On the River

Good morning, my friends. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we had a plan to spend the afternoon on the river. We were home until around 3:00 p.m., and so there was time to get some things done. I had one household chore to complete, and in a burst of energy (and being out of socks), I decided to do a couple of loads of laundry. Laundry fits well with slow-stitching, and between machine beeps, I stitched along turning the third corner on my quilt. 

Probably…maybe…I’ll finish this today, but it could be tomorrow. Matthew and I have a meet-up scheduled. I’ll say more about that in a minute. For now, I just wanted to mention that as I was stitching the binding, I noticed this weird rat nest on the back. You can see where I’ve indicated with a red arrow in the image below.  It’s a small area. I don’t know what happened there, and I don’t know why I didn’t notice it at the time. 

Probably it happened as I came to the end of a bobbin. It could also have been the end of my spool of top thread. My friend, Sharon, mentioned to me once that she thought the thread got weird as it approached the end of a spool. She saved those ends to be wound onto bobbins. I can’t say I always see that happening, but I have seen it before. Anyway…this is just a small area, and it will be a quick fix. I wanted to finish off the binding so I wouldn’t have to mess with all those binding clips while I was fixing it.

Okay, and that was just about time to go. There’s a boat launch just down the hill from where we live, which is very convenient. It’s a nice ramp. Not busy. There’s a $3 day-use fee that supports the local parks. Having access to this launch is just one of the reasons we love our home. You can see it in the image below.

This is one of those times where the sound you’d hear on the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland pops into my head as if I were right there, right now. Having lived in Southern California for a good part of my life, I went to Disneyland a lot. On the Peter Pan ride, you got into this flying pirate ship and sailed through some doors that swung open. Just as you entered the interior of the ride, Peter Pan would say “C’mon, Everybody! Here we gooooooooooooooooooo!” And this is one of those times. Everybody got a life thacket on? Say good-bye to civilization, my friends. C’mon, Everybody! Here we go!

Okay, and mostly we just sat in the river and bobbed. It was very peaceful. Almost no boats on the river yesterday. Mike wanted to run the boat. The gas in the fuel tank was old, and it needed to get used. So we bobbed, and we also just sped down the river. It was a nice day for it. Sunny, but not too hot. In the image below is some kind of pipeline for gas, or oil, or who knows what? There are several places along the river where there are warnings not to dredge or to anchor because of pipelines running under the water. I’m not sure why this one is elevated like that.

And then there’s this bridge that heads south toward Salem from our town of Newberg. We cross this bridge several times a week, I imagine.

And then we just bobbed for a while. 

We didn’t see as many birds as we usually do, if it were earlier in the year. I saw a Great Blue Heron, but we were going fast, and I didn’t try to get a pictures. While we were bobbing, I was able to capture this osprey flying overhead. We probably saw half a dozen or so.

Ah, but show me a body of water, and I’ll show you some Canada geese. There were several armadas of these guys. They never fail to show up when we’re around water. I wonder how they feel about this tariff situation.

Okay, then. As I mentioned, Matthew and I are meeting up to see the Portland Japanese Gardens today. It was Matthew’s suggestion. We’ve both been before, but not together. My only visit was some 20 years ago. I remember that it was beautiful, and there’s no reason I haven’t been back. I’m glad he suggested it. 

So, that will probably take up a good part of my day. Also, I’m stopping off at Erik and Mae’s. They’re passing along some apples from their trees. I’ll use them to make applesauce. She’s also passing along some Asian pears. I might decided to make some apple-pear chutney from those. It’s really good spread on  bruschetta with a sprinkle of blue cheese. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I’m passing along pickles to everyone, and I’ll hand-off the Kittens quilt to Mae. It’s going to be a good day.

All right then, I’ll leave you to it. I hope you have a good day too.