ODDS AND ENDS ON A SATURDAY MORNING

Morning Aire-Celtic harp music with traditional accompaniment. A very cheerful piece of work.

Well, let’s see.

Saturday morning with sunshine on a three-day weekend. Yup, Promise of sun and mild temperatures all weekend. Yup.

Things still blooming. Canna lilies, Marguerite daisies, bellflowers, little yellow Potentilla ground cover, everbearing strawberries, (those don’t give up until it frosts and then they look like they’re thinking about it), ground cover strawberries. If you’ve seen the ground cover plants they have a deep pink bloom and very small but very sweet berries.

The new huckleberries are getting ripe. Even when those bushes get five feet tall, I’d hate to try and pick enough for a pie. Those berries are tiny! Think the tip of your little finger. Then think smaller.

The two ground cover Oregon Grapes are really going to town this year. One is even putting up a little brother.  The andromedas and nandinas are putting out shoots for winterberries and the dogwood is also setting berries.

We have a local thrush that loves the dogwood berries. They are about the size of a robin and very shy. Usually all you see is the little white patch above their tail as they fly away. You never see more than one or two at a time until winter. When the dogwood berries get ripe you get a whole flock of them. They work over the tree until the berries are gone and then move to the neighbor’s holly tree.

The lavender is pretty much gone; don’t see very many bumbles now. Soon the blueberry and dogwood leaves will turn red. Two more weeks until I get my camera back. Waaaaaah. (No choice, really. Every time I changed a lens little pieces of foam fell out.) Mornings get pretty cool now. It can get very foggy in the mornings. Warm afternoons with occasional rain. Most years the wet season doesn’t start until sometime in October. I know we have a rainy reputation but it’s more fog and overcast. We’re in the southern part of the valley and just over the mountains it almost qualifies as desert. Not the sandy kind, the scrubby kind. Trees in Eastern Oregon are shrubs with delusions of grandeur.

Ok, before I end this entry, drum roll please. The scales said 298 this morning. Now the fun really starts. The second hundred. I’d like to do it a year. Reality check here. It’ll probably take two. But, hey, how old will I be in two years if I don’t work on it?

Happy Saturday all!