Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge

Good morning, my friends. It was a lovely day for a walk with Matthew yesterday. There was almost no time for sewing. But you know me...no day can start without a little slow-stitching and yesterday was no different. I took the first stitches on this final block for Le Jardin.

So Matthew texted early, and he was feeling up for a walk. When he arrived here, we drove over to the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge together. Tualatin...pronounced Too-WALL-uh-ton. When Mike and I first moved to Oregon, Tualatin was among the first words we learned to pronounce.

There are a couple of trails for walking. We chose the Wetlands Trail, which is the orange trail marked on the map below. We took the loop that turns south in the middle of the image.

These pictures aren’t great. Most were taken from very far away, zoomed in as close as I could get. At our first stop, I was so busy looking out at the Canada geese and ducks…

That I almost completely missed the great blue heron standing right in front of us. Matthew spotted him with his good eyes.

A little farther on, we could walk out to where the Tualatin River flowed. The river trail walks along the river, and it’s more in the shade. Looking to our left, it looked like this.

Looking right, it looked like this.

Walking on, this seemed to be a bridge to nowhere. Matthew and I both mused about what could cross a narrow bridge like this that would weight anywhere near 11 tons. We’re probably safe if we all walk out together. Oh, but never mind. Like I said…it’s a bridge to nowhere.

Walking on, there were plenty of these American white pelicans hanging out on the far side.

To their right, a grouping of Great Egrets. When I aimed for this shot, there were just two. Just before I snapped the shutter, another stepped into the frame.

Here’s another Great Blue Heron. We saw a lot of these. Some of them were in flight. They have a huge wingspan.

Here’s an abandoned nest on a snag. It was surrounded by water.

The wildflowers were mostly bloomed out, except for the Queen Anne’s Lace, which was ubiquitous. There were a lot of these little miniature morning glory appearing flowers. They’re about the size of a quarter. My phone tells me this is Field Bindweed. Most of it was white, but there were some of these tinged in pink.

And that was our walk. We got some lunch before heading for home. Matthew was kind enough to go to the garden with me and harvest four more zucchini. Phew! He also took home three mini loaves of zucchini bread. With his one visit, I managed to foist off six zucchini. Not a bad haul.

Today is going to be a bummer of a day. I’m scheduled for a Moh’s procedure on my nose. This will be the fifth procedure on my nose. Seems like I oughta get some kind of punch card, doean’t it? Anyway, my nose is surprisingly unscarred given all of that. The same doctor has done all of them, and so I’m trusting this procedure will be as successful as the previous ones. It’s still a bummer, and my nose is going to hurt for a while. I don’t expect to have any time for sewing today, and the afternoon is going to be miserable. With all of that going on, I’m going to take the day off from blogging tomorrow. 

As long as we’re talking about tomorrow, I’ll add that it’s the day I’ve chosen to make some pickles from the pickling cucumbers I’ve accumulated. We’ve been out of homemade pickles for a while, and so I’ll be glad to be putting some back on the shelf. And I only bring this up because it probably means not much sewing tomorrow either. Nevertheless, I’ll be back on Thursday. Probably, I won’t have much to show for my days beyond some jars of homemade pickles.

How are y’all going to keep busy over the next couple of days? Hopefully, your day today will be more pleasant than mine.