Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

 I took the dog down to the park yesterday so we can both get a little exercise and he gets a chance to try out a different lawn to crap in. Variety is the spice of life or so they say. He's taken to eating the little crab shells that the ravens pick up from the beach and deposit on the walkway or grass down at the park. The tidal flats are right up against the park boundaries, so they are always digging for cockles and small crabs and breaking the shells by dropping them on the pavement. I don't know what the attraction is for my dog. The crab shells are empty; maybe he just likes the crunchiness of them, kind of like pretzels. I hope he doesn't develop a taste for beer- I'm going broke just keeping him in carrots. Anyway, while we were walking, I was struck by the sheer diversity of the plant life in and around the park. Granted, some of the trees like the apple, mountain ash, red maple and  hawthornes  were planted, there is an a...

 To tell you the honest truth, sometimes I feel like my life is like an episode of Seinfeld, and I'm one of the characters- probably George Castanza. Even I can't believe some of the stuff that happens, and it's been going on for sixty six years!  Some time back, Jan and I decided we wanted to go down and look around in Idaho, so we elected to go in March, before the weather got good enough to work on the boat and before fishing started. We got our tickets to go to Juneau a month in advance because we wanted to take the truck over and do some shopping. In the interim, our washing machine that we had owned for over ten years decided to give up the ghost. We got a lot of good use out of it and I had no problem picking one up in Juneau while we were there, that way we'd save the freight of sending it over to Hoonah. For a few weeks we did laundry at my daughter, Jen's house. It was inconvenient, but it worked. Well, the day before we were to take the ferry over...

  For all intents and purposes, summer has arrived in Hoonah. School is out, the leaves on all the trees have finally shown, the flowers on the salmon berry bushes are blooming, as are the Forget Me Not's. The hummingbirds have made there way  here on their annual migration north, and while the bugs haven't hatched yet, the tourists certainly have. They've arrived en-mass on the cruise ships, crowding the streets, hopping on buses and taking pictures of whatever they find photo worthy, which apparently is almost everything. After a two week stint of rainy, mostly normal weather for Southeast, we've gotten a break and the sun has been out for the past few days. It always amazes me that we can go from needing a jacket to wishing that running around nude was an acceptable practice here, all in the course of a single day. When the sun  comes out this time of year, it can be intense. Of course sunny days mean beautiful sunsets, and as of late we've had...