Halloween

To celebrate my favorite holiday this year, we dressed up like pirates and went to Burgerville for breakfast. Then we did the usual low-key Halloween thing over at Gladstone. The kids dressed up like firefighters (thanks to a firefighter jacket the pre-schooler borrowed from his classroom over the weekend). I dressed up like a pirate (for the first time since I met my husband) which was fun. ;) The weather was actually nice too--no rain! So we did a little bit of trick-or-treating at the town square, the kids got to go in the fire engines, and we came home and carved our pumpkins.

Late October

It's the end of the month, almost Halloween,
There's a carpet of yellow leaves spread out under the cherry tree,
Squirrels and crows haggling over tennis ball sized walnuts on my back fence,
Blueberries on fire, all red and orange,
Golden leaves twirling from the neighbor's birch tree,
Occasional glimpses of sun, golden fire through a heavy blanket of grey clouds,
The stubborn green of the apple tree spattered with dabs of impressionistic yellow,
A few red apples lingering on top,
A few leaves drift down from the cheery tree every time the wind blows,
Blue holes in the grey sea,
Red berries in the Hawthorne trees, like Halloween candy,
The world bathed in ethereal light,
The last sunny days before those early nights and rainy days of winter.

Meldrum bar

Another day of beautiful weather, so I took the kids to Meldrum Bar after school let out. I love going and looking for agates while the water's low because you always find them.

It hasn't rained for awhile, so there's still low water levels in the Willamette River, so we're still able to drive out onto the bar, which is always bumpy and entertaining for the kids. However, hot little Mustang convertible, this doesn't mean YOU can drive on the bar.

We had a rather entertaining time watching the hapless car and it's clueless owner spin her tires digging deep holes while moving nary an inch. Eventually some demolition derby-looking jacked up truck (a friend?) showed up and helped tow her out...nothing too professional, but it got the job done.

Whenever we're there, we always see kids out in canoes, sometimes regular canoes, sometimes these Haida looking canoes. Some group takes them out to Hog Island and back. Looks like a lot of fun, wish we could join them. Looks way more fun than the loud obnoxious jetboat tours that burn down the channel creating huge wake that slams into everyone that's parked out in the river trying to catch salmon.

Today we were treated to a pair of bald eagles that were hanging around the boat ramp. A huge dead salmon may have had something to do with that--I've never seen eagles at the bar before, so that was pretty cool.

Powell Butte

I decided to go to Powell Butte today, while we're having this crazy run of sunny weather. I haven't been in at least 5 years, so it's been awhile. Since we're still in the height of mushroom season, I figured it might be a good place to go looking. These mushroom walks have been a really fun thing to do with Cedar, he's so into it, and as good at spotting mushrooms as he is at finding agates.

Powell Butte is a small mountain, probably part of the volcanic/dormant cluster that we have here in Portland. As far as mushrooms go, it's a Douglass fir forest with an understory of vine maples, big leaf maples, and lots of ferns, so that means there's lots of mushrooms. In the summer it's also full of red huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium).

So we walked around for about an hour and a half and saw lots of mushrooms. Lots of delicate airy marsmius, tons of little mycenas and collybias, amanitas, russulas, various cup-type and polyphores, and on the logs in the parking lot, turkey tails, and some dramatic looking sulfur tuft.

On the way out, there was also a nice bonus of ripe huckleberries on the way out! Yum!

Frost!

There's a frost advisory for tonight! Earliest one I can remember ever...usually we're good through Halloween! Now I'm frantically harvesting what's left of my herbs, which fortunately isn't much. Thankfully, this isn't a big garden year for me, but I'd be in trouble if it was...I better get out there and get those pumpkins inside.

Last chance

Taking a baby to the beach isn't the worst idea, but it's not exactly easy. I've been dying to go, though, and with the the tyranny of the nap schedule, ABA appointments, school, speech, and so forth, it's not easy to just run away for a day...but I've never needed it more.

The Oregon coast is so beautiful, it was hard for me to leave it, and every time I go, I never want to leave. No matter how cold/windy/stormy it gets, it sucks me in. It's my spiritual home, I suppose. When I die, I want someone to give me a Viking funeral.

As much as I wish I still lived in Waldport at times, the pragmatist in me knows that the drives to Corvallis for EVERYTHING would have sucked, so we must love each other from a distance, I guess.

So once in awhile, schedules and routines be damned. I'm gonna have to blow an afternoon and listen to cranky children in the car, put up with traffic, and just drive. If you can't get a wild hair once in awhile, what's the point of living?

Cannon Beach Blues

The itch,
87 miles,
Another year,
The immense pull of the ocean,
2 cranky kids,
Driving too fast,
Mushrooms and salal cheering me on through the pass,
Hit the junction,
And jump south,
And hit the gas,
There's sunshine up ahead,
I was born ready to go,
Painfully white sand,
The litter of seagull feathers,
Sea grass like some improbable Medusa's hair,
2 huge rocks,
A laughing boy, and crying baby,
Calm blue seas,
Mussels and razor clams,
Jellyfish and sand dollars,
Balm for my soul,
I never want to leave

Mushroom walks

Found "Mushroom Demystified" at the library, and its the height of the fall mushroom season, so we've been having a good time with that around here.

My son is fascinated by mushrooms, and October is prime time for seeing them. We've gone on a lot of hikes lately and I've been pointing them out to him, since he keeps asking about them. He grew up watching me harvest them in the woods as a baby and still remembers it. I figure I may as well teach him, since he seems to have the gift of finding even the tiniest ones. He's as good at spotting them as I am, so basically, I'm trying to impress upon him that many of the most beautiful ones (e.g. the Amanitas) are dangerous.

We went to Mt. Tabor, where I haven't been in probably 3 or 4 years now. There's big gorgeous conifers there, and lots of shade, so we saw tons of Amanitas, Russulas, Boletes, etc. The battery on my phone died, so I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, but enough to play around with IDing them.