Just got back to Port Townsend from a few days in Everett on an emergency (sort of) basement cleaning mission. Burnt out from moving a bunch of junk around for a few days, I arrived at Port Townsend, and not quite ready for prime time in the world of Alzheimer's (my parents home), I tried to take a short nap in my truck, down by the waterfront.
Before I got into the mouth-open snoring stage, I was pleasantly awakened by the call's of high flying Cackling Geese - about 60 of 'em - headed due East across the Sound.
Personally, I associate Cackling Geese, and their other goose buddy's , like the Snow Geese, with lush short green grass because that's where I've mostly seen them "wintering" - in the emerald green fields of grass in the Skagit, Stillaquamish, Snohomish, Snoqualmie, and Sammamish, valley's - part of "Ish River Country" as the forever Poet Laureate of the area ,Robert Sund, called it - (If you haven't read his poems, you might wanna check them out).
Moving right along, that got me going on (again) about our diverse local habitats. You see, we in general live in a Summer Drought climate. The whole Wetside of Washington State is known as being wet, but some areas are more wetter than others. Take the East side of the Sound, from Mount Vernon down through Everett, and Seattle; it gets twice the annual rainfall as Port Townsend does.
Puget Sounders know well that if you don't water your lawn in summer, i't gonna go brown, and this is a telltale of local rainfall. Sure, Seattle lawns go brown, but in Port Townsend they go browner. Wanna go "Green"? How about going "Brown"? "Brown is the New Green!" could be a new slogan for Summer environmental purity in the area, but the grass is greener in Snohomish County right now, I can tell you, and the Geese were voting with their wings. Or so it seemed. Purity is a great concept when your'e not hungry.
That being said, recent rains are greening up the poor ol' lawn a bit here in Port Townsend. Mowing time again soon. Oh well.
Jeff Gibsonjust sayin'Port Townsend Wa