E walked over to H’s house this morning. She’s tending to Houdini the cat while H and T are in Portland for a few days. Her route led her past Garfield Park.
She found this on the sidewalk. It must have fallen from one of those tall branchy things.
Sunday, December 24th
We had a great meal on Christmas Eve, courtesy of BJEM Enterprises, a (very) local catering cooperative. We started with a couple of black cod salad dock boxes from Local Ocean. The boxes provided baby kale, acorn squash, cauliflower, pepitas, green onions, parsley and white balsamic vinegar, plus four pieces of cod. While B tossed and plated the salad portions, M pan seared the fish. J assisted with plating and sliced up a loaf of olive bread that she had baked for the occasion.
For dessert, E provided a baked Alaska and talked M into flambeing it, thus transforming it into bombe Alaska.
Christmas Day
That tall, light-blue present on the left turned out to be a generous jug of organic maple syrup. Oh yeah.
Our amaryllis was almost at its peak.
Tuesday, December 26th
The day after Christmas was damp and foggy. In the morning we went up to Basket Slough, planning to walk through the wildlife refuge there. It turns out, though, that at this time of year, only wildlife are allowed into the main area. No humans.
So we took a look…but then moved on to Salem.
In Salem we went back to Minto-Brown Island Park, located along the south bank of the Willamette just west of downtown. The park covers 1200 low lying acres, an area that was once a Kalapuyan trading center and later became home to a large lumber mill and a number of farms. The park is named for two early immigrant landowners: John Minto and Isaac “Whiskey” Brown . Minto was a prominent sheep farmer and a long-time state legislator. Brown was not. Today much of the area has been restored and only a few traces of its history remain.
Part of our walk went right along the river.
On our way back to Corvallis we couldn’t help noticing the blueberry bushes and the seed fields.
Thursday, December 28th
E has been enjoying her social life with various animals. Yesterday she had a delightful walk with her canine friend, Asher, in an oak savannah park on the outskirts of town. Asher even surprised E with a luscious bag of Lindt chocolate balls! He clearly knows her taste.
This morning she paid a visit to Houdini the cat. He grumbled that she was late in serving breakfast, but after eating he purred and rubbed against E’s leg before settling down for a rest on the heated floor of the bathroom. What a life!
We’re doing a lot of bird feeding lately, mainly by allowing birds free access to apples.
Some birds seem to prefer pecking at the fruit that is still up in the tree, but we also see them pecking away at ground level.
Monday, December 11th
E had her post-op appointment today up in Lake Oswego. Because she arrived early, she took a walk around the neighborhood. She ran across this sign that gave her pause.
E wishes to stress that this is not the place where her surgeon has her office. It’s another business entirely.
At the post-op, out came the nasal stents, which was a huge relief. E is delighted to be able to breathe through her nose again, in fact already better than before the surgery.
While E was up north, M went to the Albany train station to pick up our friend Charles. Charles has been visiting Seattle and stopped by on his way back to California.
Tuesday, December 12th
We took Charles to the Ankeny Wildlife Reserve today and walked along the boardwalk through the wetland ash forest. The ash trees there grow in one to three feet of water for half the year. It’s a unique scene. Such forests may soon disappear from Oregon. Emerald ash borers, which have killed millions of ash trees in the east and midwest, are now moving into our region.
Wednesday, December 13th
Today the three of us took a walk in the OSU forest. Here we are in front of the old logging wheel at the Forestry Club cabin.
We took Charles to the OSU campus also, mainly to see the food delivery robots in action. Since it was quite cold, we decided to have hot chocolate. We have the app all set up, so it wasn’t too hard to place the order and say where we wanted it to be delivered. The only glitch is that when we ordered three hot chocolates (Swiss Miss), the app informed us that the most we could order was two. Well, okay, two would have to do.
When your order arrives, you use the app to identify yourself. Then the top flips open. Aah…we could almost taste that hot chocolate already.Oops! No drinks. Just two large cartons of Swiss Miss powder packets. The robots serve about a dozen campus entities. Most of them are cafes and restaurants, but…some of them are convenience stores and it’s not easy to tell which is which. Good thing the maximum was two.
Thursday, December 14th
Eve still has nasal swelling but has been feeling a lot better. So good, in fact, that we made short work of this 500 piece puzzle.
Monday, December 18th (Andrea’s birthday)
We’ve been running around getting our gifts ready for an early Xmas and Birthday celebration up at the Andees’ in Vancouver. Here are the things we had to haul up with us. The Charles Leclerc F1 shirt, ordered from Germany, arrived just in the nick of time.
We drove up to Vancouver in the afternoon and had a nice spaghetti dinner, followed by our gift exchange. We did the exchange early because Andy and Andi are leaving this Friday on a trip to Spain.
We had a chance to visit with the English china that once belonged to Lizzie Spanswick Chambers, E’s paternal grandmother. Here are a few pieces as seen on Andrea’s table in Vancouver.
In the evening we went to see Priscilla at the Darkside. We liked it very much, at least at first. The period cars were great as were all the clothes. So was the portrait of Elvis, both in the script and by the actor, Jacob Elbow, who did a great job of reproducing some of Elvis’s voice mannerisms. It was a fascinating story too. It’s all from Priscilla Presley’s book, which E has read and liked a lot. Some of the scenes were filmed in Graceland, which gave them a special kind of eerie realism. But man did that movie go on and on and on. It’s about two hours long, but the second hour seemed like three all by itself. When we discussed it afterward, we found out that we had both wanted to bail at about the ninety minute mark.
Earlier in the day we did a short hike in nearby Chip Ross Park. We went clockwise around the main loop and got four thousand steps and twenty-two floors as recorded by phone and watch. Now we don’t really trust those devices, especially about floors climbed. The counts are sometimes infuriatingly low. Today’s count seems maybe a little high. But we’ll take it. And we will remember to take this route again if we ever feel the need to get our floor count up.
Thursday, November 30
Another busy Thursday for E. First we had tertulia with J and R at Bodhi’s. Next she had to go up to Lake Oswego–about 65 miles away–for a 1:15 appointment. The doctor’s office is conveniently located just west of the Bridgeport Village shops and not far east of the La Provence bakery/restaurant. E managed to squeeze in a visit to both of those. Then it was back home in time for Laughter Yoga at 4:00, followed by a Lemon Meringue Pie Society meeting at 5:30.
M managed to get to the store–about three fourths of a mile away–and buy pickling vegetables. He also got some of the pickling done. (He does refrigerator pickles, which are easy.) He then raked up some late falling leaves from the side yard and spread them around in the flower beds. On a sudden impulse he got up on the roof and swept away the tangle of leaves and branches that had been slowly increasing in size over the last four years. He also continues to work on his memoirs, averaging a couple of paragraphs per day.
Friday, December 1
Bought a Christmas tree. Maybe sometime we’ll get around to decorating it.
Saturday, December 2
It’s a lot warmer around here these days–highs in the 50’s–but also a lot wetter. It’s cloudy all the time with showers passing through at frequent intervals. Between showers, M raked apple tree leaves. With all the clouds it gets dark awful early. Today we went out to dinner at the Dizzy Hen. We got there around 5:20 and by then the light was mostly gone. Dinner was delicious. E loved the leek and persimmon pie.
Later on we watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rodgers. In case you haven’t seen it, we’ll just mention that it is based on the true story of a magazine writer who was assigned to write a piece about Mr. Rodgers for Esquire in 1998. We liked the film very much.
Sunday, December 3
We thawed out some magdalenas for breakfast this morning, real Spanish ones from La Tienda. My, they’re good. Our new mantra–borrowed from a Spanish friend–is “Las magdalenas son mi salvación.”
After breakfast we did grocery shopping. This chore had to be done today as we will be spending most of tomorrow in Lake Oswego, where E is scheduled for surgery to straighten out her deviated septum. An important item on the shopping list was a tub of Tillamook Peanut Butter Chocolate ice cream, which will be required for successful recovery from the procedure.
As our reward for completing the grocery shopping, we went downtown intending to have a coffee at Tried and True and possibly do some Xmas shopping at a couple of nearby clothing stores. That worked out well.
Monday, December 4
E’s surgery went fine. Now comes the recovery, which is not much fun for this sort of procedure.
Tuesday, December 5
We got some packages today, including our favorite sort of Texas grapefruit. That should be of some assistance with E’s recovery.
Our weather continues to be rainy, but only normally rainy. It’s been worse up Seattle way. This weather pattern–the Pineapple Express–comes from the direction of Hawaii and brings warmer temperatures as well as lots of rain.
These jump-up pansies think the weather is just fine.
And here’s a cute little blackberry popping up where it is NOT WANTED.
Wednesday, December 7
E’s recovery continues. Some cardamom buns have been delivered to assist us. We’ve managed to decorate the tree and M is thinking of putting up some outside lights if there’s ever a pause in the rain.
