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New video from Willamette Riverkeeper promotes Paddle Oregon 2015 which will be Aug. 17 to 21. Many kayakers and canoeists from Eugene and Springfield participate and even serve as leaders in this annual 100-mile adventure. The trip is similar to Cycle Oregon is that meals, camping sites and entertainment are provided, along with gear shuttles. Continue reading
Do birds return to the same nest year after year? All winter, when the deciduous trees are bare, I look at clots of debris high in their branches and try to pick out which are just clumps of leaves and which are nests. The obstacle to solving this puzzle is that the old nests are obscured by leaves by the time birds might come back. The trees leaf out before most birds begin nesting. It’s hard to tell if the nests are used again. Continue reading
The gray whale cows and their calves are migrating north in good numbers this month. I finally visited the most fabulous place to watch whales: the shelter at the top of the Saint Perpetua Trail. The hike is very steep but a road allows one to drive up. Go early in the day, as the parking lot at the top is small. There are often volunteers with spotting scopes at the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center. They have information on how many whales are passing that day. Continue reading
Most gardeners are aware by now that honeybees are in trouble. This knowledge is driving a surge in amateur beekeeping. Other pollinators, including native bees, are in trouble too, from the same disastrous cocktail of causes — habitat loss, pesticides, disease and parasites. Keeping a hive of honeybees is quite a commitment, and for gardeners and small orchardists, encouraging native bees is a pretty good option. You can do it by growing native plants; leaving some areas, shall we say, unmaintained; and by providing nesting opportunities. Continue reading
Gold was first found in the Opal Creek Watershed in 1859. The legacy of the ensuing gold rush left many hillsides up and down the narrow valleys dotted with mine shafts. Silver King — the group of mines near Henline Falls in the Willamette National Forest — today exhibits little of what was once a bustling mining operation. The exception is a 1,700-foot-long shaft right next to the falls. Over the years silver, lead, zinc and gold were pulled out of the mines near Henline Falls. Thankfully nearly all signs of mining have been washed away. Continue reading
Looking up at a rare starry sky in January, even rarer because of a warm night, I was drawn to do a little star gazing. Orion is heading out west long before midnight. I’m going to miss him because there is no summer character in the sky that I know well enough to track the spring-summer-fall passage. Maybe a little gazing this July will find the constellation that attracts my focus. Continue reading
Since I work at home a lot of the time I frequently eat lunch there. Lunch usually means salad, and many of the components come from my own garden. For the past three years I’ve been recording, month-by-month, what goes from the garden into my salads. Picking garden greens for lunch on a nearly daily basis, all year round, turns out to be one of the real pleasures of having a vegetable garden, and I probably eat salad more often because of it. Continue reading
A year ago the eastside Delta Ponds had already frozen solid. Ice was an inch thick under seven inches of snow and thawed completely by the New Year. In February another snowfall was accompanied by a freezing rain the likes of which we hadn’t seen for many years. It was hard on the birdwatchers and really hard on the birds. Hummingbird feeders froze. Continue reading
I recently took a couple of hours to do something I’ve been putting off for ages: cleaning and oiling my gardening tools. Until we moved into a different house five years ago, I kept my tools in a dry, attached garage. Now I keep everything but my best pruning tools in a garden shed that’s more or less open to the moisture-laden air. Although the tools are out of the rain, they are rusting. Perhaps this would have happened eventually in my old garage, but whatever deterioration there was in 15 years, I didn’t notice it. Continue reading
The duckweed and mosquito fern have been blown to the southeast corner of the pond. It means the wind is coming out of the northwest and it will be cold and rainy. I can feel it in the air; I can smell it swirling around me. It is the source of my joy of walking outdoors. I believe that the feel and smell of nature constitute a subliminal elixir to counteract the poisons of urban living. Even in town, it is important to preserve walking paths through woodlands and prairies in our neighborhood parks. A session on a treadmill in a gym just cannot substitute. Continue reading