Winter 2009 Photos
Oregon Coast, January 18, 2009
Amazing to have a perfectly clear 60-degree day in January!
(It hasn't been this warm since.)
On a beach north of Newport.
This dude looks better than me in photos...maybe I need sunglasses. (Ali)
Folks were surfing, wading, kite-flying.
I've tried this shot a few times but never got the lighting right before.
January 24, 2009
I bought this little trailer in Sweet Home.
The end gate is my construction. Ebba's bus in background. The next weekend (Feb. 1) I tried it out with a 1600-lb load of oak firewood.
Our old warrior rooster at the entrance to the coop. His days are numbered...
February 12, 2009
Landlord installed a new water heater (after our old one shorted and melted the insulation), but he forgot to fill the tank before turning it on and the element burned out (top one). So I quickly learned how to wire a hot water heater and replace an element.
February 14, 2009
Ebba and Ali have been working on the raspberries - woodchip mulch courtesy of our arborist neighbors.
Cold frame.
Inside the cold frame - can't do this in Minnesota in February.
Chickens! Notice the new Ameraucana rooster (with the gray tailfeathers). Our old rooster made some delicious tamales, courtesy of Ebba and Ali.
The new 0.12-acre chicken enclosure (my project on the Jan. 24th weekend).
Aerial photo of our property from 2004.
Eggs! (one Rhode Island Red and one Ameraucana)
A junkier view: an old styrofoam boat - part of the junk the landlords have collected - along with our burn pile of blackberries and old rotten lumber and the north side of our house. I may attack that coating of mold sometime - it comes off of the vinyl siding quite easily.
February 15, 2009
Lily will be leaving Lost Valley in two weeks, heading toward new adventures in Massachusetts and Maine. In her year in Oregon, she never visited the coast, so I thought it fitting that we should explore the shoreline before the Corvallis contra dance. I drove down to Lost Valley on Saturday, and we enjoyed a night of folk singing, guitar playing, and drinking tasty wine. We didn't quite leave as early as I had planned on Sunday, but we still made it to all of my planned stops without feeling rushed. The weather was forecast as cloudy with a 70% chance of rain. We were expecting a dreary day, but the rain all went south to California leaving us with bright sun and 54 degrees!
Coastline north of Florence.
Trail to the Hobbit Beach. The band of forest along the coast feels like spring in every season with the smell of fresh moss and damp earth.
Lily on Hobbit Beach (looking north)
Sea anemones! (In a tidepool as the tide was coming in.)
Blue mussels on the rocks
Wise Woman of the sands.
I returned to the well-known giant spruce at Cape Perpetua. Always amazing to see a living thing grow to such proportions. There must be a great wisdom and soul in this tree.
We drove to the Cape Perpetua overlook, stopped at the Devil's Churn, and then tasted a few beers at the Rogue Brewery in Newport before returning to Corvallis for delicious food and doppelbock at Block 15 before the dance. The dance was well-attended - it was the end of the annual dance workshop weekend, with some folks coming from as far as Grass Valley.