of forests and amphibians

For heaven's sake, people, I am the slowest! But (almost) only on the blogosphere, mind you, I manage to keep all those balls tripping merrily through the air in real life. What with patterns and photos and impromptu business trips to Australia and family and work and stuff, things just seems to get a bit snarled up and go nowhere. Does it infringe on your credulity a bit to appeal to your sympathies? Not bloody likely, eh? Poor me, too much of a good thing! But honestly, with all of my great good fortune aside, all I really want to be doing right now is to buckle down to the even more serious business of summertime.

Because, friends, when Summer peeks her insouciant head into the Pacific Northwest, nowhere is it lovelier. And all the natives come out to play (even the ones with very heavy deadlines swinging ominously over them).



Memaloose Lake, with friends. Now why, you may ask, after all that gushing about ripe summertimes, do those people look for all the world as though they are dressed for winter? How astute the blog public is indeed, and the answer lies in the majesty of our mountains and the unpredictability of their weather systems. We swelter in the valleys while the snowmelt continues its journey to our gardens. But it made for such a clear and invigorating hike up to the lake, with still-blooming trilliums and other beauties, nascent huckleberries, and dramatic and swirling mists. And true to the magic of such places, the sun did come out and we were transformed.







And the excuse for my son's attire? The hunt!



I wish I could take pictures for you of the air and the singular way it makes you feel, all the scents of growing things and the story of the temperature changes in each little ion. Refreshing just doesn't cut it. And the trees! And all things green! I will let the pictures do the talking from here.











A perfect day, I hope to have many more like it, and soon. Well, in a couple of weeks perhaps, after I've sampled that antipodal wintertime. Now that will be a shift.