some bamboo fencing and some neat concrete leaves. Mmm, and jam. And maybe one of Marguerite Goff’s wonderful blue tiles…

Unfortunately, I can never quite remember how to get there and I always lose the directions. So here’s the “external brain” portion of today’s post. The Rexville Grange is at 1929 Rexville Grange Road. To get there from I-5 northbound, take Exit 221 and head toward LaConner. Go over the Conway Bridge and follow Fir Island Road over the next bridge. Turn right onto Summer Drive and follow signs to the Grange, which will be on the left.

Okay. Six months from now, I will have my heels on the floor in downward dog.

So I’m told, anyway; my teacher says that if I do a certain stretch daily without fail, it’ll happen. I was doing it daily for about a month and a half, and I had a pretty good record. But then life got freaky about two months ago and I let my whole home practice fall apart, more fool me. Today, though, I’m resuscitating it. And come the Fall equinox, barring calamity, I will be doing one fine adho mukha svanasana.

In other news, my Pilates instructor has started to get me into Yamuna body rolling as a sort of self-care myofascial release method. And all this stuff is getting me interested in knowing enough about anatomy to talk sensibly about it. (Fun fact: a trochanter is neither a musical instrument nor a nautical hat.)

I believe I’m seeing some improvement in the alignment of my right knee.

A couple of days ago I dropped in at my local flower shop and bought a gorgeous orange-red gerbera daisy. Joanne, the florist, gave me a couple of tips to help it last:

• Gerberas don’t much care for floral food like Floralife.
• Gerberas last longer if their stems don’t rest on the bottom of their container. Joanne loosely wired some beargrass around it for me. When I got home, I recut the gerbera stem so it was a little shorter than the beargrass and could hang there supported by it, ensuring good circulation around the base of the stem.

The first bloom of the Daphne opened today. Mmm. One of my favorite smells.

One of my least favorite smells has been coming off the compost heap lately. It’s wet and rank. I dumped some shredded paper into it today (it’s been low on “browns”) and gave it a good aeration. Even with my new improved Pilates-ized strength, I can just barely spin the barrel around its axle these days. It’s time to start a new batch and let this one finish off. The City of Seattle suggests that simply burying kitchen scraps at least 8 inches deep is a good way to compost. Since I have only the one compost tumbler, I might let the compost finish underground, depending on the weather and my ability to work. (Still getting over that cold. There sure are some nasty bugs going around.)

According to the water supply information from Seattle Public Utilities, snowpack is about 12 percent of normal in the Cedar watershed and 25 percent of normal in the South Fork Tolt watershed. Yikes. This would be a good time to hook up that second water barrel, and perhaps I’ll see if I can get my hands on a third one.

[Just after I posted this, SPU updated their page to note that the snowpack numbers are now 9 and 21 percent of normal respectively. Yeesh.]