We Crossed the Line…

Since Dear is retired now and soon he’ll be all wrapped up in building his shop we decided to take advantage of “free time” before the shop materials arrive to enjoy a day across the line. (that was a long sentence w/o punctuation) We crossed the border into Canada at a new to us crossing, Paterson, just north of the town of Northport in Washington state. We crossed the line at about 7am and we were the only ones crossing at this time in the morning.

British Columbia welcomed us with a few rules and cautions. Now we would have to think in kilometers.

Rossland is a city in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada. Tucked high in the Monashee Mountains, Rossland is at an elevation of 3356′. Its population is 3729, though it fluctuates from season to season. The population is at its peak during the winter.

You have entered the center of an ancient volcano rich in minerals…

Rossland was our first stop in Canada with intentions of having breakfast at a restaurant called Fuel. It was housed in a refurbished gas station. I didn’t take a photo of the building but I did take a photo of our Eggs Benedict.

It was very good. We arrived in town at 7:30am and the restaurant didn’t open until 8am so we drove around the picturesque/quaint town.

The main road through town.

Born a Norwegian, Olaus Jeldness left his home country as a teenager for greener pastures in first the U.S., then Canada, then again in the U.S. Along with him, he brought his love for and adeptness at downhill skiing.

Play not for gain, but for sport.
Leap not for gold, but glee.
Oh! Youth, play well thy part
Whatever life’s gain may be.

You can read more about Olaus Jeldness here.

Nelson artist Cedar Mueller constructed Rusty, a nearly life-size sculpture of a horse, in classic pose from scavenged steel…

The Rossland Council for Arts and Culture also commissioned the installation of “The Storytellers”, a sculpture of ravens in trees, created by Andrew Raney from Salmo, outside Rossland’s public library.

This one is called the Sphere of Influence. By Carl Schlichting (Slocan Valley, BC, 2013) The Sphere was leased for 2015. A perfect Sphere, constructed out of almost 200 old steel bicycle rims…

There were several other sculptures that we missed on this trip.

I enjoyed this little town and it’s close enough that we might take another trip in the future.

On our way back to the USA after visiting Nelson which I’ll share photos of in a future post we stopped in Rossland again and did some deli shopping at their local grocer, Ferraro Foods. They make their own delicious salamis. I took another photo of the main drag in the afternoon light.

Sorry to those of you who because of WordPress  are having issues commenting.  I don’t know what to do to change that. 😦

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Marching On…

Even though we have webbed feet Seattleites are getting weary of the rain and lack of sunshine in these parts. On Wednesday we had a window of dryness with some sunshine so Dear and I took our standard walk about the neighborhood. The photo above is of one of our 5 Rhododendron plants budding. This is our state flower.

Along our walk there is a pond that our webbed feet friends enjoy. We are getting some nice signs that Spring will come like clockwork.

Friday morning it was warmer than usual so I went outside to do some planter clean up. I raked and trimmed some bushes with my nifty new hedge trimmer. I stopped to take some more photos of one of my favorites, the Lenten Rose (Hellebore).

Then on Friday late in the morning the sun broke through in all it’s glory and we were ready to leap like these youngsters but we chose to walk instead along the waterways in Kirkland Washington after enjoying lunch here. This sculpture is a bronze created by Glena Goodacre called “Puddle Jumpers”. Purchased for the city of Kirkland by city residents and businesses in 2001.

We have a bag partially packed and the gas tank full for when we get the call that our daughter-in-law is admitted to the hospital. Fun times. Thank you dear friends for your kind words and suggestions to us as we enter the world of grandparent land.

More Monumentale…

The entrance to Monumentale Cemetery in Milan is as grand as the rest of the grounds. This cemetery is filled with both contemporary and classical sculptures. We were struck with how massive many of the sculptures are.

This monument reminded me so much of a story from the Old Testament. Anyone out there want to guess which one?

This cemetery would need several hours to fully take in. I will soon share the last part of the cemetery we visited including the Hall of Fame.

Hope your week is going well. So far so good here. I was happy that the constant rain from the weekend has seemed to cease. The exciting news this week is that our new cookbook, Celebrations, is in the hands of some at Menno Press. The 10 of us are excitedly and anxiously waiting for our copy to arrive!

Blessings…

Round Robin Photo Challenge ~ See the Music!

Welcome to the Round Robin Photo Challenge. This Saturday the theme is “See the Music”

You can be literal with this one, with photos of sheet music, musical instruments, stereo equipment etc., or more abstract, showing something that reminds you of a particular song. Illustrate a Rolling Stones lyric, or photograph your favorite local band, or catch your kid practicing the guitar or clarinet! If it’s suggestive of some kind of music, it counts!

The photos I’m posting are from a trip to Santa Barbara, California and Dallas, Texas…

This sculpture was just off State Street. See the store in the background called Mozart Trio?

 

This was taken at the Dallas Arboretum.

To see more Round Robin Photo Challenges on this subject visit the Round Robin Blog.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

ABC Wednesday ~ E is for

E is for Eagles

I’m back in Southern California and for the letter E I’m sharing these sculptures that are in Old Town Camarillo and at the Civic Center in Thousand Oaks, California. The Sculpture in the next few photos really shows the fierceness of an Eagle to me. Kind of scary…

For more ABC posts on the letter E visit the ABC Wednesday Blog.

I will be at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on Wednesday and hope to get around to visit more ABC’s on Thursday.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site and have replaced my photos with black and grey boxes of ugliness. I’m slowly deleting those boxes from my blog and trying to update so many posts, very frustrating.

Dallas Arboretum ~ The Star of Texas

 

It was a beautiful day at the Dallas Arboretum last Saturday.

 

Just in case there’s any confusion as to what state you are in here’s the Star of Texas, a Longhorn, an Armadillo and a cowboy hat to set you right.

 

It was so lush with pinks, purples and many shades of green.

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of beautiful trees. The crape myrtle had such smooth interesting bark.

 

We were a little late for the wisteria but I can imagine how lush this was about a month ago. On our way out I bought a souvenir here that I will share in a future post. The afternoon was so lovely, sunny but not hot.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage and they have blacked them all out. I’m slowly working at restoring my posts without their help. Such a tiresome bother!