It's that time of year again. In spite of the cold (or not so cold, this year) or gloom or rain, spring is moving quietly but surely toward its debut, and here in Eugene one of the best places to keep track of the progress of the local flora is at the Masonic cemetery. Essentially a combination burial ground, outdoor historical museum, wildflower preserve and local park, this wooded hillside draws me each February in a search for the first flowers of the season. And things are indeed beginning to bloom.

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This afternoon at the Finley Wildlife Refuge. The speckles at the far side
of the pond are geese.

Today dawned with blue skies and big clouds, a break in our usual winter routine of rain or its common variants (mist, drizzle, overcast), so after the routine items were taken care of, Jenny, Con and I hopped into the car and headed up to Finley Wildlife Refuge, a pleasant 40-minute trip through a couple of little towns (one of 4,500 people, the other with a population of 680, according to the sign at the edge of the village) along country roads, past green fields scattered with sheep and the odd alpaca, past roadside wetlands and stretches of dormant woods (which, this being Oregon, means they're currently leafless but with respectable coats of moss.) And all that lovely blue sky with dramatic clouds brush-stroked overhead.

Jenny is a bird lover, but the last time we ventured up to the wildlife refuge, just before Christmas, all the feathered residents seemed to have gone elsewheref for the holidays. This time, however, the cackling geese (a type of Canada goose that winters in the Willamette Valley) were there in full force... and full voice. As soon as we opened the car doors, the din of honking geese on the pond filled the air. And they were there by the thousands, in long floating clusters on the water, with more periodically circling in dark wreaths overhead and then settling with the rest.

Quite the spectacular site, and a highlight of a very pleasant afternoon. Every time I head out of town to someplace like this, I'm so thankful to live in a good-sized state that has only 3.8 million human inhabitants, and therefore much room left over for other types of life.


Close-up so you can see that there really are lots of geese. Lots and lots of geese.

Photo of a restaurant in my former town in SoCal, taken at night
and jiggled, but tweaked in Photoshop and hit with 'posterize'.

I'm so grateful for what the web has become as a research tool for writing. I remember, back in the 'old days' (i.e. 1998) trying to find information for story locations and only encountering a lot of text, but very few of the pictures I was really searching for. It was enough to drive me to post my own pictures in the hopes that some poor soul looking for glimpses of the places I'd been might have more success than I was having. Of course, the digital camera revolution has since taken care of that problem. Now you can find all kinds of pictures for any possible location you might have in mind. It's amazing, really.

Then there's the 'all the world at your fingertips' convenience of being able to almost instantly find out any sort of background information or verify any obscure factoid you might need. I'm old enough to remember the days when, suddenly needing some background information, your quickest option was to phone a reference librarian at a local library, explain what you were looking for and wait for a call back hours later. That is, if they had the information at all, or the staff to help you.

I love the background knowledge that helps bring a story scene to life. If I've set a piece within a strictly defined time period, I'll look up the historical weather for that date and place at WeatherUnderground to see if those conditions might end up coming into play or somehow altering what my characters might face. If they're headed someplace I'm not familiar with, I'll go out searching for photos and absorb what I find, so I can write as accurately as possible.

But one of my latest favorite story setting aids is Google maps' street view. Just this morning as I was writing, a certain enigmatic villain was called to a meeting at a deli in Brooklyn. Immediately I whipped open a new window, went to Google maps, looked at the overall area, then zoomed in close. Where exactly would this place be? I typed in 'deli in Brooklyn, New York', and got a list of places. Then I went to one, switched to street view and looked around the neighborhood, soaking in the details and the atmosphere. I checked the deli's website and found out what was on the menu. Going back to the map, I worked out my character's route and the amount of time he would spend in a taxi, wondering who he'd encounter on the other end. I dipped down along his route to look at the street view and see what he would be seeing along the way. A mood started to grow. Ideas started to filter into his head, and of course at that point I was off and writing. Whee!

Yes, I'm still plugging away at 'A Rat's Life'. I've been having quite the prolonged wrestling match with writer's block, but my recent encounter with Steven Pressfield's 'The War of Art' seems to have helped, so there's another small section of the saga ready here for those interested.

Btw, I don't agree with everything Pressfield says in his book; at times he makes dangerously broad generalizations. But he keeps hammering away at one core truth of writing: that if you sit down and are ready to do the work, inspiration will come. And he repeats it enough, in a variety of effective ways, that you remember when you've done just that: sat down, thinking you had nothing in the way of plot or content in your head, only to find ideas starting to flow as soon as you had your hands on the keyboard (or pen/pencil/typewriter/whatever you use.) He also has a lot to say about resistance to creative work and the myriad forms it takes, which can be pretty enlightening when applied to other areas of life, too. It's definitely worth the read.

Cormorants on Dianna's Pond

We're in the middle of winter's gloomy/rainy/drizzly period, which mostly means staying indoors, though occasionally, when the temperatures are above average, as they have been recently, we go out for a walk or other adventure in spite of the wet stuff falling--or dripping, or drifting down--from above. The cats, for their part, have been doing a lot of snoozing in the living room, as you can see below, where the fire in the pellet stove makes things cozy. (That chair, btw, was a great find I stumbled across at a thrift store recently. It's in very nice shape but had the recliner handle missing and a U-shaped tear in the lower front part of the seat cushion. I paid the ridiculously low $10 they were asking, hauled it home, applied my mad sewing skillz for a few minutes, which made the tear virtually disappear, popped a pair of vice-grips on the recliner knob for a temporary fix and--voila!--near-instant extra seating, which we really needed.)



Aside from perusing seed catalogs, looking through cookbooks for new recipes to get us out of our current food rut, doing jigsaw puzzles--and work, of course--when we do get outside we notice the inevitable, if quiet, march of progress in the world of greenery around us. Moss everywhere--on trees, rocks, roadsides and roofs--is vibrant and healthy, buds on camellias and rhododendrons are swelling, and the leaves of crocus and daffodils are pushing up through the ground, reminding us that winter, no matter how all-pervasive it may seem when you're in the middle of it, doesn't last forever.


Crocuses sprouting at the base of our birch tree

By the way, some of you may know that I had great fun over the holidays making photo books at Shutterfly. Today they sent me a notice that they'll offer a free 20-page photo book to up to three people I refer to them (obviously looking for new customers.) You would be responsible for postage, and any pages over the 20, but I can vouch for the high quality of their books and photo reproduction; the books make great gifts or family memoirs. If any of you are interested (I assume this would be best for those in the U.S. or Canada, where there wouldn't be heavy additional postage required), just e-me--my screen name at gee mail.

The Goodpasture bridge decorated for Christmas

I'm not sure that Steve and Larry, Southern Californians that they are, quite grasped the rationale in going out for a walk in 33-degree weather the other day. The reason was, of course, that it was--ta-da!--sunny, and sun in the winter here comes seldom enough that we locals feel the need to get out and enjoy it before it disappears and the cloak of winter wraps us tightly in gray once again.

Yesterday, on the other hand, it looked like just another typical socked-in day, with our signature misty fog everywhere. But suspecting that we might be able to get beyond it by escaping the valley floor, we decided to drive up the McKenzie and show Steve and Larry the fish hatchery and adjoining park at Leaburg Lake, a place we frequent in warmer times (generally after picking blueberries.) And it was true; soon after leaving Springfield, the fog thinned and then melted away.

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Warm and cozy times to all of you!

Ice flowers on the back storm door this morning

This morning it was 21 degrees in the garage, though so far our jars of canned fruit and veggies seem to be okay. The girls' water bowl cracked overnight, though, and that combined with the frozen egg I found in one of the nesting boxes this morning means I'm going to be spending some time today figuring out how to better insulate the henhouse.

Okay, don't laugh, you Midwesterners and northern Europeans who find these temperatures to be just middling, but it's c-c-cold here at the moment--for this area, anyway. Generally we hover just above the freezing mark in the winter, but we're in the middle of an Arctic air mass at the moment, which means it was 16 degrees last night, the ground is frozen, and we've been pouring a lot of pellets into the pellet stove. So far the chickens haven't shown any signs of being affected by the temps--they still bound eagerly out of the henhouse in the morning, even if its to greet a water bowl that's frozen solid. It's been sunny though, with blindingly blue skies, so at least the sunshine on their dark feathers during the day is a plus.

Having finished the Big Work Project, I fell right into another, putting together a photo book for Jenny's parents about the boys' year. It turned out to be quite the project, but the result looks pretty darn amazing and we're anxious to see the book when it gets here next week before sending it on to its destination. I'm really glad I carried my camera around and took so many pictures. I figured as the resident grandparent it was the least I could do for the ones at a distance.

And now it's on to Christmas cards and gift prep. And looking forward to having this icy air blow away in a few more days. (My fingers are crossed that the predictions are correct.)

P.S. Many belated thanks to thimble_kiss for the snowflake. It was the perfect cheer-me-up after having had my nose to the grindstone for so long. {{hugs}}

No, it hasn't snowed here; I've merely chosen to amuse myself by thinking ahead to winter and Christmas, hence the picture above of the driveway of our house in Bend. In the interest of full disclosure I have to add that the driveway was much steeper than it appears in the picture, and that over the cold season we developed a six-inch thick layer of solid ice at the bottom of the driveway--no fun to walk on, or to have to pick-axe through when it built up enough that our vehicles lost traction on the way up and couldn't make it out to the road (which was a whole challenge in itself in its unplowed, potholed state.) Still, from the comfort of distance, it's a pretty sight indeed.

And looking at it as my desktop wallpaper reminds me that there will be an end to the work tunnel I've been in for the past two weeks, laboring frantically on a project where I severely underestimated the scope of the work that ended up being involved. Let's just say I've spent the last two solid weeks resizing/tweaking endless photos and making database entries, and though for a long time it seemed like one of Dante's tortures that would go on endlessly and never reach its conclusion, I can see now that I should definitely be done tomorrow. Which is a huge, huge relief. I suspect I'll have that post-finals reaction when it's all done (the all-pervasive crush is past, and what on earth do I do now?)

Except that I do know what I'll be doing: seasonal decorating, sending off the Christmas cards that go to Europe, spending time with Jenny and the boys, working on a photo book for Jenny's parents, relaxing in front of the fire. And hopefully recovering my wits enough to carve out some time to write. :-) It all sounds really good. :-)

And now, back to my regularly scheduled drugery. But the end is near, and that makes it so much more bearable.

Heron in late afternoon at the Delta Ponds

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there who are celebrating. It's been a cozy day here. We follow a pattern of having the big meal early so there's time to walk later... and so we can graze on leftovers for dinner. :-) This was Jenny's first time roasting a turkey, and it turned out really well, moist and flavorful. There were colorful paper plates (enough work has gone into cooking, so we spare the dishwashers--Ben and Cade--this extra burden), dressing in two varieties (veggie and non), all the traditional foods we only make on this one day, pumpkin pies made with freshly-roasted pumpkin... and an assortment of intriguing mini-desserts brought by Annie and Beth. The house smelled of good food, there was talking and laughter, and in the living room the fire in the pellet stove roared away as rain poured down outside.

Con entertained (or monopolized, take your pick) Annie and Beth, Jenny gave us a demonstration of how she's learning to spin yard, and the boys ended up in a game of Wii tennis after the main course was over. After Annie and Beth had finally left and the food was put away, Ben, that total creature of habit, decided... to rearrange his room! So, darkness having now fallen and 'the girls' having been tucked into their coop, Paul and Ben are rearranging Ben's room, Jenny is spinning and Aaron is cleaning out the pellet stove. And I'm out here in the cottage writing up this entry, filled with images of a very pleasant day. There was a time when it was only me and the boys on Thanksgiving, an empty-seeming follow-up to the crowded, cousin-laden family gatherings I'd experienced as a child. So this was nice--very nice indeed. And I hope all of you had days that were equally as nice.

One of our very friendly Black Australorps hens taking a closer look

No doubt it appears I've dropped off the face of the earth. That would be more dramatic than the truth, though; in actuality I've just been sitting here at this desk working away on a website redesign, which with any luck I'll have finished within a week. Less if I'm very lucky. Then I'll have a chance to breathe, look out at the surroundings, and start thinking about things like baking pumpkin pies, and Christmas upcoming, and... How did it get to be past the middle of November already? It seems like just a few days ago we were in the thick of canning and preserving back in September.

In the meantime, fall has continued to progress here. We've had enough constant dampness to revive the seasonal moss, which grows in sidewalk cracks, along the edges of roadways, on roofs and just about anywhere else that stays damp or shady, though we've had less actual rain than usual, and more sunbreaks (I'm not complaining about those.) Most of our trees are pretty bare now, except for the apple and hazelnut which--strangely--still have a respectable canopy of yellow-green.

Down the street, however, neighbors Beck and Annette's liquidamber (the multicolored, glorious torch of a tree at left in the photo below) is still quite spectacular, like a stop-action display of fall fireworks. And you can see in the picture how tall some of our neighborhood trees are, one of the things I really, really love about this place.

Looking from the cottage toward the back of the house

The picture above shows what the yard looked like a little less than two weeks ago. Now, over half the leaves are off the trees and the path to the door of my cottage is paved in fallen leaves and fig puree. In the garage, we have leftover tomatoes that were picked green, along with some apples, winter squash and Bosc pears from a neighbor's tree. The apples and pears really need to be processed, though we've been too burned out from the big August-September canning/dehydrating push to do it. Hopefully they'll last a while longer.

I'm in the middle of another web redesign job, but what's really captured my imagination recently has been--drum roll--making photo books. I'd always wanted to do one, and a few weeks ago I finally did some comparative research about the different services out there and chose Shutterfly. My first photo book, created as a Christmas gift for my good friend Listen, arrived last week and I was definitely impressed with the final result. The pictures were clear, the colors were very consistent with the way I'd prepped them on my monitor, and they offered quite a variety of page layouts to choose from. As usual, I wasn't just puttting together a collection of pictures but telling a story at the same time, which made the project a lot more work that if I'd just tossed together a picture album. But the end result was worth it, and besides, for the first time in years I've got Listen's present ready way ahead of time--yay! I'll even be able to get it packed and prepped and fill out that annoying little customs sticker before the mobs hit the post office for the Christmas rush.

I also found that my experience at writing XF 155-word fics came in really handy when I inadvertently entered more in the text areas than would fit. That training in trimming down words and phrases to fit the word count enabled me to zero in quickly on the most likely things to eliminate. Who knew fic writing could come in so handy in the real world? :-) Now I'm hard at work on a second photo book and have ideas for a couple more I'd like to do when I get the time.

While all this has been going on, we've been having what I can only describe as a 'quick autumn'. The temperatures have been generally warmish, with rain off and on (more off than usual), but finally the trees are losing their leaves and that sure sign of the colder seasons has finally arrived: our fine, misty fall fog, which you can see in the picture below. I can't quite pinpoint what it is that differentiates our Eugene fog from the fog I've experienced in other places, but there's just something... well, magical about it. It's not as opaque, but more like a whispy veil. You can see someone coming out of it as they approach you and it's as if they were coming from another dimension. I love what the fog does to the landscape, too, and the photographic possibilities that come out of it. You can bet I'll be out there camera-in-hand to take advantage of it before it's gone.


Red maples in the fog at Maury Jacobs Park

The forest is currently lit up... with trees! Come see.

Found myself frustrated after Thursday's trip to the mountains, because my pictures just weren't having any impact at the usual size I display them. So I made the pic above into a wallpaper, and believe me, at 1024x768 it makes a pretty cool desktop display if you're looking for something new and outdoorsy to look at. Feel free to help yourself. You can find it at the bottom of this page along with one other new wallpaper offering.

Have fun!

First view of the Cascades, coming up out of the forest on a mountain road

HikingFriend invited me and another mutual friend for a drive in the mountains today. It was the perfect opportunity because I've had a little breathing space between projects, and because there's been sun all week, though rain is predicted for next week. And rain in the mountains will translate to snow and potentially impassible roads. So out we went while we had the chance, climbing up sometimes-paved, sometimes-gravel forest roads of a width that can only be described as 'two lanes or less'. In roughly two hours, we passed only three other vehicles. Along the way we saw fiery vine maples, gorgeous volcanic snow-covered peaks, snow beside the road in the shady areas, ferns, moss, two deer and burbling creeks. The clear air was filled with the sweet, damp scents of the forest and wrapped in silence. While it was cold in the shady areas, the sunny spots held that fragile, attenuated warmth that seems to say, "Enjoy me now; before you know it I'll be gone."

In other news, I was inspired to pull out my XF DVDs yesterday, looking for something to keep me occupied while I rode the exercise bike. For whatever reason, I chose the ep Unusual Suspects, one that never particularly did much for me when it first came out, and which I haven't re-viewed more than once or twice. I was surprised, having been away from the show for quite a while now, at how much I enjoyed it--the clever, economical way the story developed, how well all the pieces fit and the nice touches of visual storytelling and musical highlighting. I think when I first saw this ep, it wasn't the story I wanted to see, since I was more focused on the core characters and eager to find out what would happen to them next. At that point, the minor episodes sometimes seemed like roadblocks, or like someone tall sitting in front of you in a theater, blocking your view. But now I find I'm able to watch them and appreciate them for what they are. Nice.

Mid-Willamette Valley as seen from the old Rock Hill School

Last week I found myself facing the prospect of making a trip up the I-5 to a town about an hour north of here. Given that this is Oregon, and not heavily populated, this main north-south artery has only two lanes going in each direction, meaning that you're constantly having to pass strings of semi-trailers. I find it wearying in the extreme, and besides, the scenery along the freeway isn't all that interesting. So I pulled up Google Maps and plotted what looked like an interesting way to get from here to there while avoiding the freeway entirely.

It turned out to be a great trip. If you could use a quick break from whatever you're doing, feel free to come along.

Have fun!

Fall-blooming colchicum

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been spending far too much time at my desk recently (work projects.) However, having finished one this afternoon, I decided to head out and take a walk around the neighborhood. Everything was freshly washed from this morning's rain, which added urgency to the idea of getting out and enjoying the sunshine before the next bank of clouds would come in overhead. So I headed out, camera and umbrella in hand.

If you could use a break, too, feel free to come along and enjoy the scenery.

Here's something you may not know: a field lug of pears, dried, pretty much fits into a 7" tall jar (above.) I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that fact. What seems even more amazing at this point, though, is that there are no more lugs of pears or tomatoes lined up against the kitchen wall. Granted, there's one lug of tomatoes left in the garage, and a lug of apples in the kitchen, which will probably be dried, or if not, made into sauce. Still, peach season is definitely behind us now, as is pear--two items ticked off our list as we store up food against the coming winter. And the end of apple and tomato processing is definitely in sight, which is a relief since I think Jenny is finally reaching the food prep overload stage.


Distinctive blue-gray sweet meat squash at a local farm market.

We've had a few rain showers now, bookended by periods of warm weather, and the last few things in the garden are either ripening or being harvested as-is because they're not going to get any riper, like our little Yellow Baby watermelons, which are about six inches across and very refreshing, even if not as sweet as we would have liked them (they got a late start.) In the bed beside the driveway, we still have quite a few huge red onions to use as the need arises, and two rows of leeks that probably won't be fully mature until winter. Beside them, my giant complex of delicata squash is finally starting to die back and the squash are turning yellow as they should. My last count turned up 27 of them. They'll be welcome additions to cold weather dinners.



The flower garden is reaching a harvest point, too. I'm trying to clear out beds that have been covered with random weeds and a crop of late, self-seeded forget-me-nots that never bloomed, so that we can see what space we have available to plant spring bulbs. One of my biggest surprises this year was the 'Thai Silk' variety of California poppies (see pic above), which bloomed in frilly abandon for months and months in shades of pink, copper, yellow and orange. I've never seen so many flowers on a single bush before, and of course they have the traditional California poppy tolerance for dry conditions, a big plus for the sunny spot where I had them. I've saved as many seed heads as I can so I can spread them to other areas next year. If you have a hot, dry spot you're looking to fill with summer color, I highly recommend them.

Becoming more self-sufficient has meant living closer than ever to the seasons, but this seems to be a plus in the end. Just as we need all periods of the day/night cycle, living with the seasons nudges us to truly experience the character of each facet of the year rather than just letting it slip by at a distance. Canning and gardening have been family projects, too, weaving bonds of cooperation and memory that strengthen the fabric of our communal life.

Fall Creek, Lowell, OR

A very happy birthday to thimble_kiss! Wishing you inspiration, peace and beauty in the year ahead. {{{hugs}}}