Life At Our Place and Beyond

Now that the weather is drying out and warming, everything is growing right before our our eyes. We have been spending a lot of time mowing, weed cutting, hacking back the salmon berries, and processing firewood.  The following are some snapshots from the past week.

 While I mowed the pathways, Gail trimmed back the brambles.  We still get lost on our meandering trails!

One of the many "happy hour" spots.

 Gail swings a mean ax!

This is down at our lower woodshed.  Luckily, I can use the tractor mower and a trailer to haul wood up closer to the house.  

 I've got some veggies started in the greenhouse.  The banana plant that was left behind adds a tropical touch.  The covering of the greenhouse, except for the ends, is two layers with an insulating air space in between.  Usually my glasses fog up for a few minutes when I first walk in.

 The place to be on rainy days.

So far, we have lettuce, broccoli, and strawberries in the raised beds. In the background on the right is a nice row of blooming blueberries.

"Our" bobcat has been around the past two nights.

We do enjoy our breaks, especially down by the river.  Also, on Saturday we drove down to Florence for a movie at a cool made over theater, and then had a late lunch in the old part of town. The City Lights Theater shows art house films as well as regular movies.  We saw a London theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  

 On the way home we stopped at a wayside to look at a bog full of carnivorous plants - Darlingtonia Californica.

We realized it had been awhile since we took a selfie, shot here with Darlingtonia looking on.

We have a lot of unfamiliar garden plants blooming right now. If you know what they are, please let us know!  These are a few:

 Purple flowers.

 Orange flowers.

 Pull back of orange flowers.

Dogwood?

Not much need for fires for awhile!

Jaunt Up the Coast

Wednesday dawned sunny and calm, a great day to break away and explore the coast.  We hoped to see the murres at Yaquina Head. We saw them and a lot more!

 At the Yaquina Head Visitor Center parking lot we noticed a few people with long lenses aimed at a cliff. It turned out there is a pair of nesting Peregrine Falcons. This is the female. The male was on the nest, out of sight.

 After awhile, the female switched places with the male on the aerie. This is the male.

 It is estimated that there may be 80,000 Common Murres at the rookery at Yaquina Head. They are kind of the Northern Hemisphere's penguin.

 Two Pelagic Cormorants find a little space among the murres.

Murres are very awkward on land, as their bodies are made to be at sea most of the year.  Dives up to 590 feet deep have been recorded.

Our next stop was Cape Foulweather.  The water is 500 feet below.

 We were hoping to see Gray Whales, but immediately saw Orcas! The pod seemed to only be three individuals.  Judging by the dorsal fin of the one on the right, it appears to be a male.

A rare treat to see these!  We also saw Gray whales further out.

We headed north. A couple miles up the Siletz River is this victorian home built just for the 1971 film "Sometimes a Great Notion", based on Ken Kesey's novel.  We recently saw the movie starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda, and we thought it was pretty bad - very Hollywood.

We finished our exploration with a hike to Drift Creek Falls east of Lincoln City.  That suspension bridge for hikers is 200 feet above the chasm. A highlight of the hike has hearing a loud owl calling not far from the trail.  After listening to various owl calls, we determined it to be a Barred Owl, which has a very distinctive call that sounds like, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?"

First Bear

We saw our first bear from the house this morning. Gail spotted it from the kitchen window. Unfortunately, my point and shoot camera would only focus on the closer tree branches before it ambled off.