Bubbles!

Yesterday we went to a beautiful summer party out on the Olympic Peninsula at a house that overlooks Puget Sound and the northern surburbs of Seattle.

And Mt. Baker.



A cruise ship headed for Alaska.



Cool garden art. Hey, is that a snake?



Ayup.







The food was great, the company was great, the vinho verde was great. But best of all were the bubbles.



Oh my God. Every summer party needs a bubble setup like this.



Luckily there were only a couple of kids at the party, so the grownups got to hog the solution and the wands.













Fun!

Little and Lewis Garden Gallery

On our way out to a party outside Kingston today, we decided to stop at Little and Lewis, my favorite little garden in the area.

We have to wait an hour for the ferry to Bainbridge. I fret that my big sunglasses, which are perfect for my big head, are out of style again.



Don't worry -- we don't need an appointment today. It's their last open garden day of the year.





















"This place is very Pan's Labyrinth," my husband said, and he didn't even see the little fairy girl running through the trees.

























Yes, very Pan's Labyrinth.



































On our way to Kingston, we stopped at the grave of Chief Sealth, former head of the Suquamish tribe and the namesake of Seattle.







I see that people have decorated his grave with firecrackers and casino trinkets, two things that can be found in abundance on the reservations out here.

Sabey to Demolish Part of the Rainier Cold Storage Building Complex

This comes as no surprise to any of us who took one of Sabey Corporation's recent building tours, but the company has announced plans to demolish the rapidly sinking/crumbling Stock House portion of the Rainier Cold Storage Building on Airport Way. This includes the building across from the Vespa dealership, and the facade across from Jules Maes.

They invited us neighbors to tour the building last month so later we could present unbiased testimony as to its state of disrepair. It's an old brick building that was used as an ammonia freezer for decades, to the point that the ground underneath was frozen solid for 24 feet down. The building heaved up an entire foot on top of this ice ball, and now it's in the process of thawing out. And subsequently sinking.

So yes, I can testify that it seemed unsalvageable. I was actually a little scared to even be inside it. They had marked Xes on the walls across cracks, and you could see that their marks had visibly shifted just over the course of some months.

In an e-mail to the Georgetown mailing list today, Sabey representative Jim Harmon wrote:

The silver lining here is that a new building can be placed of equivalent mass, setback off the street to create pedestrian room, allow reasonable vehicle access and circulation, and open up the "great wall" between the east and west sides of Airport Way. This building is in the process of being designed.

Johnson Architecture + Planning, whose work doesn't blow me away but could certainly be worse, is supposed to have some designs done by September 1. Let's hope they're on their best game for this project, which will one of the biggest changes to the neighborhood since I-5 went in.

Here's the application to the Landmarks Review Board to get permission to demolish the structure. You can see the maps and the history and everything there.