A New Cause

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

Food!

Yesterday Donna (bless her heart) came over and roto-tilled the section in the back where the vegetable garden was/is to be. I meant to take a picture beforehand, of the rotting wood and the weeds, but didn't get to it. Instead I have the "after" pictures, of the new layout (in progress) and this Swiss Chard with its very appropriate cutworm collar.


So far I've almost tripled the veggie garden space I had before we moved. In the foreground of the picture above you can see the Compost Squash that I rescued from the Old Beds before they were tilled. We'll find out soon what it is.

I've also started a little garden spot in the back for NOD. She has a tomato, marigolds and a lavender right now, and soon will have some Cosmos and Nasturtiums.

Why do people bother buying toys for kids, part 7

Street art

Katie's been doing some quick paintings and hanging them up around town. She posted one in front of our house:

Found it!

YouTube has *everything*.
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The cemetary on the hill

Yesterday we all went up the hill to Mulkey Cemetary. It is very prettily situated at the top of a hill that at one time would have had beautiful views of both the coastal range and the Cascades, but now houses and yards are in the way. The House Bean spent some time weeding and helping solve a flagpole problem, and I chased the kids around and tried to keep them from removing all the flags and flowers from the gravesites.
Later in the afternoon we went to the Buddha-Q at Horton Road Organics, and hung out with a bunch of Zendo folk at the farm. Didn't bring the camera for that one. We bought shares at the farm for this season, so we'll know exactly where our vegetables are coming from, as well as the people who grew them. It is a very peaceful place in a little valley in the coastal mountains. Unfortunately, it is looking like the hill behind the farm will be clearcut this summer. Number Two Son had a blast running all over the place. He was right at home. It is really too bad that I didn't have the camera to get a shot of him taking a ride on a hand truck that he pulled out and brought to me. Next time.

What a rotten week

...which I won't go into the details of. But here's what I found this morning as "comfort viewing." Bobby Burgess and Barbara Boyland dancing to "Calcutta" on the Lawrence Welk show in 1961.

NOD's solo

NOD has been in a few dance classes at Parks & Rec this year. I don't get to take her, since I'm at work when she goes, but the House Bean took a couple of videos this week for me.

Wall o' Ribbon

Wall o' Ribbon
Originally uploaded by pangolina.

Last weekend I finally got the chance to go to Mindy's, the needlework store over at the 5th Street Market. It really is a treasure of a store, not just because she has *every* kind of embroidery floss you could ever dream of, but also because of this Wall of Ribbon. Unfortunately, I only had my phone camera with me at the time, so I couldn't really do it justice.

Why do people bother buying toys for kids, part 6

We went to the animal fair

To celebrate my birthday week, I took the day off yesterday and we went up to Portland to the Oregon Zoo. We also stopped off at the Japanese Gardens on the way up the hill. NTS is at a really great age - He recognizes animals, and when he sees them (it doesn't matter what kind of animal it is) he growls, "Rarrr, rarrr!" He spent quite a lot of time with the lion-dogs at the entrance to the Japanese Gardens:

Then, we did the zoo. The Oregon Zoo has a brand-new exhibit on the animals of the Northwest; there are bobcats and black bears, cougars, river otters, salmon and trout. It is very well done as a walk through the woods with a bridge that is evocative of the bike/pedestrian bridges that are across the Willamette River in just about every town here.

The latest trends in zoo exhibit design are "habitat islands" that let the visitor get the feeling of really walking amongst the animals (they've done a great job with this at the new entrance to the San Francisco Zoo), and big glass windows that allow you to stand right next to the animal and get an up-close look. In several cases, they've made one of the walls of the animal's den out of glass. We got to get up close to the bobcat and the cougar that way. Later on, the kids got to visit the Oregon Zoo's oldest inhabitant, this female Orangutan who has been there since 1961:

Later, we were lucky enough to stumble onto the flight practice for the bird show that will be opening in June. This was the first time they've had the birds out to fly this season. It hadn't occured to me that a bird could get out-of-shape from not flying, but *doh*! Of course! I only hope they fly a little higher when there's a full audience out there:
That's a Red-Tailed Hawk. Here's a brief movie of her flying from the stage to the back perch:


We also got to see the Turkey Vulture fly. She was supposed to fly from the stage to the middle perch, then to the back perch. However, she was very interested in the bits of cut up mouse that were on the stage from feeding the other birds, and so she kept just flying back to the stage:


But why were Wayne and Charlie sitting in the garbage can?


Also, Hippopatabutts:


We got stuck in rush-hour traffic leaving Portland, decided not to try to get out to I-5, and took some other highway out of town. Saw the Blues Brothers in Sherwood:


We stopped in Salem to have some dinner and wound up at a very good Indian place. But we had to stop and take a picture of the Capitol Building. They must have hired Mormon architects, because this place just plain looks like it should be the Salem Temple (For examples of what I mean, go here and here). Even has a golden Moroni/logger on the top. He's facing Missouri the long way around.

And they say the weather is so much "worse" here...

Dark times

I know it's getting bad again when I start getting Sweeney Todd lyrics in my head.

Take a trip in the Way Back Machine

Sean has been posting a bit on his blog about Punk and getting all cerebral about it. I say WHATEVER...

Twins, separated by a generation

Number Two Son, at fifteen months old:

...and his grandfather, my dad, at fifteen months old (in 1949):


And here's NTS at 12 months, also to compare with the above photo of Grampy:

Old school

I found a table at St. Vinnie's today (the awesome HUGE one) for twenty-five bucks! And then it turned out to be 25% off! It's an old dining table, probably from the 40's, and somebody has already apparently used it for crafting, or it was in a garage for a while, because it has paint splashed down one side of it. But there's still the pencil marks from it's (by hand) construction from so long ago, and somebody (maybe the builder) had to make a quick calculation:

My daughter, the dancer

She's taking two dance classes at Parks and Rec right now, because we're just trying to keep up with her...

That's her dancing along with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the final sequence of Shall We Dance (1937). She loves these movies.

Why do people bother buying toys for kids, part 5

Oregon Spring

Spring is springing up beautifully here. Today I have some pictures from our (short) hike up by Goodman Creek. It turned out short because NOD was having issues keeping up with her short little legs.

On the way we stopped at the Lowell Covered Bridge interpretive center. We saw three other covered bridges (drove across one) still in use on the way back down. There's a piece of the original bridge timber lying on the deck inside the bridge here, that was originally a 400 year old Douglas Fir. I had never seen a single piece of milled wood so large.


NTS walked for the first bit of our hike:

There were lots of little woodland flowers blooming all along the trail. Most of them were trillium:
NOD:
We met a few red newts scittering across the trail, and a bunch of banana slugs:
NOD examines a banana slug:
Afterwards we took the scenic route back, through Lowell, and eventually made our way to the Saturday Market, which opened today. The afternoon music at the Market was a showcase of local youth bands. We caught part of the performance by Tonn Nua, who we saw last fall in their first live performance. They've obviously become more comfortable with performing on stage since then, and they sounded fantastic. On the way back through, after hitting the Farmer's Market and stopping by Sonya's booth (where we got a couple of onesies for an impending niece/nephew), the wonderful marimba music we heard was from Hokoyo, one of whose members is a student of mine. I highly recommend their CD.

The weather was beautiful (sunny, with occasional showers). And we're having cake tonight for the House Bean's birthday.

Photo Friday: Blessing

This week's Photo Friday entry is a picture of my husband, brother-in-law, and my husband's grandfather blessing our Number Two Son, a month after he was born.