Life at the Lake

Lake Ketchum Art Galleries is another website of ours: Click on Art Gallery to go there. Be sure to visit it, if you enjoy contemporary art.
It features painting , drawing, digital graphics, and photography.

We also have a literary website, Kingfisher Journal, which you might enjoy. Go to Kingfisher Journal.
Its content changes regularly. It is published in four issues per year, but an issue may have several editions, so please keep coming back. The site emphasizes poetry, fiction, movies, and literary criticism. There is usually a fine painting on its masthead. Often the art is by a regional artist.

Please note: Life at the Lake is archived. (See below, lower column right.) Click on the hyperlink to visit some of our older entries.

Some Representative Views of the Lake and Its Environs

The sun has not yet set, but already the moon has risen in a scudded sky
A pair of wood ducks on our dock rail, where we have a feeder placed specially for them. The only duck with prehensile feet, they can (and do) perch in adjacent cedar trees. These shy ducks will not be approached and feed only when left entirely alone.

Facing West, a brilliant October sunset holds the eye long after the sun is gone to bed

Nearby tulip fields of Skagit Valley. Actually our lake straddles two watersheds, the Skagit and Stillaguamish. But the former is more famous

.
Four domestic geese arrange themselves in eye-pleasing fashion

Ah, my boat and dock, though I used the motor
rarely and prefer to row, especially when I fish

Early moonset on the lake, a pretty time of day

Yes, it is I, with a bigger-than-average rainbow. Most our trout are planted small, but grow an inch or so a month during the summer, and by fall are of
respectable size. We always let them go.

Life At The Lake

568

Both the yellow iris and the purple iris are in bloom. The yellow we brought to the lake, but have since learned that is is classified as a pernicious weed because of how rapidly it spreads and will take over a wet area. Still, it is beautiful and cheery during a dark and rainy spring. But the purple iris is thoroughly domesticated and does not spread so vigorously. And to some of us it is even more beautiful, though long domesticated.

In my old age I enjoy photographing flowers, especially those my wife has tended so carefully . And I know enough about photography so that I can get great sharpness and depth of field, color saturation, and brilliance.

That is rewarding for someone who has no horticultural talent. And here they are again:

569

This is just about the worst year for trout fishing I can recall. I don't think the constant rain has anything to do with it.

The hatchery plant came late again and the fish seem an inch or two smaller than in recent past years. And the lake is clogged again with filamentous green algae, making vision for both the fish and the fishermen more difficult.

It is always easy, if you are a fisher, to blame somebody else for your lack of success. In fact, that is the characteristic that distinguishes fishers from "real" people--their ability to stand around and complain at such length.

Speaking only for myself, I am only catching the odd trout and, as a consequence, fish less than I do most years. That is more a change in behavior pattern than it is a vocal complaint. Though I suppose it is both.

More views of the lake