Memorial Day Weekend this year was a mix of everything - a cold & stormy Saturday spent in the city drinking tea and lurking in plant stores, contrasted by warm & sunny Sunday spent in the woods volunteering for more trail work with WTA. Life is all about balance, right? This time of year, it sometimes startles me that everything is suddenly so green after what felt like an endless winter, and this was particularly the case in the Sehome Arboretum, where Andy and I spent our Sunday doing trail work. The small patch of forest perched above the Western Washington University campus was absolutely bursting with ferns, maples, and other sun-dappled greenery. One of my favorite things about signing up for trail work with WTA is that it often leads me to discover new trails - ones like Sehome Arboretum that I never would have visited otherwise. Since the trail system is pretty tiny, I don’t know that I’ll return to this particular spot unless I happen to be in Bellingham and have a little time for a short walk, but I’m glad I had an excuse to visit it this once!
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Holiday weekends mean crowds, traffic, and stress, so in the past Andy and I have tended to just spend long weekends close to home. Especially after weeks of overtime at work, a quiet weekend at home sounded pretty perfect. That is until I noticed that WTA had work parties scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday on a trail that's only a 15 minute walk from my parents cabin! By the time I saw this, both days were full, but I put both myself and Andy on the wait list and crossed my fingers. If we managed to snag spots for either day, we could spend the remainder of the weekend at the cabin with my family - even better than spending the weekend at home. At the last minute, two spots opened up, but they'd moved the work party to the nearby Denny Creek trail. Instead of walking from the cabin to meet the group Saturday morning, we'd have to drive. Regardless of the location, the work was fantastic as always. Andy spent most of the day building rock steps, and I worked on drainage. Drainage maintenance is mucky, filthy work, but it's so satisfying to see clear water once again flowing down a drainage trench when you'd started with a debris filled mud pit and water running across the trail!
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We had a glimpse of summer just in time for Memorial Day this year! The week was filled with sunshine, and by the weekend it was uncomfortably hot. Signs of the approaching season abound - daylight is lingering well into the evening and soon there will be berries lining the lowland trails and filling the farmers market! Rather than suffer through holiday weekend crowds and traffic, Andy and I spent the weekend close to home. On Saturday, we made our first trip of the year to the Redmond Farmers Market, where we picked up an impressive amount of spring produce along with a pile of my favorite spring flowers - peonies! Afterward, we drove into Kirkland to investigate some of the new businesses I'd been wanting to try.
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Hooray for long weekends! Since we both had Monday off, Andy and I took the opportunity to spend some time in Wenatchee. We ate barbecue and lemon meringue pie, and I made some progress on knitting, then spent hours reading (this book) in the sunshine while Andy played with power tools in the garage. On Sunday, we went for a short hike from the Mission Ridge ski area. Even though it was a beautiful day, and a short hike, we had the lake to ourselves for a while. It can be so lovely to get away from home for just a couple days, and totally worth the rather terrible holiday weekend traffic we had to sit in on Highway 2!
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