Ruby Beach is Creeping?

Garnet sand?

Patches of garnet sand on the Clallam Bay beach? These usually only show up at Ruby Beach, down the Pacific coast.

Building on the beach.

Here's a shot of a little pile of driftwood several people seem to have been working on as the days goes by. Sometimes it's a house, sometimes its collapsed into a decorative heap. Sometimes the sea takes it back.

Happy dog

And fun with dogs up on the Hobuck Beach, near Neah Bay: Shaun Allyn and two unidentified dog regulars at Hobuck Beach. It seems to be a local law that, if you go to the beach, you will be issued, like Allyn, with a large, friendly Beach Dog, who will return all those precious sticks you so carelessly throw into the surf. 

While the law requires all dogs to be on a leash, in a large rural area where people need to get along, animal control's unofficial view works: if the dogs don't cause problems, the officers "aren't going to shake any trees." Friday, May 24.

Steamed Bread

Steamed, upside-down.

When I bake in the summer, I just use the microwave. Or all year, if I'm doing whole wheat, which gets tough in our little woodstove-top oven.

Recipe:

Any bread recipe.

Oil microwavable container (glass is preferable, for all microwave cooking, but plastic lets you invert the loaf).

Cooled, flipped, showing lid design in top.

Microwave at 50% for 10 minutes. Check to see if finished crumb is complete across top, if not, microwave 70% for 2 minutes.

Invert, microwave at full power for 2-3 minutes.

Remove, pull up container, let cool.  

Invert onto cutting board.  Enjoy! 

Sliced. Nice crumb, huh?

(Microwaving produces fabulous steamed Chinese breads. It makes English Christmas pudding in a fraction of the traditional time).

I Hope It's Not Naughty

I hope it's not naughty....

Just some rocks found on the Clallam Bay beach. They sorta look like Chinese idiograms, to me, especially the one on the lower left.

Any Chinese friends can read these?

Have I got them all right-side-up? 

:D

Swiftsure Sailboat Race

Swiftsure boat race evening.

Just a pretty photo off the beach, as the sailboats drove in, on Memorial Day Saturday. I liked the lens flare.

A Coelacanth in Tar?

Slip Point Tar Pits?

A Coelacanth fossil on the Clallam River bridge at Slip Point? No, but a surprisingly evocative image in asphalt left by a road-patching crew. "Fossils" - or rather shells embedded in sandstone - are a popular tourism draw to the cliffs behind the beach. Wednesday, May 22.

Sekiu Running Dog

Kim and Petey (with Mom's help).

Will Kim actually breed a dog based on Lab, Cocker Spaniel and Chihuahua? 

Petey, who hangs out at Olson's resort, is black and sweet like a lab, small and big-footed like a Cocker, and has the silky coat of a Chihuahua. He fetches, has a soft mouth, swims like a duck, and is loving but loyal. He can jog for miles, will probably hunt, and can still come in and love on the sofa or a lap without causing pelvic failure. And his huge feet just say "puppy." Yes, that's a full-grown dog.

Kim was wondering what to call it - "Cockalabahua" or something like - but we decided it needed a REAL breed name. 

And now I want a Sekiu Running Dog.

Floor Repair Gets Out Of Hand

Front room, down hallway (still a bit to do).

All we meant to do was pull up the horrible, catted-up old rug and fix holes in the old floor. Then I found the Instructables link.

OOPS. 

But - not bad for an amateur? Okay, so it's not perfect, but we're kinda happy! I made lots of mistakes, and my denoting rooms and areas with different darkness values might not have been completely successful, but man, it feels great underfoot. Holes repaired with steel sheets (which causes a bit of music here and there), but so much warmer and nicer. And so much easier to clean. 

We're not quite done - still have to put in the edging (and thus hiding all my fun with not quite measuring right on the fancy cuts) and a few more pieces. But this is mostly it.

Front room from dooway. Dan at the book-case.

I put it down with nice brass screws. No glue for me. EVER. Or nails. Well, yes, in the quarter rounds and little metal strips, but nowhere it could split wood. I'll pay the extra bit for screws because - yes - I'm always experimenting, and it's always three steps forward, two steps back, until I get it. And we don't want to waste money on an expensive project.

And the cats think it's a skating rink for toy mousies and running up and down the hallway at night. Singing.

Back bedroom from the hall.

Back bedroom from the bath.

Admittedly, though, once again I've had demonstrated to me how the forest industry is tanking from ill-planned, badly-informed overuse and lack of stewardship. As Dan said about the boards and quarter rounds - of supposed good quality - "My grandfather wouldn't have used this for firewood." I got one other word in argument: chipboard. Don't even start with me on chipboard.


Added more photos on the 26th of May. Some of the wood was a bit too pale - mostly because we couldn't use the backs, which were badly patched and touched up. Can we say, "WTF?" Again, as the old Good Show used to say, "You can't get the wood, you know."

Anyway, got out a can of mahogany stain and quickly faked in the wood grain. Was able to line up real grains with fake grains, rather nicely.  Don't try this at home - unless you're an artist with years of practice and a perfectly-developed eye. 

Flowing "wood grain" down the hall.

Bringing false into real

No, wood grains do NOT go around corners like that.

Chickening In

"I don't need chickens. I can buy the few eggs we need."

Not.

There's nothing like the luxury of having all the eggs we want, for cooking and distribution (I'm a publisher - we use publisher words). I'm spoiled. I want my hens back. I originally dreamed of having bees (like Sherlock Holmes?) but I have to face it - I'm a chicken farmer. We should do what we're good at.

"Food dish? No, it's a nest. Because we think so."

So here they are from the Airport Garden, five little Ameracauna hen chicks (99% guarantee from a nice bunch of people who keep love-me cats in the shop). The young man who sold 'em to me could talk chickens all day. Green eggs, evidently. Cool. I like color in my shells. Nothing as huge as the big pink eggs laid by old Rhode Island Red, but not quail eggs, either.

The first day, two chicks would fit in the feeder. Not the next day.

The five little chicks were given working-horse names. You don't give working farm animals - or goldfish - fancy personal names; it's a jinx. So meet Goldie, Blackie, Brownie, Pinkie and Stripes. The names might as well be yelled by Andy Devine in Stagecoach.

Yes, they're in the bathtub. The young man asked where I was going to keep them.

"In the bathroom."

"Oh. You're smart."

Most people must stick baby chicks out in the shed with a light. How am I going to get them friendly by picking them up and talking to them, if I can't drop in on their heated room whenever I feel like it, instead of putting on a coat and boots and finding excuses not to? Besides, they're so darn cute. 

Hey, I'm not the only one. The old farmer up here never talks about how his back-bred Jersey calves are successful, or his little Devons are blocky or milk well. They're "cute." He doesn't have a farm, he has a petting zoo. And is successful with all his beasts. Love = success? What a concept.

Now We Don't Have To Pay Them Reparations!

FACEPALM. Article in the Forks Forum was straight out of the 1950's (I SAID it can seem like decades ago, here, with nobody catching up for years). It was panicking over the JAPANESE PLAN TO PUT IN AN AIRFIELD BY LAKE OZETTE. Knowing what I know about any military, I know how THAT went:

Japanese General: "We need plans for an airfield on enemy territory, right HERE!" (Points at harbory-looking place on a map.) (Same thing for any American General, just in English).
Japanese Colonel: "Make it so!"
Japanese Major: "Here is your assignment!"
Couple of confused Japanese Lieutenants and a signalman (Scratching heads over publicly-available maps): "Um.... let's see. Here's what looks like a flat place near a lake... um... Is that a cliff? Um.... Okay, this looks good. Draw it up and it'll make the old man happy."

Back up the chain of command, into the hands of American "military" intelligence, Hearst papers get ahold of it and the next thing you know, the whole west coast loses its Japanese population to internment, who never get their property back. Oh, tell me I'm wrong, go ahead.

As usual, the article is all gaspy about how the Japanese were making war plans while negotiating peace. Hello? Does anybody NOT know how the military and civil arms of a country work? Attack contingency plans in case the peace talks fall through? D'uh.

And don't even be pissed about Pearl Harbor - it was just two empires heading for each other, and they got in the first lick. If we didn't like "sneak attacks" we shouldn't have been sailing into people's bays - more than once - and threatening governments for trade. Admiral Perry's Teeth, INDEED.

Diaper Kitty Box?

Fearless letting BlueBear do her job.

We kitty owners all face - THE LITTER BOX. You know how we automatically used sand because that's what cats use outside? By accident, we found out something else that's far easier, neater and cleaner. 

You know how your towels slowly turn ratty? Use them in the litter boxes. Before you gasp WTF? all you have to do every day is shake the solids into the toilet, throw the dirty towel into the wash, wipe out the box a bit, put in a fresh folded towel. Think of it as using a diaper. Keep the ratty towels in a clean, separate pile. No more tracked litter, no more constantly buying and disposing of litter. It really is cleaner and neater. 

And if you have a kitty with one of those sudden housebreaking problems, you can lay a towel where they go, then put it in the box, then start seeing if you can move the box back to a more secluded place. Cats are conservative. They'll put up with anything if you do it slowly enough (and you can see if the urine changes color or has anything to worry about in it).

Smoke Dem Turkeys

Turkey hindquarters smoking.

Dan's not crazy about turkey, or at least the blah commercial kind. But we have one. So I decided to smoke it. 

Rubbed it with home-dried sea salt from the bay, let it set, rinsed it and smoked it.

Smoker, with lid.

Came out pretty tough - I need to let it set in brine, rather than dry salt. But that's okay. Today there's smoked turkey simmering in the beans. So we've decided to dry-smoke any turkeys we get and use 'em like smoked pork. They smell just as good!

And yeah, that's not a very fancy smoker, but according to the Fire Chief it's legal, and we're using it to cook.

And I'd prefer to use the $80 to buy a commercial smoker for DVDs and stuff.

Toilet float!

We thought this was a bottle, because of the screw neck, but it's completely sealed.

The texture is uneven, as though it's been rolled in a cloth while still hot.

What am this thang? It had some of the yellowish crud on it that says "Tsunami debris," but we dunno.

Going to troll around the interwebs and try to find out.

And now we know. A nice gentleman named Stu Farnsworth, who knows about floats emailed me:  

"Hi Donna;
  Thanks for your note, pretty easy one here. This is a Toilet Bowl flange used in the holding tank for the water pressure. Early ones were glass some like this were totally sealed and many think they are Glass Floats. It is possible it could have been used for that if it was found on the Beach because the family operations would use anything that floats that would hold up their nets.
  This could very well be something from the Tsunami if it was found on the beach because lord only knows what is going to show up. Hope this helps."

Houses used to stand on the beach. As the river sands re-align and release their buried objects, we've been pulling out and disposing of everything from old piping to toilets to actual tin-foil to ancient tires.

I dunno if a glass toilet float is worth anything, but it's interesting! 

Challenge Buddha

Buddha has a new hobby.

If you meet Buddha on the beach - skip a rock.

There's a town law; when you got to the beach at Clallam Bay, you're issued a big dog to fetch sticks and pee on the grass.

Buddha is our regular issue. He's part Lab and part - what? Grayhound? Arctic wolf? Whoositwhatsit? Anyway, he's fast.

When we first met him, he thought catching small rocks was the coolest game. But it's bad for his teeth, and we stopped that. Then he decided having the biggest rocks he might be able to get his jaws around was the right thing for us to throw far past his head, so he could pretend to dig them out of the sand, barely ducking the surf. Then it was sticks thrown INTO the surf - but not too far.

He has a new passion, for which he has abandoned all other challenges: trying to catch skipped rocks.

That's right, he follows me bug-eyed as I pick up flat rocks to skip. Then he tries to catch them in mid-air as they whiz past him into the surf or the river, yipping each time, as he misses. I have learned to skip a rock OVER a dog's head and UNDER a dog's head and BEHIND a dog, and IN FRONT of a dog, and quickly while he's still out after the last one.

Nothing else will do; when I try to throw big rocks or sticks for him, he looks like I've hurt his professional pride.

This is more exercise than it sounds like. For two miles yesterday, I collected, flung, ran, and otherwise tried to outwit and outspeed a very fast dog. So far, I'm winning, but he's come close three times. No wonder, as we're heading for the beach, he romps up with flopping ears, his entire aspect proclaiming "Ohboyohboyohboy!"

Well, it beats going to the gym. And the neighbor has a dog-walker.

(Buddha passed away August 24, 2013. Good running, dear, dear beach-dog and friend.)

Ozette Potatoes

Ozette Potatoes

Ozette Potatoes. Well, that's what they call 'em up here, after the lake named after a Makah village. Supposedly they came in with the Spanish a couple centuries ago. Sounds right to me. They certainly look like the original breeds of tuber that came up from South America through Europe.

The ones I've seen have often been small, as the original tuber types often are, but as you can see in the photo, they respond very well to fertilizer and water. The larger ones average a foot and a half long. Under equivalent conditions, compared to reds, blues and various whites, they're the best producers in the garden, at least for this cool, salty, windy climate.

They grow in upright bunches that would make them excellent for container gardening, and produce long, strong vines, that would take a lot of burying to produce even more potatoes.

They have rather difficult-to-clean sunken eyes, but they never seem to have any hollow or bad spots inside. They steam up nicely and they're tasty. At a certain stage, they're waxy like salad potatoes. Steamed more, they become fluffy, like Idaho bakers. They're particularly easy to prepare for pan-fries; simply slice them like carrots and slow-fry in oil.

Note: if you only have poor soil and little water, go for blues; they seem to be jump-started by drought, even happier, and produce more than anything else. Tough guys, blues. 

Roberta Gregory's potatoes just came up in Seattle. April 10, 2013.

WTF is THIS thing?

Body of the beast.

Ah, the mystery of the sea. Somebody up here must know what this thing is. We found two of them on the beach. It seems to have - um - feelers, and perhaps a mouth on the opposite end, and are those guts? Animal or plant? You tell us.

Head or tail or something.

I just received this email. I suggest going to this gentleman's site, which is full of wonderful photos, as well as contact info for diving services. The skate backbones had been washing up on the beach of late, so yes, this is very likely one of their egg cases, in a very degraded state.

Hi Donna,

Thanks for the comment on the site.  It is a labor of love. 

It is hard to tell from the pics, but if I had to guess I think what you found is an egg casing for a shark or skate.  It looks fairly deteriorated as it has long ago hatched, but unhatched ones look like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_case_(Chondrichthyes)

Thanks for sharing!

Keith Clements

Emerald Diving, LLC

www.emeralddiving.com

Discover the beauty within Pacific Northwest waters

Scared Silly

Clallam Bay Haunted House

Well, I nearly was. I had the gall to go through the Haunted House in the Clallam Bay Visitor's Center, all by myself.

Their claim is, "Your head will say it isn't real, but your eyes will say it is." I can vouch for that.  I knew every one of these kids, and all the scare tricks, and it still scared me as bad as when I went through the old San Francisco haunted house.

I haven't had so much fun in years. You gotta go. It's open this weekend (2012, the weekend before Hallowe'en itself, and Hallowe'en night). Only $4.00, which goes to The United Way. Yes, they have less scary hours for little kids, too.

Big Sis

Me and my sis Dotti at Mukilteo.

Kurt Vonnegut in the Berry Patch

Us: Lalalala, let's go pick some berries and make wine and pies. And not pay attention to it being a Krakatoa year, and berries might not be as common as they usually are.

Bear waking up on the hill: RAWR! (Translation: You fucking monkeys get off my hill and away from my hibernation food!).

Me: Click all car doors open, walk quietly but QUICKLY over to Dan, and mutter, "Pick up all your equipment and get in the car."

Dan:  Didn't say a word. Picked up his equipment and got in the car.

The September 11 harvest.

Well, for most humans, berrying and stuff is only a hobby, anyway. We can buy all kinds of subsidized food, including berry jam. Ursa Major up there needs the food he can pick to make it through the winter.

And when you see two-inch-thick berry canes ripped to shreds, as with a machete, maybe not so much arguing with a much larger, more irritable omnivore who is worried about the food source.

So we went and picked Chanterelles, instead. Results: Blackberry wine, blackberry pie, more blackberry filling, and mushroom rice for supper.  Not so shabby. That double dish is corn-breaded fish fillets from the freezer, from a couple day's teasing the greenling on the beach.

(Kurt Vonnegut, captured at the Battle of The Bulge, said he and his fellow platoon-members didn't say "Nuts!" or anything to the SS. They held up their hands and went along quietly. Basically, we didn't make any smart remarks to anything that heavily armed and wearing black, either.)

(Sadly enough, ran into my childhood in the Pacific Northwest, again. When I was a kid, dumb-ass grownups used the back gully as a rubbish tip. Ran into a local rubbish tip up here, again, when you think people would finally have learned better. One wonders, sometimes, if one is in a time-warp from the 1950's.)

Short Commons, River Tension, Live Heart, OMG

Which is the phrase for "There's not a lot to eat." And why birds are dying and washing up on the beach. Yesterday, found this adult red-tail hawk washing around on the edge of the surf, and picked it up, bedding it up on the beach plaintain.  No, we can't feel anything when we're dead, but - you know. We do it out of respect.

How do you know the Clallam River is rising as the tide comes up? The surface tension on the dry rocks is swelling.

A Douglas Fir that went down a long time ago on Slip Point (Clallam Bay beach) and cut. Still bleeding blood-red pitch.

Dan, making fun of the Chemtrail sillies.

The Real Working Forest

Believe me, even loggers up here KNOW forests are the lungs of the planet - and even the food-link to the algae that produce so much of the oxygen. They're asking, "But what do we do for our grandkids?" Admittedly, they still wince at the word "education" (imagine the industry propaganda that caused that) - but their kids are teaching them!

As one girl (admittedly south state) had tattooed on her belly: "We are the ones the grandmothers have been praying for." They're asking questions, they WANT education (including the highly necessary arts) and they can see ahead. One converted logger said his grandkid showed him how much money was in FUN (and your entire paycheck doesn't go fixing the @#$!!! machinery).

This is an Audobon Area - all those birdwatchers want good trail guides, and will pay, and fancy wild birds, in a proper environment, are a self-replicating, no-expense resource. If we must put it in those terms for us Geezers. "Jobs" are about serfdom, but a fully-restored forest offers hundreds of self-employment jobs. Now we need more classes about running your own business - and it's not that hard!

Note: a waitress at the Lake Crescent lodge (on a slow day) listened to how to run her own comicon at the lodge, as did people on the bus. They're all listening to the possibilities of tourism and entertainment. The term "Working Forest" works even better if it's a fully-restored forest with beautiful trails.  The real money will be in beauty and fun, for everybody, because the old model of theft, murder and greed is failing under our feet. 

We owe it to the kids to stop wiping our butts with the lungs of our planet - and pooping in our drinking water.