Trail Camera photos!

 For Christmas, I bought each of us a trail camera. Okay, so I bought them both for me to put up and monitor but I wrapped one for Johnny and one for me. Life, as usual, got busy and I didn't get either one up until a week ago or so. Today I finally took the card out and put it into my computer to see what the camera had seen. Of course, since it was trained on the driveway, it got lots of cars going in and out, also our tractors and EZ Go carts... 85 photos in fact. I have deleted most but thought it would be fun to see a little of the driveway activity... in the snow. I love that it gives me the temperature as well as date and time.

Johnny on his way up the driveway to get the mail

Plowing so friend Suue will be able to drive in later (see previous blog post).

Friend Suue driving in from Portland in her rental car..

Friend Suue driving out the next day on her way to the Portland convention

Johnny on the big tractor after sawing off 3 leaning trees

Johnny back on the Kubota spreading gravel on the driveway

 Too bad I didn't think about having the 3 of us stand in front of the trail camera to get a photo. Suue was unsuccessful in getting a selfie of us with her magic phone... her arms would not reach far enough to capture all of us! We are so last century.

 

Now I will go put the cameras up where they might actually see wildlife, instead of our life. It's been years since we've had working trail cameras. It was fun to see deer and bears and bobcats, along with horses, dogs and miscellaneous birds, etc. Here are some of those earlier photo captures: https://lindafink.blogspot.com/2011/11/where-wild-things-are.html

 

 

Bad Weather and a Wonderful Friend from Afar

 Long time friend Suue (known as Sue to everyone but me), flew in to Portland for a conference. She works as a volunteer at a wildlife refuge near her in Maryland. The organization that provides volunteers who work at refuges have a conference somewhere every year. This year it is in Portland, Oregon, so Suue decided to fly out early and visit us. Alas, the snow storm hit when her flight arrived in Chicago and the Portland Airport shut down. However she was able to get here the next day when the airport reopened. She rented a car and drove bravely down here. Johnny had plowed out our driveway so it was navigable.

Our electric EZ Go (golf carts) turned out to be excellent snowmobiles so we were able to drive her to the barn to see handsome buck Freddie and through the arboretum. She had been here four years ago but, as I reminded her, never in the snow! 

I was scheduled to pick up native plants that I had ordered on Saturday, way down in Corvallis. So we all swooped down there in amazingly sunny, dry weather. (Made me realize that we really do live in the Coast Range mountains and valley dwellers have different weather.) "Swooping" is what a gang of friends in college did during college breaks. Suue and Johnny and I were all part of that gang. Suue and I had been horse-crazy friends in high school and were roommates in college. 

We took the back way home and stopped in Dallas (Oregon, not Texas) for delicious Mexican food at our favorite restaurant there. Suue says there are no good ethnic restaurants in her area of Maryland. And they also don't have all the ethnic food trucks that we have. (And Easterners think we live in the wild west?)

Strangely, I did not take photos until she was about to leave. I love this photo of Suue and Johnny in the greenhouse. (I just have to point out that's an orchid blooming behind and right of Suue,  a master gardener.)

 

 

All three of them are far more photogenic than I am. But here I am with my forever friend Suue anyway.  Who knows when she'll get here again...

 

 

 

 

Snow!!!

 Four inches overnight and still snowing. The Valentine's Day lawn llama is not amused.

 Nightingale and her dog, Annie, don't seem to mind, although Night is wondering where her grass went.

I love it... after morning chores when I'm back in the warm, dry house...

 

There is even snow at the coast! And Portland is shut down with snow... most since 1943... airport closed.  ...Weather just gets weirder and weirder...

Anniversary #56

 Once again, Friday the 13th came on a Monday, as Johnny likes to say about our Feb. 13, 1967, wedding day. And as usual, we hiked to a waterfall... between rain and sleet and snow showers. Since the weather was iffy, we hiked to nearby Yoncalla Falls, just up the road a few miles from our farm.

 

 the falls from a distance...

  the falls up close...

I'm not good at selfies, but Johnny is cute

same waterfall but from up on the road

 We hike to every waterfall we can find. And then I blog about them on my Waterfalls blog... complete with height measurements that Johnny takes. We are waterfall nuts. So here is the blog about this falls, which is really, according to Johnny, the West Fork Yoncalla Falls: https://ourwaterfallproject.blogspot.com/2016/02/west-fork-yoncalla-falls.html

We did other things on our anniversary this year, like look at old photos Johnny found... They were mostly pictures taken of trenches dug for water lines on our place when we were first laying water pipes from well to various buildings. And then there were the photos of his various roofing jobs... 

Thank goodness for waterfalls.