SFFD to Cape Perpetua

Our family has been taking lots of road trips around the Pacific Northwest over the last month. On one weekend, we decided to drive out to the coast and spend some time exploring Cape Perpetua. Sandwiches, dog, kid, cameras were loaded into the car and off we went, down highways 22 and 18 to Lincoln City, then south on Hwy 101 until we arrived.

The kid, being a teenager and all, was a little grumpy about having to tag along with mom and dad. The dog, who usually whines every 15 minutes for a long sniff out an open window, was surprisingly quiet. Things changed once we got there, however.

Mergansers on Suttle Lake

It’s stupid to have lived in Oregon for almost 10 years without really exploring beyond the Willamette Valley. Before yesterday, I had made only two trips over the Santiam Pass. Over the past few months, I have started to come alive and am rapidly expanding my world, which includes discovering Oregon.

Yesterday, when plans to meet up with a friend for a hike and photo shoot in the Jefferson Wilderness fell through, I grabbed Rachel and we headed east. Lunch was made and the car was ready for a road trip, so why not?

Photo of the Santiam Pass burn area courtesy of A.S. Photography

When we first moved here for the upper midwest, I was dying to go swimming in a lake. Local friends recommended Suttle Lake, and while I knew where it was, I had never gone. Yesterday I pointed the car in that direction and drove… over the pass, through the insanely surreal B & B Complex burn area, and to the lake. Yes, it’s a lake all right, but a Midwesterner (aka me) would be hesitant to swim at the gravel beach and steep grade to the bottom.

Rachel stayed in the car (party pooper) while I walked down the Suttle Lake Smoke Trail, along the north side of the lake. I don’t know why I didn’t take my camera. What was I thinking? Darn, I’ll have to go back. Early. With camera and tripod.

The Van Duzer Corridor

Every now and then, Rachel and I need to just get away and relax. Our favorite direction to head is west, toward the Oregon coast, which is only about an hour from home. We usually take the dog, and the plan is to do some beachcombing and just walk in the wet hard-packed sand, breathing in the briny air and watching the seagulls.

Getting there is half the fun. Highways 22 and 18 from Salem to Lincoln City first pass through farmland, wineries and vineyards, logging operations, and a casino. Following the casino is our favorite stretch of road: The Van Duzer Corridor. We love the winding highway, passing lanes, moss covered trees, Salmon Creek, and the summit over Murphy Hill.
Sure, it’s one of the more dangerous stretches of road due to high traffic volume, limited passing, tight curves, sharp drop-offs (guardrails are a luxury item,) and roadbed undermining, but there’s something magical about it.

On one particular trip, we didn’t have time to go all the way to the coast and back, so we stopped at the rest area at the west end of Van Duzer, just before Rose Lodge. All of these pictures were taken at the rest area in October, but the lush moss and vibrant greenery stay this way all winter long.

That’s the beauty of Western Oregon – when winter arrives, everything turns all green and beautiful.
Our winter climate is like a wet refrigerator; cool and damp.

Caesar took a break at the rest area and explored a little. Here he is, King of the Tree Stump. This was either a Douglas Fir or Redwood, with a cut diameter of about 4 feet. It was quite a jump for Caesar to get up onto the stump, too, since it’s about 4 feet high.

I can never get enough of the moss. It comes alive in the fall and coats the trees in its various forms: thick dark moss, minty green lichen, chartreuse velvet… I don’t know any of the moss names, so I refer to them based on how they look. Some moss clings tightly to trees, some looks like a fur coat, other forms drip from the branches.

Either way, it’s breathtaking.
The Van Duzer Corridor may be a dangerous stretch of road, but it’s like a magical fairyland.
We love it.

 

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

It’s the best time of the year.

I don’t know if there’ll be snow, but have a cup of cheer.

Oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year!

The last of the roses

 

 

 

 

Frosty Hydrangea

Yeah, I saw her too.

She was hanging around that group of young guys.

Ratilda, our new… pet?

A couple weeks ago, I was taking pictures of Ollie on the roof of our carriage house. He was more interested than usual in the jasmine bush, which he is sniffing here in this photo. Later that night we realized there was something good to be sniffed in that spot.
See the suet feeder cage hanging from the eaves, just behind and under Ollie?

That evening, when the pooch was let out to go check his pee-mail, that suet feeder was swinging back and forth wildly.
No wind. Huh, that’s odd.

After posting my curiosity on Facebook, my Midwestern friends suggested a raccoon or a nocturnal squirrel.
(I thought it might be a possum. Surely nutria can’t climb, right?)
I grabbed the camera and watched. Here’s the carriage house at night.
What’s that on the suet feeder?

Oh my goodness, it’s a rat!

This is the best I could do with the camera, being nighttime, and I couldn’t get very close.
After our little fiasco with getting a hamster (in 2006) our household is now very familiar with rodent gender identification, and this suet- eating rat is a girl.

We names her Ratilda.

She will not become an indoor pet. I promise.
Sorry, Frank and Rachel, but you cannot change my mind on this one.

Our lease prohibits feeding stray animals, and if we are caught placing food outside, it will be considered a pet and we will have to pay a deposit for it. On the other hand, bird feeders are allowed, and I love having bird feeders outside my kitchen windows. The birds haven’t been too interested in either of the suet feeders this year, and the suet cakes are about a year old, so I really don’t care who eats it at this point. But I suppose since we are feeding a rat, it would be amusing to consider Ratilda our pet.
Just until I can get some D-Con into Ratilda’s suet, anyway.

So what’s the dealio with the swinging suet? I stepped to the the edge of the deck steps to get a better picture and she jumped from the suet to the jasmine.

  

Then she scampered up the trellis into the rain gutter, ran to the downspout, and disappeared.
Aha! She lives in the city storm drains.

Ratilda came back every night and ate the suet until it was down to a thin wafer at the bottom of the cage. Her acrobatics on the suet feeder amused us, but she gave up on hanging upside down, fighting to eat the last little bit, and hasn’t come back.
Time to untangle the feeder from the jasmine and move it to a more bird-friendly spot. With a fresh (and D-Con free) suet cake.

Summer Reprieve

Summer is too hot. I’m going to roll back the calendar for a minute to early April, when our Redbud trees were just starting to bloom.

Now imagine Oregon in April: sometimes sunny, sometimes drizzle, all the flowers start blooming overnight. Everything is fresh and new. 

The temperature tries to get over 60, but it just can’t.
You wish you could ditch the wool socks you wear with your Birkenstocks, but it’s just not warm enough.
(I did say this is Oregon, didn’t I?)

Ok, back to summer again.
Now 75 degrees doesn’t feel so incredibly hot, does it?
(Again, didn’t I say this is Oregon? I do wish you would pay attention.)

Our summer garden

I love our backyard. It’s small and plain, but there are some elements here that make me so happy that I love to just sit outside and enjoy the space. When it’s nice out, the back deck is my happy place. Here’s what’s growing and blooming right now:

Cherry Tomatoes

Thai peppers 

Lemon balm (it’s growing wild in patches here and there all around the property),
an artichoke, and a tomato plant that is as tall as I am.

Frank is checking out the progress of his red peppers. He says this is the kind used in making chimichurri, a kind of hot sauce/relish. That’s his plan for these peppers. I’m too much of a Scandinavian wimp, though, (Scandinavian hot sauce is butter with a pinch of black pepper) and don’t think I have the guts to try it.

Yes, Frank has long hair. He was growing it to see how long it could grow until chemo made it fall out. The plan sort of backfired though, when he didn’t lose a single hair from the chemo. Now it’s almost like a trophy, and so he continues to let it grow. I don’t care. Could be worse, like him wanting a sports car or a mistress.

Back to the yard…

My all time July favorite is this big vine-y shrub on the left: Jasmine.

Oh, I wish computers had smell-o-vision so you could breathe in the heady perfume of these little white flowers. The fragrance wafts into my open kitchen window and fills up the back of the house.

A little stroll down the alley behind my next door neighbor’s house brings another treat:
Gladiolus and blackberries and more wild lemon balm.
(This neighbor is the crafty lady with the colored pencil fence.)

I asked her what variety she planted and she said, “I don’t know, black ones?”

 

Did you know there are over 1100 varieties of blackberries. We have lots of commercial caneberry (blackberry and raspberry) farms here in the Willamette Valley. Marionberries were developed here in Marion County and are full bodied and sweet, like a cross between raspberries and blackberries. My favorite blackberries for eating out of hand are the hardest to find in the markets: Black Cap. They’re so mellow and sweet and will turn your mouth dark purple in an instant. They’re hard to find for raw consumption because they’re processed into food grade dye and sold to the meat packing industry to be used for marking sides of beef with grades such as “USDA Prime” and the like.

But I digress. With all those tomato plants I can’t wait until late August when we can start picking and eating and drying and canning all the tomatoes. Mmm.

Rows of Roses

Yesterday the roses next to my driveway exploded.

It’s as if all the buds had a meeting early this morning and agreed that today would be the day they would open. And open they did. The colors and fragrance are amazing. I only wish you had smell-o-vision to go with these pictures.

   

I don’t think there could possibly be any more buds on this rosebush by the side door.

May Day

 hosta

We don’t have any big May Day festivals here in Salem like they do at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, and there’s nothing special going on around town today, but that isn’t stopping me from pausing to enjoy how absolutely gorgeous today is. To me, May 1st is kind of a personal, unofficial first day of summer that wakes up my Earth Mama Muse. Today is a double whammy of good, since it’s not only May 1st, but also brilliantly sunny and 61 degrees.

three lonely tulips, a hydrangea (still twigs, but wait until July), and thousands of bluebells

Every year around the beginning of May, I get the urge to do gardening, bird-feedering, and outdoor craft projects. The craft projects haven’t started yet (although there’s no excuse… wait, there is. I need to rig up some sort of table to work at.) Anyway, I thought it would be fitting to share some gardening pictures to kick off my personal unofficial first day of Summer.

Enjoy!

the gate to our back yard

flowering vine over the back gate

Mother Nature reads my blog

Three days ago, in a previous blog post, I complained about the cold weather.

I guess Mother Nature reads this blog and decided to show me who's boss:

It's ok. I love the heat.

You Oregonians might not appreciate my next comment, but I have to say it:

It's a dry heat...

Summer Rant

It is July and I am cold.

Actually, I am freezing my butt off. Oh yes I'm here in Oregon, not Antarctica, where it should at least be 80 degrees by now. The windows are open and the thermostat in my house reads 64.

I reluctantly shut off the furnace for the season a couple weeks ago. If I had firewood, I'd build a fire in the fireplace because I'm so dang cold. My nose is icy and my nostrils feel frosted when I inhale. Doesn't that just sound wrong to want to build a fire or turn on the heat in July? I'm just tired of being so cold all the time.

It's just not right.

Our weather here in Oregon is usually so wonderful that I keep some weather widgets on my computer wallpaper just so I can be accurate when bragging about our weather. Hmph. It's depressing to realize that compared to Salem, Oregon: it's a little warmer on the coast, toasty warm in my Wisconsin hometown, and delightfully HOT in Rancho Mirage, CA (near Palm Springs.)
Gee, I'd like to be there right now...

Yesterday Rachel asked if we could go up the mountain to our favorite bend in the river at North Fork.

"Uh, that's a mountain stream fed by snow melt. I'm gonna have to say no."

"But mommmmmm..."

"How many days have we had over 80 degrees this year?"

"Ummm, 2? Maybe 3?"

Yah, No. Maybe by the end of August it will have warmed up enough.

Is it warm where you are? Has June delivered its June-like weather to you and your garden? Does July look like it's going to be everything you hoped it would be - as far as weather goes?

Comment here with your weather bragging and gloating. At least I can warm myself up by imagining your weather!