Happy Birthday to Me

So, I've decided to post a few pictures from my birthday -- celebrated yesterday in Seattle.

We walked some of the streets of the city, on a cool and sunny afternoon. Here's a dahlia that I loved, planted in a median near Pete's (http://www.peteswineshop.com/store/) where we bought some interesting Washington state wines. More about that later.

Likewise, artichokes are everywhere in street-side vegetable gardens (take that, Ferguson, Mo.! http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/ferguson-resident-wins-fight-for-front-yard-vegetable-garden/article_a5452134-2a26-5dc5-9c16-0c1c212c8ff3.html ).

Salted caramel ice cream from Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream shop (http://www.mollymoonicecream.com/) topped off a surprisingly ho-hum lunch elsewhere (http://whereyaatmatt.com/, celebrated as a New Orleans food truck here, not so much by us but especially not by Alex, who's from New Orleans). We made up for what we didn't eat from Matt's at tables in front of the Molly Moon store (Alex had lavender-vanilla). And when we looked up, we saw "Ice Cream" in the sky.

Later, we took plastic glasses of one of our new wines to a beach on Puget Sound, in Discovery Park (http://www.seattle.gov/parks/environment/discovery.htm). If you look closely at the center left of this photo -- where two islands seem to join -- you'll see a hazy Mount Rainier.  That mountain is extremely impressive when you drive closer to it, as we did coming in from Montana. We'll view it up close and personal again Saturday, on our drive home (http://www.nps.gov/mora/index.htm).

A pair of eagles also took in the scene, near the Discovery Park lighthouse.

Dinner came late, at the seafood restaurant Chinook's (http://www.anthonys.com/restaurants/detail/chinook-at-salmon-bay/). I had halibut cakes -- very light and totally YUM! -- and Alex chose the seafood platter. All in all, a more than acceptable birthday was had by me! Oh, and I bought myself two mini-, black-stemmed, purple-flowering dahlias at a garden center on Fremont (http://emeraldcitygardens.com/) just to round out the day.