Fall weather

With the advent of Facebook, the impulse to post is somewhat satisfied, but the photos appear and then disappear and the story doesn't develop.  Items posted to an album remain a little while at least.  While the impulse lasts, here are a few photos I took recently.  I put up a hummingbird feeder, and almost immediately, hummers showed up, first a female Anna's, then later the male.

Don't know how they survive, can't be many flowers producing nectar but Google says they stay in the Willamette Valley all year.

Days were clear and sunny.  In the garden, a snake showed up day after day to warm in the sun.

Garter snakes are mildly poisonous, it turns out, if you let them chew on you.  Who knew?  Nights were balmy too.  I couldn't resist the sulky in moonlight.

Then the morning of Friday the 13th, snow started falling.

Notice the sulky is headed north.  A friend posted "Turn back, turn back!" 

By noon, we had 8 1/2 inches between the house and barn. and from time to time flurries continued.

Because of the timing, roads weren't plowed or sanded.  After several trucks slid into ditches and one postal service woman broke her wrist in a fall, the post office called in the entire fleet.  So much for "Neither snow nor rain...nor gloom of night..."  We didn't get any mail that night, hilly areas in town didn't get deliveries for a week.  Then the temperature started falling.

By morning, it was cold.  Fog settled in and froze on everything but the geese.

Seven days later the sun returned,

snow started melting,

broken pipes started flowing, flooding basements and apartments here and there around town, and several spots in our garden.  Fortunately, I have turn-offs in critical places.  The streets cleared and the Gazette-Times declared that it had been a once in 20-year event.  The Anna's returned.

And it was still Fall.

Days of Wine and ....

Fall arrived with bluster, gusts bowled over the good luck sign on the patio, rain intermittently blew sideways, the house felt chill and damp, but we were off to a party arranged by Kerry, a friend from school who had purchased futures on a barrel of Cabernet that was now ready to bottle.  Rainsong is a boutique winery on 55 acres with about 9 acres of grapes, located about 45 minutes from the ranch along a narrow curvy road in the hills near Cheshire.  We arrived during a lull in the rain and found a few of the other bottlers already exploring the small (even by Oregon standards) winery, set on a slope between trees and fields, with the end of grape rows barely visible at the top of the rise several hundred yards beyond.

Mike, the vintner, started a fire in a cast iron fireplace under the portico and began telling us about the young bobcat that was making inroads in the local wild turkey population, and when the rest of the party arrived, about making wine and how the bottling would proceed.

Mike started at the beginning of the production line, pointing out the barrel we would be draining, on the third tier above, a Tygon tube trailing from the bung hole down to the array of spigots where we would fill the bottles.

When a bottle was full, the person at that station placed it to the left where the corker inserted it in the tray of the corking machine, pushed the lever down until the cork was seated,

then placed the bottle on the labeling table, where individuals smoothed a label on the back, then passed the bottle on to another who put on the front label.

In the middle of all this, someone spotted the bobcat in the field above and some of us rushed out to see: a speck some hundred yards away.

My little Leica could barely record the speck, and even enhanced, only a few brown pixels provide evidence.

While I was out, however, I snapped more evidence of life in the wild.

When the barrel was empty, the bottles all cased, we sat down to a pot luck, fortified against the weather, of course, with generous glasses of Rainsong's product.

And when we were sufficiently satisfied, we purchased our own cases of the Cab against the possibility of more chilly Oregon sunshine.

Foreigner

We skipped the first night of the Albany Art & Air Festival but despite Deb's not feeling well we braved the crowd for the Foreigner concert.  We arrived later than we usually do for these things but parking was easy and they still had armbands that limited the number of people allowed to set up on the grass around the pond that surrounds the stage.  We found a thin strip of grass on the bank at the side of the stage, set up, went to the beer garden for a light supper, then back to our spot to wait.

The crowd didn't bother the ducks at all; all night, only one drunk wound up in the water.

Right at 8 the band came out and started playing and working the crowd.

For an hour and a half they played and sang and even I recognized every number, which gives an idea of how popular they've been since starting in 1976.

After they left the stage, the fireworks, and our spot on the bank provided a better view than we've had in the past.

A pleasant evening.

Yachats B'Day

We drove over to celebrate Debbie Rudel's birthday Wednesday with lovely weather in both the valley and the coast.  Found Debbie

and Bob at home

and then went into town to eat at Ona, a new restaurant for us.

The weather was so nice, we ate on the deck.  The food was good, but not great.

After dinner, we drove to the top of Horizon Hill, a destination Deb and I have tried several times to find again after a trip some years ago.

We made it to the top this time, and watched the sun set.

A lovely view, looking down on downtown Yachats and a pacific Pacific.

We stayed the night and after a leisurely morning, drove to Florence,

window shopped, and ate a late lunch on the deck at ICM fishhouse.

Then back to Yachats and home.

A nice time.

Summer Visit '13

Laurel and the grandkids hopped a United from a wedding in Denver to spend a few days in Oregon at the beginning of summer, 2013.  We set up a trailer in the yard to provide bedroom space and an extra bath and planned a busy schedule.

First was a dinner at Aomatsu to celebrate Matthew's upcoming 13th birthday.  Because it was raining, we started indoors: OMSI's "Mummies of the World"--the largest exhibition of mummies and related artifacts ever assembled (according to their website), including mummies (both man-made and accidental) and artifacts from Asia, Oceania, South America, Europe, and Egypt, dating as far back as 6,500 years.

Photographing inside was not allowed but I have my ways.

From OMSI we went to the Portland Art Museum to take in Cyclepedia, the third of PAM's design-oriented exhibition series (I went in 2011 to Allure of the Automobile; photos can be found elsewhere in this blog).  The 40 bicycles on display were from the collection of Vienna-based designer and bike aficionado Michael Embacher.  The examples were fascinating, but I had hoped for a more inclusive historical collection.

There were bicycles for racing, mountains, touring, tandem (side-by-side as well as fore-and-aft), folding, cargo, and a child's bike that converted into a stroller--I have included two I found especially interesting, a folding bike popular in China, and a bike designed for ice riding (not very successfully, according to the display text).

I also wanted to see MAN/WOMAN, so while the kids explored other art, Laurel and I took in the 50-odd bronze and marble works by Gaston Lachaise (American, born France, 1882-1935).

A fascinating set, clearly a precursor to Fernando Botero's buxom bronzes.

We stopped at Powell's and while Deb visited nearby second-hand clothiers, the rest of us took a break at Peet's where, as Matthew watched, Maren resisted my efforts to immortalize her eating whipped cream with a straw.

The rain stopped, we headed first for the hills:  Silver Falls State Park, one of the two destinations Laurel especially wanted to visit as we had a number of times when she was younger.  The trees, the creeks, and the falls of course are pretty much the same but the trails have changed: bricked near the parking lots by the lodges and cabins, paved and graveled elsewhere, with substantial railings in place along the cliffs.  South Falls is a lovely as ever.

We followed the trail under the falls along South Fork of Silver Creek.  Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) was blooming,

salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) was ripening,

the walk was all I remembered,

but I had a special goal: a stump left from the logging of the old growth forest that once existed throughout the PNW, a stump we've admired every trip we've made to Silver Falls.  The earliest photo I've found is from 1979.

Laurel has climbed to the top, Judi stands by the springboard cuts and Silkie looks on (dogs are now forbidden on the trails.)

The next photo was taken in 2010 with Deb and Bogie and somewhat shrunken stump.  Today we can no longer climb to the top.  I wonder how much longer we'll be able to admire this memorial to the great forests.

We continued to Lower South Falls

and then back on Maple Ridge Trail, about 2 1/2 miles in all, enough to pretty much wipe us out for the rest of the day,

curtailing our plan to hike the Oregon Garden and the Frank Lloyd Wright house.  Instead, we drove, looked at what we could see from the car windows; perhaps we'll visit it another time.

Friday, the coast, the other destination on Laurel's list:  first Yaquina Head.  The light house was closed until July due to the sequester, we were told, but the outside is still impressive

and the Harbor Seals and cormorants are not affected by federal shenanigans.

On to Sea Lion Caves, one of the great sea grottos of the world.  I had forgotten that the elevator was completed only in 1961; prior to that date, to enter the cave, visitors used a quarter mile steep trail and a 135-step wood tower, remnants of which can still be seen at the north opening.

I got the feeling the grandkids were not as impressed by the experience as the adults; for the kids, Disney World is more exciting.

Saturday afternoon, we headed for Portland, stopping at Champoeg Park, the site of what may be the oldest structure in Oregon--the Donald Manson Barn,

 

thought to have been salvaged from the 1861 flood that washed away the town of Champoeg--and the oldest operating store, Butteville Store, founded in 1863, where we sampled ice cream.  The park features a pioneer-type garden

and small collections of pioneer artifacts, camp grounds, and bike trails.  In Portland, we wandered antique stores in the Sellwood district but nothing leapt out at us, and ate a scrumptious dinner at a Cena, then dropped the crew off at the Radisson for the 5:30 a.m. flight to Huntsville the next morning.

A nice summer's visit.