Fifty Shades of Green

The petunias baskets are back, a bit late and a little down-sized. We had a week or two of sunny weather when I started using my bike instead of the bus for errand running again, riding twenty-five or thirty miles a day, three or four times a week.

I still use the post office in Bellingham, even though my emergency move to Ferndale is now more than two years past - this was supposed to be a short-term arrangement. I've come to like it, though, even with having to make regular bus trips to Bellingham to pick up mail and do my laundry. A yoga studio opened recently just a ten minute walk away. If there was a bike shop and a laundromat in town I would definitely change my post office box to Ferndale. But then I would have to plan bike excursions, rather than riding because I need to get somewhere.

This barn blew down in an early windstorm last fall

And a job, too. I still need paychecks.

These photos are from one of the prettier stretches of my old commute route, a marsh separated by railroad tracks from Tennant Lake, which isn't much more than a marsh, either. In the morning the roadside is alive with goldfinches and red-winged blackbirds, and frogs chirping in the ditches. Riding through on my way home in the evening, I sometimes heard heavy splashes in the water, maybe otter or beaver.

This is the season when the roadsides suddenly change from dull brown blackberry thickets, bare tree trunks, dead leaves and dry grass to layers of green, green, green.