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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

OUR KITTY & A WEATHER REPORT


Summer Girl

One of the things we have been trying to do the past few weeks is get our outdoor kitty, Summer Girl, to be comfortable coming inside. She will never be a 100% indoor cat since she has lived out on our back porch for the past 7 years or so. But our indoor kitty of 16 years, Peeber (AKA Precious Baby), passed away last summer and we have so missed having a fur-baby in the house with us. We started inviting Summer Girl inside before Christmas, and little by little she has stayed in for longer periods of time. Here is a video I took of her last summer. She is such a sweetie!


I can never get a good video of her, she always gets up and moves or looks away or, as in this instance, butts me with her head. I did get a meow or two out of her but that usually isn't a problem because she is a talker! So we are now kept busy getting up and down to let her in or out. We didn't have this problem with our other cat because she was totally an indoor cat. She accidentally got outside a couple of times and she was scared to even move. But this one lets us know when she wants in...or out. And it is constant when we are sitting in our recliners watching TV. We are hoping she settles down after a while. 

Linda came up with the name "Summer" because this little black kitty, only a few months old, just showed up at our house in the summer of 2009, July to be exact. We watched her as she hid under one of our bushes. We could not just watch her starve, so we started feeding her. Actually, she and her little brother had both been eating the bread crumbs we were throwing out for the birds. Her brother was an absolutely gorgeous caramel-colored kitty and very friendly.,.too friendly for his own good because he kind of disappeared one day. She was very skittish at first, but with a lot of coaxing she finally came around and let us touch her. I guess the southerner in me had to come out because I started calling her "Summer Girl" (you know, kind of like "John Boy"), and I still call her that. Peeber was definitely a southern-belle cat, a little bit pampered and quiet. Summer is definitely a northwest cat, all brash and vocal. During the summertime, she is my garden buddy. Every time I go out to the garden, she follows me. She spends a lot of time out there hiding among the tomatoes and peppers, her favorite spot. So you will probably be seeing lots of pictures and videos of her when the weather gets nice.

WEATHER

This time of year there is not a lot happening so one of the main topics on everybody's mind is the weather. It seems like there has been a lot of weird weather all over the country. We have lots of weather here in Yakima, most of it extremely cold or extremely hot. The spring and fall seasons only last two to three weeks before spring turns into HOT summer, or fall turns into COLD winter. This took some getting used to, but I think we have adjusted. Right now we are having a warm spell, with the daily temperatures topping out around 33 degrees and the nighttime temperatures going down to only 22 degrees. This is way better than the below zero nighttime temperatures and mid-teen daytime temperatures that we had just a week or so ago. One particular weather phenomenon that we have seen several times since we moved here, but something I had never heard of before then, is called "frozen fog." This happens when it is foggy outside and the temperatures are low enough to cause the moisture in the atmosphere to freeze when it comes in contact with a solid object, coating that object. It makes the trees and bushes, and really any object, look absolutely beautiful. Below are a couple of pictures I took of the frozen fog.


We still have an inch or two of ice on top of the snow out in our yard, so it was rather precarious getting out there to take these pictures. But I wanted to show the frozen fog to everybody on the blog, therefore I risked life and limb to bring these to you :-).

We managed to take some walks around the park that is just a few blocks from our house. I took along my phone so I could get some pictures for the blog. Below are a couple of shots of the view on our walk. The hills surrounding Yakima are so lovely when covered in snow!


That wraps it up for this week, so be sure and come back next week to see what's happening up in these parts. Until then, stay warm!


Wednesday, January 18, 2017

A Few Thoughts About the Blog

A COUPLE OF NOTES ABOUT THIS BLOG:If you would like to sign up to get an email notification whenever I post to my blog, there is a box over to the right underneath "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" to enter your email address. Also, please read the note in that same area if you would like to leave a comment. Some people are having trouble leaving comments so I am not sure if my suggestion will work for everybody or not, but you can try it anyway. Check back on my blog each week as I intend to post every Wednesday...but don't hold me to it!



CONTINUING THOUGHTS ON RETIREMENT

I think my favorite thing about retirement, so far, is being able to sleep late. I have never been a morning person so when I was getting up at 5:15 to get ready and go to work, it was really hard. But now I am able to sleep as long as I want to, and also stay up later (since I can sleep-in the next morning). I am really enjoying this, more than I thought I would. Of course, sleeping late now amounts to around 6:00 or 7:00, which to some people isn't very late. But it is later than 5:15, so I'll take it!

Another good thing about retirement is that I now have the time to do more baking. I love to cook, but have never been much of a baker because to me baking meant cookies and pies and cakes. Now I have discovered baking bread! As Martha Stewart would say "It's a good thing." I did some baking when I started working part-time, but sometimes doing a bread recipe takes most of the day, what with the rising of the dough and all that. There is something really satisfying about taking a few simple ingredients like flour, yeast, water and salt, and turning it into a wonderful-smelling loaf of bread. And the eating part isn't bad, either. I intent to get into making homemade pasta, too. I have done this before, but I need to do more of it now that I have the time. Maybe even make some homemade pastry, which I hardly ever have because it is so labor intensive (and calorie-laden). But I sure do love it, and my friends back East know why. It is a true Southern delicacy! For those of you who don't know what this dish is, it is what a lot of people call "dumplings". In the Northeast, I think they call it "slicks". So there are many names for it, but where I came from, it was called "pastry".

So far, we haven't been able to do any traveling. The extent of our traveling has been to the grocery store and back. There has been snow on the ground since before Christmas, and the last couple of weeks it seems like it snowed every day. But the temperatures are warming up a bit for the upcoming week, so maybe we can get out and go down to the Greenway and take a walk.

The Greenway is a nature path around Yakima that is fabulous! We walked it on a regular basis when we first moved here (and weren't working yet). The pathway is paved and there are multiple entrances and parking areas, so you can access it from various places around town. This is the best for birding that I have found around Yakima. From walking on the Greenway, we have been able to see many bald eagles. I do believe this is my favorite bird in this area, although we don't see them in the summer because they go over to the Westside of the mountains to vacation. There does not seem to be nearly as many songbirds in our area as we had in Lumberton, probably due to the dry conditions. That's the funny thing, even though it snows a lot here, it is still very, very dry. So, whenever we see a bird that is not a sparrow or house finch, we get excited. I saw a Golden-Crowned Kinglet flitting around in the snow the other day and I just about had a fit! We used to see the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet in Lumberton all the time, but the species here is the Golden-Crowned, and I have rarely seen it since we moved here. But we keep looking for interesting birds anyway.

Here is a picture of our flamingos, named Fanti and Mingo, enjoying the snow in our back yard!



That's it for this week. Check back again next Wednesday for more. Until then, Happy Birding!


Wednesday, January 11, 2017

My First Week of Retirement

Retirement Week 1

Well, I made it through my first week of retirement and managed to keep myself busy. In fact, I was just as busy as before, I do believe. Of course, I am sure things will slow down once I get through my list of "things to do when I retire."

One of the things I did this past week was read a new book. It's a special book, one that was given to me by the ladies in the office on the day I retired. Every retired person should read this book when they retire. It gives a nice outlook on retirement.

I know you're saying to yourself, "But that's a children's book!" However, if you read it from the perspective of a person who is about to retire, you will see what I mean. It is all about going on new adventures, which I definitely believe retirement will be. It seems to me that Dr. Seuss wrote this book for people of all ages. I recommend it for anyone who is heading into the unknown on any kind of endeavor.

I'm still working on the blogging thing, it is definitely a work-in-progress. There is certainly a lot to learn, but they say that's what you need to do when you retire, continue to learn new things. I am always up for that so this is perfect for me. Besides, I always wanted to be a writer although life seemed to get in the way every time I even thought about it. But I did find time to keep a journal occasionally, and I think I came by it honest. My father used to keep a journal and write in it every single day. I haven't been that dedicated to it, although I have tried to write in it daily during the summers when my garden is up and I have so much going on.

So, where will we go on our first trip? I'm not really sure yet, but I do know I would like to take a trip back East in the not too distant future. We just need to decide when is the best time to go. We want to avoid hurricane season, the really hot and humid weather and the time of year when mosquitoes are really bad. I'm not sure what time of year that would leave as an option. But before we take that big trip, we will probably take a few smaller trips around to places here in Washington. All of this is on hold right now, though, due to the weather. At this very moment it is snowing and we are none too fond of driving in the snow. But as soon as the weather changes (in a couple of months) we will be venturing out and I will report our travels here.

The local newspaper had some interesting statistics about the snowfall for this year. So far this season, we have had 18.2 inches of snow, which seemed like an awful lot to me. But last year up to this same date, we had 24.1 inches of snow, so I guess I forgot how snowy it was last year. Our normal snowfall for the season to this date is 14.9 inches. It has stopped for now and I can actually see some blue sky out there...Carolina Blue!  Below is a video out our front door taken a couple of days ago.




All this snow leaves plenty of time for reading, so I decided to join the Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2017 on the Goodreads.com website. I put down on my challenge that I will read 30 books this year, which doesn't seem like all that many to me, but I am hoping it is a goal I can reach. I can always increase the number if I see that I am reading more than I anticipated. I already have one book towards my goal that I actually started in 2016 but was able to count towards this year's goal because I finished it in January. It was book #1 of The Breakers series by Edward W. Robertson, and I really enjoyed it. I am now reading book #2 in that same series and this one is turning out to be as good as the first book. I highly recommend this series if you love science fiction or dystopian novels.

We got brave yesterday and ventured out in the truck to Starbucks. Gotta have our coffee treat! Besides, we were getting a bit of cabin fever and needed to get out of the house. Actually, I ventured out alone in the truck and Linda decided to walk. Backing out of the garage was a new experience for me! Since we only drive when we have to in the snow, I was not prepared for driving in several inches of snow. I didn't think I was even going to be able to get out of the driveway to start with, but after going back-and-forth a couple of times, I was able to finally get out to the road. From there it was like driving a boat...you point your vehicle in one direction and you kind of eventually float to where you want to go. This is okay unless you are in traffic. Fortunately for me, I was the only one on the road so I was able to make it the two blocks up to a main road, which had been somewhat cleared. From there to Starbucks was easy going. Maybe I will be a good "snow driver" one of these days.

That's about all for this week from up here in the snowy Northwest. Join me again next week for more adventures from the retired!


Wednesday, January 4, 2017

What Am I Doing?

I retired at the end of 2016 and to keep myself busy, I decided to do a blog! Of course, I had no idea how to do one or what all was involved. After just a few hours today, I am finding out that it is not as easy as it seems. So, my hat goes off to all you bloggers out there that have been doing this for years. It is actually like work! But I am up for giving it a go, so hang in there!

I chose to name my blog "Southerner in the Northwest" because that is exactly what I am. My partner and I moved to Yakima, Washington, from Lumberton, North Carolina, in the summer of 2007. We arrived in Yakima on July 3rd which turned out to be the hottest day of the year, with the temperature at 106 degrees. "But it's a dry heat." That's what you always hear, and coming from the humid South, it was indeed a very different heat. But 106 degrees is 106 degrees, no matter how you sweat it, so to us it was just HOT! We had beat the moving van by about a week, so we set up housekeeping in our new home (with our kitty, Precious) having just the items we were able to pack into our Toyota Corolla for the drive cross-country. Our furniture consisted of two plastic chairs we bought at a pharmacy nearby with our cooler functioning as a table. We also had a blow-up bed. And one frying pan. That was it. However, we had a good time cleaning and painting our new house and exploring around the area. Everything was so different and new here. After our furniture arrived we got settled in. And that is how I wound up in the Northwest.

Fast forward to the present. New Year's Day 2017 was a very different story (but nothing new since the 9 years we have been here). Five inches of snow fell in December that had melted somewhat but was still hanging around. Come New Year's Day we got another 7 inches and single digit temperatures to go with it. That was a far cry from the 106 degrees when we moved out here.

So now you have the basics of our life in the Northwest...at least the part of it we live in. My blog is going to be on a wide variety of topics:  travel - when we go somewhere (which isn't very often but we hope that changes); cooking - when I make something new or interesting (which I do quite often); nature observations - when the weather gets better (it's too cold for that now); vegetable gardening - my passion in the summer (again, too cold now); and just my thoughts in general on whatever pops into my head. I have a feeling retirement is going to be an interesting journey, so I invite you to come along for the ride!