Summer notes

So western Oregon is in that transition between spring and summer right now. Temps are mostly mild, and we've had a few little rain showers here and there that have helped keep things green.

This was taken at 3:45 am the other morning. Short nights here!

One thing we're having a hard time adjusting to is the length of the night. This part of Oregon sits at about 44 degrees north latitude, like parts of Minnesota, which means our nights are short this time of year. Sunset/rise seem to be at fairly normal times (9 pm and 5:30 am, respectively) but there is a lingering twilight/dawn that lasts a few hours on either end that has made sleeping eight hours a challenge. At the same time, getting up to close a window at 4 am gives a peak at the beginnings of a two-hour sunrise, which is very cool.

But you want to hear something else cool? The latitude of the Willamette Valley also sits on a parallel with Provence, France. So those tall pine trees and fields of tall grass Van Gogh painted also appear in our landscape. Vincent would feel right at home here. 

The girls are finally out of their enclosure and free-ranging for part of the day, which lifts my heart and probably also the nutritional content of the eggs they lay, so that's good.

Just don't crap on the chaise lounge.

I am kind of surprised how much my mood has changed since living here. It seems I'm just consistently in a mellow, congenial kind of attitude, with almost no angst at all. I've realized that's because through most of my adult life I've always hated summer; hated when it started early and stole from spring, hated when it was in its triple digit height from about July through mid-October, and especially hated when it wiped out autumn entirely. That's a lot of hatred and, hence, the angst. 

And the  brush fire danger has gone away, too. I recently took down the three-part list I had posted on the fridge with what to gather up in a wildfire evacuation if you have 5/30/120 minutes to pack. There will be wildfires in Oregon this summer, to be sure, but probably not where we live. 

A Van Gogh kind of summer

Back before we moved here I used to wonder what I'd miss about California, and the answer is nothing...except the people we left. Luckily we've had no less than four friends come to see us since we moved, and more are on the way. Some are just visiting, and others are looking at possible relocations themselves. Either way, it's nice to see familiar faces in new places!

About a Pine

Small damaged things...

So as I think I've written before, once our move to Oregon was a definite thing, I dug up the Scotch Pine I'd bought as a seedling from a friend's son (part of a Boy Scout Christmas fundraiser) a few years ago. 

Back when I received it, I tended to the pine in its tiny plastic pot until it was ready to go into the ground, and then I planted it in our backyard in Paso Robles. But after a year of typical brutal sun and wind, one side of the tree was completely scorched, to a point where I thought it might die. And since pines don't like alkaline water and our well water was high in alkalinity, even the manual watering I provided was just not to its taste. Literally. 

But I refused to give up on it. I have great sympathy - maybe too much -- for anything that is originally planted in the wrong place, because that is the story of my life. Born in the middle of the city, should have been in the country. I spent most of my childhood acutely aware that somehow, I'd been mailed to the wrong address, and yet I still stayed for 30 years or so before finally getting the guts to jailbreak myself out and into a small country town in Central California, which was better, but still not the four-seasons climate I always felt I belonged in.  

...become big and beautiful in the right places

So when I noticed the pine tree was failing, of course I decided to dig it up and put it into a temporary container and bring it along with us to the Pacific Northwest.

It is no easy task bringing plants along when you're moving 14 hours north. They take up a lot of space that could be used for other possessions and by nature, potted plants are not always stable when riding in the back of a car or truck.  But when Big Ag brought a bunch of things north a couple of months before we moved, I made him put the pine tree in the back seat of the truck and told him to find a shady spot for it someplace around the property we were going to be living on. Which, God bless him, he did. 

It sat here in Oregon for two months, with no water other than what the rain provided. But lo and behold, when I finally got up here, it looked better than it had during its entire time in Paso Robles. Lots of new needles, and the burned side (above) at least appeared to not be getting any worse. 

Sometimes the circumstances don't need to be perfect for us to leave and go to a new place; we just need to gather our courage, and go. As Goethe once said, "whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

And sometimes there is even more than one right place!

Since it's been growing each day since it's been here, today I transplanted the Scotch Pine into a new, larger container, which will hold it nicely until we find a home we like and can plant it on the property somewhere. The scorched needles have dropped, and slowly new growth is appearing all over the tree. So it is when you end up in the right place. Old wounds from being in the wrong place begin to heal, and you begin the process of growth again. 

But it's the beginning it that's the key to everything, I think. Dreams were not meant to stay dreams forever; that's not what we were given the dreams for. And that's true whether you're a little Christmas pine tree longing for the cloud forest or a human being longing for a new home.

Begin it.

House-hunting, painting, hiking kind of week

So it's about right now -- a little over a month since we made the move -- that I finally feel like I'm getting my bearings here. My days consist of mainly painting, but when I'm not up on a ladder with a brush and roller, I'm driving around, learning the routes to new places I need to become familiar with, like shopping centers.

We are actively looking for a house, against the advice of one good friend, who said we needed to wait at least a year before deciding on a place to live. As as abstract rule, I understand how that could be a good thing. You get to see each area in four different seasons and you can really learn the ins and outs of individual neighborhoods. The cons to that are that 1) you'll never really learn the ins and outs of the neighborhoods until you actually live in one, and 2) for us, it would mean staying in a less-than desirable rental until that time.

The shortcomings of the rental are numerous. The house itself is a neglected manufactured house which was actually left open to the elements, with a sizable hole in the roof, for over a year. Even if that were not the case, it is now 15 years old, and most manufactured homes begin to decline after about 20 years, usually becoming worth far less than the land they are on. This house will be no different. It's sad because it has several really nice features I like -- soaking tub, plenty of room, double oven and huge walk-in pantry -- but we suspect the mold has set in due to its time when the roof was open, and therefore it's not a good long-term option for us.

But while we're here, we're committed to making it as livable as possible. When Big Ag said he found the riotous paint colors depressing, I set about painting in some soothing neutrals to make it less soul-suckingly ugly, especially since the company that owns the house agreed to pay for paint and any other repairs we wanted to make. So here are some before and after photos, along with a few shots I took on a day hike along the Lukiamute River natural preserve last weekend.

I liked the gray, but the paint had a lot of dents and scuffs where white showed through, with no way to match the color to repair. (And Big Ag hated it.) 

This probably made the biggest difference. That kitchen was just SO dark.