Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

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ode to the americano 1/18/11


ode to the americano
Originally uploaded by Autumn L. Azure 
The much cheaper, under appreciated coffee extravagance, the americano. My regular is a double split (1 shot cafe/1 shot decaf), shot of hazelnut, room for cream. If there ever was a place that had the possibility of nurturing the coffee snob in me, it is Seattle. Here I have learned the difference between swill, diner coffee, Starbucks coffee, and the ubiquitous Seattle independently owned coffee. If Starbucks is Seattle, despite it being on every half block, and then Seattle is some strange simulacrum I only see when out of towners come to see me.

I suppose I should apologize for being a coffee snob. But to me it is more than good coffee. It's good business. Being a cafe dweller and a local business advocate, the two just fit together nicely.  Locally owned, fair-trade purchases, quality product that I am more than willing to spend an extra dollar on.  But I'm not about dissing the Starbucks. I just prefer my smaller businesses. Admittedly, I have hung out at this cleverly disguised Starbucks on Roy and Harvard once or twice.

The featured americano came from Volunteer Park Cafe. You can usually find me writing or reading at one of these three Capitol Hill Cafes: Bauhaus, Vivace, or Joe's Bar. I prefer Joe's Bar americano, the espresso crema is dark and heady; mysterious. For a soy mocha I love Bauhaus' and usually order the largest, which comes in a 16 oz pint glass. Tall, smooth, warm, creamy, bold, and utterly chocolaty in all the right places. Pretty much utopia in a glass.

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ode to botany and bees 1/16/11




















Today was a good day, and may I say, a perfect and very Seattle Winter Sunday. A slow waking, lazying around reading in bed, surrounded by diffused,Winter light, a languid, hot shower (I know water conservation), brunch at Galerias with friends, where I indulged in this mole pabalono, and a walk through woodsy Volunteer Park located in the north end of Capitol Hill. I was even able to convince everyone parading with me on this fine Sunday to explore the conservatory.

As if I needed to pull out my persuasive skills. The conservatory is a little like world travel for botanical lovers, if perhaps, Dr. Seuss had planned it. Each room boasts exotic, Dr. Seuss inspired, if he were a flower god: bromeliads, palms, ferns, fuzzy cacti, and pitcher plants. A plant that a friend accurately described as "slutty." And they are the sirens of the botanical world, except instead of luring by song, they lure by smell. Every room has its own fragrances, temperature, humidity, strangeness, and colors. What I appreciate is not only the human manpower that it must take to preserve and nurture these botanical wonders, but the educational placards that accompany each plant. For instance, I learned about non-parasitic epiphytes. Plants that are supported non-parasitically to other plants or objects, and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and dust. Also known at aerophytes.

 I probably know a little more than your average person due to a botanical interest and a 101 class I took in school, but there is so much vast, interesting stuff out there to know about the wonderful, diverse flora world that yes, LIVES on our PLANET. : )  If you'd like to know more about the amazing, symbiotic relationships that exist between pollinators and their botanical counterparts, I highly recommend watching the Sexual Encounters of the Flora Kind.  It's deliciously corny and has a musical score of a '70's porn.

And if you haven't heard already read about the world-wide colony bee collapses, which at this point you'd have to be living in Plato's cave to not have heard or read about this necessary and I might add adorable pollinator's plight, here's some updated info.  According to the New York Times who quoted a now infamous paper by Army Scientists and Montanan Bee experts, "a fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem." The team states that even though a cause has been located the team now has to find why the particular combination of the fungus and virus kills the bees. According to this CNN article, pesticides are the cause for the bee collapses. While it isn't in doubt that the fungus-virus is plaguing the bees, it alone isn't enough to cause the mass colony collapses; however, common pesticides made by Bayer, are arguably strong enough to weaken the bee's immune systems, which would allow the fungus-virus to take over.

In fact, there is strong evidence that the EPA covered up Bayer's connection to the colony collapses. And to support the pesticide theory, in Europe where the Bayer neonicotinoids have been banned, bee population is being restored. There are still many theories for the mass collapses: limited food supply, pesticides, disease, infection, but many argue it is ultimately due to our mono-culure farming. Limited biodiversity and pesticide usage are two common elements to mono-culture. And way to represent, urban bees are apparently faring better than country bees due to more plant diversity and minimal usage of pesticides.


And for your pleasure, I found this gem while mining the collective of the Internets for bee stuff. The personal journey of a bee keeper.

The difference between a honey bee and a bumble bee: Bumble bees are the slow, innocuous, furry creatures usually bumming around your garden. They pollinate and make honey, but not enough for them to be used commercially. Honey bees are not aggressive by nature, and often get mistaken for wasps and hornets, who are the real villains. Honey bees are used commercially and are the bees that are dying off.

Help save the bees. Bees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 30% of our food. Their plight is key into understanding the importance of a limited-pesticide, biodiverse, polyculture world.

The conservatory is a non-profit in peril. Please go here to vote for it to stay open.

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ode to that thing called snow 1/12/11

On the rare occasion it snows in our infamously soggy city, it is both a nuisance and a form of rare entertainment. But when all is said and done and everyone is finally home from hours stuck in traffic, or finding creative ways to transform our steep hills into sledding mayhem and as the snow continues to fall, the streets become quiet and still. Almost as if we're a proverbial city with normal amounts of snow, and it isn't a rare phenomenon, but rather a fact of life. So after hours of watching the snow fall from our street level apartment I took a walk at midnight, and came across lonely snowmen, ski tracks, piles of frozen snowballs, and and one or two people with the same idea as me. It reminded me so much of when I lived in Montana and I had to be to work by 7 am, and many mornings I'd walk to work in utter whiteness and silence. Even though it was cold and annoying, I miss those quiet moments of walking through the newly fallen snow and abandoned streets because everyone was still sleeping. Not that I want to go back to that place. I'll take the persistent rain over daily snow storms any day. But sometimes it's nice to have on occasion.

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ode to partnerships 1/2/11

Inspired by my sister-in-law I finally uploaded photo apps for the iPhone. We hung out at Neptune Coffee in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle and collaborated on a reading blog.

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