Road of Peas

Pam and Jill and I planted trees at our Oregon Country Fair booth a couple Saturdays ago.We live at Random Elements, 630 Shady Lane, and lost much of our shade when a big tree fell on our booth about ten years back. We miss our loft, and although we have been happy with temporary pole, cord, and fabric creations for a booth, the shade from the tree is irreplaceable and sorely missed.

I learned from Steve Wisnovsky (and others) that each year the Fair gets young trees from the Balance Restoration Nursery in Lorane, trees in lots with some damaged, or surplus trees which probably won’t sell. This time of year, site staff and Vegmanics plant them around the Fair, along the river and various creeks, and wherever educated whim alights, I’d imagine. It’s a generous and gracious act by the nursery, and a noble job and a lot of work for the staff and crew that plant and care for them. We all owe them all a great deal of thanks.

I’m a slow learner, but after a couple weeks it dawned on me that Random Elements had some good spots for new trees, that I had the ability to take care of them, and by my 70th Fair, there’d be shade galore! I called up Pam and Jill, whose thumbs shine green, and we headed out.

The trees were outside the Warebarn. We decided to plant 3 big leaf maples in the green zone between our booth and the one downstream, and 3 alders in the edge of the giant green zone behind the booth. All of this gets inundated, but land between the booths is a higher ridge covered with vegetation and is more stable than the lower more open part in the back.

We loaded up a cart and headed out. It was a great day, one of the few warm and dry that we’ve had.

We planted the alders first. We found three spots amid the flood debris that were relatively clear

and dug holes sufficient to allow the roots to be spread out. The dirt is rich and loose, but sticky with clay. (Where are those hippies when you need them?)

You can see two of the alders in the next picture, the third one is just beyond the fallen tree in the middle of the picture. This is looking downstream.

Access to the maple sites is more difficult. In the next picture, Pam prepares to enter the jungle as Jill selects the appropriate tree. You can see the green grass on the path in the middle of the picture.

This is the middle one. Malcolm Maple, I presume:

The spot furthest from the path is the hardest to get to - here’s intrepid Jill on location:

This is my tent site. The three maples form a line from the path along a ridge of higher land, which ends here. The alders are planted just past the edge of my site. You can see there is standing water just below.

This is standing in my site looking toward the path at the Most Hidden Maple:

Pam performed the water blessing, a six of cups, with local, organic, hand gathered water:

Here is Random Elements from across the path. The Most Forward Maple is in the brambles where Pam and Jill are standing.

The flowers are astounding. It took a while getting back. Jill was trying to be polite when what she really wanted to do was sit there all day keying out all the cool stuff. I went back this last weekend and spent the afternoon taking pictures of wildflowers. You can see part of The Kaleidoscope Booth in the picture above - it’s full of Camas, who’d of thunk?

There are trees to plant every year. Look around where you camp, there must be a great spot somewhere.

An appropriate new hotlink began today - the maple tree in this post is in my front yard, here in Eugene. Maybe I should ask for the $150 rebate.

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Too Loud a Solitude Bohumil Hrabal

The Marx Family Saga Juan Goytisolo

Pafko at the Wall Don Delillio

Atomik Aztex Sesshu Foster

Waiting for the Barbarians Coetzee

This startling event happened on my last tour of little lakes in the area just west of Waldo Lake. I was in a clear flat area east of road’s end, and had just taken some pictures. I heard a sound I associate with mating dragonflies, and six feet off in the duff I found this fight. I managed three pictures before… well, I don’t really know what happened. They both disappeared.

The bee is tucked up under the dragonfly, you can see the tail end of its abdomen in each picture. The insects were spinning around very rapidly. I think most of the noise came from the dragonfly’s wings beating on the ground.

This post has been created for the Circus of the Spineless for September. It is number XIII, and will be hosted at Deep-Sea News.

Both pictures were previously posted without commentary at Middle-Fork. Here’s my picture of Waldo lake from Fuji Mountain. The dragonfly-bee encounter was just off the left edge of this picture.

EXTRA BONUS TRACKS! Added 22 September 2006

The Bee Dives Right In!

The Spider and the Fly:

This post has been created for the Circus of the Spineless for August. It is number XII, and will be hosted at Sunbeams From Cucumbers. The butterfly pictures, and the first dancing aquatic worm picture were previously posted at Middle-Fork.

I found this butterfly, along with dozens more like it, near a trail to Skipper Lakes. This is on a ridgeline at somthing just over 5000 feet, on the south side of the Calapooya Mountains, overlooking the Boulder Creek Wilderness, part of the North Umpqua River drainage. There were many hundreds of butterflies very much like this one, but twice as large. The larger variety flitted away if I came within ten feet. The smaller ones ignored me, and fed away.

The Dancing Aquatic Worm was wiggling around over the crestline of the Calapooya Mountains and down on Staley Creek (which was once called the South Fork of the Middle Fork WIllamette.) There are some fine carved rock channels here. Two weeks ago I found an orange frog, which thrilled my boss, who had spent a few years researching chromatophores.

But, I’d seen frogs before.

This worm is something else entrely. As the creek flow dwindles, it leaves ponds behind. The worm was in a still water pond, and was constantly twisting and flexing. Every few seconds it touched the surface, perhaps to breath, but it may have been accidental, as it also bumped a couple water stiders, which did what they do best, and skedaddled.

UPDATE 23 Aug 2006: I made an exploratory plunge into little lake country to see how the mosquitoes were doing. There are quite a few close to the lakes, but by keeping my distance, I managed to avoid most of their attention. This is good; they will be gone soon. Not my favorite invertebrae.

But this critter! Wow! I think it’s my favorite. It looks like a common garden spider all dressed up for Gilbert and Sullivan. It was sitting in the sun, busy working on its web, 5 feet in the air and 20 feet from its anchor trees, and swinging wildly back and forth in the wind. It ignored me completely from this side of the web, but as soon as I walked wide around to the other side, it popped right into threat posture.