Situated right on the beach of Puget Sound in Washington, this spot couldn’t be more different from my spot in Centennial Woods. Its really open and human impact is much clearer and noticeable in this area than in VT. Given that Seattle is much more populated and everyone has been inside for the past few rainy months, it was pretty crowded and didn’t feel as wild as Centennial Woods does. The focus here is much more on human use than wildlife or conservation. This time of year, Seattle feels like spring, unlike Vermont. It was about 50° when I was there, and plants are blooming and budding. We don’t really get the freeze-thaw cycles that Vermont gets, so once on thing blooms, it seems like everything else goes all at once.
Like I said, Golden Gardens was pretty busy that day, and usually is almost every day of the year. It’s the most accessible public beach in the city, so foot and car traffic is really high throughout the whole park. There is a small wetland on the north edge of the field near the beach that is maintained by the city. This wetland is small but supports a pretty large population of Mallard ducks, common but interesting nonetheless. Breeding season for these birds starts in early March (right now!), and so the pairs that males and females formed in the the fall are still together. When I was there, there were probably 10 or 15 different duck pairs that I saw, all sticking very close to each other. Nesting does not occur for another month or so for these birds, so for now they are just scoping out territory. There will probably be baby ducks when I am back in the summer, something to look forward to.
Theres other signs of spring in the area. None of the deciduous trees have leaves on the yet, but most of them have buds and some have the starts of blossoms. The neighborhood up the hill from this park has a pretty spectacular collection of flowering cherry trees, which I am unfortunately missing the peak of this year. Hopefully I’ll catch the end of them in May. Even though there aren’t blossoms on these trees yet, they appear slightly pink even from afar due to the buds on the branches that are probably only about a week and a half from popping open. A few of the smaller magnolia trees around the city have early flowers, but none of the trees have leaves yet. I have a huge poplar tree in my backyard that has catkins on it, and standing under it you can hear the casings of the catkins popping open (it sounds almost like someone crinkling plastic).
Doing the walk-around for this posting made me remember how much I love Seattle in the spring. It may rain a lot, but when the rain breaks you’re left with prefect conditions for flowers and greenery. They don’t call it the Emerald City for nothing. Seattle also has a really distinctive light in the evenings in spring and fall, when the sun dips just low enough that it comes below the cloud cover. When this happens, about an hour or so before sunset, you get this really gorgeous golden light against the dark blue sky over the Cascade Mountains to the east, and a golden outline of the Olympic range to the west. Makes for quite the sunset.
