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!