lush life

The wedding party celebrated in the campground across the road, kept us awake with a band playing loudly until the middle of the night. It was a soft, sweet summer night, with a few early Perseid meteors streaking across the north sky.  The half moon was still orange, though it was high overhead, because of smoke from all the forest fires burning now in the Pacific Northwest.

We have a fresh maitake (chicken of the woods ) mushroom to shred, fry in butter and oil, and eat to our heart's content. It is a rare treat to find one wild in the woods, that someone doesn't mind us
taking!

I ride my bike everyday this summer! Today,  I climbed up the overgrown driveway where Veva's house stands, though she died years ago.  She was the artist of Avalanche back in the day, and a very sweet woman.

When my kids were little we used to find our way up this path on Halloween night,  to Trick-or-Treat.  Veva came out on her porch wearing a little Martian helmet with springs sticking up on top. Little handkerchief ghosts came flying out of the woods on strings, pulled by a neighbor boy hiding in the bushes. Her house is tangled in brambles and brush now, and my hair bun got stuck in a blackberry vine while I was climbing the overgrown path to her place.

I felt a little panicky,  as I tried to untangle my hair from the thorn bush, because it was a little bit creepy up there, and I didn't want to hang around.  There was a rock root cellar behind the house, and the door was off. It looked black inside, and If I'd been braver, I'd have gone over to have a look. As it was,  I took a couple of pictures, just to prove to myself I went up there, and to my relief,  there is no face in any of the windows!

The trailer house is still empty where a popular shade tree mechanic lived when we first moved to Avalanche, but he also died years ago.

I started this blog quite a while ago.  At first I was afraid to write words and send them out on the Internet (no, really) so I just posted pictures.  One of my first posts was a picture of the fairy candle flowers blooming along the highway.   Here they are, blooming again!

The last picture is from my friend, Judith, who was recently in County Clare, Ireland, and draped
a scarf I wove on a rock there!  What a thrill for me to see it there.