Walking and Hauling Rocks

We actually left the house today for something that was not shopping for food or going to a hardware store.  Our house is about five minutes from Riverside Park.  We met Jim's son and his wife for a loop walk along the river and back through the woods.  The temperature was perfect, the sun was out and it was just delightful.  I have pictures.

One enters the trail system by walking across this suspension bridge.  It's a nice bridge, not too bouncy, doesn't sway a lot.

The Spokane river.

Big rocks along the river.

Another view from the suspension bridge.

What IS that, is a popular refrain when people are looking at this building.  It's built on a bluff over looking the river.  It's a mausoleum and cemetery.  I was looking at a web page about them, and noticed that they also do green burials.  They do have a nice location.

After hiking the loop, we drove up to the overlook to see the Bowl and Pitcher formation.  Like others before me, I don't see it.  I see giant rocks and water.

It was nice to get out and do something fun.  Yesterday we bought and then then transported 12 bags of pond rocks to the side yard where the day lillies used to live.  I think each bag weighs about 40 to 50 pounds.  It was a day.  Anyway, the bed looks better with the lillies gone.  They are heavy rocks, unlike the volcanic rocks that were used elsewhere in the yard, so we can take a blower to them when the leaves drop off the deciduous trees that are overhanging.

This unfortunate tree is a maple.  A long time ago, someone topped it.  Once the large branches are cut, all they can do is put out weak suckering growth.  We had an arborist out to look at it, and he could bring its height back to what it was when it was topped, but it might kill the tree.  We like the tree, so we're going to have him come out and give it a haircut.  We can do the sides, but our ladder is too short to get the top.  He's bringing out a 12 foot orchard ladder to do it.  I guess it will be an annual exercise to keep it in check.  If the sides did not project into the path one uses to get to the back deck, I'd let it run amok, but it does impede progress through the side yard as well as the neighbor's yard.

I think tomorrow we will go to Costco.  We're out of everything.  Speaking of out of things, Spokane currently has a shortage of distilled water.  We saw this in Tucson awhile back, and we're annoyed with ourselves for not putting a gallon in the car when we moved.  My steam iron wants distilled water, as does the floor steamer.  I had to order it from Amazon for a really exorbitant amount of money.  This negatively affects people with CPAP machines.

Look at this photo.  Is this astonishing or what? I screen scraped it from an article interviewing Mitch Dobrowner, who took it.  The article has several more amazing pictures, and is worth looking at.

There are nine (count them, NINE) day lillies in the front yard.  They are two, two and a half feet wide.  What I really hate about them is the amount of weeds they shelter.  We sat outside with the weed stickers and pulled out weeds for a couple of hours this afternoon.  I think three or four bushes out there would be better.  That is labor that will not be done by us, in addition to the lilly root system, there are two tree stumps in the area. 

That's it!  That's all I've got.