Composting is a must for a full-time resident of our little island. There is a pack-it-in-pack-it-out necessity if you don’t want to be buried under your garbage. Besides that, the topsoil is thin,acid, and resting on stone or clay. If you are planning to have daffodils under your firs, or anything else you had better start turning your organic wastes to black gold.
Sorry — the photos for this article were mistakenly deleted. I may post them again and so have left the titles to help guide me.
It started with the fire back in ‘04. Orcas loggers felled firs for cordwood to fuel the steamers. Live embers from a slash fire on the east end of Orcas flew across the water to Obstruction, igniting the island. It burned from end to end.
The deer and raccoons swam.
In the Pacific Northwest summer, there is much to be said for hanging out your wash. The clothes dryer was one of the new labor saving devices of the ’50s that you may want to reconsider. Not only are you going greener and treating your senses to the smells and sounds of nature but you may find hanging out your wash may be more labor saving than folding the wash from the dryer.
Sorry — the photographs for this article were mistakenly deleted. I have left the text.
we are asked at an evening event on Orcas, “You’re not going back to Obstruction Island tonight, are you?”
“Of course we are. That is our home.”
“But you have to cross the water in the dark!”
Have you wondered how to get the effect of people walking on a foggy beach — some near and some farther away? Or how to show the illusion of gauze curtains?
This illusion is called the White Veil Effect. How to paint these may be the opposite of what you would think.