looking up

For the last couple of months, my life has revolved around various springtime tasks, and leading our Elderhostel/Exploritas kayaking groups every other week. This has been a very cold, wet, and windy spring. The picture below was taken on March 28th, on our Leadership Scenarios day in Skamokawa. Today, it looks much the same out there, at the end of May!


rain on the river


group photo, Exploritas program

I have been involved with Elderhostel groups since 2004, and to date, I have been a co-leader for 84 Elderhostel programs. This year, all four of our spring programs lined up on similar tides, and we paddled the same routes each time. One of these routes was paddling along the cliffs upstream of Cathlamet, created 17 million years ago by the Columbia River basalt flows. There are dramatic waterfalls, and a population of plants that are found nowhere else in the county, including various wildflowers, Oregon white oak, Madrone and even poison oak.


waterfall and ferns

Flowers shown below are Broad-Leaved Stonecrop, Larkspur and Streamside Arnica.


Broad-Leaved Stonecrop


Larkspur


Streamside Arnica

The controversial, but beautiful Caspian terns are back, to spend the summer nesting on sandy islands in the Columbia, and feasting on salmon smolts. You can read a little about the terns, and their presence on the Columbia River by clicking here.


Caspian Terns

In other springtime news, I did finally manage to catch a spring Chinook, with only a couple of days left of the season, and my brother caught his on the very last day. The water was so high and cloudy down in this part of the river that even though there was a decent run of fish passing through, the catch rate was pretty mediocre, and a lot of people went up above the confluence with the Willamette to fish in clearer water.

And I caught a very small window of dry, sunny days, and managed to till my garden beds while the soil was dry and warm. I got my potatoes planted, three 40′ long beds worth, just before the weather switched back to rain again. I bought fresh seed potatoes this year from Irish Eyes, and planted Russian Banana, a fingerling that has done well here before, Chieftan, a red potato, and Bintje, a variety I had never heard of before.

Now, if it would just stop raining for a little while….

Well, it’s been a busy week! I finally got the new transmission in the Subaru the other day, after another trip back to Portland for more parts. For the first 100 miles or so, it was really stiff and noisy and not shifting smoothly, and I was starting to wonder when my bad car luck would end, if ever. Then, I guess the oil got to all the little places inside that it needed to and things quieted down somewhat and the shifting got much better. So, other than a host of other small problems like any car with over a quarter million miles on it might be expected to have, I have a decent car for daily driving again. Whew!

Here’s the new clutch all installed just before the transmission goes back in. The old clutch fork was just about worn through from lack of grease, and the axles were all loose and wobbly. I replaced those too, and now, with a quieter transmission, I can hear the noisy wheel bearings. Heh heh…


clutch cover

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The other big project this last week or so was getting shiitake logs inoculated. I went out into a little corner of woods by my barn and cleared out a bunch of small diameter alder, and cut it into 42″ lengths. Shannon and the girls stacked it up neatly and I ordered the sawdust spawn from Northwest Mycological Consultants in Corvallis, OR. It came about a week ago, and after I helped my neighbor Levi with his logs, I spent a day with Alice working on my logs and we got through one bag of spawn and about three dozen logs. Yesterday, Levi came over and we knocked out the rest of the spawn in a couple of hours. I still have some logs left over, so I will probably order another bag of spawn, maybe maitake, or one of the many oyster mushroom strains that are available.

It feels good to have gotten those things done, and just in time, since my work season is about to start in earnest. The first Elderhostel kayak tour of the season started Sunday night.


alder logs