You know, you think you're doing OK...

You're treading water nicely, the waves are mere ripples.

The shore is possibly even getting a bit closer.

Then a big wave rolls in from behind, swamps you, and you're back to feeling drowned.


Laid off.

Again.

I so enjoy my aquarium. There's always something to watch. The veritable feeding frenzy when I drop in an algae wafer always amuses me.



All those panda cories are ones that I raised from eggs spawned in my tank. The littlest one is the baby I found in my filter in January. As you can see, he is thriving.

The other catfish are Otocinclus vittatus (I think, or possibly O. mariae. Or possibly both!). They're very peaceful and unobtrusive, and VERY good at hiding. I had one originally, then got four more in January to keep him company. A few weeks later, I thought I had lost two of those, since I only ever saw three at a time. A month ago I dropped in an algae wafer and was shocked to see all five otos in view at once! They get in among the dense plants and under the driftwood and just disappear.

They must have recently developed a taste for the algae wafers, though. In the past couple months I've noticed them eating flake food and wafers in addition to cleaning algae off the glass, plants, and driftwood. I purposely don't clean the glass at all on two sides of the tank, to let the algae grow for them, and they keep it pretty clean. I was glad to see that they have adapted to other foods besides the soft algae. I drop in a slice of zucchini or some peas every so often, and they go to town on those as well (as do the rest of their tankmates.) Anyway, otos have a reputation of being sensitive fish, but mine seem to be thriving. They always have nice round bellies and are quite active.

They get so excited about the algae wafers that they try to suck onto everything, including the other fish... Normally they are very calm, but the wafers drive them into a hyperactive fit!

I have been spinning, but mostly several pounds of cashmere/silk singles for contract work. I did ply a couple more skeins of the green sweater yarn (I think I have seven plied now), but haven't taken a picture. Therefore, in an effort to distract you from the fact that I have nothing at all fibery to talk about, I'm going to show some more pretty pictures.

We drove down to southern California this past weekend, for my niece's graduation from high school. Yes, you read that correctly, we drove to the LA area for the weekend. I took a half day off Friday, and a full day off Monday. We traveled 36 hours for a 27 hour visit, and it was totally worth it.

We left La Grande about 3:00 pm on Friday, and drove until 1:00 am Saturday. Most of this leg of the journey was through the wide open sagebrush flats of eastern Oregon.



It was raining off and on, and there is nothing like the sweetly resinous-fragrant scent of sagebrush in the rain. It's sharp and almost eucalyptus-like. Delightful.

We stayed the night at Topaz Lake, right on the Nevada/California border. We were going to camp, but there was a hotel right there, and we were so tired, and well... anyway. It was a very comfy bed.

The next morning, we traveled down through California. I think this was taken in the vicinity of the road to Yosemite. Aspen groves on the hillsides, with snowcapped mountains in the background. Someday we'll come back here with time to properly appreciate it.



Traveling, traveling. We passed Mono Lake and stopped at a scenic overlook to check it out and wiggle a bit.



It was chilly up there at 6000 feet! If you click the panorama, hopefully it will enlarge enough to be able to see.



Traveling, traveling. Past Mammoth Lake, and down alongside the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Impressive rocky mountains rising up out of the plain.



Traveling, traveling. Along the edge of the Mojave Desert, past the Joshua trees. Past Red Rock Canyon State Park. Amazing rock formations visible from the highway. I can only imagine what the rest of the park looks like.



Traveling, traveling. Finally, we arrived at Shaun's brother's home. We got to see Shaun's dad and stepmom, which was great, and Emma got to meet her six California cousins and one of her two east-coast cousins. She had a blast playing with them, especially the 3-year-old girl. She was in tears when it came time to go home. It was a way-too-short visit.

We left about 7:00 pm on Sunday night, after the graduation party, and made it all the way up to the edge of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, by about 1:30 am. We camped this time, at the Chris Flat Campground. It's a lovely spot, right beside the Walker River.



Despite the late night, I woke up early eary early on Monday morning, in a very odd way. I was having a dream about flying, complete with that swoopy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I kept hearing this noise as part of my dream. It was a bird song, and I remember thinking, "That sounds almost like a towhee. But it's not quite normal. I think it's a Green-tailed Towhee." I swooped around my dream for a while longer, but I kept hearing the noise, and decided to wake up. It was very strange, aware, half-awake dream.

So I got up. Now, I have never seen or heard a Green-tailed Towhee before in my entire life. I have seen the pictures in my field guides, and doubtless have heard them on my birdsong CDs, but I could have not have described what they sound like. It's not a song that is consciously part of my mental library. Apparently, it is a part of my subconscious. When I got up, I was still hearing the song that was part of my dream. It sounded like a towhee, but not quite right. And there it was, a Green-tailed Towhee. Perched right there on a dead branch above the tent. So cool.

I had a lovely walk around the campground. Turns out that I got up about 5:45. Needless to say, I had a couple hours to myself. It was pretty cold when I first got up, but once the sun came up over the ridge, it warmed up nicely.




I spent quite a while sitting on the riverbank just listening and watching, and enjoying the penstemon plants blooming on the sandy bank. I have no idea which species, since there are a LOT of species of penstemon, and I haven't had time to look it up yet. It was lovely, though.



As I was sitting there, watching the sun rise, this big (1" long) bumblebee was waking up, too. She was sleeping on the west side of the penstemon flowers, probably because that was the warmest side as the sun went down the night before. As the sun rose and started to light the flowers, she slowly and ponderously crawled through the flowers onto the east side of the plant. She basked for probably 20 minutes, then crawled into a flower, bumbled around for a while, came out covered with pollen, and flew to a plant about 10 feet away. She investigated 4 flowers on that plant, then flew off across the river.

I just love watching things closely. You see so much.



Another neat thing I saw on my walk was a pair of Clark's Nutcrackers, another new species for me. They were flying back and forth between the tops of the pine trees. Delicious, delicious pine seeds.



As I wandered back toward the tent, amid the squeaking ground squirrels, one hopped up on a rock to keep an eye on me.



All too soon, we were back on the road. Traveling, traveling. Back through the sagebrush. Twelve more hours of driving, and we were home.

Emma and I went on a nature walk today, up to the Spring Creek area of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. It was hot (85deg F), but we had so much fun. The wildflowers are blooming, the birds are back, the butterflies are out, and you can't beat the views...



There were swarms of Western Pine Elfins (Callophrys erephon), which are possibly my favorite early spring butterfly. They're so amazingly intricately patterned. Then again, I say that about almost every species. They're all my favorites.



The Larkspurs are in full bloom up there right now, tinting the hillsides purply-blue:



There were a good number of Silvery Blues (Glaucopsyche lygdamus) fluttering around. These are possibly my favorite early spring butterfl... Oh wait, we already discussed this.



This one was working a mud puddle. I think it's a female, because of the gray-brown tinge to the upper surface of the wings. The males are brilliantly blue on top. Don't you wish you had black and white striped antennae?



At this point in our walk, we sat down on the side of the path and had a rest and a drink. Emma was watching the chickadees in the pines across the path, but I was distracted by watching her.



Oh, those freckles, those eyes, those almost-dimples. Can you stand it? I actually got all chokey, right there on our nature walk.

This weekend was the Fourth Annual Ladd Marsh Birdathon. This was the third year I've participated as an "expert birder," staffing a station in the marsh and helping people look for birds and know what they were seeing. As always, it was great fun.

Saturday was the marsh day; 6:00 am to noon in the marsh looking at birds, followed by a cookout and program on raptors. I was at Station 5 again, right on Ladd Creek at the fish ladder. This is a pond behind the dike, looking west to the Blue Mountains.



The water in the marsh was incredibly high this spring, and the entrance to my station was flooded. Normally the roadside ditch has an access road across it to get to the dike, fish ladder, and water control structure, but this year it had about a foot and a half of water over it. It was a ford, not an access road! I had an Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife truck that I used to ferry people across the flood to get back to this pond.

I spent six hours at my station, and saw 61 species of birds, including two (Great-tailed Grackle and Black Tern) that were new for my life list. Not rare birds at all, but I've never happened to spot them before. In the case of the grackle, I've never lived in their range before. The sighting at the Birdathon was the second record for the county.

After the cookout, there was a presentation on raptors by Blue Mountain Wildlife. They brought six rehabilitated but non-releasable birds with them to show: a golden eagle, a red-tailed hawk, a barn owl, a great-horned owl, a kestrel, and a western screech-owl. They also had a fully rehabilitated red-tailed hawk that was released that day, which was cool.

Golden eagles are beautiful.



They are also HUGE.



This is a mature female, and she has a 7-foot wingspan. Very impressive.

I signed up to go on one of the field trips on Sunday (because Mother's Day is the perfect excuse to go off and do whatever I want for an entire day.) The trip I went on was up north of Enterprise, Oregon, to the Nature Conservancy's Zumwalt Prairie Preserve and Clear Lake Ridge Preserve. Unfortunately, I think we were about 1-2 weeks too early for the birds, and didn't get the species diversity we'd hoped for. It was still beautiful.

We started off at Clear Lake Ridge, and hiked up Devil's Gulch a little way. The serviceberries were in full bloom:



and we did see a few warblers and flycatchers. We also were treated to a female Rufous Hummingbird zipping around us and scolding, which we realized after watching her for a few minutes was because we were standing about three feet from her nest!



I claim the honor of spotting it first, but if she hadn't zipped in briefly, I never would have seen it. It was beautifully camoflaged with bits of lichen and spiderwebs, and as we hastily left the area, she settled back on top of her two tiny eggs. The opening of the nest was about an inch across, and the eggs were at most, a half inch long.

Back at the car, we continued our trip up a winding canyon road toward the prairie.



We saw some birds here, mainly lazuli buntings and sparrows, with golden eagles and hawks soaring overhead. The riparian habtat around the creek looked fabulous for birds, but our guide was eager to get to the prairie at the top, and we didn't stop often. One place we stopped had a wonderful big mud puddle, and while everyone else was looking at the treetops for buntings, I was stalking butterflies at the edge of the mud.



There was quite a convention of Anise Swallowtails (Papilio zelicaon), probably 20 or so. They are beautiful butterflies, and to see a big swarm of them like that was amazing.



There was also a nice little group of spring azures (Celestrina ladon), which are always cheerful; bright clear blue and very lively. Luckily, they were busy getting drunk on the tasty, tasty mud, and agreeable to having pictures taken.



We finally made it up to the Zumwalt Prairie, and wow, is it beautiful! This is the largest remaining area of northwestern bunchgrass prairie, totalling approximately 160,000 acres, of which 33,000 acres is owned by The Nature Conservancy.



The land is gently rolling, bordered by mountains all around. This is looking south toward the Wallowa Mountains:



and this is east, toward the Seven Devils Mountains on the other side of the Snake River and Hells Canyon:



Amazing, wide-open spaces, too much air to breathe, and unbelievable quiet. It is wonderful to know that places like this still exist.

The wildflowers were beginning to bloom, and I got to see white shooting stars in amongst the more common pink ones.





The bluebells were also blooming:



After we birded around the prairie for a while, we went to the Nature Conservancy house (used for visiting researchers and TNC volunteers) to see what we could find. In addition to a new bird for my life list (Say's Phoebe), we found this pair of Great-horned Owls in the old barn.



They were not terribly amused to have us invade their barn, so we left them to it.

By this time, it was getting on toward late afternoon, so we headed back to La Grande. The drive down off the prairie plateau was beautiful, with a backdrop of the Wallowa Mountains.



This is a remote and harsh place to try to farm, but it does have a few residents. The agriculture is mostly ranching, as the soil is too poor and the climate too arid for crops. Thus, the land escaped the plow and the prairie remains intact. Managed properly, the native grasslands can support summer grazing of cattle.

Most of the ranchers don't live up here year-round, but move up in the spring, bringing their cattle with them from the winter pastures (or feedlots) in the river bottoms. Small, old barns and farmhouses are scattered near the streams, many falling in. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the first families that settled up here in the 1850s and tried to make a living.

I don't think I mentioned it here, but I got a new bike this winter, a road bike. I've been riding Shaun's old mountain bike since last summer, and still have it set up for pulling the trailer, but it's heavy and somewhat slow, with the big knobby tires, and the shifting mechanisms are somewhat jumpy (as in, I can only get into about half the gears). The mountain bike was great for riding back and forth to work in the winter, when the roads were wet or snowy, but the road bike is so much faster and lighter.

Anyway, Shaun and I did a charity ride yesterday, which benefits the Mt. Emily Safe Center. I am quite happy to report that I successfully completed the second-longest course, a total of 33.7 miles! I did it in 2 1/2 hours (average speed: 13.7 mph), and I am extremely proud of myself. That's the longest ride I've done since college, twenty years ago. AND surprisingly, I didn't feel wiped out when I was done. My feet were frozen (oh, yes, it was raining and in the low 50's, did I mention that?) and I was tired, but not destroyed. Of course, I did fall into bed a bit after 9:00 last night, but I'm not at all sore today.

Biking is fun.

Today was another milestone for the green aran sweater:



The singles are all spun. It was a sad moment when the last bit of the last batt passed through my fingers onto the bobbin.



So where am I in the process? Probably about a third of the way.

• wash
• sort
• dye
• pick
• card individual colors
• divide for blended batts
• card twice for blending
• spin
• ply
• wash
• swatch
• design a cabled sweater
• knit

Those last two steps will take a while. I have enjoyed every step of this project so far. Now, on to plying!