What a week! The days continue to get longer, and all week, the neighborhood has smelled of flowers and rain. On a long mid-week walk through the neighborhood, I found blooms everywhere. I can never resist photographing the delicate cherry, plum, and apple blossoms, but saw daffodil, paperwhite, hyacinth, hellebore, and magnolia blooms as well. Spring is most definitely here, and with spring, come windstorms. Over the week, we had several blustery days, but Sunday took the cake. At one point, the Puget Sound Energy website was reporting over 200,000 homes without power in the area. At home, our power has been our for nearly 24 hours now - by far the longest we've ever been without power.
Saturday, Andy and I met both my family and his to see the beautiful quilts made by Andy's grandmother, on display at the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum. We've seen all the quilts in the show many times before, but they looked especially beautiful in the historic mansion that houses the museum in La Conner. The drive to and from the quilt show also took us through Skagit Valley, which, at this time of year is filled with fields of golden daffodils. From the car, they looks like fields of sunshine! In another month, the same fields will be packed with multicolored tulips and hordes of people.
Over the weekend, Andy also finished making a chair hammock for me to take on hikes. Sunday afternoon, we headed to my parents house to test out the hammock. It was quick to set up, and quite comfortable! As I was reading in my hammock, we heard the pop of a tree snapping close by, then ran inside the house to find the power out. 15 minutes later, we watched as several large limbs were ripped from a tree right outside my parents living room window. On our drive home, everything from Woodinville into Redmond was dark. It's been a long time since I've seen so much of the area without power! Since the storm seemed to have calmed during our drive home, we ventured out for a walk through the neighborhood. We seemed to be the only two brave enough to go exploring, even though the wind had noticeably died down. When we reach the powerline trail, we found the only other person we saw on our walk - a lone PSE employee hard at work restoring power!
Hours of daylight left after I get home from work now. Such a wonderful change!
