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!