scenes around in Queen Anne

More photos from this week in my area of Queen Anne (northern part). This neighborhood has lots of impressive landscaping with a wide variety unique ornamental plants I've never seen before, and many modern homes. Queen Anne is situated on the highest named hill in Seattle, so as you wander around you can catch some very scenic views of the Cascades to the east and the Olympics to the west. (The last picture shows the Olympics, and the modern house with the red door has windows through which you can see the Cascades if you look at my photo closely.)
More Queen Anne photos on Flickr.

seafoam houses in Queen Anne

A few of the surprisingly many seafoam-green houses in my area of Queen Anne.

walking to the Fremont Brewery

Last Sunday we walked across the Fremont Bridge and east a little ways to the Fremont Brewery, an excellent local brewery we really like. The path winds down and under the Aurora Bridge, a high arch bridge built to allow huge ships through the ship canal without having to raise up like the Fremont and Ballard bridges. As we traveled along the canal we saw a purple houseboat, and a pretty great mural done by a 5th grade class several years ago showing all kinds of animals riding bikes around Seattle (including a fish).

terrarium day and planted cat

Packed up and ready to head home.


Cat is happily planted.


My terrariums.


Dustin's terrariums.



Today we took a terrarium-making class at The Palm Room in Ballard, the best plant and garden store ever. We had saved these two awesome empty bottles with corks from Woodinville Whiskey that we brought along to plant as well, so we ended up with four terrariums.

I also recently happened upon a Lions Valley studio pottery cat planter on Etsy by David Stewart, a popular mid century ceramics artist. I couldn't pass the planter up, I had to have him. I mean, look at him. He arrived last week, so I brought him along too to find the perfect little air plants (tillandsia) to live in his back. Everyone that saw him loved him. Look at that face! Second only to a real cat.

neighborhood walk

Some shots from my immediate neighborhood yesterday. On clear/sunny days like this, you can see the Cascades to the east and they look awesome.

Gas Works Park

This Sunday the weather was really beautiful if still a little chilly. We checked out the Fremont Sunday Market as is our standard weekly habit, and then wandered to the Fremont Brewery to try a few more of their beers. After that we headed to Gas Works Park, a public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant that's located on the north shore of Lake Union. It contains remnants of the sole remaining coal gasification plant in the US. The plant itself operated from 1906 to 1956, then was purchased by the city in 1962 and opened as a public park in 1975. The park's designer, Richard Haag, won the "American Society of Landscape Architects Presidents Award of Design Excellence" for the project. Check out an aerial view of the park here.
The last image is of the Fremont Bridge, our handy portal into Fremont from Queen Anne.

Seattle hail storm

Seattle isn't known for weather extremes, so today when we had a few claps of thunder and a 10 minute long hailstorm, people were really impressed. Dustin and I happened to be in the Queen Anne Hilltop Ale House during the storm. We went outside to let the hail rain on us, and watched an entire hot yoga class from next door come out and pose on the sidewalk. So much hail fell in a short time that it blanketed the ground and looked like snow. A very cool and magical little moment!

Birthday

A few pictures from today --
The weather was cold and rainy (a bummer after last weekend's sunny 65 degree days), so the Fremont Sunday Market was pretty empty when we went. We wandered there briefly before walking over to the Fremont Brewery, which for some reason we haven't yet visited. We had a flight of 10 of their beers, most of which were excellent. I have no idea why this didn't occur to us before, I think we were under the impression they didn't have a pub area or something...
For an early dinner we went to Toulouse Petit, an awesome Cajun-influenced place with a very ornate interior (lots of paneled glass, tile work, intricate wood inlay on the tables, etc.). Currently relaxing at home watching The Twilight Zone. Overall a good day to turn 29.

Puget Sound from Carkeek Park

A few pictures from our visit last weekend to Carkeek Park, which overlooks Puget Sound. People were out windsurfing/parasurfing/kitesurfing (not sure?), and it looked pretty fun despite the freezing cold water. The hazy mountains in the distance were gorgeous; it's hard to believe how geographically beautiful it is here.