There has been some serious Cereus action in my house! I had always heard that all the blooms happened on the same night. This year is the first time I've had more than one bud, and they seem to be disobeying orders. One flower bloomed Monday night, but the others stayed shut. This was good because I had to work 'til 9pm Monday night and I didn't get home until after 9:30.
Tuesday night I still had four unopened buds, and once again I had to work until 9pm. Luckily, I wasn't scheduled to be on the desk for the last hour, so I was able to go home one hour early! Thanks, Alene! I set up a light before I went to work, and Michael had started the video on my camera at 7:00 when he left for KungFu. I got home at 8:30 just in time to change the battery on the camera and see most of the blooming. I took a bunch of stills and a couple hours of video. I hope to take the video and do some time lapse fiddling. I'll post that sometime this week.
One bud still hasn't opened, and I'm pretty sure it will bloom tonight. The plant is right next to a big window, and the blooms face the glass making them hard to film. The plant is too huge to turn around entirely. I'm going to try to twist the last one around to get some full-frontal-bloomity.
Meanwhile, I've uploaded my photos to a Flickr set.
Tonight's the night the cereus bloom! At least I'm pretty sure it will be tonight or tomorrow. Unfortunately, I work 'til 9pm tonight and tomorrow. Big wah. I set up the camera, and Michael will get some shots and footage. Last year it got to its most open at around 9:45, so I won't totally miss it, just all the opening action. I discovered another bud, too! I'll have 5 blooms!
This week has been quite hot, although today finally cooled off with some rain. Bijou has decided her new favorite place to cool off is in JoJo's carrot garden. Michael said it's because it's a "bed of carrots." The poor carrots are getting pretty squished, so I started pulling them for JoJo to eat. They're delicious!
My Dad and my brother Brady were just out for a visit, and I got to do lots of great tourist things I never get around to doing on my own. They took a train cross-country from Maine, seeing the sites as they whizzed past. At Glacier, they rented a car and came out to Seattle Friday night.
Saturday we spent relaxing for the most part, though I took my Dad for a bike ride down to Golden Gardens while Michael abused Brady with weight lifting and going up and down the long stairs to Golden Gardens. We stopped in at Dusty Strings to oogle instruments and buy a few doodads and a CD. That night, after a dinner at the Hi-Life, we went to the Tractor Tavern. I had seen a bluegrass show advertised, but I knew nothing about the performers. What an awesome show! As my Dad said, one guitar solo alone was worth the $15 to get in. Danny Barnes of the Bad Livers opened the show on his banjo. He'd lay down a lick, record it, play it while laying down another lick, record it, etc., until he had about 5 tracks of himself playing while he played yet something else. Then six handsome young bucks got on the stage and proceeded to blow us away with totally amazing bluegrass. The Infamous Stringdusters. Wow. Each musician was top-notch. The guitar player blazed around the neck of his guitar like a classical guitarist, the mandolin player's hand was a blur, the other players were very fine, and the most beautiful vocals and harmonies came from them. To finish off their encore they came off the stage and stood in a tight circle in the middle of the stage picking like they do for themselves. Brady and I each picked up a CD at the end of the night.
It's hard to beat all that Saturday fun, so Sunday we just left town. We drove up to Paradise on Mt. Rainier and hiked around for a couple of hours. Although clouds covered the summit while we were there, Dad and Brady were suitably impressed by the views they got of the mountain and the tree strewn Nisqually river bed. We saw some pretty alpine flowers, a blue grouse and her chicks, lots of other birds, and a big fat marmot. On the way down the mountain, the clouds finally left the summit, and we got a nice view of the mountain up through Kautz Creek.
They had planned to leave Monday, but I convinced them to stay another day. Monday we strolled down to the Java Bean for coffee and goodies, then walked on to the Ballard Locks. We were able to see the Locks in action and get some salmon viewing in! The Chinook were heading up to spawn. We could see them waiting below the locks, in the glass viewing area we saw them hanging out resting in the fish ladder, and then we briefly saw a few jumping up through the locks. They were mighty big. Smolt were heading out of the locks, and a seagull and a great blue heron were monitoring it all. Some fish and chips from the Lockspot got us home, and then they came with me to my banjo lesson and a little thrift shopping. We topped the night off with square dancing at the tractor.
Last year, my Night Blooming Cereus bloomed for the first time in 6 years. I got one flower last year, and one flower 6 years before. This year, I left the cactus in the nice sunny window it had enjoyed so much, and I fertilized it with specialized cactus fertilizer. It's paid off! I have FOUR alien-pod-like buds! I'm very excited. I have a better camera this year, so I'm hoping I have enough memory to shoot the whole blooming thing on film, rather than just paste together stills like I did last year.
Last year it bloomed on August 17th, and it will probably be at around the same time. Stay tuned!
Last night Michael and I finally saw the cinematic masterpiece Night of the Lepus. Giant mutant killer bunnies on the rampage! I got it from Scarecrow Video where you can get anything. Oh my god this movie was great! We watched bits over in slow-mo and laughed our asses off! JoJo watched and got some pointers on world domination. If you can get a hold of this movie, watch the first half for the "special effects" and skip the second half if you want to. The first half has awesome close-ups of blood-drenched tooth-baring giant rabbits. The second half is just many scenes of rabbits running through miniature sets, and then of people killing them.
Michael and I kept wondering how the bunny wranglers got the rabbits to bare their teeth so much. Bitter paint on their teeth? Glue on their gums? I hope it wasn't to bad for the rabbit "actors". Every once in a while you'd see a person in a bunny suit, too, for those scenes which a rabbit actor just couldn't pull off.
I put together a montage of our viewing experience. I hope it inspires you to get the movie some day!
Sunday afternoon I got back from a week at Fiddle Tunes up in Port Townsend. Oh god it was heaven! Fiddle Tunes is week of workshops in American traditional music styles, and it takes place in Fort Worden where participants and faculty live, learn, play music, and party for a week solid.
I camped out in my huge cabin tent in a string of campsites filled with friends. This is luxury camping! We camp in the RV area, so we have electricity and water. We set up light decked canopies, dining tables, and a kitchen complete with electrical appliances.
Many people come to camp, jam, and go to the dances every evening, and these folks are usually up until 3 or 4 every morning. Participants going to all the workshops have to be ready to think by 9:30 am, though, so I tried to be in bed by 1am each night. It was hard!
This year I took banjo workshops with Kelley Breiding from Back-Step (that's them on the right) and Band Lab workshops with the band as a whole. Back-Step are from Mount Airy, NC and play Roundpeak style Old Time music. Nick McMillian plays fiddle, and his dad Chester McMillian plays guitar. What a nice bunch of folks! They were very patient with slow beginners such as myself, and they made sure we all "got it". I had my first experience of confidently playing up to speed with a band. It was exhilarating! In the Band Lab we learned Cotton-Eyed Joe, Fire On the Mountain, and Sail Away Ladies. In the banjo workshops Kelley also taught us Chilly Winds, John Henry, and Back Step Cindy. I can't begin to express how much fun I had even though it was also hard work! Kelley kept joking that we were going to"win" the Band Lab concert, so at the end of the concert we gave the band a trophy. I found a "golden" goblet at Goodwill for $1.99 and painted "#1 band Lab Fiddle Tunes 2008" on it along with their names inside the cup. I noticed on their MySpace page they have a photo of our Band Lab playing labeled "First Place Band Lab: Misstep!" You can also see the trophy on the floor in front of them in my YouTube clips of them playing their Saturday night concert. Here's a video of us playing Cotton-Eyed Joe for the Thursday night Band-Lab dance.
I also joined the World Choir led by Daniel Steinberg. I haven't sung in a choir since 6th grade, which wasn't such a good experience. But I did sing with Les Femmes d'Enfer and I also took voice lessons for two years, so I have much more confidence and skill than I did when I was 11 (at least I hope so). Anyway, I thought I'd give the World Choir a whirl, and boy am I glad I did! We sang a traditional South African song called Ipharadisi; it was a pretty simple but very cool song. Then we sang Tango Malena. Wow. I didn't even know you could sing a tango since I think I've only ever heard instrumental tangos. This tune has amazing lyrics, melodies, and harmonies. I didn't get a record of our final performance, but I do have a recording from rehearsal with Bertram Levy playing the accordion with us.
Aside from the fun banjo and vocal work, I had plenty of Fun fun, too! Every night after dinner there was a concert showcasing the faculty's and participant's talents. Every night after the concerts there were two simultaneous dance halls going with contras, squares, Cajun, honky-tonk, swing,Cumbia, you name it. But of course, the best part was our campsite's annual silly hat cocktail party. Laurie and I, being the clothing extroverts we are, had elaborate costumes and hats, but many people traditionally make hats from whatever junk they can find at or around their campsite. Some others are experts at raiding the local Goodwill for weird hat parts. Check out my Flickr account for the hats.
I feel like I could go on and on and never capture the joy! Come to Fiddle Tunes and find out for yourself. If you're a musician or want to be, come on and participate. If you just love to listen and dance, come and camp with us and party!
Some evil bastard in my neighborhood has put out rat poison.
PAWS called me and I found out about the fate of my squirrel. She was blind and slowly and painfully dying from eating rat poison. Thankfully, PAWS was able to put her out of her misery before dying got a lot worse. Now I'm worried about my Bijou, all the neighborhood wildlife, and people's pets.
Because of this, I did a little research, and it turns out that just weeks ago the EPA laid down the law on distribution of rat poison. Unfortunately, rat poison manufacturers have 3 years to comply.
I'm sad and angry. And now Bijou wants to go out into the sunshine and I can't let her.
I know I don't blog much these days, but life has been just rollin' along. Today was exciting though! This afternoon I noticed a very tired squirrel in our back yard. He was crouching motionless on the ground with his head down and his cute little nose touching the ground. He looked very healthy with a nice fur coat and bushy tail, but I have never seen a tired squirrel before. I got on a pair of gloves and a pet carrier, and these are the results:
Squirrel: Safe in the carrier. Julia: Not so safe with the gloves.
I was able to walk right up to Mr. Squirrel and grab him, which proved he really was ill. But then he perked right up. He screamed. He bit me. I screamed. I dropped him. Then I persevered and nabbed him again a little closer to his head and shoved him into the pet carrier. He screamed and growled again, threw his little body against the bars, and then huddled in the back. That pretty much was the end of his efforts, though he growled again at Michael when Michael moved the carrier a bit.
Luckily, squirrels rarely are rabid and especially not in Seattle. Also, I'm up on my tetanus. I took Mr. S to PAWS, and hopefully they will be able to do something for him. The last critter I brought them, a mountain beaver, didn't do so well. The mountain beaver had baylis and was put down.
In other news, Fiddle Tunes is coming up! I'm looking forward to a week of music, partying, dancing, and banjo larnin'. Last year I had a blast. I had a disappointment recently, so as a consolation prize, I bought myself a Tascam digital audio recorder. No more low quality cassette recorder, piles of cassettes, bags of batteries, and endless hours sucking the cassettes into my computer. Yay! I feel so 21st century.
We also got a new dishwasher, but that's not so exciting. Just convenient!
I just finished reading Julie Andrews' memoir Home. I really love Julie Andrews, and the book was a great read. One of the most interesting things I learned was that Julie Andrews' first album was a joint venture with Moondog! What a combo! In 1957 they collaborated on a recording of children's songs called "Tell it again" - Songs of Sense and Nonsense. This album seems to be out of print, but the songs are included on Julie Andrews' album Once Upon a Time. I'm gonna be gettin' me some of that.
I am a librarian in public libraries. Outside of work I love to go dancing with my husband and play music. I play 5 string clawhammer banjo, and I have also played rhythm with Cajun bands since 1994. I love to garden and nurture plants. I love world travel, and I have been to Egypt (6 months), England (6 months), Scotland, France, Italy, Greece, Thailand, Hong Kong, Tibet, Nepal, Cambodia, Russia, Estonia, Ecuador and of course Mexico and Canada. I'd love to go to the Galapagos next. Anywhere I go, and inside the US, I love to go hiking and boating and see the real beauty of nature. I live with my husband, a cat, and a rabbit we rescued from Woodland Park. And now we have our son Zane, born 8/15/09!
