Pandemic Diary — August 16 to 21, 2021

Monday, August 16   

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. 

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. 

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.