JANUARY 20,2021

A day when everything changes!

For Andrew — here are the photos I promised of the “great-flood-so-far”:

We walked down the path to the river that morning. Luckily we didn’t do anything stupid like drop a phone in the water, or fall in, but Grandpa said his right boot had a leak and his toes were getting squishy. No help for that, so we walked along Llewellyn back to our driveway. There’s never much traffic along the road, but everyone who passes smiles and waves. This is nice. We don’t know one another, but it feels like we belong here.

We always stop to see if there are eggs, and this day the answer was yes:

Okay, buddy, your turn! The photo of the BMW was an excellent start, but if you’ll send more, I’ll post them here next time. Deal?

It’s been a busy week here at the Wood! After struggling with our hot water system, on the advice of the plumber, we decided to go ahead with a change to reverse-osmosis treatment for the household water. This involved a great new tank in the shed, causing a round of rearrangement where the patio chairs and the Traeger used to spend the winter. I cannot tell you how reverse-osmosis works, but it does allow us to dispense with the Britta filters for drinking water, get hot water to the shower without a five-minute wait, and, we hope, a return to actual white linens from the washing machine.

The next day was the beautiful Wednesday-the-20th. We celebrated with some neighbors, correctly distanced — wait! Does this now go without saying that when we meet anyone we will be correctly distanced? How long, oh Lord, but okay? Anyway, we sat out on their meadow, watched the sun set, toasted the peaceful change of power with some champagne, laughed and told stories. Practically froze, because hey, it is winter and this outdoor gathering stuff, while saving lives, friendships, and sanity all around? Sigh.

Speaking of which, we got a notice that Benton County and Samaritan Health were joining to offer mass vaccination on Reser Stadium field next Tuesday and Wednesday. Didn’t mention how they’d offer the second dose, so I’m not sure if we should jump in. We have an arrangement with Terwilliger to get the shots after they’ve completed the Assisted Living vaccinations, but have no idea when that will be. Kind-of tempting to join the crowd down at the stadium. We’ll see.

Back on the farm, our favorite crew from Peterson Landscaping showed up early Thursday morning to plant three maple trees in the north-facing yard. This is with the idea of providing shade in the hot afternoons on the porch. Side benefits will be to soften the house into the surrounding land, offer birds a stop between the oak copse and the distant standing oaks. Maybe to induce the owls who nightly serenade us to make a home nearby? Those owls sing all night long, and it’s perfect background noise for sleeping.

And on the subject of trees, we’ve been talking with Matt, the county planting contractor, about adding trees to the creekside habitat. At the moment, this habitat consists mostly of spirea, Oregon Grape, wild roses, red alder. He’s coming back next week with the trees he can find in the nurseries. Ash, alder, willow, maple. We thought maybe a couple of dozen, but he says, no, 600, depending. This is courtesy of our grant from Benton County, and wow! Gonna be fun!

Bob Altman, vesper sparrow guy, visited with Jerod Jabousek from Fish and Wildlife to consider planting shrubs in the pasture lands to encourage the nesting of vesper sparrows. These birds apparently like to live among grazing cows, but they do need intermittent bushes to house their nests. In the past, cows haven’t grazed on the F&W land, but we can work with Ryan, cow guy, to pasture them in a timely dance with the wild flowers and birds.

Now it’s Saturday morning. Blue sky, frost on the land, Larry cooking his breakfast, all’s well. See ya next time! Andrew, send those photos!

SO NOW IT’S JANUARY

And how are we celebrating this shiny new year? First, just enjoying the sunshine. But.

Yesterday we spent a day in Portland clearing out the condo in the hoped-for event that the sale goes through. This is tricky. We need to get the personal stuff out of there, yet leave enough “staging” in place, should this sale fall through and we need to start showing it again.

So Larry started in his office. This is a man who keeps the most complete records of every transaction ever effected, and keeps it on hard copy, because who trusts computers? Btw, he is right to suspect computers of evil-doing as experience has demonstrated. Still, that’s a lot of paper. Neatly filed. But where is it going to live in our little farmhouse?

Me? I started with the kitchen. Specifically, the spice drawer. Dear God, what have I been thinking? Never mind, the past is history. We are advised to dispose of our herbs and spices every 12-18 months, or so, but who does that? I piled the lot in boxes and hauled it home to the farm, where all those sister and brother herbs and spices are already — alphabetized, incidentally, and yes, I hear you, Vik — filed in drawers. See, I’m no different from my husband in this respect.

FIRST DRAWER
SECOND DRAWER

Can you relate? Hey! I already dumped 21 redundant bottles. I just counted.

Exciting bird news in the ‘hood. Remember that photo of the colorful bird from last entry? Seems an expert from OSU came to see it and noted that this is the first painted bunting ever sighted in Benton County. Only 10 reported in Oregon since 1963. But he won’t, he says, reveal the location or hundreds of eager birders would descend with binocs and spotting scopes. I’m feeling grateful that this little pioneer didn’t arrive at our bird feeders. Would we have known what we’d seen? Yeah, probably not.

Okay, that was fun. Now, back to work. While Larry’s office is a continent unto itself, the kitchen is a cluster of archipelagos, some of them even French-speaking. Take the pull-out pantry shelves. Half-full packages of pasta in various shapes. Cans of Campbells soups. (Why? Did I bring them to Oregon from Minnesota where they make “hot dish” using Cream of Mushroom or etc.?) Plastic baggies of hull-less barley. Oh! That nearly empty container of wild rice that Gloria gave me once. Damn. I’ve been missing that.

Hey. I just noticed that in that paragraph I managed to use three hyphenated words containing a rhyme. Find them? I’m a regular genius.

But you can’t throw food away. Let’s move on. Allison has offered to help with this project, and I’d be three times a fool if I didn’t accept. But I think I offended her by the suggestion that she identify some items she might want. Paintings? Grandmother Eagleson’s Seth Thomas clock with the wooden gears? The cut-glass pitcher that came over on the Mayflower? (just kidding) But honestly, who wants to pick over her mother-in-law’s dusty artifacts? Not me. I totally get that. However, she can’t be here in any case — Covid, of course.

Meanwhile, Larry and I have been trying to sort out exactly where we will stay in Portland while waiting the three years for our apartment in Terwilliger’s Park View addition to be built.

The present option under consideration is a little re-finished detached garage, fitted out as a tiny apartment. It’s like 284 square feet, but it has a super kitchen tucked in complete with stove-top, oven, microwave, refrig. Tiled bath with walk-in shower. Queen-size bed in, unbelievably, a separate room. After seeing it, we decided maybe not — Larry didn’t think he’d be comfortable there. No cozy chair for reading or putting on your socks. But we’re rethinking it. We’ll have to put a few things in storage while we wait for the Terwilliger apartment, but that’s okay. It’s not like we’re going to spend too much time in Portland. Just need somewhere to sleep and brush our teeth. Why not just stay in a hotel, you ask? That’s the other option. For three years it feels kind-of nice to think we’d have our own space. Where we wouldn’t have to pack every time we came to town.

We’re going to have another look this Sunday, and maybe will make a decision then.

People keep asking if I’ll miss our condo. The answer is yes. Emphatically. But I won’t miss the building, and of late, won’t miss Portland. I’ve lived in or around Portland most of my long life, but something happened, and it got broken. It will recover, but right now, it breaks my heart. And I simply love our “farm.” So thank you for asking!

It’s getting dark. Larry has been outside all afternoon working on the fallen oak tree. Just picking up the pieces, hauling firewood down to the barn, tossing the small branches onto a burn pile. I think he prefers this to filing paperwork!