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Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
May / Back to Project 366 (2016) / July
There are three light rail stations currently under construction in North Seattle: University District, Roosevelt, and Northgate. The site of the Roosevelt station used to be a grocery store with a sizable parking lot. You can see the construction crane in the mirror, and at the mirror's bottom are concrete pieces which can be put together to make a tube.
Not all of the construction in the city is near future light rail stations. This retail construction is right next to a bunch of new single-family homes which are very close together.
Surrounding Drumheller Fountain on campus are large rose beds, and the blossoms are starting to come out.
Bagel Oasis is not to far from us, and we enjoy getting breakfast there every now and then. Today we met some cousins of mine, and we all had plenty to eat. I also got a dozen to take home.
We noticed that our birch trees (especially the one on the right) had some die-back. Ends up they're infested with the bronze birch borer beetle, and the choices are to either annually prune the infected parts and give the trees a treatment to slow the infestation, or to remove them before they completely die. We've decided to just remove the trees, so we can plant some sort of replacement and give the new trees a chance to grow while we're still in the house.
Our neighbors have a locust tree which, during this time of the year, has a yellow/green glow when the sun hits it, but is closer to green out of the direct light. We get a good view of it from our living room, and we look at it often.
Morning glory is one of those weeds where you spend years trying to get rid of it (even after you dig up most if not all of the root), and it's time consuming to remove when it's winding up a plant. However, in places where it's allowed to grow (such as near my usual bus stop) it's nice to be able to enjoy the flowers without feeling the need to quickly dig it out.
There are several monkey puzzle trees around the city, including this one not in the Ravenna neighborhood. There are a few on campus, too.
The large “W” at the north end of the UW campus is a popular spot for photos during the year, but it's especially popular around graduation (which is in a coupe days).
Several drain channels on campus have decorative grating over them, rather than the standard ribbed drains.
Cherry season is beginning in this area, and these Chelans are some of the early ones. I've also seen Rainiers.
When we bought the house there was a miniature rose shrub among several full-sized roses. Of all of them, the miniature held up the best, so we gave away the full-sized shrubs and transplanted this one to one of our planter boxes on the porch, where it continues to do well.
We had our infested birch trees taken down today. the one on the right was hit harder, and after removing all the other parts,what was left was the section which was most impacted; when it hit the ground it broke apart at sections which were already dead.
Every now and then we see planes going pretty close to campus. When we land, we often pass the airport, turn around, and land from the north so we get a great view of the ship canal just before the plane turns, but we don't see much of campus from the plane because of the angle.
University Heights used to be a school, but is now a community center. It got a facelift several years ago, and the grounds were redone over the past couple years.
The church across the street from my office has hosted a tent city a few times. Before this time, it was during the coldest part of winter; last week, it was in the 90s.
A bunch of crows had found this bag of chip, then a gull came along. It was obvious that the crows were deferring to the gull, but weren't happy about it. When the gull's back was turned, a crow grabbed the bag at the bottom and dumped all the chips out, then the gull (and another which had flown in) and the crows dined together, eyeing each other the whole time.
Sustainable Northeast Seattle had a garden tour today, where several houses were available to wander around and look at what people were doing with their gardens. We visited a couple, one which was very large and ambitious, the other which was smaller (less square footage than our house). One of them had this rooster sculpture in the back yard. Interestingly enough, it was the other house that had chickens.
The I-5 bridge over the Lake Washington Ship Canal is very high over the water (no worries about boat traffic) and is one of six ways to drive over the ship canal (you can also walk over the top of the locks in Ballard and there's a train bridge past the locks).
The sign on the outside of this restaurant is very colorful, and I've looked at it several times, not really knowing how to get a good photo of it. It seems that this would be a good place for a Dutch angle; another option would be to get a lot of the blank wall with the colors in the corner; I'll need to try that sometime, too.
There is some construction near UW which uses very bright colors. In addition to this building with blue, there's another one with bright orange.
Even though this looks like a rural scene, this house is in the city. The blue Adirondack chair's color almost matches the hydrangea.
I walked past a building which was having work done on it. This railing was removed from a big concrete slab; they were removing more of the concrete when I went by.
The sign at Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream in University Village has an “Ice Cream” sign in front of the store which has letters standing on a horizontal negative image. Since the “M” is symmetric, it made for an interesting shot.
Summer squash isn't quite available yet, except for these mini squash with attached blossoms which I saw at the farmers market.
Melody was at a book group this weekend which was held at University of Puget Sound. I drove down to pick her up in the afternoon, and we met at this fountain near where the event was held.
Every now and then I see someone sitting at this bench waiting for the bus. If it weren't for that, it'd be easy to think it's neglected and unused.
The University Bookstore's main floor has faux books hanging from the ceiling. Several them look upside down from various views, but there's one string that's almost vertical.
Tucked within the buildings of the Group Health Capitol Hill Medical Center is a small garden, including this fountain by George Tsutakawa.
The poppies are mostly done blooming, so now we're starting to see a lot of seed heads.
May / Back to Project 366 (2016) / July