On the Ranch

We flew to San Jose and drove down to Creston to see Matt's parents. They live in a house that looks like a barn in the rolling hills of Central California. Parts of their property look like the default Windows XP backdrop.

Matt's parents, Gary and Marilyn, built this pond and have been keeping it up very nicely. Check out their web site for the latest update. There are lots of beautiful wild flowers on their property these days.

... including pink poppies! There are also some long horn cattle that graze there.

Steve happened to be visiting that weekend too and Matt got to share some twin time with him.

The print that Takashi (Nile's dad) gave to Matt's parents is hanging nicely near there bedroom. Nile liked how they hung it next to their parrot to keep eachother company.

Parade of School Busses

There is an elementary school next to our house. Between 3:30 and 3:35 there is a whole parade of school busses. This is looking north from the three way intersection that we live at.

They continue down to the south.

And some line up to the west. One day Nile plans to count them all to figure out just how many there are.

The Seattle Public Library

Nile went to the new, downtown Seattle Public Library branch. This building has been featured in magazine car ads. It has also won some architecture awards.

Inside is very futuristic. The library system is futuristic too. All the books have RFID tags, so when you check out, you just put your books on a pad, and it detects them all. You just scan your card and off you go!

One of the floors in the building is completely red. We didn't alter the color in this photo at all. It's really that red. After this floor, everything looks greener.

Origami no hon! (Origami book)

Tonight we went to Uwajimaya, a local Japanese grocery and gift store, and stopped at Kinokuniya, the book store next-door. They have more origami books than we've seen anywhere. At first, Matt was looking through each one, thinking that there was just one shelf of them. Then he realized that it was the entire bookcase. Then Nile pointed out that there was another bookcase of origami books written in Japanese next to it. Matt ended up getting this book which is by his favorite origami author. He already has his sea animals book.

At home, Matt folded a hippo and some grass for the hippo from the book. Hippos come out of the water at night to feed. Nile wants to make a background for all the African animals that Matt is going to make. We are both excited about our new project.

These are some seashells from the other book by the same author.

U.W. Greenhouse

Nile heard a rumor that a corpse flower is at bloom at the U of W greenhouse, so she went to check it out. They didn't have a corpse flower, but they did have other species in the same genus in bloom.


This is an Amorphophallus that is emerging from its resting stage.


This is an emerging leaf on another related species.


Each year it dies completly back to the ground and regrows bigger. After several years of dying back and regrowing it can be quite big. This is the corpse flower in its vegitative state. It is about 2 meters tall.


Once it has enough energy, after dying back multiple times, it regrows as a flower. This one is Amorphophallus abyssinicus from Nigeria.

This is the inside of the flower. Reading down the inflorecence, the purple wrikly part is non-sexual, the lighter part is male, and the darker spotted part deep down is female.

After it is pollinated, the petal and male part die off and the female part develops into seeds. This is the corpse flower that bloomed a while ago.

These are the seeds up close. It won't produce seeds unless it is polinated. In the wild the stench of the flower attracts flies which polinate it. (It smells like a corpse, hence the name.) In the greenhouse they polinate it with deep frozen pollen.
They have quite a collection of plants in this genus.

They have other exotic life forms including this cute little frog.

They have a large collection of passiflora as well.

Another strange thing Nile saw there was this giant coffee bean-looking palm seed. It was at least a foot across. Not the pot, but the seed. She has no idea what the stuff surrounding it in the giant tub is. It says "Do Not Touch," so she didn't, and therefore couldn't figure it out.

Nile never saw a larger pitcher plant than this one. The pitcher was more than a foot long.

... and the plant was very large too.

Every botanist's favorite plant, welwitschia, was growing there too.

It seemed that most everything was in bloom at the greenhouse, including the welwitschia.

Here are some flowering carnivourous plants as well.



"Come again!"

More home improvement

Last week, Nile was invited to a dinner at an art collector's house and came home inspired to put more things on the wall. Here are some that were up already. The top two are Eiji's (Nile's uncle) Italy landscapes, and the bottom four are Romney's (a friend from Toronto) Italy landscapes.

This is a new picture that Nile put up after her inspiration. It is a tinga-tinga painting that she got in Tanzania. It looks really small in this picture, but we think it's proportional. We have a larger one (later) that we were thinking of putting here, but it was much too big. Nile thinks she should go back to Tanzania to get the right size.

Here is another tinga-tinga.

This is our largest tinga-tinga, but we don't know where to put it yet.

Matt at Nile's work

Matt visited Nile on Saturday while she worked. There were pretty things in bloom.




Last week Ivan and Frank were being rebel cats but this week they were mellow and napping inside all day.

Nile loves the color of this one!


Orchid version of butter and eggs?


Red Passion Flower

Matt's friend Ari didn't believe Nile that Crown of Thorns came in any other color than red. Here is a yellow one.



The wasabi plants that Matt donated last year have been doing well under David's care.
The cacti are blooming now too.
Double pettaled Daffodils