Spring has Sprung!

The scent of cottonwood is just starting to make it's appearance here in Homer. It has an intoxicating sweet balsam scent, that I adore. I have often wondered why the scent was never captured as a perfume or essential oil. Perhaps a project to look into during the winter....

Here is a picture of the cottonwood tree....

Even though the calendar says "spring" the grass is just starting to turn green and small buds are arriving on the trees. It is certainly nice to start to see some green around town. The boarded up stores are starting to open up for business and people are slowly trickling into town.

We have extreme tides here in Alaska, and this past week we had severe minus tides, which are perfect for exposing clam beds! So we tried our hand at razor clam digging. It was a beautiful day on the beach, but because of a severe winter storm (that we found out about AFTER we tried clamming) a few years ago, the clamming has been difficult. We found several razor clams but they were too small to take home. We did find about a dozen ENORMOUS butter clams bigger than the size of my hand. All in all we came home with about 15 clams, which is a huge disappointment. Three years ago I remember razor clamming and getting our limit within a couple of hours (60 clams per person). Ahhh those were the days....

Yesterday we went to a small town called Seldovia. It is not connected to the road system which makes it a bit more remote. They were having a wood carving chainsaw festival. For those who know Ray, he loves wood, wood carvings and any type of crafting with wood. It was a fairly small festival, however, the carvings are beautiful. We spent the entire day walking around the town, hiking and chatting with the local folks. Seldovia is a beautiful small town with a more relaxed atmosphere than busy Homer. Most of the places in Seldovia have no running water and people rely on their neighbors. I like that type of lifestyle and wouldn't mind living like that for a bit, but Ray is dead against it. So running water and electric it shall be, for now......

Until next time, hoping you are all well.