Taxi outing

In June each year the Edinburgh taxi trade runs an outing from the city for what are termed 'vulnerable' or 'disadvantaged' children, including disabled children. This year the outing included visiting children from Chernobyl. A huge fleet of decorated black cabs travels in convoy from the city to the beach at Dirleton, on the East Lothian coast. The taxi in the shot above is rather low key, but it was out and about very early. I hoped to see more extravagant decorations on the remainder of my 40 minute walk to work, but I must have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Part of me wonders about the whole singling out of children as 'disadvantaged' in this way, but there's no doubt that the event is still going strong after 63 years. It reminds me of the annual outing that my father enjoyed at primary school in a tiny village on Speyside in the 1930s and still talks about today. The entire 2 room school was taken by steam train from Craigellachie (yes, the original of the Canadian Pacific Railway version) to Lossiemouth on the Moray Firth Coast, a journey of 17 miles. On arrival they were treated to lemonade and buns. They then walked to the wide, sandy beach backed by dunes, and played until lunchtime. I don't imagine any of the children owned a swimming costume - it would have been frocks tucked into knickers for the girls, and school shorts for the boys. The school then walked back into town, where they had lunch that still makes my father misty-eyed: soup, mince and tatties and ice cream. Then back to the beach for games of cricket and races, before taking the train back up into the hills. All this was organised and paid for by a wealthy lady landowner, and for most of the children it was the only time in the year they went beyond a 2 or 3 mile radius of the village.

The Oregon Garden

Major rainstorms with wind are predicted for Oregon. It was supposed to start tonight. Guess what? The rain and wind kicked up on our way south to The Oregon Garden in Silverton. As we drove south from Tigard, the rain decreased. By the time we got to the garden, we had wind and a few sprinkles. That was about to change.

We used my Groupon for half-price admission for four people ($22) which was pretty good. As soon as our hands were stamped to prove we paid, the docent in the visitor center said, "A tram should be arriving right about now." The 25-minute tram tour is included in the admission.

Sure enough, as soon as we walked out to the tram stop, a tram arrived. The tram is open air, but has plastic "windows" that can be rolled down
to provide protection from wind and rain. Mom and Jan rolled their
windows down, but I wanted to take photos and so did the lady next to me.
We left our window up. There wasn't any rain, but the wind was chilly.

Mom and Jan before they rolled their "window" down.

The tram.

The garden is 120 acres, 80 acres are developed. Water for the garden is provided by twice-filtered water reclaimed from the sewage treatment plant. In order to meet water-quality standards, the water has to be cooled as it is too warm as it comes from the treatment plant. The first area the tram took us through was the wetlands. A number of ponds were created so the water could flow from pond to pond, thus cooling it.

Here is a photo log of our tram tour:

Conifer garden

White oak savannah

The large tree on the left in the photo below is a protected signature oak, one of the oldest on earth.

400-year-old Signature Oak, an Oregon Heritage Tree.

I call these "wizard" trees.

Still lots of color in the garden!

Beautiful plant - don't know what it is.

Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine.

The trees in the following photo are poplars. These are planted as a crop and can grow eight feet in one year. Their bark is ground up, mixed with water and used to create pressboard, cardboard and high-quality paper. This is a great renewable resource.

Poplars

Ooh...weird plant.

The "living" sea serpent made with succulents/sedums.

Jan, Mom, Mike in the Conifer Garden.

I love all the different greens in these conifers.

A few weeks ago, the tree below was hit by lightning. The garden is leaving it as it is to show the power and destructive force of Mother Nature.

Tree struck by lightning.

One of the reflecting pools. I'm reflecting on autumn.

Our tram driver spent quite a bit of time talking about the Oregon Garden Resort next to The Oregon Garden. All stays include free admission to The Oregon Garden and you can walk from the resort, through a gate, and be at a tram stop or on a trail to take you into the garden.

We finished our tram tour, then walked through part of the garden. As we were walking up to the reflecting pools,
I started to have a vertigo attack and became very dizzy. My sister had
me sit down on the rock wall that goes around the reflecting pool. I closed
my eyes and stayed very still for a couple of minutes. Luckily the
episode passed and we continued on.

It was lunch time,
so we walked up the path to The Oregon Garden Resort to have lunch in
their dining room. (Most lunches are under $10.) What a lovely place to
have lunch. The view overlooks the gardens and the Willamette
Valley. Today was not the best day to enjoy the view because the rains
came while we were eating. The clouds lowered giving limited views.

We walked through here to The Oregon Garden Resort for lunch.

Front door of the Oregon Garden Resort.

In October, The Oregon Garden is having an event called "Scarecrows in the Garden." The resort is getting in on the fun and created these two lovely scarecrows.

Scarecrows at the Resort.

After our healthy lunch, we headed out to wait for the tram to take us back to the visitor center. Picture if you will, strong, gusty winds and driving rain. We have ten minutes to wait for the tram in the gazebo. The gazebo has no walls. Mom and Jan went up to the covered patio to wait. Mike and I kept an eye out for the tram from the gazebo. Brr. Four chilled people boarded the tram. Thankfully, all the "windows" were rolled down and zipped up. So ended our day at The Oregon Garden.

Back at Mom's by early afternoon, we decided to watch a DVD called "Evening" that we had checked out from the library. The cover description sounded pretty good with an all-star cast: Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Hugh Dancy, and Glenn Close. It's supposed to be about the power of the past and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters, family, and the loves of their lives. Our recommendation: don't bother. We didn't finish watching it. About half-way through Mom and Jan stopped watching to finish dinner preparations. It was a weird, boring movie.

For dinner we had dark turkey meat that had been in the slow cooker all day, broccoli, mashed yams, and cranberry sauce. Such a good meal for a cold, wet day. For dessert, Mom made peach crisp from peaches we bought in the orchard yesterday.

Jan took off after dinner to go to a singles social at church. Mike, Mom and I played Rummikub. Mike headed home about 8 p.m. At 9 p.m., Mom and I watched Shark Tank, which we absolutely love.

In all the driving we've been doing the past couple of days, we have seen many RVs out and about...many heading south, but some probably heading out for the start of hunting season. I'm thinking they've been hearing the weather forecast and decided to skedaddle out of here.

Plans for us to go to the coast tomorrow are off. Weather maps are showing red, there are weather alerts on TV about heavy rain, with wind gusts up to 60 mph, and possible flooding. No way do I want to drive two hours out and two hours back in that kind of weather.

Instead, Mike and I are going to see "The Grandmaster" in downtown Portland. Enjoy your weekend.

Travel Bug out.

The dig

Not sure what will happen if you do push food through the bars. They seem to have brought their own, so they can't be starving.

The dig is taking place in the quadrangle of the University of Edinburgh's Old College. The current buildings date from 1789, and were built on top of Kirk O'Fields, the site of the murder in 1567 of Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary Queen of Scots.


Two skeletons have been uncovered, found in the coffin-shaped indentations immediately to the right of the green netting in the shot below. With the naked eye, but less so in a photo, you can make out the indentations where the bones lay. The remains have now been interred in a graveyard. There's no suggestion that I've seen that the remains were those of Darnley and his valet, and I think they're likely to remain unidentified after so long.

Welcoming Spring With Friends

After a record high of 91°F/32.2ºC on Friday, an overnight cold front delivered Saturday temperatures of 55°F/13ºC with gusting winds to the Divas of the Dirt - we were off and running for the first project of ...If you'd like to see what we Divas did last weekend it's posted on the Divas of the Dirt Blog. We're trying something new - instead of posting a yearly roundup of projects and recipes on the non-interactive website, we'll use the blog to post new projects reasonably soon after we do them. You can find some recipes for the dishes served at our meetings on the Divas' recipe blog.

The light was fading when I got home from Mattie's house - barely giving me enough time to protect tender plants from a threatened freeze. First the Christmas lights and thermal covers went over the Meyer's Lemon in the back yard and the Mexican Lime in the Secret Garden, a few pots were tucked into the shed and others went in the garage. Then I followed Pam/Digging's advice and covered the 2-foot tall Texas Mountain Laurel. Its buds were just showing color on Saturday and on Tuesday it was in full, unfrozen bloom. I've waited over four years to see this sight and smell the grapey scent. The water in the birdbaths had turned to ice on Sunday & Monday mornings but some ''Grand Primo' narcissus bought last fall bloom unfazed in their terracotta pot. These bulbs came from the Southern Bulb Company, so they should be the real 'Grand Primo'!
Tuesday afternoon I found a few small flowers of Yellow Lady Banks rose open on the patio arch. Today a few 'Pink Charm' narcissus from the dollar store have returned for a third spring
The white Spiraea near the back fence has small white flowers popped out on wandlike stems
A freeze discouraged these pale peach iris a few weeks ago, but today they hold nothing back
Mountain Laurel in the triangle bed with white iris and pale pink iris in the background along the fence - yes! The shrubs are still small, but this view has started to look like what I had in mind when the elements were planted four springs ago. And around the corner in the Secret Garden are leaves that I love - the unfolding fig leaves are as beautiful as flowers to me. Our ten-day forecast shows no more cold spells - maybe our See-Saw Spring is settling down.

Crash

There is nothing nice about crashing. I can't say I've ever enjoyed the experience, and if I ride long enough to accumulate another million kilometres, I don't expect I ever will. It's not so much the injuries sustained (although in my case, these have never included so much as a broken fingernail), it's more the time off the bike that follows (two days so far and I'm already climbing the walls), and the anger in the immediate aftermath of the crash that never quite subsides, the wishing you could go back and navigate that corner again just one more time, and all the things you would do differently.

Yes, mine happened on the descent from O'Reilly's Plateau at Lamington National Park on Saturday in the wet. For me the really annoying thing was that it was the absolute last corner of the descent that I failed to navigate, having easily dealt with every other corner on that 14km descent. I suppose I should look on the bright side and be glad I didn't crash higher up the mountain (as I did in 2002) and have to deal with cooler temperatures and the prospect of still having half the descent to do, yet it's still rather annoying.

The day itself had been wet, and the temperature barely made it into double figures on the mountain itself, yet conditions in the valley below were pleasant enough to make me think about climbing Beechmont for an encore on the way home. The dropping temperatures on the climb didn't concern me because I generally enjoy riding in the rain. Today there was an added bonus as the rainforest on the final 7km of the climb came alive even more than usual.

Of course, the descent on that higher part of the mountain was freezing, but I had brought a long a jacket I'd bought in New Zealand some three years previously. It hasn't had much use on this side of the Tasman, but it justified it's price tag today. I even detoured out to Kamarun Lookout, just a little off the "main" road to take in some really spectacular views of the clouds swirling around the mountains on what had been a truly remarkable day in terms of the weather.

Of course, my crash at the bottom put paid to any plans I had of returning over Beechmont and another ride in the clouds. That said, I was genuinely surprised how well I handled the final 50km ride home, particularly the climbs on the gorge road from Canungra. It was only the flat final stretch after Nerang that caused limbs to stiffen up and the loss of blood started to pose an issue. I ended up buying an energy drink at a convenience store to make sure I got through it all. That said, the final damage hasn't been too significant - despite the blood stains on that cycling jersey that didn't come out in the wash. My knee looks to be regaining flexibility already, and I could be back on the bike in time for the weekend. God knows I need it.