PHOENIX: ON IT

But let’s start here with Charlie and Arianne: When life gives you grandkids, put them to work! Here they are culling apples in advance of the fall harvest. Charlie is our son Peter’s kid, Arianne the adorable girlfriend. They’d flown in for the weekend of the 4th down on Balboa Island with wide-flung Lindbeck/Viehl family and friends. A long-time tradition with boat rides, games, good food, a chance to enjoy the new generation of girlfriends/boyfriends.

Then the two came up to Corvallis for a day, before leaving to spend a week at our family place at Black Butte Ranch. Charlie has been a part of Black Butte as long as we all could remember, and he wanted to introduce Arianne to both the people and settings of the California and Oregon branches of his family.

Arianne’s family is in Massachusetts, where she grew up, and it seems most of them also went to Boston College, which is where our two met. The Horan family has an on-line baking company, Damask, “Make it Because it Matters.” In the box I just opened, having ordered their gluten-free cinnamon cake, I found all the pre-measured ingredients, plus a silicone cake pan. Nice. I’ll post an image after I bake it.

Of course I got some grandkid help with my annoying, contrary devices before they left in the morning. Specifically, how I can send photos from my phone directly to my computer without mailing them to myself. Huh. That was easy. Question is, where on my computer have they landed? Will it work when he’s not here to supervise? We’ll soon learn. Apparently I’m to look in Downloads. But I’m busy right now.

So what about Phoenix? On Tuesday morning, a crew arrived with the intent to start work on the oak copse just east of the house:

They came loaded with those tools, borrowed the ATV, and disappeared into the oak stand you see behind them. Their intention is to hack down the blackberries (non-native, invasive) in the understory. James, whom you met earlier, was here as well to identify any of the native, threatened plants that may be damaged by the first sweep. The Himalayan Blackberry , native to Armenia and Iran, was introduced to North America as an agricultural crop, but has escaped cultivation. The plant is wildly successful at both seed dispersal and root generation. Forming dense thickets, it outshades and outcompetes desirable natives. Plus, as I have personally discovered, the thorns are particularly savage in the damage they inflict on innocent berry pickers or simple hikers. How they are regarded in Armenia or Iran I cannot tell you.

That same morning, here’s a man we recently hired for the job busy mowing the field we call “the meadow.” This was seeded some years ago by Field and Wildlife with the flowers Checkermallow, Self Heal, native Cinquefoil, and with the grass Roemers Fescue. All lovely, but we were instructed to wait until they’d set seed to mow the tall wild grasses surrounding the flowers. Last year Larry had done the mowing himself but today was happy to hand over the keys to a younger driver. Who has been unafraid, apparently, to drive his machine on the required side-hill lie.

That afternoon, we had a meeting with Ian, lead guy with Phoenix, on the proposal to create a different setting surrounding the house. The idea is to replace the common lawn grass with native shrubs, flowers, chipped wood paths, in an area on both sides of the driveway entrance. This should align with our idea to improve habitat, attract butterflies and bees, eliminate the need for weekly mowing. They’ve created a plan for the space, with plant suggestions for us to review. Yes. Homework.

Over the following weekend, Larry and I went to Portland for my afternoon with Chicks-and-Flicks-in-the- park. We all watch a movie on Netflix at home, then come together to discuss. The film this time was “Intern,” and as most of us are of an age, we loved it. (Btw, I had to do a grammar check on where the comma following “Intern” needed to be placed. As you see.) So we spent that night at Terwilliger, feeling a little happy and smug to have retained a foothold in Portland..

Then that following Sunday, we met friends Vik and Gordon in Tigard to watch the musical “Waitress.” Yes, in Tigard, in the auditorium of the very high school which I, my younger sisters, and the later, our kids, had attended. My mom was the math teacher there. The building has been much remodeled of course — no nostalgia wasted — but seriously? When did you last set foot in your high school?

Mixed reviews of the musical, but we love the chance to be with our Portland friends, and will for certainly buy tickets for next year’s season. However, after the show we had to blitz back to Corvallis to be here for my 8 a.m. haircut the following morning.

When Charlie and Arianne returned that afternoon from their Black Butte stay, Charlie was on a high of enthusiasm for the Nike campus, which they’d had an opportunity to tour on Monday, apparently as a side benefit of his employment connection with Sports Illustrated. I almost allowed myself to imagine that he’d consider coming to work with Nike in Portland. I mean, he does his writing remotely, why not here? But before I could raise the question, they were off to Eugene and on their way back to Boston.

Moving on from that fantasy, Larry’s garden is at full throttle. He spent one morning this week digging onions in preparation for drying them on the wire rack covering one of the raised beds. I could walk out there and count them, but let’s just say there are a lot of onions. To keep them over the winter, I can chop and freeze some of them, but to how keep them fresh? One suggestion is to use the legs of women’s stockings to form a tube in which to store the onions in a line. Uh huh. Womens’ stockings? Do they even make them any more? I sure don’t have any to contribute, so the question is, can I create something similar? Something that allows air circulation, yet keeps the onions from touching one another. Hmm.

But someone or something has been dining on the lettuces, the broccoli starts, the pea plants in the carefully created raised beds. Larry accuses the ground squirrels, the slugs, the birds, but here’s one candidate I found the other day on my morning walk:

Isn’t he the sweetest? I’d be happy to share with this little fellow, but I do worry that his survival chances now that the meadow has been mown, aren’t high.

On this note, I’ll get out from behind my computer and head outside to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. Got to go check on the chickens. It’s been way hot these past days, and I usually find the flock huddled in one shady corner of the orchard. Yesterday I found a quail trapped in the main coop, and it was interesting to watch her find a way to escape. Basically just flinging herself at every option until she finally found the open sky Sorry, I didn’t get a photo to share with you. Do birds have brains? We’ll talk another time.