Summer flowers

Well we are into summer and that means many beautiful flowers. Marilyn works hard and deadheading and cutting some flowers to bring into the house. We even provided several bouquets for a 50th wedding anniversary party at the tennis club last Sunday. Of course in the front yard the deer have taken care of all our pansies and marigolds. I have even sprayed the flowers so the deer are not supposed to eat them but they don’t read the labels very well.

I have been spending time taking many pictures of all the flowers. It gives me a chance to learn how to better use my camera. I have even started using the manual setting more to help with the settings and try to get the focus better. Close-up photography is a very interesting process and it seems the camera keeps getting into the light to cause even more problems. Anyway it has been fun and I am sure I will have a very large collection of flower pictures by the end of the summer. I even got a wall in the dinning room for my collection of framed enlargements.

Of course I have a large collection of the pictures on my flickr account in addition to the ones displayed here. I am now trying to get more birds and bees to pose for pictures. The bees seem to like the sunflowers but both the birds and the bees seem to fly away just as I am going to take the picture.

Philomath Frolic

This is the weekend of the Philomath Frolic & Rodeo. We attended the parade with Lance and his two daughters.
Of course it had most of the standard things you need in a small town parade but it was missing the marching band. Other than recorded music only a Western Band played on one of the floats.
You start off with the Grand Marshall. When Kevin Boss graduated from your high school and play for the NY Giants to help them win the Super Bowl, he gets to ride in that first convertible as the Grand Marshall. Did I mention he went to college at Western Oregon University where I taught? No he was not in any of my classes.
Then you follow with all the standard floats for a local business, other festivals in the area, student robot or drag race team, and the rodeo Queen Alyssa Miller. Many of the floats were throwing out candy so the granddaughters had a small bag to bring home in addition to what we all ate while watching the parade.
Both political parties had floats but I only got a picture of one of them. The Hull family had a number of logging trucks in the parade. They are one of the big logging families in the area. Some of the trucks were new and some were very old, showing the different trucks they had used over the years.
Both the fire trucks and the local swim team were spraying water so you had to be on the lookout for a stray stream of water. One lady about 50 yards from us said, “Spray me,” and they got the lady next to her, their aim was not that good.

Oddwater

We stopped by the Aquarium for a short time on the way to visit friends on the Oregon Coast. This was our first time to visit this summer and see the new exhibit, Oddwater.
We will be back for another visit in a couple of weeks with the granddaughters but it is nice to stop by when ever we can. Even though it was a short visit I did get some good pictures.

The new exhibit was very interesting with all of the different and weird looking animals that live in the ocean. It was displayed very well with blown glass in the water with the fish.
We didn’t spent much time with the otters or seals but they are more fun a feeding time. Maybe we will see that later. Also we went past the touch area. I will get more on that with the granddaughters.

Fourth of July

Well it is time for obligatory Fourth of July fireworks pictures. We spent July 3-5 on the Oregon Coast at the home of a friend in Waldport. It was a full house with people sleeping everywhere. It was a two bedroom house and eight people. We drew the high card so we got the master bedroom and not the hide-a-bed in the living room. One of the ladies slept on a cushion on the pool table downstairs.
We spent the first part of the evening on the third playing bridge, then when to another friend’s house to watch the fireworks that Waldport has on the evening of the third. It was a cool evening with a little fog but with a few snacks and drinks everyone had a good time.
We had planed on attending the parade in Yachats on the Fourth but when we got up it was raining and that turned into fog as we ate breakfast. We continued the round of bridge and decided we didn’t want to stand out in the old wind to watch the parade. Of course by noon when the parade was to start it was beginning to be a nice day.
The afternoon was spent having our picnic of more food than we needed and going for a walk on the beach. That was followed by a nap and more bridge by the others but I sat out to finish pictures and write the blog.

Summer Flowers

Well summer is here and we finally have some warm weather. It was actually hot for a couple of days. Of course it cools off at night so it works out well. My garden has started to grow except one of my bell peppers died. I guess it got tired of waiting for the warm weather. Of course they are predicting a chance of rain for the 4th of July.
The iris have finished but we enjoyed ours, our neighbors, and we made the trip to Scheiner’s Iris Garden for their Memorial Day open house. That is always fun. The Capital City Jazz Band plays, there is a chicken dinner, and the flowers. Of course they have many different iris in the display garden as well as many other flowers and are more than happy to sell you many iris blooms or roots as you want. Some of the new release roots sell for $50. We did have some rain during the open house this year but it was not that bad and I got a number of pictures. Many times I can’t see the difference between two similar plants but I am sure they can.
After a very slow start the dahlias are about to start blooming and the roses are getting started. The sunflowers and lilies have the buds and a few warm days produce many flowers.
As I drove home from my 7 AM tennis on Tuesday I saw a wild turkey and her seven little chicks. I had been saying that I hadn’t seen the wild turkey yet this year but she is back. It may be that soon we won’t be so happy to see them as they increase in number. They could really take care of a garden for you.