FRIDAY FRIEND FOCUS: Local Divers (& Stickers)

How cool is this? I received an email from a new virtual friend and fellow nature nerd Bethany the other day:

“I bought four of your Resilient stickers to recognize members of our dive team (WDFW Shellfish dive team), for their efforts in our annual May fitness challenge. We call it “Don’t Be Lazy” fitness challenge. Haha. We dive all over the WA waters of the Salish Sea. Here’s a picture of two of our divers in front of Allan Island about to get in to do an urchin survey. We love to put special stickers on our personal gear boxes - you can see my sticker on my box here.”

Turns out the team dives to check on our Pinto Abalone stocks as well, so I’m sending a few of those stickers along for the team to enjoy!

Worth the side quest!

Taking two weeks out of my tight schedule to build the front deck is already paying off! Loading things in and out of the building is easy breezy now instead of an uneven minefield. 12’ metal roofing pieces and other odd pieces of lumber that’ve been taking up valuable floor space for 2 years OUT, 100 2x4s for framing the walls IN.

Jasper's New Perch

Jasper loves laying on the new front deck, his new vantage point to watch the world go by. While working on my email newsletter today in the shed, I heard someone outside walk by and exclaim “Oh Jasper, buddy, lookit you on your new porch!” I looked over at him and I swear he was beaming. He really does smile when he’s happy, and he does this whole “snarl smile” thing when he’s happy to see someone he hasn’t seen in a while. Someday I want to capture it on video for posterity.

Plywood bridge for now to get the heavy things inside. Cedar decking will replace it soon!

Oopsies & Blueberries

Life took an unexpected turn yesterday morning when I woke up to go to the Anacortes Farmers Market. I had a severe food allergy reaction, passed out on the boat while getting ready, knocked my noggin on the steps on the way down, and called 911 to come check my bloody head gash. Thankfully it didn’t require stitches or a trip to the hospital, just a few days bed rest. Ouch though!


I cancelled both markets for the weekend (rescheduling for next weekend) & my sailor sweetie came to the mainland. Today we were getting restless on the boat, so we spent the day at a u-pick blueberry patch leisurely, intermittently picking berries and napping in the shade.


I was bummed to miss the markets, but taking a whole day to pick my own yearly 50 pounds of berries for the chest freezer with my favorite guy and dog was an unexpected luxury. A day grounding in the blueberry fields has done wonders for my head, belly & outlook!

Tackling those summer projects!

The front deck build is coming along! I have the framing all finished & will cover the path to the door with scrap plywood for now to get things in and out of the building. I have the decking on hand, but need to prioritize a few other tasks before the rains come!

This week I also worked on installing the last two windows and trim. These will be my kitchen windows looking out to the forest behind the house! And my septic drain field, which will eventually become a native wildflower meadow.

Calm chamomile

I was able to spend some time in the shade in the garden harvesting chamomile for tea and to seed my septic tank mound. A lovely meditative time!

oof, summer internet sux!

With all the additional summer visitors to our island, my internet connection has gotten so bad I don’t bother with it most days. I’m pretty busy working on my house build and in the garden while the weather is clear anyhow!

Working on the front deck installation last week, and this week!

Every other week I head to the mainland to participate in some local Farmer’s Markets. Come visit Jasper dog and I if you can!

Jasper chillaxes under my market table every weekend!

I’ve had better internet connectivity success using telegram on my phone. Follow along there if you’d like more real-time updates! I’ll be back to posting here on the blog more regularly when the season wanes and the visitors leave. Until then, happy high summer friends!

Synchronistic Bliss

I’m on the floating condo (my sailor sweetie’s sailboat) today catching up with the internet after a weekend of mainland markets. The YouTube algorithm recommended this video about Marguerite Wildenhein and I’m now enthralled with this woman’s legacy, I resonate deeply with her life and philosophy. I can see my life emulating hers in some ways. Do you have complimentary videos to recommend? Please comment below!

I had so many other synchronistic moments this past weekend vending at the farmers markets. Talking with a younger artist visitor to my Everett Farmer’s Market booth, his enthusiasm for nature and yearning for a life path to incorporate it more fully, I suddenly remembered a fateful meeting I had while vending at farmer’s markets in my then-home Portland OR when I was younger and looking for the next direction my life would take. Gosh, it’s been almost 11 years ago now since I came home here to the Salish Sea!

Anyhow, talking to the younger artist yesterday, I remembered a conversation I had years ago with a middle-aged woman in my booth who was looking over all my nature prints and notecards and emphatically exclaiming over and over that I just HAD to go to the San Juan islands, my artwork resonated with her experiences there. Truth be told, this happened several times with several different booth visitors in the 5 years I lived in Portland, but that particular woman left the strongest impression. I wish I remembered more details about her! In my life’s story, she was a harbinger of the future to come, just as perhaps I have been for the young artist who visited with me yesterday.

Other important-feeling visitors/harbingers of the future-to-come this weekend were a group of regenerative permaculture-principle farmers. We traded stories, artwork and plant starts; and I caught a glimpse of a possible future coming into being. That’s all I can definitely say for now. I’ll have to let the vision percolate a bit and reveal more as time goes on!

I also met a woman named Hope, who purchased my Hope image in sticker form. I jokingly shared with her that I never had kids but if I had had a daughter I daydreamed of naming her Hope to match my last name (if you say “Hope Bliss” out loud you’ll understand my humor). The woman named Hope standing in front of me shared that her given last name was Foley. Her parents had my sense of humor! She also shared that her grandmother liked to remind her that she stopped the parents from giving Hope the middle name of Leslie. Ha!

Happy Solstice!

Here we are, midway through summer. The garden is coming into it’s own this year, year 3.

So grateful for all this bounty!

Summertime Barge Fun!

In the last few weeks I’ve made two major home purchases on the mainland: septic tank and kitchen stove, both destined for my island home-in-progress. Here’s a recap in pics of the septic tank’s journey from the mainland to home via a few forklifts, the barge and Truckie:

Dropped off at the barge office.

Offloading from the barge on the island

The new barge/forklift operator: “Where’s this going?” Me:”On top of my truck.” Barge op: “Awesome!”

Truckie, the champ

Island neighbors came to help me off-load.

The stove is making a similar journey (still in progress as I write this):

Into the mainland van

Out of the van and into a trailer, awaiting barge transport.

My new old kitchen oven!

Saturday after the market my mission was to find a used gas kitchen stove/range to convert to propane for my new kitchen-to-be.

My sailor sweetie has another empty trailer scheduled on the barge soon. The perfect opportunity to find a stove and get it home.

I really want a vintage stove - or at least one without electronics - but for logistics and sanity’s sake, whatever ones the building salvage shop had in stock were to be my choices. They usually have half a dozen or so in the warehouse.

My new kitchen will be designed around this beauty!

They only had ONE stove in the warehouse on Saturday afternoon. A vintage gas Wedgewood in great condition and working order - it even still has the original salt and pepper shakers! Are you kidding me?! This is the stove the universe has delivered to me!

It was slightly over my budget, but a gaggle of girls towards the end of the market generously bought a bunch of things to help support my home and art studio build. Girls, if you’re reading this, THANK YOU! You helped pay for this beautiful stove for my kitchen!

Framed Print & technology silence

Keegan in Anacortes emailed me a photo of her new print all framed and hanging in her home. I love seeing these pics! Thank you Keegan!

In other news, I’ve been plagued by technology issues the past two weeks, which has been a blessing in disguise actually. Turns out I really appreciate the quiet of not being tethered to the internet and I’m questioning my relationship with it altogether.

My old i-phone broke the last time I was on the mainland. I now have a new-to-me older model one from eBay, but it apparently needs a new SIM card. That’s on the way. I also left my laptop cord on the boat on the mainland, and my backup cord at home frayed beyond repair. I ordered a new one of those, but the wrong one was sent.

I do have an iPad, which I’m using now. But I only have access to it and my pokey island internet in the morning and the evening when I’m home. Otherwise, I’m now technology-free during the day. If I need to speak to someone, I walk or drive to their house or wait until evening to contact them. Just like the old days.

I’m really enjoying no tech during the day, and plan to continue even when the SIM card and correct laptop cord arrive. Perhaps I’ll even cancel the internet altogether since it’s so pokey and expensive anyways, and just use my phone connection in the evenings or on occasion.

Lovely lady slippers!

Oh, hello lovely lady slippers! I spied this grouping - the largest I’ve ever seen! - on my way to a neighbors across the island. I just had to stop and bask in their diminutive fleeting beauty. Swoon!

Meanwhile, in the garden...

In between reconstructing my yard, working on other island yards and grounds, and prepping for farmers market vending soon, I’ve been sneaking as many daylight hours as I can in my own garden. All is in bloom right now. Plants and trees that began life here as bare root sticks several years ago are becoming juvenile plants. It’s exciting to see!

Eagerly awaiting the first blooms on a lilac that began life here as a bareroot stick several years ago. I also have a potted collection of different young lilacs a friend from another island thinned and dug out of her own garden a few years back, each with a different island pedigree carefully noted on ID tags. I can’t wait to finally plant them all along the permanent fencing I’ll be erecting later this season!

First year asparagus! Obviously too tiny to harvest this year, but in the coming years…

Despite my best netting efforts, the birds got into the sweet pea bed and ate all the seeds earlier in the season. Happily, I’ve found a few clusters of sweet peas growing in the shade of other large plants around the garden. The scavenging birds obviously took a break after the pilaging and deposited their spoils elsewhere. I’ve transplanted these too-large-for-birds-to-eat seedlings to one central location.

Destruction, Reconstruction & New Growth

Oof, it’s been a flurry of activity around here. Trying to keep up with it all has been difficult, especially making the time to be or share online. But that’s ok with me - I prefer to put my energies into real life than online life!

The new crater in the center of my yard.

Recently I struck a barter deal with a neighbor with an excavator to finish the groundworks around my home/studio that someone else had begun but now can’t finish. What began as a simple project turned into my yard currently looking as if a bomb went off. Literally, there is a giant hole where the firepit used to be, large boulders strewn about and piles of rocks and dirt everywhere! Giving another person free reign to express their creativity and co-creating with them has always been my achilles heal…

Eventually the pit will become a wildlife pond and summer irrigation for my garden, fed by a seasonal creek bed that will collect rainwater from the house roof and the road above my place. I’ve been nerding out researching native pond plants and ecosystems as I’ll be doing the finish work myself. Another project I didn’t plan for, but am excited to learn more and implement!

There’s also a rock bridge in progress that will connect my future front porch/front door to the newly leveled and graded parking area out front. The firepit has moved to the back of the house. The septic system will be installed soon, and I’ve begun collecting small diameter trees to turn into fence posts for fencing the entire place later this summer.

The little shed I built quickly from found materials to originally store my camping gear and simple tools when I first bought the property is now located in the future septic drainfield. I had planned to take it down, but now that I have access to someone with heavy equipment, it will be moved elsewhere to be repurposed as garden tool storage.

In exchange for all this, I’ll be making the neighbor a website for his business and designing all his promo materials. Probably for the rest of my life, ha ha!

Another One!

It’s great to be finding beauties this time of year while doing yard work at various places around the island!