Aki is not here. Since she is a dog she must stay home. Dogs are not allowed to visit the arboretum that blossoms north of Juneau. I am not worried about her absence. She already had a nice little neighborhood walk this morning. At her age, she probably prefers an afternoon snooze on this sunny day to a wander around our town’s beautiful little garden.

            We were lucky to find an empty space to use in the arboretum parking lot. Given that crowd of cars, I had expected the little garden to be jammed with drivers. But, it turned out we had no reason to worry. Most of the drivers were being guided around towers of flowering fox gloves by the main gardener. After soaking up sunshine and flowering plants, I walked down to the beach to watch rolling salmon glide in and out of the bay waters.