It's almost that time again...

For a valentine:

or a valentine:

That's a veggie Valentine the orang is munching. And he probably doesn't care that it's heart-shaped (though he may like the color.)

I prefer chocolate - dark chocolate! Champagne is nice, too.

The flowers that bloom in spring (if planted at Christmas...)

A friend often gives me an amaryllis bulb at Christmas - the kind that comes in a square box with a beautiful picture on the outside.

Inside you find a dry, unpromising-looking bulb, a green plastic pot, an English muffin-shaped cake of compressed peat, and directions for producing your very own Georgia O'Keefe moment.

After immersion in an astonishing amount of water, the peat muffin expands exponentially, more than enough to fill the plastic pot. (My other pot plants love the leftovers!) After burying the bulb in the pot, you move it to a warm sunny place, and in a very short time voilà - a strong, proud, distinctly phallic green stalk springs up.

No leaves - they are cut back to the point of invisibility before the bulb is packaged. Lack of leaves emphasizes the beauty of the flowers when they emerge.

Last year's amaryllis was a deep, vibrant red. After the flowers were gone, I left the pot alone, watering only if it dried out - and by mid-summer it had sprouted two or three tall, sword-shaped leaves.

Usually we need these indoor bulbs to remind us of spring, but this year we've had almost no winter, and outside all kinds of flowers are out. A huge camellia across the street from our building popped its first hot pink blooms at the end of December, and by now has dropped a pink carpet of fading flowers all the way down a flight of concrete steps.

An uproar of crows

Late yesterday afternoon a murder of crows (that's the proper group name - check here for a whole list of wonderful collective names for birds. I like "an ostentation of peacocks," too) took over the maple tree outside my window. What a cacophony - and what hopping and flapping to find just the right branch.

An uproar of crows in that tree usually means four or five birds screaming (from a safe distance) at a perching eagle or red-tailed hawk. From time to time one or two birds will fly close to the interloper. When the big bird is ready, it leaves, with a lazy flap of its wings, and the crows settle down.

This gathering turned out to be a rest stop on the way to somewhere else, as at a certain moment, the whole group rose into the air and flew off across the lake.

I like crows. Occasionally, one lands on the deck, strutting along the rail as if it owns the place. There are nests in the neighborhood, too, and in late summer, when the young are emerging, parent birds take turns dive-bombing pedestrians.

No one believes me when I tell them this, but baby crows have blue eyes and striped legs. I was able to get close to one that had either fallen from the nest or tried to fly too soon, and I know what I saw. I tried to get close enough to the chick to lift it into the tree, but it flapped and squawked and dared me to come close enough to peck.

Travel dreams

A favorite winter occupation. And I am planning a trip to Venice, charged this time with being "tour guide" for two friends who have not previously visited the city.

Since my favorite activity in Venice is to get lost, I may have to be a little more organized. (Bring a camera - getting lost in Venice is the way to find really good photo opportunities.)

Here's another favorite Venice occupation: watching people from a cafe on Campo Santa Margarita.

Wandering in the blog world...

Yesterday instead of posting, I went blog surfing - using the "Next blog" button in the navigation bar to page randomly through the words of strangers.

Normally this pulls up an interesting assortment from everywhere - family chronicles from Idaho and Utah, tech-loaded schoolgirl effusions from Hong Kong or Malaysia, blogs written in beautiful, but entirely incomprehensible Arabic or Asian scripts (with pictures of beautiful children.)

This time I got cancer blogs - eight or nine in a row, all in English. Blogs written by the sufferer, blogs written by a partner or caregiver. Chronicles of chemotherapy, complete with pictures of bald patients.

It was not what I wanted to read. While I admire people who have the energy to keep their friends au courant in this way, I could not have written a regular blog about cancer or chemotherapy.

What is there to say, after all? At best, chemotherapy is unpleasant. The body finds all kinds of inventive and uncomfortable ways to fight back. When your white count goes too far down, you leave the infusion room crying because you CAN'T have the therapy that week, and the elusive end date is pushed farther back. For months the first thing people ask is whether you are going to lose your hair.

If any of this sounds familiar, and you accidentally surf over here - my very best wishes to you. I've been there and survived, and had more surgery and survived that, and still believe that what you can choose is your attitude.

Happy New Year (and a look back at Christmas)

Only at Vashon does it seem perfectly reasonable to put up a Christmas "tree" made from recycled New Yorker magazines cut into tree shapes and sewn together with brown paper twine.

Moving on from there, Leah and Drew cut more magazines into paper chains, and strung them across the kitchen and living room. It was all done as a surprise, when they went to the cabin two nights before everyone else arrived.

Add presents, a couple of visiting cats, and an unexpected burst pipe that flooded out the bunkhouse. Thanks to Ian and Zanne's quick action, Drew's giant shop vac, and dry sunny weather, the damage was containable. After cleaning up as much as possible, we settled down to the fun of Christmas, followed by a festive dinner (complete with Christmas crackers.)


Tonight we celebrate an anniversary, take leave of the past year, and look forward to the one ahead. In spite of gloomy news from everywhere, I wish everyone a happy 2010, and hope for a good one for myself.

Almost the end of the year...

...and it's one I won't miss. Suddenly a lot of the blogs I read are offering "farewell to the 00's - what a ghastly decade" posts. Not sure I'm that down on the ten years we've almost lived through, though I definitely would not want to repeat any of them.

Especially this year, in which a broken wrist forced cancellation or rearrangement of far too many plans, and major surgery last month has so far left me almost inert for the run-up to Christmas.

Instead of the "5-7 days" in hospital optimistically predicted by the surgeon, I spent 19 days there, coming home the day before Thanksgiving. As I remind myself several times a day, things are going to be ALL RIGHT, but meantime, just moving around can be a challenge. When I finally went out for a walk, I moved carefully, like a very old person, swathed in layers of hats, jackets and scarves!

(Still, I was out. And walking. And enjoying it!)

I'm lucky to have family and friends close by, dropping in to keep my spirits up, and doing all manner of errands large and small. Thanks to everyone!