My summer began with tears.
I cried when I accidentally drove over my favorite snake with the ride-around mower and hacked her into three bloody pieces. I have the best garter snakes at my house and she was the biggest of them all! The one with bright blue stripes and a girth the diameter of a napkin wring. Did you know that garter snakes live to be ten years old? I wept for the rest of the afternoon and woke up crying the next morning.
It started two months ago with a phone call from my sister.
I have returned to Freeland after a year and a half up in a tiny condo in Oak Harbor. I missed many things about the south end and one of them was my yard in Freeland.
Spring is near. All the harbingers are visible: daphne odora, pussywillows, quince. Racks of colorful primrose are at the grocery store. Next it will be the forsythia, then tulips and the lilac bushes.
Will you set a table, offer a seat or accept an offer to a table this holiday season? Who will you be with and why and why not?
Did you get caught in that weird weather the other day? I did.
It was a classic fall day in the Pacific Northwest—too warm to wear a sweater but a storm raged outside, a true Pineapple Express stuffed full of warm, wet air that spun huge confections of steel gray clouds.
On one of our recent sunny days, I sped down the highway around the end of Penn Cove and saw many cars parked at the beach. I had seen a notice online for a “Digging for Dinner” class, a how-to on clam habitat, limits and licensing. I guessed that this was it, people learning about the rich shellfish bounty of our wonderful Puget Sound.
This made me think of Monstro.
Downsizing is big these days and I have done it. A year ago I moved from 1700 sq. ft. to 665 sq. ft. and from 18 rosebushes to one.
According to the Census, the average American will move 11.7 times in a lifetime. Mobility and a shortage of usable space have inspired cozy Manhattan studios measuring less than 300 sq. ft. and a popular “tiny house” movement.
I was a confirmed reader by the age of ten and for a never-enough girl like myself, there were always more books. Over-indulging on bazillions of words like chocolate chips… Into paragraphs like cookies…
Change is in the air as the New Year approaches and I am ready for my part in this large drama.
Whidbey Life Magazine was a sponsor of this weekend’s 2014 Whidbey Island Writers Conference and, as a blogger for WLM, I was allowed to go as a member of the “press.” What a blast!
BY SIRI BARDARSON September 26, 2014 There is a floor-to-ceiling window that runs the length of the pool up here in Oak Harbor and, just outside, there is a huge oak tree. Out of the foggy left eye of my swim goggles, I glance up at it and then away with each breath and stroke […]
Have you noticed the ox-eye daisy? Its blank stare skyward, zoned out like a cat in a sunbeam; it is the harbinger of summer. Only a few days ago, the fields were blanketed in a patchwork of green grasses: citron, neon green, blue-green with a touch of rust red on the grass heads, mossy and silvery green.
Whidbey Life Magazine is delivering its first print edition this week! And WLM is celebrating the release of the 2014 Spring/Summer edition at a release party this Friday night at Freeland Hall in Freeland. Be there or be square!
I have always had a secret disdain for football – but not anymore. “Go Hawks!” is all I can say. We all love a winner, but coach Pete Carroll is bigger than the win. Wow, talk about leadership! Here is a man who has committed his life to inspiring others to do difficult things and do them well.
I wanted Chanterelles sautéed in soft scrambled eggs with toast or in heavy cream sauce on big flat noodle pasta; ; I want, I want, I want.
The setting was exotic, a rocky island off the coast of Africa.
Even as a little girl sitting on a hard pew in patent-leather shoes with a tulle petticoat that left tiny chicken wire imprints on the backs of my thighs …
Love is so much better for our creative selves than being gray and good.
Happy New Year readers and I don’t want to jump right in to the “resolution” thing but along those lines, have you thought about that musical passion you have stashed in the back of your heart?
Listening to a symphonic work is like having my Tarot cards read.
Tom Lindsay blowing bubbles at sunset (Photo by David Welton)