A busy Monday, what with E having both a yoga class and an exercise class in the morning, a dental checkup in the middle of the day, and her friend PF coming for a visit at tea time. Tea consisted of ginger lemon drop cocktails, maple sugar candies, and blackberry cobbler. M thought that it was only polite for him to participate. Beyond that, he was occupied with yard maintenance issues and such.
Our cleaner, who has not been vaccinated, has texted to say that she won’t be able to come tomorrow because she had been exposed to COVID and is quarantining for two weeks. We were glad to see her taking things seriously at least in this way.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Eve worked for a couple of hours in the garden this morning. M was also outside, installing new roll-up sunshades on the south side of the house.
In the early afternoon E went to a meeting of her HEPAJ group at J’s house. She was smartly turned out a lightweight wool jacket and her new denim skirt. Alas, no photos were taken. In the late afternoon, both M and E were busy filling in for the absent cleaner. No photos of that either.
The Oregon COVID spike continues to worsen. COVID hospitalizations are at an all time high and many hospitals are reporting zero available ICU beds. Over the last ten days, the average daily death toll has been 13.5, which is the highest level since January. The daily toll could be even higher over the next ten days.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
We’ve learned that an old friend and colleague of ours has died. We both met Edith more than forty years ago when we first started working at OSU. Although she has not been able to attend in recent times, she was one of the original members of E’s HEEPA group (which has since morphed into HEPAJ). She was smart and unsentimental, but always kind. We’ve been missing her since she moved to a care facility in Portland. We miss her still.
Thursday, August 26, 2021
This morning we had just a few drops or rain. It’s been a while, seems like a long while.
We’re feeling very unhappy today as we wrestle with a COVID-related dilemma. In the spring of 2020 the son of our good friend F was planning to be married. Because of the pandemic, they had to defer their plans and wait for a better time. This year, in early July, when the virus seemed to be very much in abeyance, they decided to proceed with the wedding and scheduled it for August 28. They live in Boise, just a day’s drive away, and we immediately told them we’d be there. Now, alas, the virus situation is much worse than it was in July and is not expected to get better anytime soon. There are a lot of factors to consider here, but we’re thinking that maybe we shouldn’t go. It’s hard.
Friday, August 27, 2021
We discussed our dilemma early this morning, in what M called the ‘cold light of dawn.’ After breakfast we spent an hour composing our regrets. We sent one message to F and another to the bride and groom. Now we’re depressed.
We need to plan something else for the next few days, can’t just stay home and mope.
Saturday, August 28, 2021
We took the Porsche down to Eugene today. Eugene is home to the Euphoria Chocolate Company, a really good Ethiopian food truck, and the M. Jacobs furniture store, all three of which we visited with good results.
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Drove the Mazda up to Hood River in the Columbia Gorge. Three hours from Corvallis, Hood River is home to Full Sail Brewing, makers of M’s favorite beer. You don’t have to go to Hood River to get Full Sail beer, but you do have to go there if you want to visit the Full Sail brewery pub and get some of their Caesar salad, which is one of E’s favorite things. Fortunately they offer curbside pickup, which wasn’t as much fun as being in the pub, but was a safer alternative.
We stayed overnight in a motel where our car could spend time with others of its ilk.
Monday, August 30, 2021
Time to get up? Nah. Not yet.
Eventually we did get up and after breakfast we crossed the Bridge of the Gods and wandered around Washington for a while. Then we recrossed the river and went for a hike at Wahkeena Falls on the Oregon side. We hiked steeply upward until we got tired and ate the last of our chocolate.
Here’s a view looking across to the Washington side.
View to the northeast.
Wahkeena Falls is relatively subdued at this time of year…
…but not as quiet as this little waterfall just a hundred feet away.
We found traces of an older trail, now out of use. It was closed, we guess, so as not to attract perdition seekers.
Alas, M and E have separated. M returned to Corvallis a couple of days ago, while E remained in the east. She’s just got back from a visit to see MB in Maine. This week she’s staying with Mrs H and making some day visits to see her brother and sister-in-law. She is scheduled to fly back to Oregon on Thursday. M has been home since Friday. He has watered the yard a couple of times but otherwise has done nothing of any significance whatever, at least as far as we can tell. He is, however, planning a Porsche outing for Tuesday.
Tuesday, August 17
M took the Boxster on a modest southern loop today, going down the center of the Willamette valley on the back roads through the farms, out where it’s really flat. A mile south of Coburg, he found what he was looking for, a little road that ducked under the freeway and headed east along a route just a scant few miles north of Springfield, the working class neighbor of Eugene. It took him out of the valley and north into the foothills toward Marcola. The area is sparsely settled and the road has lots of ups and downs and curves and such. All good things come to an end, of course, and soon M and the B had to turn west and head home via Brownsville and Halsey.
After some months of improvement, the COVID 19 situation in Oregon has worsened. So far in August the death rate is more than double that of July. Hospitalizations and new case numbers are up sharply. An indoor mask requirement has been reinstated across the board. In total, Oregon has now recorded 2,964 COVID-related deaths, which comes out to 69 deaths per 100,000 of population. Here is how that level of impact compares to a few other places. Numbers are from the Johns Hopkins COVID monitoring site.
United Kingdom (196)
United States (189)
Spain (179)
Germany (110)
Canada (71)
Oregon (69)
Denmark (44)
Thailand (11)
Australia (4)
New Zealand (0.5)
Wednesday, August 18
Another drive today, this time in the Frontier. M went into the forests north of Willamina, the same general area where he had fled from the demon pickup truck. This time he wanted to take it easy, enjoy the scenery, and follow the road that leads east to Carlton. Wednesday is a work day, so there was some logging traffic. As he was climbing into the mountains M came across four loaded log trucks coming down–three of them at spots where the road was wide enough for the two vehicles to pass relatively easily, and one at a spot where the road was narrower and both trucks had to slow down and take an inch or two of the very narrow shoulder in order to squeeze by. On the narrowest stretches of road there were no shoulders at all, just a deep ditch on each side, but he didn’t meet anybody in those places, which was fine. Later on, going down the other side, M passed two empty log trucks and four big gravel trucks heading up. The road was wider by then, so these encounters were uneventful. Along the way M also saw two motorcyclists, one bicycle rider, and one small white SUV with a big black cargo container on the roof. The white car was going recklessly fast. That seemed a little strange; perhaps it was a demon problem of one kind or another. One of the motorcycles was also going very fast, but that made more sense.
Once out of the forest, M meandered around on his way home. He avoided the main highways and drove through farm country, some of it boringly flat and some of it lovely rolling hills. Between Bellevue and Perrydale, he passed the Brigattine Monestery, where their sign still advertises their candy for sale. And then, since he’d just spent a week in the environs of the famous New York State town of Ballston Spa, he decided to swing through Ballston Oregon. Here’s a photo of the main intersection.
Not real exciting, is it? But wait…
… just behind the ugly metal building in the previous photo, there is a nice little park and a sturdy old school house.
It’s called the Ballston School now, but it was built in 1855 and the town did not come into existence until 1880. Before that time, it was called Lawn Arbor School.
The outhouse behind the school is more modern inside that you might imagine and seems to be still in use.
There are just five side streets in Ballston. May Yocum Road is the only one on the north side of the railroad tracks.
Lincoln Street is on the south side of town and has the distinction of being the only side street to have pavement.
And finally, here’s a view from the edge of town looking east. M is guessing that the old truck is a Mack and that it was born around the same time he was.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
Tertulia this morning with J and R. We were only three. Eve is returning today but will arrive very late. J and R’s house addition project is nearing completion. Despite a few hiccups here and there, it has stayed on schedule. The major event recently was the application of the oil finish to the new hardwood floors. The penetrating oil takes a day or two to cure and the fumes are dangerous, so J and R had take a trip down south along the coast to Port Orford and Gold Beach.
In the evening M went to Portland to pick up E at the airport. Her flight arrived at 11:40, but the airport was crowded and it took another 45 minutes to extricate her from the terminal. Traffic was light though, and they were back in Corvallis by 2:00 a.m.
Friday, August 20, 2021
After having gone to bed at 3:00, E was up by 7:30 and went off to get pain au chocolate from Le Patissier to have for breakfast. What a gal. Later in the morning M went off to get a haircut and E spent a few hours in the garden. It was a nice day for it, with temps in the low seventies. Though cooler, it’s still very dry here, such a contrast to the rain and humidity of upstate NY.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Grocery shopping today, E to the Co-op, M to MofC. M came home with a roast chicken. E came home with a giant peanut butter cookie and a couple of potatoes. Those two, along with three smaller potatoes from our garden, got mashed for dinner. Yum. After dinner a crisis ensued with it became known that there was no ice cream in the house. Yikes. E went out to forage while M cleaned up. E returned with a tub of vanilla–a very small one–which we ate while watching The Cook of Castamar.
Sunday, August 22, 2021
The weather was cool and cloudy. It looked almost like it might rain, but not quite. Good day for a hike. We went into the OSU forest at around 10:30. The forest newsletter has announced that masks are again required on the trails, but there was little sign that anyone had read it. The forest is dry everywhere and we noticed especially that the poison oak looked parched. Some of it was still green, but lots of it was turning to either dull brown or its usual brilliant red. No shortage of poison oak out there. M’s phone counted 5,900 steps and 25 floors in 2.1 miles. E’s watch gave her over 6,000 steps, which was fine, but only 19 floors, which she found very annoying. She was also dismayed by how dry the forest seemed in these days of global warming. We neither saw nor heard any birds and E suggested that they were probably all daid. Even though M admired her pronunciation, he thought that her assessment was too pessimistic. He thinks there could have been lots of birds in the forest. Might not they have been napping at this time of day like sensible beings?
After M took a nap, he went out and picked blackberries. Are we talking about the famous Oregon marionberry? You know–Rubus L. subgenus Rubus–the hybrid berries created by the USDA and Oregon State University, the ones that are large, thornless and delicious? The blackberry that anyone with half a brain would grow? Uh…no. M, having only four tenths of a brain, instead grows cut leaf evergreen blackberries and also tolerates a few canes of Himalayan blackberries. Both the former, Rubus laciniatus, and the latter, Rubus armeniacus, are obnoxious weeds–highly aggressive and very thorny. But the berries are good.
Presumably, Oregon has been a good place to grow berries for thousands of years, but the native blackberry species, Rubus ursinus, is a trailing plant with very small fruits and no commercial potential. So, at some point, possibly as early as 1830, someone brought some cut leaf evergreen blackberries from Europe. They were thorny and aggressive but also had large and tasty fruit. Over the next fifty years more and more of them were grown. They of course quickly escaped from the fields and began popping up everywhere. Fifty years later, enter Luther Burbank, who was dissatisfied with Rubus laciniatus and believed that American growers could do better. He thought he had found something better in the form of Rubus armeniacus. He called his plants ‘Himalayan Giants,” although they are actually from Armenia. Starting in 1905, Burbank hyped them up big time and the USDA also got on board and recommended them. The plants were so obnoxious, however, that they never really caught on. .
They grow very fast and propagate like crazy, not only via seeds but also via ground runners as well as by stem tip propagation. (That’s where a cane curves downward and bends over to the point where its tip touches the ground and roots grow out of it.) They form really nasty thickets. In 1906, one nurseryman put it this way: “They would turn a mad bull or a scared cat. I sold a few plants, but I have apologized to all who bought them and gave them something else.” Despite this commercial failure, armeniacus are now extremely widespread in the wild where they seem to be very gradually crowding out their laciniatus cousins. The wild is where M got both of his varieties. He has a vicious mass of lacininatus and tolerates a few canes of armeniacus. He devotes a considerable percentage of his gardening life to hacking away at them to keep them in check. And seems to like it.
By the way, the cultivation of Rubus armeniacus is strictly prohibited in the state of Wisconsin. You heard it here first. Probably.
Monday, July 26 Deaths 2,838 (+2) New cases 993 (#‘s include Sat/Sun)
M’s turn for the dentist. Bleh.
Tuesday, July 27 Deaths 2,643 (+5) New cases 1,032
We went to Eugene to meet our friend S for lunch. Another “first” since the Pandemic. We enjoyed her company as usual. We went for a walk in her neighborhood and had a look at the University of Oregon’s newly rebuilt Hayward Field, which hosted the recent USA Olympic Track and Field trials. Phil Knight and other donors have created a number of high end sports and recreation facilities at the U of O, including new stadiums for both men’s baseball and women’s softball as well as the Hayward Field improvements and a new student fitness center. They are all quite nice-looking as such things go, all vaguely futuristic with rather elegant artistic embellishments. Money, money, money. We had lunch at a fine little bistro just a few blocks from S’s house.
Wednesday, July 28 Deaths 2,849 (+6) New cases 804
We finally saw Hamilton, courtesy of H, who has Disney+. M dropped out after the first two hours, but E was more positive. Not only did she watch till the end, she hardly slept at all.
Thursday, July 29 Deaths 2,855 (+6) New cases 1,026
The continued hot weather makes us a bit lethargic. But for these lilies, now is the time!
Friday, July 30 Deaths 2,858 (+3) New cases 1,076
A short rain shower just after sunrise this morning. E woke M up to see it. We went out into the yard just after the rain had stopped and enjoyed the cool, fresh smell.
Saturday, July 31
Here’s another month gone, so it’s time to make another COVID curve chart. As you see, the Oregon death rate fell a little in July, reaching its lowest level since June of 2020.
The bad news is that the first half of the month was better than the second half. And in the past five days both new cases and positive test numbers have risen dramatically. Given that increases in the death rate generally lag a week or two behind increases in new case numbers, we could see some worse news in August.
Meanwhile our lives rumble along. E made a trip to the humane society thrift store. She took an old, old lamp and a new old backpacking pack. The staffer who received them was enthusiastic about them both. The lamp, she said, was “really cute” and the backpack would be “a real moneymaker.”
We’ve started watching a Spanish Netflix series called The Cook of Castamar, which is set in Madrid in 1720. The heroine is an agoraphobic young woman who, somewhat improbably, lands a position as head cook in a ducal palace. Political intrigue and sexual hijinks swirl around her, but she retains her good sense and her innocence, at least so far. She’s falling for the Duke, of course, and he is falling for her, with both of them being quite aware that there’s no way this can work.
Sunday, August 1
The weather continues hot with a high of around 95. E went for a walk in the OSU forest in the morning and then did a bunch of sorting and pre-packing for our trip to Lake George. M went off in the truck for another adventure in the mountains. His plan was to make another attempt at the route where he was frustrated by snow just a month ago. This time all was well, at least at the beginning. He went up Canyon Creek Road and continued onward and upward, stopping here and there to note items of interest.
Is this watercourse dry on the 1st of August? Not quite.
A monument near the 2026 bridge over Canyon Creek, far away from anywhere.
M followed Road 2022 up to where it ends in a T-junction with road 1509. He turned right (west) and continued upward. This was more or less familiar, but not for long. When the road began to descend, he realized he had unknowingly passed the place that had once been blocked by snow. It was a long and windy way down, but eventually he reached pavement near Blue River Reservoir and stopped for lunch on the banks of the Blue River. The water level in the Blue was pretty low but it was still pretty in the sunshine. There was a bit of a breeze blowing upstream.
From there M could have followed the pavement down to Highway 36, taken 36 to Springfield, and then taken I-5 home–a peaceful but boring two-hour trip. If he had done that, we could end this blog entry right here and move on with our lives. But of course he did not do that. Because…there was…a shortcut. If he left the pavement and headed back up into the mountains to the west on Road 1510, he would eventually go up and over and down into the Calapooia drainage. He could take the Callapooia River Road back to civilization and get home that way. It would be faster and a lot more fun. Okay!
Road 1510 turned out to be pretty nice. For a while, it ran along the top of a ridge with vertiginous drop-offs on either side.
On one side of Road 1510, this…
…and on the other side, this, with both sides plunging steeply down..
The road is generally narrow and nervous making, but there is one wide spot where a person can pull over and take some pictures.
A view from Road 1510 as it begins its descent into Calapooia canyon.
So Road 1510 was scenic and a bit arduous, but it led M onto the upper reaches of Calapooia River Road, which promised a few miles of straight, smooth gravel that would change to pavement somewhere near the town of Holley. He knew that, because he’d been on Calapooia River Road before. Oh boy!
Happily M drove along, relieved to be out of the woods (so to speak) and eager to be going home. As it happened, that was too good to be true. All too soon he came upon a sturdy steel gate barring his way. A notice informed him that the next portion of the Calipooia River road had been closed by the U.S. Forest Service. Closed? Closed!? Why? Complete USFS incompetence, of course. Didn’t they know how important it was for M to use this road? But never mind that, what to do now? It was bad. Was M going to have to backtrack for miles and miles on Road 1510, going up what he had just come down and then down what he had just come up? He’d end up going home via Springfield after all. Here he was, just an hour from home, but looking at two and a half hours to get there. Argh! In the end he found an alternative escape route. It involved going in the wrong direction for way too many miles, but it got him home in just two hours. He was in the driveway by five, his day’s work done.
