Winter Diary

Before they get buried in the archives, here is a selection of “scenes seen” in the last few months.

1. Working boats at a marina in Anacortes with steam in the background from a refinery across the bay. The colors have been modified to add a little more drama.

2. Seen in a vacant lot outside a lumber business, in the small town of Edison, WA.

3. Sand patterns at Cape Perpetua, Orgeon

4. Winter fog, same location as #2. Edison has a population of perhaps a few hundred people and a four-block downtown. On that street are a couple of art galleries, a bakery, and a few restaurants, each of which achieves the kind of quality you’d expect in a city fifty times the size of Edison. And they all need electricity.

5. Another telephone pole, by the Olson Building in Anacortes.

7. Several days of snow shuttered the schools and many businesses. The Sword ferns aren’t looking very good after being laden with heavy, wet snow for days. These fronds will gradually recover though, and the plants will send up new shoots in the Spring.

8. A tea cup is a close friend on cold mornings.

10. A thrift shop vase with seasonal berries is welcome in the house.

11. Nigella (aka Love-in-a-mist) seed pods, as seen with an in-camera filter. The seeds are dropping out of the pods. Maybe I’ll plant them. A relative, *N. damascena*, is used as a condiment and according to Wikipedia, its seeds were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

12. Paperwhite *(Narcissus papyraceus)* buds are reassuring whispers of hope.

13. Now that the buds have opened, the fragrance arrives like the blessing of a soft-cheeked infant.

14. In Port Townsend, a small town on the Olympic peninsula, moss overtakes a stairway. Port Townsend is in the Olympic rain shadow (which means the Olympic Mountains grab Pacific ocean moisture before it reaches this area). The town only gets about 20 inches of rain a year, compared to the U.S. average of 38. It’s still relatively cool and damp throughout much of the year, keeping the moss happy. This photo was taken in the wettest month, November.

LOCAL WALKS: Washington Park

Set into a chunky peninsula on the northwest corner of Fidalgo Island, Washington Park is a singularly beautiful place. I’ve been there thirty-odd times in the past couple of years and each time I return, I see something new, and I’m enchanted again. Here is a selection of photos from this favorite local haunt.

1. Winter sunset. The Olympic Mountains are low on the horizon; a gnarled, half-dead Seaside juniper tree is silhouetted on the bluff.

2. Ferries to the San Juan Islands (seen in the distance) leave from a terminal a mile away, but why leave?

3. A winter view from the park’s edge. The glacially-scraped rocks are serpentinite, from deep down in the earth’s mantle. These rocks are uncommon, and they’re around 170 million years old. This little cove has a mind-boggling variety of sea life hiding just under the water – brown and red algae, anemones, sponges, worms, chitons, snails, sea slugs, sea cucumbers, sea stars, barnacles, crabs, fish, and more have been found by inquisitive explorers.

4. Three males and a female – attractive Harlequin ducks ply the waters around the park in winter.

At 220 acres, Washington Park isn’t particularly large, but a varied habitat of saltwater shoreline, rocky bluffs and evergreen forest makes it a rewarding place to explore. From the park’s shores you might see harbor porpoises, seals, the occasional whale, oystercatchers, herons and even the elusive Marbled murrelet, which sometimes fishes near the shore. (The Marbled murrelet is an odd seabird. Back in 1974 a tree-climber found a murrelet chick high in an old tree; that was the first time Western science had found a Marbled murrelet’s nest. They may feed way out at sea and then fly up to 50 miles (80km) inland to raise their young. Their preference for old growth forests means habitat destruction is impinging on their nesting success. Foraging habits may also be negatively affected by climate change; currently the Marbled murrelet is considered endangered.)

Turning away from the water, the park’s woodlands invite scrutiny. Weather-ravaged junipers and Douglas firs command rocky headlands. Mounds of delicate, slow-growing reindeer lichens (Cladonia sp.) speckle forest openings and wildflowers that may be uncommon elsewhere bloom in the park each Spring. Deer, squirrels, and birds abound. There’s a bench by the loop road (open to walkers, bike riders and cars willing to go 10mph) with a lovely water view. It has become a favorite spot to hand-feed chickadees, sparrows, towhees and other birds. Tiny Chestnut-backed chickadees will perch on any outstretched hand with a few seeds in it; they’ve cleaned me out of nuts and seeds more than once.

6. Moisture from the Salish Sea keeps mosses green through most of the year. This photo was taken in November; in the summer there is very little rain. Plants adjust by going dormant, dropping leaves or just biding time until the rains return in September.

7. An old Seaside juniper is flanked by the evergreen leaves of several young Madrone trees. The uncommon Seaside juniper *(Juniperus maritima)* only grows in certain parts of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington State. Scientists recognized it as a separate species in 2007. The trees favor drier, south-facing slopes on the islands and are fairly plentiful in Washington Park but are scarce to nonexistent elsewhere. Seaside juniper is vulnerable to climate change since many of the trees grow on islands. If an island’s climate becomes inhospitable, the trees cannot slowly migrate away like they might be able to do on the mainland.

8. Seaside junipers and Madrones enjoy good light on this open headland slope facing uninhabited Burrows Island. The uprooted tree will slowly decompose on a bed of moss and reindeer lichen. Leaving the log where it is allows a whole host of non-flowering plants, insects, and other creatures to live their lives, which are connected to our lives.

10. A little Nodding onion *(Allium cernuum)* blooms here in June.

11. This unusual, tiny plant, a fern called Indian’s dream *(Aspidotis densa)* lives on serpentine soils, which tend to be inhospitable to many other plants.

12. Pretty pink Sea blush (Plectritis congesta) and white Field chickweed *(Cerastium arvense)* mingle on ground littered with broken, lichen-covered branches.

13. Tiger lilies (*Lilium columbianum*) were blooming in the forest only a few yards from the loop road, in June. What a delightful discovery!

14. A Douglas fir needle dangles from a Red huckleberry twig by a thread of spider silk. The forest at Washington Park sometimes seems to glow green, with plant life. The high, dense canopy of evergreens reduces the light entering the forest but open water on three sides of the park reflects light that brightens dim places.

15. Branch tip of a Seaside juniper tree.

16. Three juniper cones on the ground. I’m tempted to call them berries but they are actually cones containing one or two seeds each. A number of the park’s Seaside juniper trees may be over 200 years old.

17. Tall Douglas firs are plentiful in the woods, along with Western redcedar, whose gracefully drooping leaves are to the left.

18. I guess this rock is a glacial erratic. In the forest it quietly gathers lichens, mosses and insects, producing an ever-changing palette of life on its surface, even on a gray November day.

19. The complexity of crossing branches revealed after leaves have dropped is absolutely dizzying.

20. This beauty looks like it’s covered with snow but no, those are lichens that have found a happy home on a dead evergreen. The tree may no longer be producing needles and branches, but it still plays a vital role in the forest.

21. The snow-capped Olympic Mountain range is shrouded in clouds on a quiet December afternoon. Barely visible to the left is the Burrows Island lighthouse, the oldest intact wooden lighthouse in the state. The light went into service in 1906, then it was automated in 1972. The uninhabited island can only be reached by private boat. One of the delights of Washington Park is gazing out at the Salish Sea and dreaming of “what-ifs.” You can bet I’ll keep going back as long as I can.

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FURTHER AFIELD: Around Los Angeles

It’s archive time. A string of wet, gray days prompted a look through Lightroom’s bulging files and folders. Sometimes I scroll around arbitrarily, and sometimes I think of a place or subject and type it into the keyword field. Any archive review is bound to turn up something that deserves attention and this time, photos from a 2018 trip to Los Angeles caught my eye.

Before moving on to the photos I want to mention what happened to my Lightroom catalog and workflow process over the last few days. With the expert help of Alex Kunz, my impossibly messy catalog (the result of a computer crash, a hard drive crash and years of bad organization) has been sorted out and cleaned up. It’s a new world in there! And to top it off, I’ve learned that certain habits I had, like creating virtual copies every time I edited a photo, are unnecessary. The recycle bin is full (gotta remember to empty that!) and my editing process is now quicker and easier. What a difference! Kudos to Alex, whose services I highly recommend. Whether you use Windows or Mac he can help solve problems. His rates are reasonable, he’s trustworthy, he’s thorough – and he’s also a fine photographer.

The first image here is a view of Los Angeles from the hills above it, specifically the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of the city. It’s not an exceptional image but it sets the scene for a trip we took in October 2018 when we spent a day or so downtown, explored the hills around the city, drove out to Joshua Tree and went to the beach.