Winter Whine

It's 3:54 and it looks like twilight already.  It's bad enough that the days are so short, but the daylight savings change seems to add insult to injury.  By Christmastime it will be fully dark by 4:30 every day.

I see this sign every time I drive to and from Utah.

 I always have several feelings when I see it.  First, certainty that I should be headed towards the equator instead of away from it.  Second, surprise (even after all this time) that Portland is farther north than Rexburg.  Since Cindy Lynn spend several winters in Rexburg I know how bad those winters are, and I'm extremely grateful that the proximity to the coast tempers our winters.  But still--we are so far north!  And last every time I see the sign I'm at least a little depressed by the knowledge of the coming winter gloom, the short days and the gray skies, and the seasonal issues.

Today is a classic Oregon winter day.  It's rained for much of the day (even hard sometimes) and while it's been dry this year and rain is a good thing the resulting gloom is, well, gloomy.  It's obviously time to get my winter game plan in place to be sure that I'm ok during the long gray months.

But first, just for the moment, I want to whine!

whine!

whine!

whine!

Welcome to the Pacific Northwet

It was during the summer that I first saw them.  Shiny marks on the floor, both the wood floor and the carpet.  Marks that almost looked like someone had swiped a narrow trail of glue that had dried; but of course that was not it.

Later I saw them again, behind the couch, near the trash can, in front of the sink.  This time I tried touching the place on the carpet to see if I could feel anything but whatever was there disappeared as if glittery gossamer.

I sprinkled around a bit of salt before we left town, hoping that this would stop my mysterious invader, but when Cindy Lynn came by she saw it was not enough.  She spread the contents of a box around the floor and we hoped it would ward off the slimy evil.  I left the salt on the floor for several weeks before I finally vacuumed it up, certain that enough time had passed.  

The first week went by and then the second and the floor remained clean.  And then it happened again.  Tracks by the trash can and tracks by the sink.  Once again I spread salt along the walls, hoping to see something dead and dreading seeing something dead at the same time.

And then last night I saw it.  There was no clue where it came from, but I can tell you it went to a watery grave.  Dare I hope this was the only one???

Anticipation and a little destruction

It's been interesting to see how much of my settling in to living in Oregon has had to do with anticipation.  After the first difficult winter I planned lots of traveling for the second winter so I was anticipating those trips for months.  The first fall in our home I planted lots of tulips.  One of my friends made a comment about not liking tulips because they don't last very long, but as I planted the bulbs I was so excited about what I was going to see in a few months that I decided it really didn't matter to me that much to me if the flowers didn't last very long.

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The first spring in our house I was more than a little disconcerted to see what looked like ears of corn growing in the arborvitae next to the driveway.  When I realized it was bamboo invading from the neighbor's yard I was annoyed and had Josh and Tyler tear it out.

In between that spring and the next spring, though, my feelings about the bamboo changed.  Our backyard has been such a source of delight to me in this house.  We looked at many (MANY) homes where all you could see in the backyard was the house behind you.  Sometimes it felt like there was no privacy at all.  The lot behind 75% of our yard is an old lot of several acres, and just behind our yard there are mostly woods.

During the summer after Josh tore out the bamboo the neighbor behind the remaining 25% of our yard put an addition on his house.  He cut down several trees in his yard and then put on a huge (at least 20 foot) addition, pushing his house much closer to his back fence (and therefore our yard) than it had been before.  I HATE it.  HATE.  IT.

I started looking at the bamboo growing by our back fence in a different way.  Look how tall it was!  Look how thick it was!!  Look how evergreen it was!!!  I already knew from talking to my bamboo neighbor that a decent sized pot of bamboo was $50 at the local nursery, but then I had a thought.  I could wait until the next spring when the rouge bamboo came up by my driveway again, dig it up, and plant it in my backyard.  What a great idea!

Last spring 2 bamboo plants sprouted.  We watched them grow and grow--sometimes it seemed almost a foot in a day, and then dug them up as carefully as possible and transferred them to a pot. Despite our care we could only get a little bit of one of the rhizomes (the big root thing that the cane grows out of) and after a couple of months in the pot that bamboo cane died.  The other cane survived, though, and this year has put out a couple of small new shoots.  Last month we dug a big trench around the area where we want to plant the bamboo and put in a 30" barrier that should keep the bamboo we plant from escaping anywhere else. When this year's bamboo sprouts are all done growing & leafing out, we can transplant our bamboo into it's new home.

In the meantime, I was waiting and watching for new bamboo to come up by the driveway.  Waiting.  Watching.  Waiting.  Watching....

I just went back and reread the post about Josh and Tyler taking out the bamboo.  If I had know then what I know now I wouldn't have had them do such a thorough job of it.  This year we don't have any shoots, just some small grassy plants.  I am bummed about that.

In what was a very unexpected turn of events, though, one day I was sitting in the chair in my room and I happened to look just right out the french doors and saw this.

Just in case you need to see that up close, here you go.

I was so annoyed!  No bamboo in the driveway, and bamboo here getting ready to wreck my fence again!  I was going to break it off (which will stop it from growing) but just didn't get around to it by the time I looked again...

Two!

And yet I still didn't knock them down.  I was busy with things to do, you know.  Maybe in the back of my mind I had the idea that I would figure out a way to be able to take advantage of these bamboo canes.  So they grew and grew and grew.
One day I noticed something new--not only my 2 canes growing up between the deck and the fence, but the tip of a cane poking between the 1st and second deck board.

That's when I started thinking differently...I started thinking about deconstructing the deck.  I looked at it carefully, noticed that it was put together with screws, and rationalized that what is screwed together can also be un-screwed!

Friday evening when I was done using the drill in the attic (another story) I brought it outside along with several different drill bits.  I then proceeded to loosen as many of the screws in these two boards with a regular screwdriver, then take the screws out with the drill.  I ended up having to drill several screws out and that wasn't pretty, but being the end boards I figured they didn't have to be too pretty.  When Russ got home from work I was just starting to try to pry one of the boards up.

(Does he get home from work and think wow, she's at it again?!?)

He helped me get out the last stripped screws and provided the strength I needed to pry up the two boards.  Let's just say that being rained on and sunned on for the last 3+ years, they were on there tight!  When we finally pulled them up it was dusk and it took us a minute to figure out for sure what we were seeing.

This is a picture I took a few days later.  You can see that without the boards in it's way, the new bamboo to the left took off.  But can you also see what surprised us--on the right, two other little bamboos that were entirely under the deck boards that look like they've grown a few inches since we took them off!  On the far right are two others, but they look so stunted already that we're thinking they must have been from earlier this spring or even from last year.

The sad thing about the deck removal was that I hadn't counted on the deck frame (non-technical term) underneath.  So those two big canes are pinched between the frame and the fence.  I'm still hoping that when the time comes (we can't do anything until they have their full growth) we'll be able to get at the rhizomes via the space we've just opened up and then pull them out.  Crossing my fingers on that one.

So there you have it.  Our bamboo story as it unfolds.  A story of anticipation with just a little bit of destruction.  I can't wait to see how it ends!

Across the Divide at last!

 

Several weeks ago I was out somewhere and had a distinct thought come into my mind.

"I've finally crossed the continental divide."

When I went home and shared that thought with Russ he laughed and said "You did that almost 3 years ago!"

"Physically I did," I agreed, "but mentally & emotionally it's been a much more recent event."

 

I've been thinking about it off and on since then, trying to analyze where this thought came from and what exactly it meant.  If I remember it came on a sunny day, which we've thankfully had a lot of this winter.  (And last winter, but our first winter here seemed almost unbearably gloomy.)  I think it came the week after we'd had Kate here to babysit and I was still enjoying the memories of getting to spend so much time with her and thinking about what a blessing it's been to be closer (than North Carolina) to them.  And I'm pretty sure it was right after I dropped my kids off at school, which has been such a good experience for them.

I've wondered if I'm just weak for taking so long to acclimate emotionally but today I read an interesting comment on a random blog:
"  At some point after an event causing great pain, e.g., a divorce or the death of a parent, we need to be able to get on with it. Some research, from several decades back, indicates that the length of time that this takes for most people on average, is about three years. "

So maybe I'm just really normal.  (It would be nice to think that, wouldn't it?)  Whatever the explanation, and however much I will always love and miss North Carolina, I'm almost unbearably grateful to feel this transition within me.  To have more peace and less heartache in my life here.  To be starting to feel a part of things.  To see my children thriving.  

Thank goodness for the passage of these 3 years...

Segway Portland

About a year and a half ago I saw a groupon for a segway tour of Portland.  Since we already know that we love to segway I thought that would be a terrific date idea and I bought 2 of them.  Then I went and got concussed on that hike and it was a while before I was ready for our tour.  I worried that the weather would have changed but it turned out to be a perfect day.  The leaves were all sorts of beautiful colors and the temperatures were perfect.  We got to segway all through the downtown, around Portland State University, along the river, over a bridge, along the other side of the river, and back over another bridge.  It was seriously fantastic.



The kids were all sorts of jealous.  What they didn’t know was that we had asked whether the triplets were old enough and big enough to ride a segway because we thought that would be a fun group birthday present this year while Jason was home from college.

Here are some pictures and video from that day.

First the kids had to be taught how to ride the segways, then they got to practice in a square around a fountain.  Jenna was scared in the beginning but after a while they were all confident.

For the tour with the kids we skipped the university, but we still got to go by the Portland Loo, a public bathroom in a greenspace downtown.

We went by several bubblers, public water fountains that were designed and built long ago and are still in use. 

When we went down to the river we passed an apartment building that had a moat around it. 

We had a great view of all of the bridges.

We also passed the smallest park in the world.  Seriously.

When our tour was over we got to ride our segways around a parking garage while the tour guide was putting the first few away and settling up with Russ.  We decided that the cool Portland tour was just a bonus—they were equally fun in the parking garage.

I don’t know when or where our next segway tour will be, but I’m sure there will be one!

Foggy morning

I got up this morning at 6:30, approximately 4 hours too early for my NyQuilled and still-recovering self, to drive through the fog with rush hour traffic to take Josh to the airport. I felt just one step better than death warmed over. After dropping Josh off I found a McDonalds and got both breakfast and a coke, hoping that one or the other would help me feel better and make it home safely. Then I headed up to Marine Dr because the traffic was terrible on 84.

The fog hadn't been too bad through Portland or at the airport but it was thick and dense up by the river, and me without my GPS.

Nothing that i could see looked familiar, perhaps because i couldn't actually see anything. I circled around the port of Portland several times before I got ahold of Russ so that he could "blonde star" me back to somewhere familiar.

When I came through the pass and over the top of the hill looking towards Beaverton and Hillsboro the sun was shining, the sky was almost blue and I could see a white blanket of fog sitting on top of everything.

By the time I got to Hillsboro I was back in it... Amazing how that can happen so quickly.

I went by Intel to pick up my van and leave Russ's car. I hasn't wanted to take my van to the airport since it'd had a flat tire (#3 in as many months, and no this is not my happy voice!!) yesterday afternoon and still had the temporary tire on. I took it straight to Costco and sat down to read the only thing I had found in the van--wired magazine. After a few minutes the tire tech called to tell me that actually I didn't need my tire fixed, I needed both of my front tires (less than 2 years old) replaced. He asked me to walk back around the building so that he could show me what he was talking about, but I declined. He could tell how upset I was, and ended up charging me the warranty price instead of the full price for new tires. Good business on his part.

I didn't get back home till after noon. Still feeling crappy, totally exhausted. I'm going to take a nap now. A very, very long one.

Dad’s visit: day 3

On the last day of their visit we took Jason and drove to the Columbia River Gorge to see waterfalls.  First we all walked the paved 1/4 mile to Bridal Veil Falls.

Then we went to Multnomah Falls to look at the Falls and have ice cream.

The last place we went was Horsetail Falls. 

My dad & Ramona stayed down at the lower falls and Jason and I walked up to Pony Tail Falls, which was the waterfall we were going to hike to last summer after the Oneanta Gorge hike that I fell on.  Jason was just as impressed with Pony Tail Falls as I’d hoped they would be.  How can you not be impressed by getting to walk behind a waterfall?!?

When we were done hiking we took the long way home so that they could see the Portland Temple.  We were exhausted by the end of the 3rd day!

Dad’s visit: day 2

On the second day of Dad & Ramona’s visit we went to pick berries at my favorite berry farm.  My dad was so taken with the beauty of the area, just like I am every time I go there.

We were picking blackberries that day.  I’d thought we might each pick 1/2 of a gallon, but I’d thought wrong.  Turns out my dad is a berry picking machine.

In the end Ramona and I had each picked a whole gallon, and my dad picked 2!!  We had a delicious berry cobbler that night and I froze bags and bags to use all winter long.  Yum!!

After we were done picking berries I drove them to the place south of town where we could see Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and several other of the distant volcanoes.  They were suitably impressed.

Dahlia Heaven

In the middle of the summer one of my friends posted some pictures on facebook of really lovely dahlias, and when I asked her where she’d taken them she told me of a vast dahlia farm on the other side of Portland.  One day in late August I took myself and my fully charged camera off to spend several delightful hours on the dahlia farm.

The setting was so terrific—acre after acre of blooming dahlias, with Mt. Hood in the background.

I took over 500 pictures.  I was like a kid in a candy shop.  At the end of the day I wasn’t sure which new flowers I should get for next year, just that I definitely needed some!