A Ferry Ride

Last weekend was the annual Wooden Boat Festival. Angel and I rode the ferry over to Whidbey Island and back just so that we could take photos of some of the sites from an offshore perspective. The day was warm and bright, and there were many wooden boats in the harbor.

The shot to the right looks back towards Union Wharf. In the background near the right side of the photo you can see a yellow building. That is the new headquarters of the Wooden Boat Foundation. It occupies a site that formerly held some decaying remnants of something resembling a fuel depot.

This photograph looks back towards the Point Hudson Marina. You can get a better glimpse of the Wooden Boat Foundation headquarters. That's a big building. When it's open, visitors will be able to stand in upper galleries and look down on a shop floor where shipwrights are learning their trade.

Here is a beautiful boat under full sail.

At about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, the boats anchored in the harbor raise their sails and tack back and forth in front of the town. Quite a sight on such a glorious, September day. The trip over

to Whidbey and back took about an hour. Compared to some of the leviathans that ply the waters of Puget Sound nearer to Seattle, the Whidbey Island ferry is little. When the water gets rough, they have to cancel service.

Today, however, the crossing was smooth. On the way back a young folksinger/busker played his guitar and sang as he sat facing the sun. The kid had a good, strong voice. I admired his confidence and enthusiasm.

Later, we rode the bus back to the park-and-ride and picked up our car. This was the first time, the Old Amigo has actually gotten a senior citizen discount - an all day city transit pass for a dollar. What a bargain!

Some Updates

The Old Amigo realizes that he has been remiss in his blog postings lately. The reasons are manifold:

• We've had lots of family and friends visiting us this season. Angel and I are grateful for the company and the reassurance that people want to see us.
• I continue to look for work. Many, many hours of my life are poured into this channel each week. From what I can tell, the channel leads to an abyss.
• The yard. The yard. The yard. Heavy, satisfying work. A new retaining wall is underway. More soil trucked in.
• I've been working on my novel. It's immensely satisfying, and against my better judgment, I hope something comes of it. I have passed page 430 in my first draft. The effort has transmogrified into "what should I not write about?"

The list goes on and on of course.

Today, I dug a new bed in our main garden area so that Angel could plant two blueberry bushes that had been in pots for some months. The new bed is about 5' x 2' x 1.5' (L x W x D). I carted much of the soil down the steps in a wheelbarrow to dump near where we are building the new expansion area of the garden. I did sift some of the soil to combine with compost that I carted back up the steps in said wheelbarrow. Then Angel added some special "Dr. Organic" amendment for acid-loving plants and planted the two blueberry bushes. They look great and I fancy that they are already happier.

A single raspberry bush continues to languish in a pot, awaiting its turn. The work is heavy and must wait until I feel ready. Perhaps tomorrow.

Most days I weed a little. It is easy to fill one or two big barrels with weeds between yard waste pickups.

Also today, I "did the compost." This entails turning all the existing mixture from one bin to the other while adding food scraps saved up during the week. Our friends, D. & S. live nearby and they drop food scraps off at the house too. Angel also goes down to the Starbucks at the Safeway once each week and gets a bucket of coffee grounds to go into the mix. While I don't much like cleaning out used containers, the turning of the compost is generally fairly pleasant. Since I turn the mix each week, the reaction stays mostly aerobic and hence not very stinky.

This week I observed that the magic is beginning to happen. For a while, it seems that little is going on in the bins. Eventually, however, the microbes reach critical mass and things begin to cook. The mixture begins to look less like table scraps mixed with straw and more like, well, compost. If you've never done it, it's probably a bit hard to explain, but trust me on this: It is magical.

Perhaps I'll write a bit more on the creative process soon. For now, I note merely that it is an interesting phenomenon to experience. For me, writing a novel seems mostly to be about creating some characters and a scenario. Then I watch the characters interact and write down what I see. It, like the conversion of table scraps into compost, seems to be a magical process.

That's all from the rock at the edge of the continent on this day.

Press On