I’m not here.

The crocus colors paint the garden but we found the butterflies in the Tropical Butterfly House at the Pacific Science Center put on an even greater show.

With the exception of the Monarch, none of the butterflies in the room are native to Washington, the rest being imported from South and Central America from butterfly farms. They live almost their entire life in a wonderfully humid room my Pacific Northwest kid found “too hot!”

The butterflies, of course, are the highlight, flying freely and flashing their brilliant colors. Using the great cheat sheet provided by the center I’m able to identify some of them, alas others I’m not.

Papilio rumanzovia — Scarlet Swallowtail

Idea leuconoe — Rice Paper or Paper Kite Butterfly

Morpho peleides — Common Blue Morpho

Caligo memnon — Owl Butterfly

Heliconius hecale — Golden Helicon

And finally, this is what it looks like when you’re chasing a butterfly around the room.

I’ve been busy, extremely busy, of late so I’m seriously behind in posting some photos. Let’s play catch-up.

So what have we been up to?

My daughter and I went to the beach, she played with sticks in the surf, I chased after her, we built a fort and shot photos.

It’s been snowing a lot here! We’re kinda tired of it. In a desperate move to get some fresh greens started we decided to give row covering a shot. It’s richly rewarding to see the row covered bed in the orchard and we’re particularly proud that all the material (PVC pipe and plastic) is recycled!

So while seeing the bed is cool, peeking inside and seeing baby greens is even better.

The poor crocus can’t decide what the hell to do with this spring’s bizarre weather. They open, it snows, they stay closed, it rains.

Speaking of bizarre weather, while watching Cliff Mass give a presentation about his book, The Weather of the Pacific Northwest, at the local bookstore, the audience was treated to rain literally moving horizontally down Winslow Way!

Later, on the way to pick up dinner (we lost power twice, two hours each time), I saw a Douglas-fir limb hanging from a power line smoldering. I decided I’d take the photo on the way back — by the time I got back we’d lost power again and the limb, perhaps the cause, had stopped smoking. I’m apparently not much of a photojournalist.

This is not the Big Puppy, my daughter’s absolute favorite animal, but his backup. Big Puppy recently started showing the signs any animal would if he weighed five plus pounds and was carried everywhere, usually in a stranglehold about his neck. My wife and I decided acquiring a backup would be a prudent decision, especially considering the Huge size was no longer available in the catalogs.

I recalled having seen a Big Puppy in the window of Magic Mouse so I went over at lunch to pick one up — I didn’t recall it being so clean and soft! The clerk asked if someone had told us to get a second — just in case — but it was entirely our idea. He told me they get someone in once a week frantically looking for a replacement “it needs to be EXACTLY the same, she’ll KNOW!”.

I hope it never comes to it but we have BP II safely hidden in case of emergency. BTW, my advice to any other stuffed-animal-toting-cyclists, buy your kid lighter varieties, Big Puppy strained the legs a bit on the ride home.

Good morning.

I’ve been working on cropping these photos to eliminate a lot of the overcast clouds in the sky. These are all aspect ratios of 2:1, unfortunately this is the most expensive ratio to print at Smugmug.