Friday, August 8, 2008

Reflections on Driving Alaska in Early Summer















In late June and early July, we drove around Alaska for 11 days, using Anchorage as our pivot point. Our itinerary was two nights in Anchorage, three nights in Healy (two days in Denali National Park), one night in Anchorage, three nights in Homer, one night in Anchorage (arriving on June 23, before flying back on July 3).

Anyone familiar with Alaskan distances knows that we must have spent about 24 hours in our rental car; in addition, we spent 14 hours on a shuttle bus getting into and out of Denali on two different days. Fortunately, we had three drivers for our long commutes to/from Anchorage. The Subaru from Avis was supposed to be an upgrade, but it was actually a bit cramped even though we only had one person over six feet. Luckily, we were able to get everything into the small luggage hold area since each of us had only one small suitcase and one backpack.

There was lots of looking, seeing, oo-ing and ah-ing. Next time(?!), however, I will make sure there's more tromping about as we did last year in Alberta's Canadian Rockies. Nevertheless, in our 11 days, we had so much good luck and beautiful weather, we even fantasized about living there (of course, we have no idea what it's like to spend half the year in darkness). Our B&B hostess in Homer explained that either first-timers love Alaska, or they hate it. As long as there are curtains in the bedrooms, I discovered I could fall asleep in the perpetual daylight of an Alaskan summer (22 hours).



Sunday, July 13, 2008

Views from around Homer, Alaska in early summer
















Saturday, May 24, 2008

Create a 'Garden for Wildlife'

Soon I hope to register our garden with the National Wildlife Federation. It's easy and with the small $15 application fee, I'll get a little sign I can put out in our yard to show passersby in our neighborhood that they can create a colorful, waterwise yard that attracts a multitude of birds, bees, and butterflies.

Visit the National Wildlife Federation's website to get more ideas about how you can get started. Even if you don't have all the 'ingredients' in your yard to satisfy the Federation's rules for registering, you can get ideas about how to bring more native life into your garden.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Spring Blooms in Our Garden

If you've followed me on Twitter, you know that sometimes the garden surrounding our house is foremost on our minds. At the beginning of spring, weeds were a major stumbling block after the winter rains. We discovered that when weeds had taken over the paths surrounding our planters, we could wipe them out without using poisonous weedkillers. Instead we used a square-nosed shovel and scraped them off. After about two weeks of work, we had almost weed-free paths.
Now we've got a bunny in our yard that feeds almost exclusively on weeds in the DG (decomposed granite) and on any grass that takes hold in our planters. I never thought we could have a symbiotic relationship with rabbits.



These are photos of our front yard in full bloom. When Mickey works out front, he gets many compliments on how well it's doing.














Last weekend, we had a woman ask us who did and does our yard. Well, the landscapers that are no longer in business did the hardscape and planted some of our plants, but after about eight months of unreliable maintenance on our yard, we keep it up on our own. So far, so good.

Almost all the plants are on a drip system. In addition, most of the plants are drought-tolerant, such as Salvia, Ceanothus, and Kangaroo Paw. We've got an assortment of lavendar plants, dwarf bottlebrush, daisies, heavenly bamboo, and in the back, some camellias and azaleas.

Shortly, I hope to register our garden with the National Wildlife Federation. I'll write about how to do that in the future.