Salmon

Bob picked up ten red salmon and cut them up for freezing yesterday. The call to get them came just as we got down to the beach for the dog walk. He spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning fish. Ten reds make a lot of one pound packages! He used a spoon to scoop out the flesh that's left after cutting the filets and I used that to make salmon patties for dinner. Yum! 

Here are a few pictures from my dog walk. Typical cloudy weather with a high tide at 13+ feet which leaves enough beach for walking. Top is looking towards the spit (it's there somewhere) and underneath is looking the other direction towards Grewingk Glacier. A lot of gray in these pictures.

Someone's old stairway to the beach. Rickety and unsafe but it looks cool.

Tag taking a snooze afterwards. The local crow was focused on the fish cleaning operation and left him a moment of peace.

Today, sunny, a good day for walking. Happy dogs....

Crazy Ducks

A few ducks were madly trying to land on the roof next door this morning. Any idea what kind they are? Female common goldeneye maybe.

Shades of the Desert

The moose struck my newly planted garden area and I am so disappointed!

A strip of bark was pulled from the small trunk of the Mayday tree and it was left pushed over in the mud. Mayday is not a moose's favorite food, which was one of the reasons for getting this tree, but finding it unpalatable didn't stop them from destroying it.

After rejecting the Mayday the moose made their way to the clump of aspen, stripping most of the leaves off of it before being attracted to the sweet scent of the profusely blooming Therese Bugnet roses -- which are now without a single bud. I cannot tell you how much pleasure these beautiful roses were already giving me. I didn't even get a photo of them before they were gone.

Well, nothing was outright killed but recovery will take a year and the aspen in particular looks awfully ratty. This is so much like the frustration of growing things in Old Trails where there is no protection from the rabbits, pack rats, mice, insects, birds, heat and drought that I have finally given up any thought of a garden there.

We now have an eight foot tall wire fence around the newly planted things. Better late than never. If they break down the fence I swear I am done with Alaska gardening, too.

Bad weather coming

A few pictures while we have the sun.

Lilac beginning to bloom

Roses planted in back of garage

Taken around Homer

Float planes on Beluga Lake

The beach at Land's End, the end of the Homer Spit

Charter boats coming in from a day of fishing

Sailboat on Kachemak Bay

The famous Salty Dawg Saloon 

Cruise ship in background, lots of tourists

Some shops on the Spit

Fish Market on the Spit

Typical dirt covered Alaska car

Pier One Theater on the Spit

Gulls and bald eagle waiting for the next show

Sunny Days

Staying busy in the yard on these sunny days. We're getting spoiled by all the sunshine. Temperatures in the 60's. Next week not expected to be so pleasant.

A little rain is a good thing

Summer solstice already! The days begin to grow shorter.

 A dark cloud cover grew this morning so we rushed out to finish spreading topsoil on the new garden areas. The foundation planting was finished yesterday (the shrubs and trees) and I wanted to distribute wildflower seeds before the rain. As the rain came down I moved inside to paint my shop. Only one wall left to do.

Above, the front garden yesterday before the rain.

This is the sloping bed behind the garage. We planted Hansa roses here to form a hedge (someday).

In ten years all this might look impressive. But for now, not so much.

A few days ago we noticed the killdeer chicks on the Spit had hatched so today we stopped to check out the nest. One egg was abandoned; must have been defective. 

Correction: NOT killdeer. Semi-palmated Plover!

An Update

We now have some idea why mother moose was so agitated this morning. Where there are moose calves, there are bear. We headed down the trail to the beach to walk the dogs and were stopped dead in our tracks by this package in the trail....

Bear scat. Dropped within the last 24 hours. Not very big, we assume a blackie. I kept the can of pepper spray I was carrying for moose protection close at hand. There was a high tide at fifteen feet leaving a narrow strip of beach to walk. It wasn't long before we spotted this and followed a string of them all the way down the beach...

That is a small bear print in case you have trouble seeing it. It is the first time I've seen bear tracks on this beach. To our amusement, a couple of seals followed us, bobbing up and down in the water. They seemed particularly curious about Tag's yapping and came in to about 50 yards from shore to see what the commotion was about. It has been a glorious day, clear, sunny and 65 degrees! 

Sunny Weather

Yesterday was a beautiful day despite a mid-day shower (while we were walking the dogs, of course) prompting us to take an evening drive to see the sights. What an amazing place we live in!

The Homer Spit

Grewingk Glacier, thirteen miles long, across the bay from us. 

Redoubt Volcano, 10,198 feet, last erupted 2009. 

There are over 130 volcanoes in Alaska.

A moose morning

A Father's Day surprise! Bob was greeted with this serene scene first thing in the morning. He woke me to see it and I very quietly opened the side door so as not to disturb the family, slowly stepped out to take a picture and the cow was immediately on alert, up and gathering the twins, hightailing it to the safety of the neighbor's yard. This is the moose that caused us so much trouble the last few years. I'll need to start carrying the pepper spray when outside for the next month or two. You never know where she is hanging out or what will cause her to go berserk. Look at how she's shedding.

My Aching Back

Replanting has begun. It's a much harder job than I'd anticipated. We were promised a good soil would be placed in the landscaping area but we are dealing with a lot of clay and mud - very wet, thanks to the rain yesterday. For each plant we have to dig a huge hole, hump over to the bluff and dig out some better soil from the dirt mountains there to replace what we removed and haul that back to the planting site by the wheelbarrow, mix in steer manure and compost and refill the hole with the plant. Our boots get covered with wet, sticky, clay mud and after a few trips weigh about ten pounds making the load we haul up the slope in the barrow that much more difficult to move. This is a job for the young, yet there we are. And so my back is killing me with so much yet to do. The disheartening thing is that I spent a small fortune on this load of plants and after putting them in the area still looks bare. I suppose in five years they will be substantial plants, but think of how the weeds will move in long before they are established. Pushky, horsetails, nettles, dandelions. Ugh, they are aggressive and no amount of weeding or Round-up gets rid of them. The best I can do is quickly put in some aggressive grasses and ground covers to compete, and keep the weed whacker in good running condition.

So here is the main area with the aspen clump, three Philadelphus (mock orange) and a silver leaf dogwood in place. You can hardly see them! Two roses, still potted, are in their possible locations. Not in the picture is the lilac, the four Hansa roses, the two spirea, another dogwood and mock orange that are going into other areas, not to mention the grasses and other things around the yard I plan to transplant here. There really is so much to do.

Peace

It is very quiet without all the excavation noise. I took some pictures during a break in the rain so this is how things are looking today.

Above is the new and improved driveway/parking area as it swings around to the gravel walkway leading to the front door. There is a new landscaping bed, as marked, where the Mayday tree used to be. The red arrows point to a line of gravel that is the curtain drain, and between the arrows is a dark sliver of dirt to plant a few shrubs. There is a solid wall of horsetails behind it that I hope will not be able to grow through the gravel filled trench.

This is the slope at the back of the garage. Bob set up the Alaska RR timbers to form a short retaining wall. We'll backfill with soil, go to war with the weeds and then plant something... I'm thinking a hedge of Hansa roses that will spread roots like crazy and hold it all in place. It would be a warmer spot for the climbing rose I put at the front of the cabin last year so maybe I'll transplant that, too.

With all the gravel around you'd think the dogs could stay out of the mud but they always choose to sit and walk in the dirt.

A shot of the timbers from the opposite direction, on the path to my shop. 

My little rock garden. I thought why not rescue plants from around the yard rather than spend another hundred for starter plants. So there is forget-me-not, sedum, fern, some small grasses, lupine, columbine, strawberry, a few others. With luck, something may be happy enough to grow.

Tux is standing at the timber steps going up to the garage. Good girl, she's on the gravel! We need another small load for the top step and to fill in a few bare spots.

Tux puts her stamp of approval on the spirea. 

Sun is predicted for tomorrow, a good day for planting!

Progress

Here is a view of the cabin and back of the garage, which Bob finished today.

These are timbers from the Alaska Rail Road that we're using to build a short retaining wall that will  support the slope at the back of the garage. Another garden spot! 

A pile of dirt and clay to be pushed over the bluff eventually. 

My future rock garden. Guess I'll work on that tomorrow. Stick a fork in me. After working out, painting my workshop, hauling these rocks, and taking a walk on "our" beach I am done for the day.

Here is a nice shot of the back of the garage in the evening light - finished! The red arrows point to the locations of the future retaining wall (right) and rock garden (left). This used to be the mud bog but is going to be some nice garden area someday. 

King of the Hill

Pheasant look-out on a pile of dirt loaded at the edge of the bluff.

So close to finishing the metal siding! 

Crane Tracks

Sandhill crane prints on the beach:

Photos of the drain project as of June 8. First picture shows the eight foot deep trench that the porous pipe is laid in, then the trench is filled with rocks. 

This is the path of the pipe that carries the water from the drain trenches to the bluff. The mound of dirt will be pushed over the edge and then we will need to plant things that will put down roots in a hurry to hold it in place.

This is where the May tree was pulled out. We'll have more parking area and a (potentially) sunny garden spot. I need a tree there - maybe the quaking aspens.

This behemoth flies by doing touch-downs at the Homer Airport, I guess training on the short runway.  Bob says this is a new military plane that is replacing the C130. It is huge and it is loud.