2015 Year of the Move

Our year revolved around completing our house and shop project in Talkeetna, selling the house in Anchorage, and moving to Talkeetna. The sale and move happened in June, and the projects ... well, is a house ever really complete? Here are some highlights of the year ~

Technically we unpacked the last box in the house in October when Paul completed a shelving unit for the stereo and all the various music medium we own.  There are still boxes of books in the storage room that need a place to be.

By the end of September, all the siding and trim was on the house and grass seed was sprouting all around.  This photo was taken from the railroad tracks, looking over the swamp to our place on the ridge (house on left, shop/barn on right).

Biking and snorkeling on the Big Island of Hawaii in February has become almost an annual break for us from the Alaska winter.  For Alaskans, visiting Hawaii is like New Yorkers going to Florida to escape snow and cold.  With one flight, we can step into a warm, lush, humid tropical setting.

In mid-May I joined friends to bike the road into Denali National Park.  For a short period in the spring and fall,the road is closed to vehicles, providing a good mountain bike ride on gravel roads up and over passes.  Spring had not arrived yet - the rivers were still mostly ice covered and you can see the the plants had not leafed out yet.

In June, just 2 weeks after we moved, I visited Alaska's Emerald Isle - Kodiak - with  friends.  We drove to the ends of the few roads to wander on remote beaches and saw the famous Kodiak brown bear and the less-famous bison. 

This was a warm, dry summer -- great for checking out many of the local lakes for cooling off in the evening.

One half of my parents visited in August.  The warm weather continued and we installed the umbrella on the picnic table to shade dinners from the hot evening sun.

In August the Alaska Dirt Divas made the annual backcountry trip to a cabin near Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park.  Biking on a regular basis with these friends is one of the things I'll miss about living in Anchorage.

We did a little camping.  Over the 4th of July weekend we rafted the Susitna River with friends.

Over Labor Day weekend we camped in Seward with friends.  While the guys fished, the women hiked with dogs.

In October I visited the other half of my parents in upstate NY.  The fall colors were gorgeous. More about that in my last post.

16 nov 14 campbell creek

This bridge wasn't so great for walking either -- the far end was in the creek.

24 sep 14 harvest

My little apple tree had a good harvest this year and here's the last few raspberries, too.

The first artichoke I've ever grown!

Sunflower catching the last rays of the evening.

4 june 14 bike to work

I assumed that this sign was for me - and that my bike was an 'authorized vehicle' - at a meeting on my way to the office on Anchorage's Bike to Work Day.

25 may 14 backyard visitors

This mama and days-old twin calves spent the morning in our backyard.  One calf slipped into my vegetable garden through a break in the fence that was created by a flying garden lantern during a fall microburst.  A tense 45 minutes wondering if the calf would find the open garden gate (opened quickly by me) before the cow and other calf discovered the tasty little apple tree inside the gate.

17 may 14 bird to gird

My friend Jo-Ann and I biked the Bird-to-Gird(wood) path along Turnagain Arm on an amazing May day.

12 may 14 bike to work

lovely spring day to bike to work as part of my organization's annual Green Commuter Challenge (my office won 1st place for our city/office size class)

23 sep 13 summer highlights

The first snows of the season stuck to the ground today, so I'm inspired to edit some of the summer's photos and post up the highlights.



In June we visited family in Colorado for two weeks, and I biked the back roads of Boulder County with my dad.  The September floods wiped out most of the bridges, and he says we couldn't do any of those rides to Hygiene, Berthoud, or Mead now, or even pedal the bike paths of Longmont now.

Our neighborhood is a popular moose nursery.  This moose cow and her days-old twins spent an afternoon nibbling on the flowers at the back steps.

In June and July we enjoyed perfect summer weather.  One evening we hiked in the Glen Alps area of Chugach State Park near our house.

My bike club pedaled 12+ miles past the end of Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park for a long weekend.  The weather was fantastic.  Here's my bike on the return loaded with empty water containers strapped to the top of my sleeping bag and pad which are bungied to the rack which holds two panniers with my clothes in 1 and group and my food gear (coffee pots etc) in the other.  Bear spray in the bottle cage, snacks and small camera in the handlebar bag, and water and extra clothes in the daypack on my back (not in picture).

Our sailing weekends were too few but highlighted by sunny days and fair breezes.  I plan to post an album about our time in Prince William Sound this year.

Django was a great boat dog!  He looked this cheerful and excited whenever I brought out his life jacket for taking the dinghy to shore (except that one rainy weekend when none of us really wanted to be outside much)

30 dec 12 trail gnome

The clear cold fall left two days ago and warm drizzle replaced it.  Today I was trying hard to find the good in this turn of events.  My plans to ski/snowshoe/bike this long holiday weekend are on hold until this weather pattern moves out, which may not be until later this week.  Today we put cleats on our hiking boots and walked some mountain bike trails near our house.  There we found this trail gnome sitting outside his burrow playing his pipes.  He paused to smile at us as we walked past.  Thanks for the cheer on this gray day, little guy.  Hiking in the slush is better than many of the alternatives.

11 nov 12 sunny cold coast

golden sun and grasses on the kincaid coast on a cold november afternoon

10 nov 12 off kilter

The Bluedot is an unsanctioned trail across municipal lands that is a favorite of dog walkers and winter bikers.  A band of fairies spray paints blue blotches on the trees and maintains it for wind and dead fall.  The bridge that crossed Campbell Creek was made of two long tree trunks that just barely reached more than 30 feet from bank to bank.  Half of the planks that spanned the logs had fallen off.  I didn't dare cross that bridge except in the winter when snow and ice filled in the gaps.

Six weeks ago we walked the Bluedot Trail as Campbell Creek was overtopping its banks after days of rain.  The flooded creek had dislodged the bridge and deposited it along the far bank.  We walked upstream following another foot path to the Old Rondy Trail.  We returned a week later and the water was still high.  At the Old Rondy bridge, the water was less than a foot below its deep steel beams and rushing past the abutments on which they rested.

Today we hiked Bluedot again to see how the creek had changed.  We were surprised to find that the trail fairies had built a new bridge downstream from the old.  The logs bow down from each bank in a sway over the creek.  The planks cover the entire length of bridge.  A biker crossed just after we did.

Thank you to all the folks who care for Anchorage's trails.  The winds and rains have kept you busy this fall.

29 jul 12 summer color

I'm waiting for the big winds on a dreary day in Anchorage.  I'm behind on editing and posting photos from the summer so I decided to start with the annual garden tour by the Anchorage Garden Club. 

28 may 12 off to a good start

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start to summer, and in Alaska, that typically means the start of a race to cram as much Life as we can into the many hours of daylight we have.  I've taken a different approach the last few years.  Instead of scrambling to pack up for a long weekend of camping/boating/rafting/get-out-of-town and driving north/south with half of Anchorage, I stay home.

Paul still does an overnight raft trip on the Susitna River with some friends.  I do miss that raft trip but I must express a measure of self-satisfaction and calm as he shops for food, pulls camping gear out of the garage, and scurries around to get north to the put-in on time.  All that will come for me for trips that we do together this summer.  I prefer to start my summer at a slower pace, to savor the longer days, the warmer weather (hopefully), and my time outside in a quiet neighborhood.

I concentrate on gardening on this long weekend.  This is the recommended time to plant most vegetables and flowers in our area, and it usually takes me most of the weekend to do so.  This year I'm behind on cleaning up perennial flower beds because of the tendonitis in my shoulder, so there's been extra weeding and raking to do.  If I can get most of the weeds this weekend, I stand a chance of staying ahead of them despite the fact that we'll be gone almost every other weekend this summer.

Soon I'll be caught up in maximizing my use of the daylight even though it often requires ignoring the fact that the weather may not be very summery.  Maybe you really do need to live through six months of cold, white landscape and dark to understand how 70 can be considered hot and 80 is a reason to close offices.  After this winter of record snow and prolonged deep cold, I'm still amazed at how green the scene is and how warm it feels.

Summer in Alaska is so much more intense than anyplace I've ever lived and it's hard to explain the intensity or the appeal of it to others.  While talking to my mom this morning, I mentioned that the high yesterday was 48 with a constant drizzle, and that the clouds clearing overnight brought the temperature down to 38.  She said, "And you like living there?"  I echoed that question when she said she was on her way to watch a Memorial Day parade in the sunny muggy 80 degrees of central New York.  It's hard to explain that 50 in the sun early this afternoon felt about 20 degrees warmer than that drizzle yesterday.  And could she imagine that by late afternoon 58 on the deck would entice me to sit outside with my feet up, wide-brimmed hat on my head, sipping my first cojito* of the summer?

Summer is off to a good start in Anchortown.

* cojito: my version of a mojito = Midnight Sun Lemon Fizz, club soda, shot of tequila, and mint from the garden

18 may 12 bike to work day



The Nature Conservancy Bike Commuters

I hadn't been bicycling since late February.  Sometime that month I went over the handlebars on my friend's snowbike, which likely brought on the tendinitis and bursitis in my shoulders that has taken months to heal.  A few weeks ago the physical therapist and sports doc said that I could start riding the trainer and build up to riding outside.  I found the trainer to be more difficult than I had expected and not much fun either.  Bike to Work Day became my goal -- even though it was scheduled for a Friday when I don't normally work. 

Eventually I built up the time on the trainer and reached the next step - half an hour riding outside.  I enjoyed a sunny ride on the Campbell Creek trail several evenings before Bike to Work Day.  Riding all the way to work would be a slightly bigger leap in time than the doc prescribed but I thought the break at the half hour mark might help.  That would be the Bacon Station - a favorite stop for Paul and me at last year's BtWD.  Alas, we got there too late to partake of bacon or cinnamon rolls or free beer coupons but they were still handing out a few chocolate chip cookies and the lack of food was made up by the dozens of cyclists still hanging out on a sunny spring morning.

A few notes about Bike to Work Day in Anchorage:
~ Paul and I had to revise our route through a neighborhood because a moose was feeding next to a bike trail that cut between two houses.  Not that unusual an event in a typical bike commute here.
~ The temperature was only 36 when we left the house.  When we reached the main street outside our neighborhood, three riders were coming down the hill.  One in shorts and another in a T-shirt.  Brrr.  There was ice in the wooded wetlands near the university.
~ Only four of us were at the office on Friday and we all biked.  Emily had taken her little boy to the bacon station in an early morning ride, and Marcus stopped there with his daughter on the way to daycare.  Jessica bike-jored in.  Her sled dog Circe pulled her on a wild ride that doesn't sound like something for the faint-of-heart.  My commute was the longest - 11 miles - and  I sported the 'company colors.'

29 apr 12 glimpses of spring

A fast spring thaw continues here in Anchorage with snow melting about a foot per week in the yard.  The white and dark green world of our long winter is slowly transforming with the emergence of large swatches of brown ground and old gray snow berms.  A few bright spots of color are peeking out at the margins - the daffodils and muscari up against the south side of the house, the rhubarb on the snow's edge in the garden.

In the morning, the songs of robins and ruby-crowned kinglets greet me and Bhikkhu as we walk down the driveway to get the paper.  The newly exposed ground presents the little dog with new smells and old ones that were muffled for many months.  My less sensitive nose is slower to notice the earthier smell of spring.  What I notice is the warmth.  Even 30 in the morning feels warmer now than it did at midday a month ago. 

The promise of summer will soon be fulfilled.

The melt is somewhat uneven depending upon sun exposure and dark objects. In the last week over a foot of snow had melted around my meauring stick yet the snow was still over a foot deep in many parts of the garden.

22 apr 12 transitions

The snow continues to melt fast enough that I felt confident that any seeds I planted would have an outside home this summer.  Several flats in the living room window are sprouting with lettuce, cabbage, radicchio, broccoli, tomatoes, and a multitude of greens.

A foot of snow melted since last week!

4 apr 12 spring thaw

The snow retreated from the south foundation only two weeks ago and the tiny heads of the muscari are already pushing through the dead leaves.  Slowly the snow level is dropping in the rest of the yard.   The depth varies around the yard, from a foot in the south yard to three at the garden to four around the driveway.  The driveway is almost clear of ice except under the deck where it remains cooler and the sun can't reach.  Almost all of the snow slid off the roof in the last week.   Only a thin shelf on the flat dormer roof continues to simultaneously melt and inch its way over the eave, leaving us to wager on whether it will teeter off or disappear first.  Warm temperatures are melting this record snowfall quickly.  We've never seen a winter like this, though, so I'll try to track the thaw progress until it's all gone.

this flamingo will be tracking the snow depth by the garden gate - 3' today

Here's the yardstick for the rise and fall of the snow - compare to the zenith less than a month ago

7 april 2012 breaking the record

Just when it looked like spring was going to be dry and sunny, the clouds came in and the snows returned.  Yesterday we broke the record for the snowiest recorded winter in Anchorage by almost 2".  We've got something to show for all that shoveling and plowing.

18 mar 12 going for the record

There's nothing like a little competition for people to see the silver lining in a long, snowy winter.  Everyone is hoping for just another few inches of snow so we can break the all-time snowiest winter record from the mid-1950s.  The record is 132.6"and the official snowfall in Anchorage this winter so far is 129.4".  We're one snowy day away from the record.

As I mentioned in my first post about the snow back in January, we receive  more snow in our part of town because we're closer to the mountains than the official site, the airport, is.  I don't know how much snow we've received up here but I know how much is on the ground.  Below are two more photos of our yard for comparison to two weeks ago and January.  The above photo is the signage at the end of our street. 

The sky is cloudy this evening and the forecast calls for scattered snows this week.  Soon that record will belong to the Anchorage citizens of 2011-2012.  And all the slow commutes, aching backs, and narrow streets will be worth it.

Mount Snowmore!  Paul's overhead reach is 8'.

Now we've got a snow fence around the garden