Stick a fork in it, its done.

 Another picture from the University Street Fair (May 21)

This pair of cats entertained passersby with their music yesterday (May 21) morning at University Street Fair. Like any street musicians they had placed their hat on the pavement in front of their stage. It just occurred to me as I wrote that, to wonder about how that hat would fit over their kitty ears, I guess the musicians must have worked that out before getting to the fair.

This morning's magazine insert in the Seattle Times include a nostalgia piece about accordions, and a Seattle store that has been making and selling accordions for 100 years.

But I wonder about the instrument played by the second musician. Will it ever gain a following that might raise it to the level of nostalgia at future street fairs?

Further down the Ave, another musical group was entertaining. Their sound was ever so much louder and the accumulated crowd standing in the street listening was ever so much larger.

 

Pileated woodpecker in Beaver Pond Natural Area.  I watched as this bird first came into my field of view with a flash of wings landing on the opposite side of a tall snag beyond the range of my photo lens.  He reappeared after a few minutes just before I was about to give up, thinking that I had been mistaken in initially thinking that the flash of wings was real and had stopped at the tree.  He did reappear and flew down to forage on short stubs and logs on the ground, before he came to this rotting log, and commenced poking and probing and prying and tossing off bits of the rotted wood.  All the while I was silently urging the bird to keep moving along the log to get to the more photogenic spot of sunlight at the end of the log.  He finally obliged and spent several minutes in the sun as shown, before flying off, and out of my sight.

Note: the water below and behind the bird is Thornton Creek backed up by a beaver dam.

 

Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus).  Thimbleberry is a native shrub, related to the imported Himalayan blackberry (Rubus discolor) but lacking the sharp thorns.  Thimbleberry berries are not satisfactory for picking to make into jam or to bake in a pie.  They are not so sweet and succulent; some would suggest that the taste tends toward bitter; nor are they very prolific.  But the flowers are delicately pretty, if caught at the right time and in the best light.

 Two views of the same big leaf maple branch against the red siding and a dark window.First is from April 5, second came 42 days later.

Photo taken April 5, note hanging flower clusters.

Photo taken May 17, note heavy, hanging seed pods.  Maple seed pods are, using scientific jargon, called samara, to kids who gather and toss them in the air to watch as they float down call them helicopters and a variety of other local terms.