Here's the rest of the (summer) story
Sandy comes to visit
We finally lured Sandy away from her home in Green Valley (well, maybe it
was the first chance she was actually at home and had some time). Anyway,
first order of business was to get up to
Crater Lake, which was
as beautiful as always. As always, this
dead tree always
attracts my attention - I'm sure I've got it somewhere else on this website.
Wizard Island looks as
mysterious as always, and
Sandy looks pretty
happy to be there. On the way out we usually take the wildflower hike
a mile or so from the visitor center. The flowers were pretty nice again, as
you can see from these pictures:
one
two
three
four
five, with Sandy
six
seven
eight
nine.
And then, there was this
interesting tree
with the clouds.
In a day or two we headed for the Oregon coast, Brookings in particular, where
we stayed with Ron and Linda. On the beach there was this intricate piece of
driftwood. The Oregon
coast has lots of interesting rock formations, including
this one. The
waves continually
come ashore.
Old friends (that is,
long-time friends) enjoy the outing at the beach: Sandy, Linda, and Amelia.
One often finds
interesting things
on the beach.
The garden
My garden did (still doing!) pretty well this year. I had some volunteer
potatoes with
odd shapes.
The hibiscus
always has some pretty, but short lived blossums. Here is some of the
summer bounty
on the kitchen butcher block. A few days later I picked about 20 pounds of
Mortgage Lifter
tomatoes off of one plant. While not exactly garden variety, I suppose,
some recent rains brought out some curious
turtle shaped mushrooms
(or toadstools) down by the pond.
A few other things
I once more gave the good people of Talent a chance to see my car in parade
at the Talent Harvest Festival. This year the emphasis was on
Tate the Therapy Dog,
and neighbor Jared rode partway with Hailey and I, and walked along partway.
Amelia and I went on the AAUW Mystery Readers "days at the beach", this year in
Gold Beach. One night we went out to dinner, and I pasted together a series of
pictures that (whatever else you might say about it) at least shows
all who were there.
We had a beautiful
sunset that evening.
The following day was a great one for
walking on the beach.
Among other places we have gone kayaking this year we went to
Hyatt Lake. There are some
dead trees, with
this shot showing
Mt. McLoughlin in the background. Another time we went to
Fish Lake
to kayak. There we had a beautiful look at
Mt. McLoughlin, and some
interesting clouds.
I picked up an oddity (sort of) this summer. I bought an 8 power binocular
that also has a digital camera (with an 8 power lens, of course). I took a
few pictures trying it out. One day hiking near Mt. Ashland I took this
shot of Mt. Shasta, and
a little later
this somewhat more
interesting one. Then recently I got this picture of a
redtail hawk as it
soared near our deck.