Finally, its light as we drive to preschool and gather in the playground for outdoor time. Its always wet but we prevail because Its Good For Kids to Play Outside. We drag the wagon full of towels from the school to the playground and wipe down all the playground equipment. After the parks ppl noticed us doing this a lot they drilled holes in the seats of the swings and base of the slide so the water drains rather than pools but they are still wet all over.

So, we dry the stuff off and then shiver with our hands in our pockets, squinting at the bright grey sky, and sharing how tired we all are. But its tired in a good way. Of having no reason to push at doing things. Of just being warm and comfortable all day rather than Hiking and Halling and gardening all day. There’s a time of retreat.

After school its noontime and the afternoon closes in on us. When he wakes up from nap its already dark and he asks “is it nightime now?” and I persuade him it isn’t sort of. But it is.

And then we wallow in library books from the Seattle Public Library and watch TV and make lego robots for ages and look out the window at the wet dogs going after-work walking and the way the trees are leafless, mostly.

Actually, I guess have been enjoying the outdoors a great deal lately – just from inside the house.

You see, this wasn’t a problem when we were DINKs and lived in an apartment on Capitol Hill, but now that we have a house and yard and kid there is this thing called a garden outside. If I do nothing the bare earth does more, as if to balance out my inactivity. The more emptiness you leave (even artful emptiness with grey stones) the more it becomes a mess in a month. The answer is to fill the ground in with plants and let them do the work of fighting weeds.

Now, if anyone has ever visited our good local nurseries – Swanson’s, City People’s, Molbaks or Wells Medina (oh hallowed ground among gardeners with $$) you’ll see that plants are pricey. It would take thousands of dollars to fill our bald spots with anything larger than a head of broccoli.

Then there is Flower World USA near Woodinville (once referred to as the Walmart of nurseries). You can get a lot more for your money here, but like Costco or Walmart you also spend a lot to get a lot. Still, when I need something that isn’t too particular, I go here. There’s even a petting zoo where the kids and non-gardening spouse can frolic by the fake-lake.

For trees, especially larger trees, on a budget. I like Olympic Nursery which specializes in trees. They have big trees, decent sales and a good range. The trees are a lot bigger than the ones you get at neighbourhood nurseries.

My latest discovery has been Gardenweb. Gardenweb has discussion groups for gardeners including a local network. There are also plant exchanges where people make trades (your brugmansia for my um, oops, I don’t have any plants yet) and donations to new gardeners. Also, spread through the year there are plant swap meets where gardeners in the region gather with their trunks full of plants and swap or donate them to others with space and desire.

If you watch the plant exchange list the dates and times are posted. There is one “Green Elephant Trade” coming up in spring.

Oh, must make some more waffles… breakfast… and its Thanksgiving so I’d better..

Herewith: The Best Place to Buy Used DinosaurTankoBots in (my parts) of Seattle.

1)Value Village – Capitol Hill. This used to be the best place to find quality used toys. We call it The Broken Car Shop because we’ve bought so many HotWheels cars there. Some months back they re-organized and while the toys may be the same we seem to find fewer real glories. Perhaps it’s because they are better displayed and so more people get to pick through them rather than having to dig and delve and fight the undertoad to find the treasures. Regardless, there are still wonderful dinosaurs to be found here, including Carnegie Collection Dipolodocus and Stegasauros.

2) Value Village – Lake City Way. This is now our most frequent stop for a dinobot fix. The prices are still reasonable (you can get some good toys for under $2) and if a price tag is missing they tend to guess low rather than high. This is a good guide! Someone recently donated a large collection of Godzillas and we made off with a few.

3) Goodwill on Dearborn downtown. This is the megamall of thrift stores. Its worth going simply to get something you don’t really need really cheap and to come back with your hands smelling musty. I find I need to strap my son in at Goodwill as it has a kind of warehouse atmosphere – carts are overloaded, shelves sometimes topple over and there are just way too many people and space to let a three-year old roam. And its kind of gloomy, like you are walking around in the twilight while a light rain chills the pigeons who are shi**ing on your car. Sometimes you find great stuff, of course, but its best for Toy-r-US castoffs rather than independent toystore stuff. Very little wood or stuff that lasts. Dinosaurs are thin on the ground here but if you get that urge, and you’re eating dim sum somewhere local, go for it.

If this all fails then there are a few in Ballard:

4) Value Village on 15th NW (the parking is often difficult) – a good toy selection but also very busy. My son seldom finds toy-treasures but always enjoys the visit.

5) The NEW Goodwill on 8th in Ballard. I like this place but its new and smaller than it looks from the outside and perhaps it feels not fully crammed with stuff (yet). The toys are all higgeldy piggeldy on shelves, not hooked up in bags like the T-stores with the best toys. It gets to be a real mess once a few kids have poked through them and pulled half onto the floor. We enjoyed our visit but I bought something for the sake of it rather than being really pleased with what we found. I mean, I think we got a plastic tank with the top missing: one of those toys I will have to disappear before the $1.49 tag rubs off.

Ok, that’s all I have to offer for now. I would love to hear about other good thrift stores.

The women’s Bathhouse is a Korean tradition: hot and cold tubs, an icy waterfall, green goop, mineral baths, wet and dry spas and lots of scrubbing. But, unlike Western spas where you seldom see other women this is a very communal experience. You wander around naked in the ‘wet’ areas (the baths) and have a robe for the other areas. If you’re having a scrub (where they exfoliate you for half an hour until your skin rubs of like pulp) you arrive an hour early for soaking and steaming to soften you up. Afterwards you can relax in the hot rooms (darkened rooms with cushions and highly heated floors made of huge cushions of salt or sand or mats – like lying on a very dim hot beach). And there’s the restaurant with lots of condiments and only $7.50 for anything on the menu.

One of the greatest things about the bathhouse is the fee – its only $25 for use of the facility and $45 for a scrub. I spent almost 4 hours there for that. They’re opening another in Lynnwood – February 2005.

We garden at Picardo – its the largest – as short-season gardeners which means that this Friday the plot must be cleared, all plastics and non-compostables removed, tomatoe cages lugged home and the 10 foot sunflowers torn down.

As always, I am leaving it to the last minute. Hopefully the late pumpkins will have turned slightly less green.

Interestingly, P-Patches are becoming so popular that a couple of new housing developments are advertising “wi-fi and P-Patch for tenants”. Interesting. It reminds me of those pictures of homes built underground with goats browsing on the roof.

Anyway, as I walked home pushing the tractor-tricycle tonight it was particularly picaresque. The streets were gloomy and golden and I could see families in relief against the living room lights and flickering televisions. Umi was eating Japanese-style with her family sitting down at a low table, our neighbors carrying boxes into a car stuffed with – well – stuff, some teenagers hanging Halloween decorations in the front window. An older woman down the road gave us some seashells we admired (and I nearly stood on a dog poop as I walked closer to receive the gift).

And I didn’t even mind being almost run down by motorists going the wrong way around the roundabouts. I mean, what is it about roundabouts Seattle drivers don’t understand? Is it a form of middle-class rebellion, like “dammit, I will pay taxes and smile at the mailman but I will go whichever way I like around this circular impediment?”…

After our recent fieldtrip East of the cascades, its official. The heavy rains in September have made this a Good Year For Mushrooms. For those not mycologically inclined, Seattle is one of the fungal capitals of the world and this year mushrooms both edible, lethal and inspiring have been popping up everywhere.

This (Oct 16th) weekend is a mushroom tourist’s mecca. There’s the Wild Mushroom Exhibit, Fungii with a Fun Guy or quick run down to Wholefoods Market where they have chanterelles at the low (but not rockbottom) price of $7.99 a pound, hedgehog mushrooms, fresh porcini and even Matsutakes – that delicacy that has some people crawling around in dripping forests sniffing fungi and hiding their trails.

For myself, I’ll be heading out the the PSMS Exhibit. The whole mycological scene is as fun as the fungi. You can take your pick among home-schooled kids, students of the psychotropic, russian immigrants, chinese families and a good selection of pot-hunters (no, they’re not hunting pot, just for the pot).

Its late. Its tea-time. I’m getting into green tea but that’s another story….