Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

BIRTHDAY WISHES

Happy 29th Birthday to my beautiful daughter-in-love, Becky! I am so blessed to have her as a member of our family. I may not have carried her under my heart, but I carry her within it now.  Happy Birthday, beautiful Becky. I wish I was there to celebrate with you. Save me some ice cream cake!

GARDENING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN

When we came home from vacation, we were thrilled to find that Steve’s tomato plants, and my sunflower plants had more than doubled in size. The tomato plants have quite a few tomatoes on them. They’re green now, and our hope is that they’ll ripen before the first killing frost comes. Last summer, they died before we could harvest any fruit from them, despite covering them at night. I think this year, we’ll bring them inside before nature takes them from us. I just hope the cat doesn’t get into them.

I don’t have any photos of the tomato plants over the weeks, but I did have a photo of my sunflower plants taken in early July. I started them from seeds I feed the birds, and everyday they’re bigger and bigger. I hope they flower soon.

WILDFIRES FLARE UP

The Willow Creek fire has been flaring and smoldering since the beginning of the summer. (I took photos of this fire from the Parks Hwy, on the way home from our Seward vacation back in June.) Rain has done a pretty good job of keeping the smoke down, but we had more than a week of hot and sunny weather, which caused it to flare back up again. Fortunately, the wind wasn’t blowing directly toward North Pole, so the smell of smoke was faint or non-existent most of the time. But those days when the wind shifted and brought it this way, it was horrible.

Because of my asthma (and the horrible smell), I had to keep all the windows closed. With the heat outside (mid 80s), the house became quite warm. Keeping the curtains drawn helped a lot, but the last thing I want to do in the summer months is sit in a dark house.

The Willow Creek fire was started by lightning on June 10, and has consumed almost 12,000 acres. Because it’s on military land, and there’s a concern about unexploded ordinance, the fire has to be fought aerially. I wish it would have been put out when it first started. Experts say it’s “not threatening anything” and “There aren’t any critical resources that need to be protected.” What about being able to breathe fresh air? It’s threatening me and anyone else who has breathing problems!

Earlier this week (Tuesday), the smoke plume was huge, and easily seen from both my house and the highway. It was so large, that the sun could be seen only as an orange ball in the sky. This first photo was taken from a road near my home. The second photo was taken from the Richardson Hwy. It looks like there’s a hand in the second photo, doesn’t it? Freaky.

AURORA ALERT

You may have heard about the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that occurred on August 1st. The CME resulted from a solar flare and was aimed towards Earth. There was a prediction that the CME would reach Earth on the night of August 3rd (early morning of the 4th), causing a higher than normal possibility of aurora activity.

I stayed up late, hoping for a viewing, even though it isn’t getting very dark here yet. At most, the sky becomes a deep gray. In fact, only a few stars are visible even at the darkest time of the night.  I decided to set my camera up on my tripod and do some long exposures of the sky, with hopes of catching some ‘green’ aurora light that might not be visible to my eye. No luck. It didn’t take long for clouds (smoke?) to move in. I stayed out on the back deck until the sky started brightening again - about 3am.

We’re down to a little more than 20 hours of visible light, with the length of day being 17 and a half hours. We’re losing almost 7 minutes per day.  By the end of the month, we’ll be down 3 more hours.

M* FAMILY PORTRAIT SHOOT

My friend Hannah’s daughter is going off to college soon. Hannah asked me to photograph her family before Meghan leaves. We did the shoot in their back yard. They wanted furkid Bandit in the photo, as he’s part of the family too.  Daughter Kelly’s best friend was over, so I took some photos of the two of them too.  I thought this family photo turned out nicely. Even Bandit is smiling:

Here are a few more from the shoot:

BULL MOOSE BROTHERS

Yesterday, I woke up sick. I haven’t been that sick in a long time. Headache, fever, nausea, stomachache, chills - you name it; I had it. I spent the day laying on the sofa, and nothing (to include water) would stay down. It was horrible. Fortunately Steve was off from work and took good care of me. Mostly I dozed, with short periods of wakefulness.

Loud thunder woke me first and then pouring rain. What a welcome sound! We were able to open the doors and windows to get some fresh air in the house. I was laying on the loveseat, with a clear view to the road, when I saw a moose walk past our front yard.

Despite my illness, I wasn’t going to let the opportunity get away. I alerted Steve, who grabbed the video camera, and the two of us watched and took photos/video from inside the house, through the front door.

It wasn’t just one moose, but two. They came up our driveway, stopping to snack on birch sapling leaves along the way.  Steve and I purposely let the saplings grow on the far side of our driveway, next to the woods, because the moose love them.

It’s neat to watch them strip the leaves from the narrow stem. They wrap their mouths around the sapling at the bottom, and then move upwards, peeling the leaves effortlessly.

Slowly, but deliberately, we stepped out onto the front patio. They both saw us, which is what we wanted. We didn’t want to startle them, and hoped they’d continue dining after they realized we weren’t a threat. We didn’t seem to bother them, so we continued with the photos and video as the moved up the driveway. Soon they disappeared behind the camper. When Steve looked out in the back yard, they were moving deeper into the woods.

Here they are walking up our driveway in the rain:

Enjoying the salad bar:

I’m using my wide angle lens here, so that you can see Steve in the photo. The wide angle lens makes things look a little further than they really are.

You can see their antlers a little better here. They’re odd-shaped right now, but as the years go by, they’ll soon develop the large racks you typically see in photos of moose. From what I read, moose usually get their large racks by the time they’re 6 - 7 years old, with the huge *trophy* racks found on even older bulls.

Here’s video footage that Steve took of the visit. Please excuse the really loud shutter of my camera: