Tom and Patti Saunders
Dog's Breath Acres 2020 Annual Report
Dog's Breath Acres 2020
The first thing I said when I woke up on New Year's Day, January 1, was "Rabbit, Rabbit",
thus guaranteeing good luck for the rest of the year. The rabbits died 72 days later.
Day 1 of the Covid Lockdown: Daphne's suggestion for solving the "Do not touch your face" problem.
Day 34: I had no problem social distancing at Costco.
Day 71: Trouble brewing
Scott loses his fishing license
(That's Michael, acting as bait.)
Day 63: During World War II, while aboard the U.S. Army Hospital Ship St. Olaf, Dad passed some of the time during his Atlantic and Pacific crossings building ships-in-bottles. He learned the craft from an old salt aboard the ship, and built a box to hold his tools. As a Covid Project, I refinished the box a bit for Patti to store some of her art supplies. Click here for some more of Dad's work.
Day 84: Patti took part in a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Bothell (with proper social distancing).
Day 100: Daphne had a close call in the summer. One day she completely stopped eating, so after a while it was off to the vet. X-rays showed some sort of growth in her belly, so she went under the knife. Dr. Black (our hero), who wasn't very optimistic about the outcome, removed a large tumor plus a kidney. She just barely made it through the operation, but recovered pretty quickly and was soon back to her normal, semi-active self. And, nearly as important, she's been quite a comfort to the Authorities (Patti and me) throughout the lockdown.
Day 187: Another close call: in September Carol, Kate, and Ger had one during the wildfires near their homes down on the Oregon coast. The Echo Mountain Complex fire burned just south of them, shown in yellow on this map. With a little bad luck and a wind change, their houses would have been toast, with nothing but forest between them and the fire.
As it was, they endured days of road closures and choking smoke, until Kate (successfully) performed a rain dance.
Up here in Washington we spent a week indoors to avoid the smoke.
Click Here for a larger vesion of the map.
Day 197: Patti got an email from Michael (age 12), with a picture: "Thank you today I made kinda like a comic style. It’s of a deck of cards and the main one is 2020 for me". Click to enlarge.
Day 200: Patti's been sending out postcards boosting
Democratic voter participation.
Click Here for a bit more
Day 223: With the lockdown, our grandson Anchor hasn't been able to visit; and, in particular, play with the trains. So I made a couple of videos of the layout in operation for him. Click Here to view.
Day 235: Here's a crystal radio that my grandfather Earl Saunders and his son Bob, age 5, used to listen to the very first commercial radio broadcast on KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 2, 1920, exactly 100 years ago.
Day 240: Some photos of dawn in America
Patti has been busy sewing Covid masks, making art and books, and participating in bunches of Zoom classes and meetings. A few pictures.
Some Northwest ferns, mostly at Dog's Breath Acres
Day 146,997 (approximately): On this date (November 21) exactly 400 years ago a few of our ancestors arrived at Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower. Since our DNA shows no signs of Native ancestry, this is the earliest of any of our American roots. These Mayflower ancestors included Francis and John Cooke, Thomas Rogers, Richard Warren, William Bradford, and William Brewster and his wife, Mary.
Day 265: The first hair ice of the season. From Wikipedia:
Hair ice forms on moist, rotting wood when temperatures are slightly under freezing and the air is humid. The smooth, silky hairs grow on the fungus Exidiopsis effusa. Back in 1918, the meteorologist and discoverer of continental drift, Alfred Wegener, described hair ice on wet dead wood, assuming some specific fungi as the catalyst. His theory was pretty much ignored until just 2015, when German and Swiss scientists identified the fungus as the key to hair ice formation.
Day 265: We went over to the UW Bothell campus to view the nightly roost of 1000s of crows. A bit more.
Day 281: We installed a trail camera out back. Here's a compilation of some of the critters who came to visit.
Day 281: Thanks to covid, Patti, Judy, and Sue had to have their annual Christmas get together in a parking garage.
Click Here for a picture from last year.
Smoke and virions limited my hiking this year.
Here are a few photos:
Thanks to our Covid Lockdown, nearly all of this year's favorite photos are from Dog's Breath Acres. Click Here.
I've added a bunch of older Old Saybrook photos, including some of Old Saybrook High School classmates, and from around town, 1947 thru 1974. Plus old postcards and maps.
In an effort to keep up with the pandemic of selfies flooding Facebook, here are a few of my own from over the years.
