Month: September 2021

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

M spent the day adding a new irrigation line to our hodgepodge sprinkler system. He reports that it was tremendously exciting.

E had to prepare for the Lemon Meringue Pie Society meeting. Lots of work there, especially trying to make the patio and yard presentable. In the end all went well. The group members were well-behaved and the weather cooperated nicely. The pie was sourced from the 37th Street Grill, which is not really a grill and isn’t on 37th Street either. But they do make a nice pie.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

M had coffee with his friend R this morning. They met at Susan’s coffeehouse and garden supply store. Susan’s has some nice outdoor tables that have rain protection. Good thing. M and R talked a little baseball and shared some memories of living overseas. The time flew by.

E was busy preparing to host her second gathering in two days, this time a 1:00 p.m. potluck with HEPAJ. All went well, but after the party and the clean-up E was tuckered out. We had a simple dinner, watched some TV, and called it a day. 

The COVID surge continues in Oregon and there have been many fatalities in the last week. The numbers for new cases, test positivity, and hospitalizations, however, are again trending slightly downward.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Tertulia today with J and R at their house. J made asian pear ginger upside down cake. We also got a tour of their 99.9% completed addition. They’ve added a sort of dream master bedroom with 21st century closet space, a glorious walk-in shower, and a sliding door out to the back garden. The shower is the only thing not complete; it’s lacking its glass door.

Later on M went up to Salem and paid a guy $423 to pull out one of his teeth. Well…to be absolutely accurate it wasn’t a whole tooth, it was only half a tooth. If it had been a whole tooth, we suspect that Dr. H would have charged more than a mere $423. But the other half wasn’t there to pull. Another guy beat Dr. H to it about 20 years ago. The idea now is to replace both missing halves with one whole implant, but that won’t be for a while. Dr. H says it’ll take four months for the affected area to settle down. The missing tooth is in the back, so we won’t be able to show any photos of M with a gap-toothed smile. Dang it. 

Friday, September 24 2021

In the morning E went for a walk in the OSU forest while M stayed home slaving over E’s iPad Mini trying to clear up a family plan subscription mystery. Poor M. On her way back, E got him a latte. 

Saturday, September 25, 2021

M has been having a lot of ice cream and chocolate pudding. Are these the only two things he is allowed to eat? Hmm. He isn’t sharing the actual instruction sheet that the dentist gave him. At least he is no longer using his tooth problems as an excuse not to exercise. We took a walk up the hill on 13th and were coming down Angelica when we saw a family group standing in their driveway. One of them had a black and white dog on a leash. The dog was young and nervous but friendly. It looked like it might be a pit bull mix. The guy holding the leash asked us if we knew of anyone looking for a lost dog. It turns out they had just returned home to find a strange dog loitering around their front door. They’d leashed it and found a metal ID tag on its collar. They called the phone number. They didn’t get an answer, but they left a message. We chatted with them for a while. When we left they were considering what to do next. But they didn’t have to wait long. After we’d walked just a block or so farther down the street, we saw a fellow with a leash in hand come out of his garage and start striding up the hill. Sure enough, he’d gotten the message and seemed quite relieved.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Today we had a short hike and picnic at a place called Gordon Lakes. It’s up the Cascades in an area that M has been exploring lately. It turned out to be a very fine place. There are two lakes, an upper and a lower, separated by just a hundred yards or so. The nicest thing was that it seemed to be an old growth area, a real forest, where there were no stumps, where trees die only from natural causes and once they succumb, they just lie where they have fallen in all their glory. 

Monday, September 27, 2021

Some serious rain today, beginning in the night at around 3:00 a.m. and continuing on and off throughout the day. At around 2:00 p.m. a small flock of doves visited our back yard, giving most of their attention to Hummock #3. We hear doves often, but rarely see them walking around, pecking at the soil. They were a couple of smaller birds, each one following a larger bird. If the smaller ones followed too closely, the larger birds would turn around suddenly and bat them away. 

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

E had her annual visit with her primary care physician today. Dr. L said that her test results were great. She was really impressed by the cholesterol numbers. We went out to lunch downtown at the food truck place to celebrate. Later on, E went to a meeting of the knitting group, a largish monthly gathering of old friends and colleagues. The meeting was held outside in a park. She had a chance to catch up with some people (and their dogs) that she doesn’t get to see very often.

E finished a Maisie Dobbs novel yesterday. M started it today. This one is called A Lesson of Secrets. We have also been watching a Turkish series on Netflix called Love Me As I Am. It’s a dramedy about a couple of college students who fall in love and decide to get married without having a clue about what they’re getting into, especially in terms of family pressures. It’s a little silly, but the couple is cute and lately their brightly colored knit sweaters have been awesome. 

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

M worked in the yard for a few hours in the morning: a little mowing, a little raking, and a lot of cutting back old irises. One of the sunflower plants, a volunteer if we remember right, has shot up to a ridiculous height and now contains more than thirty open flowers. It’s about eleven feet tall. The Turkish word for sunflower is ayçiçeği, which literally means moonflower, which has always seemed a little odd to us. Anyway here’s a picture of ours, posing in the late afternoon with a half moon.. 

Today was pie-for-dinner day and it was again strikingly successful. The first course was a cup of soup (Amy’s quinoa, kale and red lentil) and a small tomato and lettuce salad. This was served at the kitchen table. The second course was served outside at our small table way at the back of the yard, next to the crepe myrtle and the compost bins. The slices of rhubarb pie were cut Chambers style, which is to say that each piece was one sixth of a pie. So as to protect the purity of the rhubarb experience, no ice cream was served. 

Today was also the day we said goodbye to our old red armchairs. They were noticeably worn and the style had never looked quite right in our current house. But we had loved them dearly. At least we found them a good home. (And made enough money to go out to dinner at Sybaris tomorrow night.)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Tertulia with J and R this morning. The coffee shop was busier that we’ve seen it in months. Summer is quiet in Corvallis, but in the fall things gear up fast. The K-12 schools have started, so the school buses and parental taxis are both out in force. OSU classes haven’t started yet, but students have started arriving and the whole great university machine is rumbling into life. 

We are still in mourning for the chairs. E says that selling them was sort of like selling your pet pig at the auction. Speaking of which, dinner at Sybaris was very fine. E had trout; we won’t mention what M had.

Friday, September 17. 2021

We talked to a concrete guy this morning about replacing our driveway. That was depressing. We’ll have to think about it. Bad news in the back garden also. The great mutant sunflower has fallen. On Wednesday it was fine. On Thursday it was leaning. Today we find that its main stem has buckled under the weight of those 35 blossoms.

In the afternoon we went with J and B to Brigadoon Winery, a lovely place in the foothills of the coast range about twenty-five miles south of Corvallis. We tasted a pinot blanc, a dry riesling, a semi-dry riesling, and two pinot noirs. Wonderful weather, warm and bright with a sky full of thin white clouds that let the sun through most of the time. Rain is forecast for ten or eleven o’clock tonight. We’ll see if that pans out. We haven’t had any real rain here for a really long time. Everything is bone dry.

Saturday, September 18, 2021

This is a melancholy date for us, twenty-four years now since Becca passed. It’s funny how sad events can recede into the far distance and yet remain forever new.

We picked apples on Thursday and E has been making applesauce, quite a lot of applesauce. Today she wanted to give a couple of jars to R and G, so we walked over that way just before lunch and dropped them off. It’s the time for year for giving away produce–we got some nice grapes from P a while back, and L dropped off a box of plums, pears and apples. Our own apples are sort of okay, but hers are really good. And so, despite E’s sauce making, we still have plenty of apples. 

The rain did actually show up late last night and came down heavily for a while. Today the world is damp and refreshed. More moisture is expected tonight and tomorrow, though it sounds like it will be mostly drizzle.  

Monday, September 20, 2021

We did our usual grocery shopping today and had smooth sailing at both stores. No shortages noted. It’s a beautiful early fall day, and E enjoyed her walk over to the Co-op. After lunch we did some furniture arranging. We just got some sliders to put under the legs of the couch. They make the process a lot more fun. E also had her Zoom yoga and then went out looking for a tablecloth. She is hosting two gatherings this week. On Tuesday the Lemon Meringue Pie Society will be here; then on Wednesday it’s HEPAJ. E had long planned on hosting the former. She’s only doing the latter because A’s well pump is broken and she cannot promise water for Wednesday. As to why the two groups have their monthly meetings so close together, that is a mystery. It’s no problem for most of the members, but E and her friend H are in both groups and have been known to grumble about the scheduling.

M spent the afternoon updating and backfilling his COVID database. He tries to keep up with it daily, but sometimes things get in the way and days are missed. Every once in a while he has to go back and fill in the blanks, which he finds soothing.

We’ve been watching a lot of our Turkish series Love Me As I Am (Beni Böyle Sev). Omer and Ayşem fall in love while they are students at a university in Istanbul. Ayşem’s mother died four days after she was born, so Ayşem has been raised by her father, who operates a modest restaurant in a small town on the Black Sea coast. She is a scholarship student at the university. Omer comes from Istanbul and is the only son of rich parents, the source of whose wealth is never mentioned. Ayşem is played by Zeynep Çamci and Omer by Alper Saldiran. Do they look like young first year college students? Uh….no. But that’s what they’re supposed to be.

Love Me As I Am is a little odd. It sounds like standard rom-com fare and that’s sort of how it goes. When the two young people first reveal that they love each other and want to get married, both Ayşem’s father and Omer’s parents are aghast and firmly opposed. But the two lovers persevere and in time Ayşem’s father comes around. He hates losing his daughter, but he appreciates Omer’s sincerity and recognizes true love when he sees it. Omer’s parents are another story. Omer’s mother, Nadide, is appalled that he would even consider marrying a girl that she had not chosen for him, especially one who was out of his class. She is devastated by this betrayal and that’s pretty much all she talks about. Are we saying that Hadide is a depthless stereotype? Yes. Are there any characters in this series who are not depthless stereotypes? Not really.

Omer’s father is short, balding, absurdly selfish and hot tempered. If anyone thwarts him, he immediately plots revenge. Omer is an earnest young man in love. He is determined to be with Ayşem and will not give her up. Ayşem is a very conventional good girl who really likes looking into Omer’s green eyes. In her mind, she refers to him as ‘Grass Eye.’ At least that’s what we think she calls him. There was that one scene when she was musing to herself about how wonderful he was and the subtitles referred to him as Glass Eye. But we think that was a mistake. Anyway, when Grass Eyes proposes, she finds herself saying yes and once she says it, she sticks to it. After that the writers don’t give her much to do except to look cute and be nice to people. 

The episodes are an hour and a half each, which is way too long, and the action often proceeds very slowly. Every episode features a musical interlude, which consists of out-takes and shots from previous scenes, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring love songs from a particular genre of Turkish traditional music. These last only three or four minutes, but they seem to go on forever. So is there any reason to watch this series? Well, the odd part is that it is really rather fascinating. Maybe someday we’ll figure out why.

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

We are packing up for our trip to the Wallowas. It’ll be a long drive tomorrow: 418 miles, mostly freeway, much of it along the south bank of the Columbia. We plan to trade off drivers every hour and a half. The Wallowas are in the extreme northeast corner of Oregon, with Washington to the north and Idaho to the east. On the map below, the red pin shows where we are in Corvallis near the coast. Wallowa Lake is at the other end of the blue line. That straight horizontal line just above it–the one near Walla Walla–is the border between OR and WA. The wiggly line just east of our destination is the Snake River, which forms part of the border between OR and ID.

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

After breakfast, E did some last minute watering while M packed us a lunch. We set out on our journey at around 8:30. By 11:30 we were past the Dalles and starting to think about a place to stop for lunch. We wondered if there might be a little park in the town of Rufus. The Internet said there was, but in fact there was not. We did find a place where a park might once have been. We’re not criticizing or anything, but if you ever plan to visit Rufus, do not do so with high expectations. We ended up having our lunch a little farther on at Lepage Park, near the John Day Dam. Nice spot. Did we mention the smoke in the air? There was some. 

Arrived at the campground around 5:00, just in time to set up the tent and make dinner. Not impressed with the tent camping area of Wallowa Lake State Park. The showers and restrooms were nice, but the sites were narrow and jammed together with very few shrubs or trees in between. The setting was incredible, however, with steep forested peaks jutting up on three sides and a big lake on the other. Only the smoke marred the scene.

Thursday, September 9, 2021

M wanted to explore the road to Hat Point, and so–following a leisurely breakfast–off we went. Navigating to Hat Point is simple. First you drive to the town of Joseph, which is named for Old Chief Joseph. (More about him later.) You turn east there and drive 31 miles to a village called Imnaha. From there it’s just 24 miles to Hat Point. That doesn’t sound very far, but the road is a really slow one: very narrow, very steep and very rough. To go up and back would involve hours of bumps and jolts along the edge of precipices and other assorted discomforts. We didn’t want to do that. Instead, we went just to the four-mile mark, where there is a nice view and–very importantly–a space wide enough to turn around. The blue line below shows the full 24 miles of the Hat Point Road. Those who go all the way are rewarded with stunning views, or so the guide book says. The red line on this map is the Snake River, which is 5,600 feet below Hat Point. 

Our four-mile jaunt provided this more modest view of a side canyon that leads down the Snake.

After our Hat Point turnaround, we went back to the town of Joseph and visited the grave of Tiwi-teqis, who is known as Old Chief Joseph. Born c. 1785, Tiwiteqis was the leader of the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce. He was an early convert to Christianity and worked to maintain peace with the arriving whites. He supported an 1855 agreement in which the Nez Perce gave up a portion of their tribal lands in return for an assurance that they would retain their most sacred land in the Wallowa Valley. Eventually the whites realized that these”most sacred lands” were also “really, really nice lands.” So in 1863, the federal government tore up the 1855 treaty and imposed a new treaty that required the Wallowa Band to leave the Wallowa Valley and relocate to a small and much less nice area on the other side of Snake River. Tiwi-teqis refused to sign the new treaty and is said to have destroyed both his American flag and his bible. He also refused to move his band from the Wallowa Valley. He died, still on his ancestral lands, in 1871. 

Tiwi-teqis was succeeded by his son Hinmatoowyalahtqit, known to the whites as Chief Joseph. The young Chief Joseph became much more famous than his father because it was he who had to deal with the federal government’s attempt to forcibly move the band to Idaho in 1877. The Nez Perce responded with a campaign of armed resistance and eventually the band attempted to flee the U.S. in hopes of finding asylum in Canada. The wikipedia entry for this Chief Joseph is here. It’s fascinating, not least because it reveals who really wrote the words that Chief Joseph is supposed to have uttered on the occasion of the Nez Perse’s final surrender–which occurred just 40 miles from the Canadian border. But enough of these rather sad events.

We had dinner at the Terminal Gravity Brew House in Enterprise. E had a Caesar salad–pretty good, but not nearly at the level of the Full Sail Brewery–and M had a jalapeño pepper bison burger–the best (and only) one he’s ever had. We ate outside in warm but blustery conditions. One wind gust blew one of M’s tortilla chips off his plate and onto the ground. Another blew a small yellow leaf from off its tree and onto E’s salad. A few brief rain showers came along as well. We appreciated their brevity, but not everyone felt that way. In the parking lot we passed a fellow just getting into his truck. He was muttering to himself about the weather, something along the lines of “Come on and rain, dammit. Rain!” 

Friday, September 10 2021

Back at Wallowa Lake we heard raindrops hitting our tent in the night, but there couldn’t have been very many of them because when we came out in the morning everything seemed just as dry as before. A few more drops fell during breakfast and as we were packing up to leave.

We drove east and then south, climbing first up to Salt Summit and then dropping down into the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area on a highway called Road 15. This is a slow and narrow route but very lovely. Eventually we turned east again, this time on Oregon 82, which took us to the Snake River at the site of the Oxbow Dam. From there we drove south along the Oregon bank of Oxbow Reservoir until we reached the bridge just below Brownlee Dam. (There are three dams on this part of the Snake, three dams in one thirty mile stretch of river. Seems a little excessive.) We crossed over the bridge and continued south down the Idaho side of Brownlee Reservoir. 

At around noon, our route turned east and started climbing up out of the Snake River Canyon. We stopped for lunch at a NFS campground. The camp sites were lovely and private, a world away from the tent sites at Wallowa Lake. (The restroom facilities were also quite different, but not a a good way.) 

Brownlee Campground is located on the route of the Oregon Trail at the site of an old mining town called Heath. Only a few traces remain of either the town or the old trail. One remnant are these decidedly unnatural clumps of mineral, slag from the Heath smelter.

Also remaining is the burnt stump of what was once one of the largest trees in the area. It is preserved as a memorial to a 7 year-old girl who died of fever while her family was traveling on the Trail in the 1870’s. The story goes that someone from Heath made a coffin for the child and that she was buried beneath this tree.

Saturday, September 11, 2021
We spent last night at a motel in Ontario, and left early today on the long road home. We stopped for lunch at the waterfront park in Arlington, Oregon. Lunch consisted of leftovers from the previous night’s take-out food. If you’re ever in Ontario, OR, one the best food options in town–unlikely as it may seem–is Japanese food from Ogawa’s. E’s rice bowl with eel was delicious and lasted for three meals.

During the last hour of the trip, we discussed the nuances of “feeling tired” vs. “feeling just a little dopey.” We think we got it cleared up. Anyway, we made it home.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Cleaned out the truck and finished putting stuff away. A bit of watering. Also sleeping. E went over to her friend H’s house and they went out for a walk. Daughter-in-law S and grandson R were there when they got back. They’d been crabbing at the coast and S shared some of their bounty.  

Monday, September 13, 2021

E had a nice phone talk with brother J, but mostly this was chore day: grocery shopping, yoga class, putting old chairs on Craig’s List, scheduling service for the truck, dealing with a failing garage door opener.  

For dinner E made her gorgonzola and spinach pasta , serving up the crab along with it. Wonderful. M caught up on his pandemic record keeping. The COVID surge continues in Oregon, but the numbers of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all down slightly, suggesting that the peak may be passing.  

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

COVID statistics in Oregon–including cases, hospitalizations and deaths–were all pretty discouraging in the first half of August. In the second half of the month, they got worse. Here’s how August 2021 compared to previous months of the pandemic. The Delta variant now accounts for over 98% of all new cases.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Tertulia this morning with R and J, then E had her final exercise class of the term. Now she gets three weeks off. 

We moved the old couch today to make room for the new one. You never know what you’ll find when you move an old couch. In this case we found not one but two unexploded cannon balls. We reckon they were fired from a Russian T-90 main battle tank, the one that was shootin’ up the place a few weeks ago.    

But now the old red couch is history. It was fine in the basement of the old place, but it never looked quite right in the living room here. Instead…

Friday, September 3 2021

E made pisto and ambled screggs for dinner. Nice. It’s the time of year for pisto; the weather is right and the local vegetables are ripe. In case you haven’t heard of it, pisto Manchego is a green pepper and tomato dish from La Mancha region of Spain. M cut up a little cheese to go into the eggs. As instructed, he made the pieces about the size of front teeth. Some people cut cheese pieces the size of molars, but that’s just lazy. Clearly, E should write a cookbook. 

We’ve been watching Ted Lasso this week. The first few episodes of the new season were pretty blah. Last night’s episode, however, seemed a little livelier. We’re wondering if the new couch had anything to do with it. 

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Watched two(!) episodes of TL last night. Either the writing is getting better or the new couch is really working. E has now watched 3 entire episodes without falling asleep.

Went back to Eugene today, dropping off fabric samples and picking up wine. We also stopped at the egg place on West Hills Road on our way back. Net proceeds of trip: 12 eggs, two bottles of Martin Codax albariño, and minus five fabric samples. We will count this as success. 

There are two medium sized forest fires burning in the region, the Bull Complex fire about 65 miles northeast of Corvallis and the Middle Fork Complex about 70 miles southeast. Fire officials are cautiously optimistic about the Bull fire; it’s headed for the same area that burned so intensely last year. It won’t find much fuel there.

Air quality in Corvallis has been quite good, just a little hazy at times in the morning. Every evening we get fresh breezes out of the west that clear things out. As we went south today, however, we very quickly got into a grayish haze that smelled of woodsmoke. Air quality was reported to be in the ‘unhealthy’ range from Halsey down to Eugene. We put this down to smoke from the Middle Fork fire.

Sunday, September 5, 2021

M went off on forest tour today. He did a quick and easy loop in an area of the Cascades that’s currently fire free. Of course that area happened to be directly between two areas that are not fire free, so the route was noticeably smoky. For more on this, see M’s Road Trip posting.

Monday, September 6, 2021

While he was out in the forest, M picked up an old log for the garden, which he installed this morning. It’s vintage and so has patina in lieu of its original bark. 

Inside the house, two new chairs were delivered today. (On Labor Day? Whose idea was that? Not ours.) They are not vintage; they are new and are a big change for us. They may turn out all right in our little room. Or they may be a hideous mistake. We don’t have time to decide which, though, because we are too busy planning for our camping trip to Wallowa Lake. The idea is to plan today, prepare tomorrow and leave early on Wednesday. So, no more blog writing, got to get planning.