Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
A simple portrait of one of my favorite places, Upper Horsetail Falls (also known as Ponytail Falls) in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. This is what I wish my backyard looked like, but it took a massive volcanic eruption and historic flood to create it, and I’m not sure that would go over well with the neighbors.
Beautiful outdoor art on an old garage? Are they trying to seduce me?
“What would you like to know?” asked the Oracle.
“What year will I die?”
“The answer is at your feet,” she said.
I looked down as numbers suddenly appeared in the concrete. “2146? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“It’s just that it’s 130 years from now, and I’m already 50.”
“Ah, well, you’ll be mostly robot by then.”
“I see. Will my death be peaceful?”
“For you or the dinosaur?”
“What?”
“I’ve said too much!”
I took this picture last summer of Ellie resting on the hardwood outside on our bedroom. We were having a heat wave and have a portable air conditioner in the bedroom and would make her stay in there during the savagely hot days, especially as she’s gotten older she pants heavily on hot or even warm days. But as you can see she doesn’t like being cooped up in there, more than anything she wants to be with her people and be at the door to greet me when I come home. Generally the weather here doesn’t get too hot but the last couple of summers have been hot and we hit 91 yesterday on May 22nd. May 22nd!
I have an appointment in a couple of weeks for an estimate on getting central air installed, which if feasible will make both of us quite happy during those days we need it. I love the smell of fresh air, and the cats like the open windows, but there are days where AC would be nice.
Mussel beds are one of my favorite parts of tide pools, as a slightly-claustrophobic introvert they remind me of crowded trains. There are a couple of trains that I try to catch on my commute as for whatever reason they are usually fairly empty at my stops, when most trains are quite crowded, and arrive and leave work at convenient times. I got to my stop this morning just before the 8:13 to Beaverton and almost have the entire car to myself.
The mussels are covered in acorn barnacles with some limpets and snails along for the ride. I don’t know what type of snails they are, frilled dogwinkles? Eroded periwinkles? Wrinkled amphissas? I do know this: A+++ to whoever came up with snail names, I love you.
I left early this morning to hike in one of my favorite spots, the short trail in the Columbia River Gorge from Horsetail Falls to Upper Horsetail Falls and on to Oneonta Falls. I was mostly interested in shooting video of the waterfalls, with some photos too, but stopped to shoot this moss-covered rock in a talus field. My heart filled with joy when I noticed a familiar face looking back at me, an American pika that I hadn’t seen when I stopped (it’s on the far left edge of the frame in the middle, looking straight at me). The location might seem surprising if you know much about pikas, as I was close to sea level and pikas normally live high in the mountains. But there is a population here in the Gorge, they live at the lowest elevation of any pikas in the United States.
I had seen them in the Gorge several times before, once near Multnomah Falls and a couple of times on the way to Angel’s Rest, but I had passed by this spot a number of times and never seen (or heard) them. I always look when I pass a talus field, I can’t help myself, pikas are always a treat to watch. I hadn’t even brought my 100-400mm lens on this hike as I don’t usually see much wildlife on this trail and I was just taking a quick hike while it was still cool (it was unusually hot today and is going to bake tomorrow). I wouldn’t have had time to get out the lens anyway, I didn’t see the pika for long, but I did hear it calling out several times as it moved about invisibly under the rocks.
A couple of weeks ago I woke up early (for a Saturday) so Ellie and I got an early start to our walk. It was a lovely spring morning and since I take the new camera a lot on our walks now, I took a couple of pictures of her at the dog park before we spent the next hour walking the neighborhood.
A Wilson’s snipe takes a rest on a bed of reeds on a rainy spring afternoon.
When I visited the tide pools in Redwood National and State Parks, I didn’t know much about most of the creatures I was photographing, I was just taking pictures of things that caught my eye and planned to read up on them later. I was taken by the shapes and colors of these aggregating anemones that were clinging to a rock at Enderts Beach, like a box of assorted candies. Then I noticed where a black turban snail had nestled down between the anemones and took my favorite picture of them. Once I looked more closely I noticed other little creatures in the scene, from the goose barnacles in the upper right to the black limpets on the snail’s shell (almost invisible since they were on the dark part of the shell).
Boolie 