The Clouds will continue... until Morale improves!

It's been a very cloudy, cool and rainy July.
Even the hardiest Alaskans are complaining -- the lack of sunshine is getting everybody down.

I'd have to check with the resident climatologist (he's asleep right now), but I doubt this summer has set any records for nastiness -- it's just a cooler summer than we'd like.
But just think of the advantages a summer like this offers:



1) No sunburn, no cancer

2) Less people on the trails

3) Best lighting for photographing flowers and landscapes


Time to stop complaining, and get outside!
The word "outside" has 2 meanings in these parts -- when written lower-case, we mean "outdoors", when written upper-case, it means "out of state", a.k.a. taking an airplane to the lower 48 (which is what we're just about to do!)

Like the saying goes: "The warmest winter I've known was a summer spent in Alaska!"

Sunshine at last... and feeling safe in bear country...

Today the weather has been GORGEOUS -- one of those days that makes up for about a month-worth of Alaskan winter snow/ice/rain. Only yesterday was I blogging on my food/gardening blog, Borealkitchen, about how it's hardly worth growing tomatoes here in Alaska -- but today the sun seems to be saying "Hey Alaska, I can shine!!!"

At the Nature Center I now get many groups of summer camp kids -- it's so much fun taking them on walks and teaching them about geology, plants, animals, etc. But mostly, just to watch them discover things along the hike: a butterfly or caterpillar, some red berries (are they safe to eat?), a hole in the ground (who lives there?)...
Some of these kids are rather urban, and are scared we might encounter a bear and moose. Today I had this one little 5-year old who held tight to my hand during the walk, and kept on asking me about bears. "If the bears here are wild, will they attack us?" -- No, they just want to be left alone, and we'll make lots of noise and they won't get near us. "So your bears here are nice?" -- Well, yes, I suppose! They seem to know to stay away from people...
After re-assuring her some more and confirming that I carry bear spray and a radio, she said "So your job is to protect us and keep us safe."

Never thought of it in those terms, but yes, my job is to take kids out into nature, give them a chance to explore, and also, to help them gain a sense of SAFETY about being in the outdoors.

Photocredit: http://dadomatic.com

It's my "Take the cubs to Work" SUMMER

You've heard of "Take your Child to Work Day", haven't you?

This summer I'm incredibly lucky -- Wolfman and Liesl have been coming to work with me once or twice every week, ever since school let out.

Sometimes they go on a hike first, but afterwards they help at the front desk: taking parking fees and making change, helping the other staff & me with whatever is needed, and of course, answering the 2 most ubiquitous nature-related questions:

Where are the bathrooms?
Are there any bears?
(Last year a resident volunteer wrote a whole song about this!)

The only scary part of this is (no, it's not them hiking the trails alone in bear country), but the fact that the 16-year old is doing the DRIVING!

Photocredit:
http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/wildlife/images/hunt/bear/cubs.jpg;//www.alaskaseaplanetours.com

What constitutes a HOT day in Alaska?

First of all, let me assure those of you from outside Alaska that we don't live in Igloos -- in fact, we live in the proverbial Banana Belt of our fair state. It does actually get hot here -- well, sort of!
How hot?

1.) We do occasionally wear shorts (some do as soon as the snow starts melting).
2.) Our kids do occasionally run through the sprinkler -- a rarity, admitted, but it did happen today!
3.) When it gets really hot, we even drag out a fan to cool down the bedroom at night -- as you may guess, nobody has air conditioning here.

Today was HOT -- I started gardening as soon as I got up (to avoid the hot part of the day, but mostly, because I did have to go to work later). As I was working in my sadly neglected flower bed, I kept finding the remains of some old candles that had fallen down from the deck at Christmas and had been covered in snow until early May. I piled them up on the stairs, and this afternoon when I got home, there was a wax puddle. Now that's HOT for Alaska!

Our high today was a whopping 77 degrees, which might be as hot as it gets for the whole summer. And that's just fine by me!

Photocredit: http://blog.kidsurplus.com

The Big Black Box

Last weekend I spent many hours moving a Big Black Box (my compost bin) across the yard to a new location -- a strange thing to do on a picturesque sunny afternoon, but it was worth it.
To me composting is all about enriching the soil for gardening -- plus, of course, reducing waste and watching that miracle of decomposition in action.

I admit that the compost-moving operation turned out to be a LOT of work, and I really did not know what I'd find inside! A pleasant surprise was that I ended up harvesting something 6-8 buckets of decent soil for my vegetable garden!

The reason that I felt the great need to tote a ton of yard waste across my yard was basically that I was unhappy with the lack of progress my compost bin was making -- I knew that it was way too dry (being a big plastic box w/ lid --rather reminiscent of a latrine, actually), and since I could not reach it with the hose, it rarely got watered.

I set up this big black box 2 springs ago, all excited to make my own compost. I picked that location for its distance to the house, and was glad of it when a black bear discovered it shortly after I had started composting in it! Lesson #1: No household wastes.
You should have seen me that day -- banging pots together to get "Blackie" out of my yard. Afterwards, I promptly removed all kitchen scraps (causing some of the frame to break as I precariously leaned over the edge). Since then, I only used it for grass clippings, fall leaves and the dead potted plants from the deck after the first frost.
I basically pretty much neglected it other than throwing in the occasional grass/leaves, having started an indoor worm bin in the garage for my kitchen scraps. Whenever it did look in the big black box, there was a bunch of very dry-looking straw. Last summer we only had 2 days where the temperature got above 70 Fahrenheit, and I had pretty much come to the conclusion that composting in Alaska was a waste of space.But my success with the worm box, and the warmth of this summer, got me to rethinking my hard-nosed position. I came to the conclusion that I could do better by moving the big black box to a sunny spot right behind one of my new raised beds, where I could water it right along with my growing veggies, plus being right there, it would also be a handy receptacle for all the green waste products of gardening such as thinning the carrots, etc.

Today, as I disassembled the big black box, and after getting past the top half of dry grass, etc, I started finding some wonderful black COMPOSTED SOIL! Miracles of miracles -- 2 years of utter neglect did produce some decent soil. How I love sifting my hands through that black gold. Between that and the harvest from my worm box, I added a hefty dent in my newest raised bed project -- yes, I do plan to grow a bigger garden next year.
Ahhh, the satisfaction of a job well done, and as a bonus, clean crocs for the whole family!

If you'd like to see a list of how my garden crops fared so far this summer, click to see "Gardening Successes and Failures", which I posted on my other blog, Borealkitchen.blogspot.com

Aha moment -- an addendum to Crow Pass hike

Why did I not think of this BEFORE hiking Crow Pass?

Had a perfectly good solution to the problem of crossing an ice-cold glacier river, sitting right in the attic with the boating gear which we hadn't used in years: neoprene socks!

It was a middle-of-the-night revelation, and I promptly went searching for them (the next morning). I lent the socks to friends who were about to go on the Crow Pass hike for the second time this summer, and we had just compared stories of painful feet!

Here's the glowing report:

"The Socks made all the difference in the world -- my feet never felt uncomfortable, so less painful. Amazing technology!"

Why don't she write?

No, I didn't get eaten by a bear, or carried away by a cloud of fierce mosquitoes! (But we did stop by this sculpture of a giant Mosquito in Delta Junction-- picture credit goes to a German blog Petaflop.de.)

We just get back from a most
wonderful camping trip to the Interior -- camping in and along the Alaska Range: it was magnificent!!! One week away from civilization (where even Sarah Palin news did not reach!) And yes, I will post pictures, but they'll have to wait, BECAUSE:

we're having an honest-to-goodness HEATWAVE here in Alaska -- we're into our second week of this amazing (above "normal") weather: it's been getting into the mid 80's (Fahrenheit) -- that's 25 C for you Europeans.

SOooo, needless to say, why blog when you can get a tan? work in the garden? drink cold beer, shooting the breeze, while sitting on the porch with good friends?

I'm afraid I might have jinxed this by (God forbid!) digging out my summer clothes yesterday(yes -- I was seen wearing SHORTS!) -- the clouds might roll in anyday!

Actually, I'd welcome some good rain for 2 reasons: first and foremost, there are a number of big forest fires burning in Alaska. Plus, at the end of this week, I'm planning to hike the Crow Pass Trail with a girlfriend (26 miles from Girdwood to Eagle River). This long-planned adventure involves crossing the Eagle River right below where it flows out of a glacier lake, and with the current heatwave causing gang-buster melting of the Eagle glacier, the river is swollen: icecold and chest high -- this will be an ICE COLD experience!

Wish us luck!

Camping at Eklutna

Last weekend we celebrated Father's Day by going camping, which is one of our favorite things to do during Alaskan summers. We went to Eklutna, which is really only one valley over, but a world away (no phones, no computers, no worries...). Eldest didn't join us -- alas, she's got her own life to live...

Here are some pix:

The family portrait with the Eklutna lake (actually a reservoir) in the background.


For kids, going to Eklutna is all about the MUD!!!! Our own kids seems to have gotten too old to get really INTO the MUD, so I photographed a bunch of other kids who were obviously relishing the fine glacial flour -- this is what ours used to look like whenever we went up there (they had a set of old clothes that were simply labelled "Eklutna").



Our own kids: portraits of Liesl and Wolfman.




Our friends, J & J, who joined us on Saturday.


Last, but not least, yours truly in a rather silly state, after just having re-discovered German Weizenbier!

BRRR!!! Midsummer Cold Front

BRRRRR!!!
We just had the longest day of the year, and this morning it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit (that's barely above freezing -- around 1 degree Celsius for you Europeans) at the river below our house (we woke up to a balmy 38 here!) Needless to say, I put on an extra sweater --staying in bed was not a choice this morning, but that's what I really wanted to do!
The mountains across our valley were covered tonight with a fresh dusting of powdered sugar /nay, snow.
Note: the mountain is Eagle River Overlook, the same mountain as on the Borealkraut header above, photographed from our front porch (poor us, having to look at that every day!) -- the rainbow picture was taken another year, later in the summer.
Cheechako (or newcomer) Alaskans call this kind of snow "termination dust", because it typically occurs around September "terminating" summer -- but let's not call it that! This is merely a cold front in mid-summer, and there is still plenty of summer left!!!
It was really quite beautiful today, and it did warm up to somewhere in the upper 50's -- yeah, I know that some of you may not exactly consider this summer! One of the Out-of-State visitors on my guided hike today asked if we even knew what an 80 degree summer day feels like. I said, yes, that's what I call too hot!

Family vacation pictures

Bicycling & beach-combing on our recent vacation to Homer on the picturesque Katchemak Bay...

Youngest seems to be the only one willing to have a picture taken these days -- Teen boy won't let mom near him with the camera!








Liesl at the Pratt Museum donning an industrial survival suit (your only hope if capsized in the cold Alaska ocean!). Next, she's checking out a display explaining how the tilt of the earth makes Alaska's summer days so long -- right now we have over 19 hours of daylight!









































Sunset at Anchor Point (about 20 miles North of Homer), with the active volcano, Mount Redoubt, in the background.






















I leave you with one last picture (taken at least 5 years ago when the kids were still significantly shorter than their mother!) to appreciate that it's not always nice weather beach-combing in Alaska.

Lorsch & Heidelberg, Germany

More pictures from this summer's Germany trip.

My brother took us on a bicycle trip to the nearby small town of Lorsch (not far from the city Worms, whose name makes most Americans giggle), site of a very famous Benedictine cloister. The Imperial Abbey of Lorsch was one of the most renowned monasteries of the Carolinian Empire, established in 764 and destroyed during the Thirty Year War in 1600's. Most of the original complex is gone -- only an ornate gate and one ship of the cathedral remain -- just look at the size of the buttressing behind the kids!

We enjoyed the little museum: it gave a good overview of the role of monasteries in over a thousand years of European history. The museum also houses a comprehensive section on tobacco (cigars were made in Lorsch until the 1950's) and an attic full of everyday objects -- including the history of bathrooms!
I would have enjoyed more time studying the Abbey's extensive garden with medicinal plants used by monks, but alas, the heat was wearing on the kids' patience. Altogether, I must say they were great sports, and did indeed absorb much of the richness of European history.

On the bike ride back, we took a rest at the ruins of another smaller monastery, discovered when farmers were plowing their fields some 40 or 50 years ago-- here the kids pretend to disappear into a well!


We loved being able to bicycle everywhere -- they are truly an important mode of transportation. My brother's family of 4 manages with one car, even though my brother and his wife both work. Besides bikes, there is also an excellent public transportation system: trains and buses are convenient, and heavily used! This sea of parked bicycles at the train station is proof (click on the picture to appreciate how many bikes are parked there -- how do you even find your bike at the end of the day..!?)

I feel a rant coming on! We sure are way behind in the US, where we rely so very heavily on our automobiles (many of which are still very energy-inefficient). Here in Alaska and many parts of the Western US, one could argue that distances are just too great for public transport. But even where railroads exist, for example, they are often not really meant for routine transportation. Take the Alaska Railroad in Anchorage: only tourists can even take the train to/from airport to downtown hotels, but I can't. Now that's anathema to a European or anyone concerned about all the fossil fuels being burned up and becoming greenhouse gases. Perhaps gasoline is still too cheap -- but as prices continue to go up, Americans may start paying attention (let's hope so, esp. with some leadership from Washington, DC). But I digress...


Back to sightseeing: we took a day trip to Heidelberg, famous for its castle and university.

Parts of the castle were destroyed during the various wars, such as the tower below where half fell off, plus there's always restoration going on -- I love the way they even made the construction canvas look more interesting!

The details are AMAZING-- for example, look at the facade of the building below with all the dignitaries' stone statues, such as portly Frederick with his sword:



Back in the old town square, there are lots of vendors -- their stalls are build right onto the church's outside walls between the buttresses:


We treated ourselves to some delicious italian icecream, including the favorite Eiskaffee and Spaghetti Icecream!


And last, lest you think Germany is all medieval -- there's plenty modern, such as this mechanical horse sculpture near the main train station in Heidelberg, where we hopped on the train to return to Bensheim, tired and hungry for the delicious cooking of my sister-in-law!