Cherry pickin'

This is the third year I've had my dwarf stella cherry tree on my balcony, but the first time I managed to get any edible fruit from it. The first year it didn't produce fruit (this is normal) and then last year the birds ate the unripe cherries before I could get to them. This year, on the recommendation of a labmate, I bought a net to put over the tree and thereby prevent the birds' access. I wasn't sure how to tell when the cherries were ripe... but when I noticed two of them becoming over-ripe, I figured that was good enough! I managed to get 15 cherries from the tree, all told, and they were delicious! Maybe I'll get even more next year :)

4th of July fireworks

This year for the Fourth, I went to Elizabeth and Andrew's for a nice BBQ and then we walked down to Gasworks for the show. Despite having lived within walking distance for two years, I never did go all the way to the park for the show - but it was totally worth it! It was crowded, for sure, but hearing the music for the fireworks' choreography was awesome, and it was great to be so close. I took along my recently returned camera and grabbed some fun shots - click on the photo to see some more. These pictures came out decidedly better than the shots I took last year with my old camera, especially since that one could only keep the shutter open for 0.25 seconds at the longest. Thanks to Peter for helping me adjust the levels on the above shot. :)

I think the biggest hit of the show was the new type of firework that rose up into the sky very slowly, all the while sparkling away. Some people thought they looked like jellyfish, others thought they looked like UFOs - I just thought they were neat (and HOW did they do that?!)

Necklace Valley

Over the long holiday weekend I went to Necklace Valley in the Cascades for three days of hiking, camping, and exploring the valley's numerous glacial lakes. Click here to see some more shots.

Yosemite reunion

Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall
Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

Last weekend I got together with four friends from high school and went camping in Yosemite. We had a complete blast. We camped in Hodgdon Meadow, to which I'd never been before. It turned out to be a great choice, because it was at a higher elevation than Yosemite Valley, and therefore less HOT. Also, it was significantly closer to Tuolumne Meadows, our hike destination of choice.

The hike we went on was to Elizabeth Lake, which lies at the base of Unicorn Peak. The ranger at the Big Oak Flat Wilderness info center told us it would just be "muddy", but if you click on the picture you can see that it was slightly more rough going than that. In the end we didn't quite make it to the lake, but still had a great time hiking in the snow :)

The following day included a trip to see the most massive living things in the world, ever. The giant sequoias can live to be over 3000 years old! I've seen them before, but it's always amazing to behold a tree that large. We then headed down to the valley for a brief lunch stop at Bridalveil Fall, and then headed on to Wawona for a look at the historic Wawona Hotel. It was 105 degrees when we got there!

All in all it was a great weekend, and we're hoping to make it an annual event, albeit with different destinations every year.

Scary!

After having my camera for nearly a year, I finally decided to bite the bullet and send it in for warranty repair (especially since my warranty runs out in a few weeks) to fix the slightly defective "up" button of the 4-way controller and the noise it makes when it zooms out slowly. I'm really hoping to get it back before I go to Yosemite, but if not, I always have my old Fuji.
 


Update 06/27/06: My camera finally made it back to me, and it's really, really fixed! The up button works great (it now "detents", according to Peter) and the zoom no longer makes its weird noise. I don't know what I was expecting, but I'm kind of overly pleased with the results. Plus, I'm so excited to have my camera back :)

Goals

House across the alley: gone!

Got home from work today to find that the house across the alley had been completely demolished in one day! Perhaps not that amazing a feat, but when you've been watching the slow excavation of the site of a new lab building like I have for the past few weeks (at work), one day seems fast.

What's next? Condos? Townhouses? A new single family home (ha ha ha). I just hope it doesn't block our view of Mt. Rainier...

Plant gallery

 
After seeing a recent post on a local blog with a collage of all the covers from a certain local weekly newspaper, I felt inspired to try something similar. So here are all my plants (at least the ones that are at home), in all their splendor, all requiring plenty of TLC, which they only get some of the time. Three are represented twice as a result of Picasa making the collage a true square. 

Brand new bus stop

I noticed today a brand new bus stop near my building in South Lake Union. It's on Dexter between Mercer and Roy, northbound. This is very exciting to me for two reasons - 1) with all the construction south of the building, it's no longer as convenient to go to the stop at Dexter and Republican - so this one will be a nice alternative; and 2) this stop also includes the 16 bus (not just the 26), which means it will be a lot easier for me to get home by bus now! I'll have two choices, thus increasing the frequency with which a bus comes by that can take me home.

Strangely, though the paint on the curb is clearly new and the gravel around the base of the pole had been disturbed, the pole supporting the yellow and white Metro bus sign appears to be old - I guess Metro must recycle their poles!

Wallace Falls

After thinking about going to Wallace Falls for several weeks now, and debating all weekend whether the weather was too bad to bother hiking, I decided this morning that I wouldn't go, so I just went to work to feed my cells for a while. I got back at 3pm, called Rachel, and then we realized we could still go - it's only an hour away from Seattle, and it's a 5.6 mile round trip hike. So despite the rain, we quickly threw together our day-hiking gear and headed up to Gold Bar. It wasn't raining until we got to about Sultan - where we tried to stop in the Red Apple to pick up a NW forest pass (and were told that only the Gold Bar Red Apple sells them... grr - but luckily we realized that since the trail was in a state park we didn't need the pass) and then it got a bit heavier by the time we got to the trailhead.

We headed out at 5 pm and passed a few hikers going in the opposite direction, but the weather (and time) seemed to have kept most people away. The views of the lower, middle (pictured above), and upper falls were very nice, and appropriately accompanied by signs warning hikers not to go into the water as they would almost certainly die. I only took three pictures due to the constant drizzle, and didn't even try to capture the verdant greens of the vine maple, moss, and evergreen being backlit by foggy diffuse sunlight. But take my word for it, it was beautiful.

In the end, it took us about 2.5 hours round-trip - and we were done a full hour before sunset. Thankfully we hadn't been hit with the rather torrential rain that we drove through on the way back to Seattle (via Dairy Queen for Blizzards, after the Gold Bar McDonalds told us that their ice cream machine was out of order and then took forever to get through the two cars in front of us in the drive-through line).