Spring flashback

Summer seems to have arrived in Arkansas to stay. April and May were cooler than normal, so we have had a bit of a reprieve, but temperatures are forecasted to be in the 90s all week. So it is a nice little break to go back and look at this pictures from our trip to Bellevue and Idaho last month, when it was cool and refreshing. Enjoy.

 Benewah Creek, just outside Benjamin's mother's house.

A door to nowhere, Lake Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Without a boat there, I can't tell if it is supposed to keep people from the lake off the dock, or people from the dock out of the lake!

Apple blossoms.

Lavender in my mother's garden, with one of her bees.

Poppy with bee (look closely, she's in there).

Chives, and bees.

Early morning raindrops.

Roses, in a delicate state of decay.

Spiky and purple and geometric.

One more rose, because I can't help myself. I love photographing them.

Visiting All the Grandparents

We spent two weeks in Idaho and Washington last month, visiting all the grandparents. Malcolm was, apart from some sleep difficulties, a great traveler, and the grandparents were all thrilled to have him. The weather was mostly good - cooler than Arkansas, and rainy at times, but not depressingly so. I got some very good flower pictures, since everything was blooming profusely. Here are some pictures of Malcolm with the grandparents; I'll save the flowers for another day.

Malcolm reached 10 months while we were there, so he let Grandpa Rider help him with his month card picture.

Three generations of Benjamin Riders at Lake Coeur d'Alene. In this picture Malcolm is starting to look a little more like Benjamin now, although a lot of his expressions are still very much like mine.

Malcolm got to meet his Oma Jennie for the first time ever, and despite the look on his face in this picture, he did get along well with her.

There, that is a happier look. Jennie was, of course, in love.

Malcolm does love to chew on rocks...

Grandpa Mikey and Malcolm in a quiet moment. Usually, they were winding each other up instead.

Malcolm and Grandma Candi, reading the same book. You'd never know it by these pictures, but my mother does have a large collection of children's books - she was a children's librarian after all. But Malcolm really liked that one - it was one of my favorites as a baby too.

The drive from Bellevue to Idaho and back can get rather long, especially if you are strapped in a car seat facing the wrong direction, so it was lovely to be able to stop and visit with our good friend Ellen along the way. As a bonus, she gave Malcolm his first piano lesson on a real piano!

Spring at the Bellevue Botanical Garden

In my (pitiful) attempts to keep this from becoming an all-Malcolm blog, I am going to share some of the nature pictures I took on our trip to Bellevue at the beginning of March. Since it is almost Easter, I thought I would lead off with this lovely hellebore, otherwise known as a lenten rose (since they typically bloom during the Lenten season). This one was in a pot at a garden center, but my mother does have some in her yard. I love the delicate pink petals and the subtle green center on this one. 

I've mentioned before how much I love the Bellevue Botanical Garden - every season has something to offer. This time it was a bank of mini-irises and a new feature - the Ravine Experience.

They have built an amazing suspension bridge over a small ravine at the edge of the garden, so you can walk in the canopy. It isn't really that much in the canopy, since the trees in the ravine are huge, but you do get to look down into the ravine. And the bridge is pretty cool.

See - the trees are all around the bridge, but Western Red Cedars are pretty darn tall, and it would take a deeper ravine than this one to pull you into their canopies.

I imagine it will be a lovely, cool and refreshing spot to visit come summer.

In the more formal section of the garden is this happy little stream. I probably should have played around with my camera settings and tried to capture the water in motion better, but at least I stopped to look at all, I guess.

And I will admit that I was less than attentive to what this flower was, but I love the tightly bunched circle and the tiny individual flowers. The yellow really stood out against the browns and greys of the leafless branches.

You have to love the various textures on this branch. The flowers, the almost fluffy moss, and the harder, crinkly lichen.

I haven't had many opportunities to take pictures of anything other than Malcolm lately, but now that it is spring again, I hope to make time. Not that I have a problem taking lots of pictures of him, but I miss looking more closely at things.

Malcolm in Bellevue, Part Deux

 Here are some more pictures from our recent trip to visit the grandparents.

We didn't even coordinate our outfits on purpose! One of those mysterious family occurrences, I guess. Malcolm is taking after his grandmother and closing his eyes in family photos, although this time Grandma actually kept hers open.

I guess Grandpa didn't get the memo about wearing blue.

Grandma Betty and her dog Chi Chi go down to this park at least once a week to walk. This morning it was cold enough that Chi Chi needed her jacket. Malcolm took the opportunity to catch up on his morning nap.

Malcolm gets to Skype with Grandma and Grandpa almost every day, so he recognized and remembered them this time and didn't act all shy. But they don't get to hold him over Skype, so they were very happy to have him around for a few days.

Grandma's owl made him laugh. 

Grandpa let his beard grown out (much to grandma's dismay) just so Malcolm could pull on it. Malcolm duly obliged, although he doesn't look too sure about it here.

Another new experience on this trip was sitting in a high chair at a restaurant. We've taken him out to eat before, but until now he always sat in someone's lap. To him, the best part was the mountain of napkins to shred. He kept me busy, picking up the confetti, making sure he didn't eat too large of pieces. He behaved very well - no shrieking.

He also got a stroller upgrade while at the grandparents' house - now he can finally see where he is going! We really needed a new stroller- he only tolerates the old one, and won't let us use it for walks. It is not really meant for anything more vigorous than a stroll around the grocery store or the mall anyway. And he is getting too heavy to carry in the snuggli on long walks. This is much better, and assuming he will allow himself to be held down for that long, should last until he is 4 or 5 (I doubt he will allow that - I certainly didn't!).

Malcolm in Bellevue, part 1

 Last week Malcolm took his first airplane trip when we flew to Bellevue to visit my parents. I was really dreading the flying part, since he used to be very sensitive to pressure changes from weather systems, and I didn't want to be the parent that all the other passengers look at with loathing if he screamed non-stop. However, Malcolm was about as perfect a traveler as you can expect for a 7 month old. There was some crying and screeching when he was getting tired and bored while the plane was sitting on the tarmac, getting de-iced, but after shredding a Skymall magazine and a snack, he eventually fell asleep. No screaming at all on any of the take-offs or landings!

One of the purposes of this trip was to introduce Malcolm to his great-grandmother in person. He's met her on Skype, but that isn't the same as being in the same room together. She is 91 and no longer travels, so we had to go to her.

 It was lovely to have 4 generations together.

Bellefield Nature Trail

The Bellefield Nature Trail is a great place to go to take pictures, pick blueberries, walk, splash in streams, and get muddy (especially if you are of the canine variety). When I visited last month, the leaves were just starting to emerge on the trees and vines, and the skunk cabbage was in full bloom. In the summer the paths are dappled and shaded, a good place to go to hide your tender white Pacific Northwesterner skin from the harsh sun (yes, Northwesterners are a little like moles when the sun comes out).

The area that is now park used to be filled with farms (warning, the background on that page is atrocious), during the first half of the 20th century. At some point, the city started buying up the parcels of land, and now it is a large park, just south of downtown Bellevue. To camera right in the above picture is still a working blueberry farm, owned by the city. You can go and pay to pick your own blueberries there. This is not where I pick blueberries, but I am not about to tell you about that patch - it would be like an angler giving up his favorite fishing hole.  Anyway, that water you see is part of the slough. Before the level of Lake Washington went down (after the Ship Canal was cut) it was all under water. Now, it is a slough, a swampy, marshy area with some running water and lots of mud. (Didn't know you would be getting a history and geology lesson, did you?!)

This part of the park also links up to a larger trail system that goes into Seattle and around other parts of the Eastside. We usually just do the shorter loop, but that's OK, especially when you get to take pictures of such great shadows, and of course, skunk cabbage.

Stay tuned - next week I will finally get to this mysterious plant.

Donovan Family Obsessions, or my visit to Bellevue, Part One

My dad in a standard photography pose.

I took a quick trip home to Bellevue over the Easter weekend, and got tons of good pictures. My family is fairly moderate, apart from a few obsessions, but whenever I get home to visit, we indulge those obsessions. This trip was no exception - we hit most of them: photography, good food, and books.
 

Obsession #1: Photography

The Saturday I arrived was their first nice day of the year, the kind of day that locals hope outsiders never see (because then they would never leave), the kind of day that compels you to go outside and do something, anything. So, we did. Dad and I took our cameras to the Bellefield Nature Trail, handily located about a mile and a half from home. It was always a great place to take the dog on a weekend afternoon, and there were certainly plenty of people there with the same idea. I took a boatload of pictures of the park, and the skunk cabbage (enough of those to make one entire blog post), but you are going to have to wait for the photography part of the trip, because this post is about obsession #2, good food.

Brandon (Mr. Orangette, owner) at the oven.

One of the first things I said to my parents when I made my plane reservations was "We have to go to dinner at Delancy." They were happy to oblige. I have been waiting impatiently for my chance to go, ever since the restaurant first opened, since the last time I was in Bellevue, it was Christmas-time, and the restaurant was closed for a short vacation. Wah!.

I forgot to take a picture before I started eating. Too good to wait...

 It is a wood-fired pizza restaurant owned and run by Molly Wizenberg, the blogger behind Orangette, and her husband (who she met because he read her blog - seriously, go read her book about it). On the blog, Molly's descriptions of setting up the restaurant, building the oven, and then of the food that they served, was enough to make me drool all over my keyboard. Anyway, if there was any chance at all that I could get to Delancy this time, I was going to take it.

 

Mom's white pizza - a cheesy, crispy bit of deliciousness.

We went that first night, and was it worth the wait! Not a fast-food place, the pizza took a while to come out of the oven, mainly because the restaurant was packed. People, it opens at 5, we were there at 5:10, and it was already full. We barely squeezed in. By the time we left, there was a line out on the sidewalk waiting for our seats. The salad was perfect to share with my mom - lettuce, a green goddess dressing, bacon... yum...

Dad's pepperoni and sausage pizza, with homemade sausage.

But the pizza was the star of the night, of course. Crispy from the wood-fired oven, topped with the best tasting ingredients. We got three, although that was being a little greedy, just because we wanted to taste them all. And we had dessert, a rhubarb poundcake with mascarpone that was tangy and sweet and oh so good. Oops, starting to drool there a bit. Anyway, it was delicious, and if you live in the general Seattle/Ballard area, you should go. If possible, go often. The menu changes regularly with the seasons (and it has changed since I was there), so you need to go a lot to get all the goodness they have to offer. Wish I could join you!

Christmas Sparkle

One of the many fun activities we did while in Bellevue for Christmas was to visit the Bellevue Botanical Gardens light show, Garden d'Lights. This is a large, and even though I am not given to using words of such magnitude, splendid, display of lights.

When it started 10 or 15 years ago, it was just a few clumps of lights that were designed to look like grapes in an arbor, and a few flowers. Well, it has certainly grown since then.

The entire gardens have been decorated, with flowers, trees, and fantastical creatures. Volunteers spent thousands of hours putting everything together, and they did a great job.

I tried not to use my flash, so the poor crocodile is a little blurry.

It was a great way to get into the festive season!