Wild Yeast

Thank you, thank you!

I am overwhelmed by your kind and supportive words, your own stories of how cancer has touched your lives, and your donations to my Team in Training fundraising. Thanks to you, my motivation and confidence that I can do this marathon thing are higher than ever, and I have already raised over $1900 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

The Sony camera raffle will close once my fundraising total reaches $2500, so if you’d like to get in on it, now would be a good time. Donate here and get one virtual ticket per dollar.

Some people have asked me to post my training progress. These first couple of weeks have been all about learning new skills, mostly ones I thought I had mastered a few decades ago. My teammates and I have been schooled by our wonderful coaches and mentors in how to:

• walk
• get dressed
• tie our shoes
• eat and drink
• act like a dead bug
• say please and thank you

Please know how much your support is appreciated, and thank you for everything!

If you’re looking for a reason why we must save our oceans and open spaces, may I suggest Point Reyes National Seashore? Tule elk graze on bluffs above the rocky shore, wildflowers brighten even the scrubbiest windswept terrain, and if you believe in God you’ll surely feel you’ve been granted privileged admission to one of her personal favorite stomping grounds (to which my photos don’t begin to do justice).
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I could argue that this is nominally on-topic, because I often see this little beauty flitting about outside my kitchen window as I am baking. Last year her nest was directly in front of said window; this year it took me a while to discover its location, once she started making daily appearances in late January.

Happily, the tiny nest turns out to be still well within easy viewing (and photographing) range if I step outside. But I didn’t discover it until the eggs were already hatched, so I’m not sure exactly how old the two hatchlings are. By the look of them, only a few days at most. Their black, shriveled heads are about the size of small blueberries, each with a bright orange beak hardly wider than the tine of a fork.
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