After the success of using Yellowstone as motivational carrot to to accomplish long-delayed car and hiking tasks, I turned my eyes toward the mess that had become my office. Stacks of unread mail and magazines threatened to topple over onto Scout in her heated bed. My pictures were scattered haphazardly across multiple hard drives, most with no backups. Most of the furniture no longer met my needs, and hadn’t for some time.

The second carrot? I bought a new TV. Perhaps I should explain.

I didn’t think to take before and after pictures, but the top picture gives a little view into the way things were. The picture is a quick snap of Sam with my iPhone, he normally ignores the TV but is rather obsessed with wolves and sits transfixed at my feet whenever they are on.

The TV is a 20″ CRT that I bought my junior year in college so it’s well over twenty years old. I felt the urge to upgrade to HDTV whenever the NFL season rolled around, the photographer in me loves loves loves high-resolution imagery, but I couldn’t justify the cost given the amount of TV I watch.

Below the TV sits the tape and CD players I got as high school graduation presents, putting them at over 25 years old. I haven’t used them in years, not since Mr. Steve Jobs and the good folks at Apple forever changed the way I listen to music with iTunes and the iPod. Below the stereo gear sits the digital-to-analog converter that converts the digital cable signal into an analog signal the old TV understands. Below that (and out of frame) lies the slowly dying TiVo that I inherited from my wife, while beneath them all sits the receiver I got my first year of grad school a touch over 20 years ago. So long ago that my address on the box it was shipped in was hand written by the mail order company I ordered it from.

The stand is a metal serving cart that my grandmother gave me when she learned I had nowhere to put the TV. To the right is an old printer stand that now holds DVD’s and magazines and mostly serves as a bird viewing platform for the cats when the window is open. To give you an idea of it’s age, the middle area was designed to hold a big ream of tractor-feed paper that fed into my dot matrix printer (that, at least, I no longer have).

To the left is a VCR tape cabinet even though I haven’t had a VCR for years. On top of it an original XBox that I used only briefly since the small TV wasn’t much fun to play games on. I used to use it as a DVD player but had long since stopped both because of the noisy fan and because I had to keep switching the connection to the sole input at the back of the TV with the TiVo, and that got old pretty quickly.

Off to the left and out of frame is a long and wide desk originally designed for the massive CRT’s we used way-back-when for picture editing, which also houses the aforementioned towering stacks of unread mail and a few cat beds and a scattered array of hard drives and computer gear.

In the middle of the room, and from whence I took the picture, sits my reclining chair which I dearly love. At only a decade old it’s one of the newer pieces of gear in my office and hopefully will last for years to come. It’s small and thin and fits well in my little office with plenty of room for me and Snuggle One and Snuggle Two (aka Scout and Sam), but not so much for the 65 pounds of Snuggle Three (aka Ellie).

In late October, Amazon put a nice 42″ Panasonic LED HDTV on a special one-day sale for a crazy low price. Two days later, a friendly UPS man brought it to my door. It’s not the TV you see in the picture below, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The new TV was too wide to fit on my grandmother’s old serving cart so it was finally retired from duty, and with it went all of the gear it I wasn’t using, plus its neighbors the printer stand and VCR tape cabinet. In its place, as shown in this picture (another quick iPhone snap, this time Sam and I enjoying a show about birds on the new gear), went an Ikea TV stand. Plus a new TiVo Premiere that can record in HD, and a Playstation 3 that serves up both high-def games and Blu-ray movies. Hidden out of sight is an 8-port gigabit router that feeds Internet connections to everything.

But this TV isn’t the one I bought from Amazon. My wife fell in love with that one so, when we saw Best Buy had a similar 42″ Panasonic plasma on sale for a good price, we picked one up while getting TV stands at the next-door Ikea. The plasma went into my office while the LED replaced the old CRT in hers.

I also took a good whack at the unread mail, I haven’t quite got through it all but Scout no longer fears for her life. The pictures on the hard drives are mostly organized and mostly backed up, the hard drives themselves now neatly arranged as well. Next up is to test out my old film scanner to see if it still works, if not the old PC I keep just to talk to it will walk the plank as well.

Then I’ll look for a new desk that better fits my small office, and then if I can work it out perhaps a small love seat or couch that will meet all the snuggling needs. Then it will be time to tackle the bookshelf and finally the Closet of Doom.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I can’t wait to see my first Super Bowl in HD, the NFL really does look amazing on these TV’s. I’m sorry I waited so long to start putting my office and life in better order, but better late than never.

Nike’s world headquarters is close to where I work and every once in a while we are allowed to shop at their employee store. I hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity before, the last time I needed shoes coincided with an opportunity to visit the Adidas employee store (their U.S. headquarters is here in Portland) and I picked up some running shoes and lightweight hiking shoes there instead.

This time though the opportunity to shop at the Nike employee store aligned with my need to replace my running shoes, and I bought two pairs of shoes, a traditional running shoe (Air Max’s on the left) and a barefoot-style trainer (Free TR2′s on the right). I’m not a runner, I just like the look and feel of running shoes, so being able to pick them up at a steep discount is welcome.

I set the shoes on the floor for a quick picture and was just testing the lighting when a certain someone sneaked into the frame. I didn’t like the lighting and moved them to a different room but when I tried to get Sam to pose in those pictures as well, he steadfastly refused. Even in the poor lighting this remains my favorite picture of the set, and I decided if I was running a marketing campaign I’d have cats randomly appearing in some of the product shots.

It’s probably best that I’m not running a marketing campaign.

Ten years ago I learned of the attacks from my wife before she left for work. I turned on the television as I got ready for work and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I turned on the radio as I drove to work and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After work I sat in my window seat and watched the news in disbelief. I barely slept for the next two days.

Then one day as I sat in my window seat, Templeton jumped up into my lap and as I stroked his head he began to purr. He had a regular purr when he was happy but when he was ecstatic, his purr not only got louder but also had an extra texture layered into the mix. As he threw his purr into that extra gear I was overcome by how happy he was. My little gray cat knew nothing of the hatred one man feels for another because he prays to the wrong God or pledges allegiance to the wrong flag.

My strongest memory of that time is not of burning buildings but of a cat and contentment.

Templeton died almost four years ago but others carry on his tradition. Scout wasn’t a lap cat in her younger days (she is now) but she has always curled up on me as I fall asleep each night. Emma also wasn’t much of a lap cat in her youth but is starting to show signs of the calling. Little Sam, mercy me, he has been a snuggler of the highest order from the moment we met.

The picture above is how I wake up many mornings. That’s Scout on the left tucked up tight against my side, with Sam on the right curled up on my legs. Ellie is over on my right just out of frame.

The picture below is how I wake up every morning. Scout is sometimes elsewhere, Ellie too, but my first waking sensation is always the feel of Sam on my legs.

God bless the little ones.

I needed new hiking shoes and when I saw that The North Face had a model named Hedgehogs, I took this as a sign from God. The problem with signs, though, is how to interpret them. Was this a sign that they would bring me as much happiness as Ellie’s hedgehogs bring her? Or a sign that she would chew my Hedgehogs as merciless as she chews hers?

Ever the optimist I gambled on the former and so far, so good. I’m still breaking them in, REI didn’t have them in my normal size of 9.5 but half a size larger seems to be working OK. I wore them outside for the first time today on our evening walk, I’ll probably give them more of a workout in the Gorge this weekend to see how they do on hills. Plus I need to ease my body back into hiking if I’m going to take a big hiking trip late this month as I usually do.

I arrived early with the fog, which soon lifted to reveal a day both cloudy and surprisingly warm. I spent the first couple of hours at Horse Lake, a small pond at the start of the auto tour, delighted with the opportunity to finally photograph the beautiful American wigeon. Wigeon are common at Ridgefield during the winter but I had always struggled to photograph them.

I made this note in my journal later in the day:

“Took me almost five hours to make my first loop of the auto tour. Sadly I don’t think that’s even close to being a record for me.”

It was a good day.

The KGB arrived with the night and began planting explosives at the front of the house. I knew I had to get out fast and without even taking the time to find my shoes ran out the backdoor. I hoped to creep through a maze of shadows to safety but was shocked to find the street lit as brightly by street lamps as if by the mid-day sun. I cursed the efficiency of the Soviet state and woke up.

At first angry at my subconscious for torturing me so, I soon burst out laughing. The efficient Soviet state? Was I the victim of a failed plot by Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB before his short stint as head of the Soviet Union, to plant subliminal propaganda into the dreams of American youth during the height of the Cold War?

Only perhaps the plot was not failed but delayed and I wondered if other middle-aged Americans were waking to the praises of a long-dead empire.

But apparently not. Sorry Yuri.

This adult bald eagle left the tree to (successfully) steal a duck captured by a younger eagle.

The 4th of July weekend started off with my wife running errands while I stayed at home to face the rigors of sleeping in. She picked me up a few bags of bark mulch so I could spread it underneath the new and new-ish plants to protect them from the drought to come. I’ll water to get them established since mother nature will turn off her spigot for the next few months, and the mulch will help keep the soil from drying out and the weeds to a minimum. I was going to order a big load of mulch but decided to put that off since there are a few bushes out front I want dug up first, but in the meantime this little bit will protect the plants most at risk.

The past few days have been nice and low key, a mix of yard work, hedgehogging, walks in the park, belly rubs and head scratches, sorting pictures, and sitting on the porch. It’s not going to be easy to go back to work tomorrow.

All part of my evil plans to attract the entire world's hummingbird population to our little yard. MUHAHAHAHA!!!!!

This past weekend we went to the nursery to pick up a few plants for the yard. I wanted to replace the lobelia the slugs devoured last fall, and pick up a couple of hostas and maybe a fern for the shady spot out front. We went to pick up a few plants and came home with twelve. And a bird bath. And a little stone owl.

We started a hummingbird garden last fall in memory of my mother-in-law, plus a dogwood for the backyard and a handful of plants for other parts of the garden. This is more of that story. In the first picture, I’ve labeled the plants of the hummingbird garden, as well as whether they were planted last fall or this summer.

I also labeled a few plants in the back I transplanted in previous years. The patch of daisies at the back is where many of my insect pictures are taken, including this ladybug that remains one of my favorite pictures.

When we moved in, this little patch had an overgrown grape vine above and overgrown weeds below. I dug those out and then the raspberries and mint took over until last summer when I cleared it down to bare dirt. And then again and again until it stayed clear enough that I could get the hummingbird garden started.

And while the slugs got the best of the lobelia I planted last fall, I did get to see it bloom, its brilliant red flowers against the maroon stems and leaves, and knew I wanted another. We got two for good measure, we’ll see how long they last. I’m thinking of setting up some really tiny electric fences.

I'm going to sit up all night beside the lobelias, cradling a shutgun, for as long as it takes. You hear me, slugs, you hear me? It ends here! It ends now!

The other plant that appears not to have survived, done in not by slugs but by the long wet spring, is one of the salvias (I haven’t given up complete hope, not yet, and left it in the ground just in case). We picked up another salvia ‘hot lips’ since we like the one we got last fall, as well as another salvia ‘black & blue’ since the black and blue flowers are both arresting and provide a nice change from the red flowers of many of the other plants. And a salvia we haven’t tried before, ‘icing sugar’, with more pinkish flowers.

The bee balm I planted last fall has come back strong so we added a little dwarf beebalm at the far edge. Both varieties of coneflowers survived the winter and spring, the little green coneflower in the front and the ‘hot papaya’ variety behind it (of all the plants I was most worried about that one as it isn’t as hardy, but it has grown like a champ and is about to bloom).

Then there’s the zauschneria, a native to the Western U.S., which has soft leaves and should bloom orange-red flowers in the fall. Our cat Emma was giving it such rapt attention that I thought she was eating it, but on closer inspection she was just sniffing each and every leaf. I thought back to last summer when she discovered the catnip for the first time and had such a wild look in her eyes that I began to fear for the safety of Sam and Scout.

Finally there are the cape fuchsias that I grew by transplanting runners from the plant out front. I planted half a dozen runners in this part of the garden during the fall, hoping one would take, and now five are thriving. I may remove a couple that are in the back since it does spread quickly, but for now it’s filling in the garden nicely.

"Give a hoot, don't pollute! Or let the dog pee on me!"

I’m glad the transplants are doing well because the original cape fuchsia out front, planted by a previous owner, wants full sun but gets full shade. It has never thrived there and was looking rather ragged after the long wet spring, so it was time to dig it up and put in some shade-tolerant plants. This little strip shown below sits beside the steps leading up to the front of the house. The hostas are probably too close together but I didn’t want to leave too much of a gap since it’s such a visible area, I’ll move them later if need be.

The hostas will die back completely by winter, balanced by the helleborus that will bloom during the winter and early spring

My wife recently picked up car chargers for our iPhones so last weekend I used the MotionX-GPS app on the iPhone to record GPS data of my movements during a day at Ridgefield. This takes a hard toll on the battery, and since I was there for 13 hours I couldn’t have pulled it off without the charger.

What I want is to merge the data with my pictures so that I can get a visual map of where I took my pictures, an idea I first had many years ago during visits to both Ridgefield and Yellowstone. The pieces are all falling into place now although I haven’t yet learned how to tie it all together. Next I need to learn how to merge the GPS data with the pictures, then I can use Apple’s Aperture to display the locations for each picture on a map.

The picture above is the GPS data overlaid on a satellite image of Ridgefield and shows how I spent 13 hours on June 19, 2011. I’ve annotated it with the names of lakes and marshes at Ridgefield. I’m not exactly sure where Bower Slough starts and ends as there is a series of dikes and canals, but this is my best guess. Google Maps only labeled one lake and they got it wrong, they have Long Lake incorrectly named as Quigley Lake.

At first I was a little confused by the satellite photo as there didn’t appear to be much water visible, but this would make sense if the picture was snapped during the summer. Many of the lakes are seasonal and even during the spring the shallower lakes fill with vegetation.

The GPS trace shows two main loops with the green and red dots showing where I started and stopped the recording. The larger loop on the right is the auto tour where I spend so much of my free time, the smaller loop on the left is the Kiwa Trail, a short hiking trail that opens up during the summer. Traffic flows counter-clockwise around the auto tour, most of it is one-way but the first stretch does allow for two-way traffic.

Many of the lakes to my eye are really ponds, or even large puddles, but what does it matter? Some of my favorite places to sit and watch are some of the smallest lakes. Some like South Quigley Lake and Rest Lake were favorite spots from my very first visit, while others like Horse Lake and Long Lake took me a while to learn their rhythms and charms and only recently have become favorites.

Here’s a quick rundown of where some of the most recent blog pictures were taken, ordered by their position along the auto tour.

Parking Lot

Killdeer

Horse Lake

Northern pintail

Sun and ice

American wigeon

Long Lake

Violet-green swallow

Common yellowthroat

Belted kingfisher

River otter

Red-winged blackbird

South Quigley Lake

Ruddy duck

American bittern

Yellow-rumped warbler

Observation Blind

Bee swarm

Tree swallow

Bower Slough (and the ash forest)

Mink

Tree swallow

Common muskrat

House wren

Black-headed grosbeak

Canvasback Lake

Northern shovelers

Rest Lake

American bittern and Townsend's vole

Great blue heron

American bittern and Townsend's vole

Bald eagles

Schwartz Lake

American bittern

Bald Eagle

1. An idiot
2. A fool
3. A Boolie

The new notebook and pens sitting on the old

Having filled up my old notebook it was time to find a new one, and this go around I wanted to upgrade the quality a bit. The internet hipsters seemed to be pretty fond of Moleskines and after looking at a few of my wife’s (and confirming that the pages are not in fact made from the skin of the molemen, who frankly have suffered enough), I ordered the Moleskine squared red large notebook. The bold red color nicely matches my in-your-face attitude and should be easier to find in an overstuffed camera bag or backpack.

It was also time to upgrade my pens. Over the years I’ve just used whatever cheapo pens I had laying around and noticed that some of the ink had faded on some pages of the old journal. And I wanted something that wrote with a fine point but also flowed smoothly. Once again the internet came to my rescue when one of my favorite podcasts discussed pens and based on their recommendations I ordered the uni-ball Signo RT Gel (0.38mm point) and uni-ball Signo 207 Gel (0.5mm point).

I was expecting sunny weather all weekend but when the clouds and scattered showers rolled in Sunday afternoon, I made a quick run to Ridgefield and had a chance to use the new journal and pens in anger for the first time. So far I am thrilled with both notebook and pens, so many thanks my internet heroes!

The new notebook and pens sitting on the old, both sitting in front of a sitting Sam

I taped the edges of the cardboard covers when they started shredding but otherwise the notebook has held up well to over seven years of hard use. One of my better $2 investments.

I used to keep notes about my hiking and photography outings on loose sheets of paper that were quickly lost. One day while in Office Depot I grabbed an inexpensive notebook to see if I’d prefer keeping my notes in more permanent form. I think it may have cost all of two dollars. It’s a simple notebook from Roaring Spring Compositions, designed for children I’d guess given that the cover asks for your school and grade. It was quad ruled which I liked as I tend to wander without the guiding hand of the grid. It measures 9 3/4″ by 7 1/2″ and was made in the USA, presumably in Roaring Spring, PA.

My first entry is from December 28, 2003 and starts with a visit to a National Wildlife Refuge — but not Ridgefield as you might expect. No, this was Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, part of the Sacramento NWR complex down in California. My wife and I spent Christmas with family in California and she flew back while I took the Subaru and planned to visit the redwoods and the refuges near the border.

After a quick visit to Colusa I drove the auto tour at Sacramento NWR, but only once as a sudden snowstorm was blowing in and I needed to hurry to get across the coast range to the redwoods. I didn’t make it too far before discretion proved the better part of valor and I retreated to spend a couple of days in a hotel in Redding. Once I-5 reopened and it was safe to drive back home, I canceled the trip and arrived at our house just hours before a nasty ice storm hit Portland.

For each visit I keep track of what animals I see and I try to make notes about how the day went, although some days I never get round to filling in the notes. Every once in a while I’ll make a little drawing in the notebook, but rarely so, for even a caveman of Lascaux once called them “rather crude”, and he was being charitable.

Look at this drawing and you can almost hear the red-winged blackbird singing in the cattails. It helps if you close your eyes while looking.

Flip over a few pages from the aborted California trip and there’s our first visit to Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks in the summer of 2004. Then comes my first real visit to Yellowstone a few weeks later (we visited for a few hours when my wife moved to Oregon but that hardly counts).

There’s my first (and only) visit to Japan in 2005, then my first visit to Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina a few months later that at long last re-introduced me to alligators. And a few months later a return to Yellowstone and my first visit to the Tetons. In between the big trips most of the pages are scrawled full of visits to Ridgefield, long ago I taped a map of the refuge to the inside of the back cover to help me keep straight the small lakes along the auto tour.

Flip a bit more and there’s my trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons in 2006. Another visit to Huntington Beach in December of that year, my first time out after my stepfather passed away unexpectedly, when the quiet serenity of the off-season provided much needed comfort.

Another visit to Yellowstone and the Tetons in the fall of 2007 which was my last. Good grief has it really been that long since I’ve been there? In the fall of 2008 I went to Rainier and the Olympics instead and saw my first hoary and Olympic marmots, continuing an obsession ignited by Yellowstone’s yellow-bellied marmots.

This entry from Yellowstone starts out with "WHAT A DAY!", and what a day it was, for I saw my first (and only) wolf up close.

In 2009 instead of my usual fall hiking trip I took a spring trip to the redwoods in California, my first visit since the snowstorm aborted my attempt back in 2003. The big trip of 2010 was our visit to Maine to spread my mother-in-law’s ashes.

Where will 2011′s big trip be? Wherever it will be, it won’t be recorded in this notebook. My June 5th visit to Ridgefield filled the final page.

Fittingly the journal closes out with a visit to and map of one of my favorite places on the earth, the unassuming little auto tour at Ridgefield.

I turned with liberated cap in hand and looked for others to share in my glorious victory. But Sam and Emma were chasing each other around the living room, Scout was asleep in her warm bed, and Ellie looked on only in the hope that this would somehow lead to hedgehogging.

Nevertheless I quietly poured my juice and lifted my glass to the heavens. Are you listening, universe? This is Boolie and he will not be denied!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Inigo Montoya

I laughed yesterday when I opened my laptop on the train while crossing the Steel Bridge and saw these available WiFi networks. Either one of Portland’s many hipsters is having a bit of fun or the DEA isn’t quite as stealthy in their surveillance attempts as they think.

Templeton died a few years ago, long before I had an iPhone, but since I gave the other pets the Instagram treatment, it only seemed fair to upload one of my favorite pictures of him onto the iPhone and give it a go. I was thinking of a funny moment with him the other day and burst out laughing, I felt a bit self-conscious but consoled myself that the other riders on the train had probably seen stranger things.

Updates here have been pretty few and far between the past few months, partly due to long hours at work, but hopefully I’ll be a bit better now that things have calmed down. But the other part of the equation is that the Canon 7D has ruined my life.

Not that I don’t love it, it’s by far the best camera I’ve ever owned and I’ve had a great deal of fun with it the past year. It’s just that the files it creates are so much larger than my older cameras that it broke my workflow. The biggest problem is that my old laptop isn’t up to the task of processing the large images. And while I’ve known that for the past year, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a PC to solve the problem.

Most of that comes down to how much I’ve loved OS X since switching to the Mac years ago, and lately to how much I love the little iPhone. But push has come to shove, I took a large number of pictures over Christmas at Ridgefield and realized I haven’t even finished sorting, much less editing, some of my pictures from my visits last Christmas.

Since I’m not a fan of Apple’s desktops, I’ll be making my return to Windows for my photo processing machine (but keeping the MacBook for everything else). I’ve decided to build the computer this time instead of buying one, my first attempt at that, and hope to be up and running in the next couple of weeks. Can’t wait! Although the dizzying array of motherboards may drive me to take up the drink.

So before too long pictures should start coming online fast and furious. Next up will be one of my favorite images of 2010, taken on the last day of the year, but I’m tired so it will have to wait ’til the morrow. It’s not the sharpest picture, even at web sizes, but if you like eagles …

Hot lips salvia blossoms in the rain

The hummingbird garden in memory of my mother-in-law got off to a slow start. I first needed to clear out some of the raspberries, but when I dug down into the clay to remove raspberry and root, the next week another young plant sprouted up and it was once more down into the clay. This continued week after week until it was time for Ellie’s surgery, our trip to Maine, and suddenly we were well into the summer.

I didn’t want to risk planting new plants during the dry season, but since there was a Cape fuchsia out front (a sun-loving plant that a previous owner planted in total shade), I dug up some of its runners and transplanted them to the back. Unfortunately I didn’t have any potting soil to ease them into their new homes, so it was clay-to-clay for them. I hoped at least one would survive, and if not, it was no great loss.

To my surprise, all but one not only survived but even bloomed during the summer, and then grew quite a bit in the fall. An occasional hummer came by, a surprise given how low the plants were when they blossomed, but it was a promising start. Still, they stood alone until cooler weather returned.

When it did, I was ready list-in-hand and we were off to local nurseries recommended by a friend. We started off at Cornell Farms since my wife’s friends had kindly gotten us a gift certificate to start us on our way, and when we got there I realized it’s just minutes from where I work. It’s also close to Ellie’s surgeon, I had almost driven right past it on the way to one of Ellie’s appointments after a wrong turn sent me astray.

For the hummingbird garden we started with a showy ‘hot papaya’ coneflower balanced by a subdued green coneflower, as well as a distinctively pretty black-and-blue salvia. We also picked up a couple each of black-eyed Susans and hostas for other parts of the garden.

The first wave of new plants from the good folks at Cornell Farms, the first picture on my blog taken with my iPhone

Good pictures of the new plants will have to wait until spring, but even this snapshot shows the distinctive blossoms that give the black-and-blue salvia its name

The all-green subtlety of this small coneflower will contrast nicely with the colorful blossoms all around it

Will the hot papaya coneflower survive the winter and bloom again next year? Here's hoping!

The black-eyed Susans were added to the wildflower garden in front to add color beneath the ever-encroaching mass of daisies. When we moved here all of the landscaping was completely overrun with weeds and this garden was the first to be rescued, but this is the first time I’ve added new plants to the survivors. When I first started pulling weeds back then, I found a golf ball buried below the plants and while not a golfer myself, decided to keep it in place in honor of my golf-loving stepfather. It now serves in his memory since he passed away a few years back, a pleasant reminder each time I work in this part of the garden and discover it anew.

The new black-eyed Susans joined the golf ball out front to add some color in front of the daisies

I’m not traditionally a fan of ferns but got religion while hiking in the redwoods surrounded by the ancient plants carpeting the forest floor. We had some ferns along a side of the house where they literally can’t be seen, so I moved them beside the trillium to create my own Redwood Corner, just like the redwood forests but for the minor point that I have no redwoods. The two new hostas sit nestled in among the ferns.

One sad note is that to make way for Redwood Corner I dug up Sam’s Grove, a patch of daisies that I moved to the backyard a few years ago. They just weren’t getting enough sun and needed to be tied up to avoid falling over. Little Sam loved playing in the daisies so I was sorry to do it, but I think he will enjoy the ferns even more than his old grove.

The next week we were off to Portland Nursery in SE Portland, starting off with a white dogwood for the back to complement the pink dogwood out front. The new one is a Korean dogwood (Cornus kousa) that is more disease-resistant than our native dogwood (native to the US, not Oregon), although our biggest consideration was finding one that would fit into the space available in the backyard — that is, it couldn’t impinge upon the hedgehog field of play. Some things are sacred.

The leaves of the Korean dogwood just starting to turn red with the fall

The hummingbird garden swelled with two new salvias, hot lips and Mexican sage, plus bee balm. A hummingbird hovered above me as I held the hot lips salvia before I even had it planted, then returned the following morning to work over all of the blossoms. I haven’t seen hummers much since, although I also haven’t spent much time out there between travel and the weather and the early approach of darkness.

The bee balm was past its prime but still gave some nice color until it finally yielded to the fall

We also picked up a stunning Lobelia hybrid, Queen Victoria, which unfortunately the slugs love as much as I do. It will be difficult to photograph, as even viewing with the naked eye it’s blooms seem impossibly red. Its dark maroon stem and leaves contrast nicely both with the red flowers as well as the green leaves of the surrounding plants. It was flopped over when we bought up but straightened right up until the wind and rain finally humbled it. It was still actively blooming last I checked so it should give us a nice explosion of color late in the season.

The lobelia (the maroon plant on the left) straightened up and prepared to bloom, setting a good example for the others. It has since bloomed the most violent red flowers I've ever seen.

So far everything has survived despite by lack of experience, we’ll see what survives the winter. The hot papaya coneflower is the biggest risk as it doesn’t like the cold, so hopefully it will at least survive one winter so I can see it bloom. Just once is all I ask.

And I have to say, I did enjoy myself putting in the new plants even if it did keep me from hiking in the Gorge, gardening is a lot more fun when you love the plants you’re working with. You’re on notice plants-of-the-garden-I-don’t-like, sleep tight this winter but don’t say I didn’t warn you if the shovel comes digging your way come spring.

The humble start of our hummingbird garden, with the ever menacing raspberries in back

All of the plants in the lower two-thirds of the picture are new, the cape fuchsia in the lower left was transplanted from the front while the rest were purchased at nurseries.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
English proverb

A bird book in the hand is worth two in the house.
Boolish proverb

I’m a nerd.

When I’m about to make a big purchase, I make an equally big spreadsheet comparing the pluses and minuses of each option. Computers, cameras, lenses, cars, houses, doesn’t matter, there’s always a spreadsheet. Until now. Until the iPhone.

Even without firing up Excel (or lately, Numbers) to map out the alternatives, I knew the iPhone 4 was the one to finally replace my ancient and little-loved Sony. I’ve been playing with it for a few weeks now and I have to say the little thing really tickles my fancy.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the first three apps I’ve purchased are all related to birds.

When I ordered the phone, I knew there were birding apps for it but I didn’t know which ones. So I did a little happy dance when my wife informed me that the Sibley guide was available for the iPhone. The Sibley guide is my favorite of my four printed field guides because of the breadth and depth of the illustrations, but it’s also the largest and heaviest so not the one I carry into the field.

Sibley has the answer

On our recent trip to Maine, I brought my second favorite guide, Kenn Kaufman’s excellent guide. But it was left behind in the hotel room when we went out to visit a relative, who it turns out had hairy woodpeckers coming to her feeders. There was a male and female and another similar bird, but with an orange patch on top instead of a red cap in back. Was this a juvenile hairy or another species altogether?

We consulted a bird guide at the house but it didn’t provide any clues. Even my book back at the hotel didn’t provide the answer. It wasn’t until I got back home that the Sibley guide showed not only the location of the juvenile’s patch but also the clue about the color.

With the iPhone app we would have known the answer straight away. And to top it off, the guide includes a lot of audio files so I can better learn to bird by ear. I was convinced of the need to improve in this area while taking a guided tour offered by the Audubon Society in Maine, I was stunned at how readily the leader could pick out birds by song.

When I’m at home, I’ll still prefer the printed guide, but I’m terribly excited now that I can carry hundreds of birds in my pocket.

Look! In the sky! It's a hedgehog! Or at least an angry bluebird!

Next up was Angry Birds, a game where you use a slingshot to toss birds at the creatures that stole their eggs. It’s a delightful little game but would be even more fun if you used a black lab to toss hedgehogs at the creatures who stole her food. Just a suggestion.

For when I want to toss the pigskin instead of the (hedge)hogskin

The next app not only has birds like eagles and falcons and cardinals, but other wildlife like bears and panthers and rams. I still have a big learning curve but I’m looking forward to playing Madden NFL 2011 as I start riding the train again.

One aspect of the new theme is you can have your own graphic across the top, I was having fun last night looking through pictures old and new for good subjects to crop for the wide format. At the moment I’m writing this I chose a crop of a swarm of bees I found at Ridgefield last month, but I have a number of other candidates on stand-by.

I got to work at 6 a.m. only to discover I left my badge at home. Since the receptionist wouldn’t be there for another two hours, I had no choice but to head back home to get it. I still got in before 7 a.m., a couple of hours earlier than normal, but it wasn’t as early a start as I hoped for.

Ellie is doing well, she feels great but still has a few weeks left before she goes back for x-rays and hopefully gets the go-ahead to start ramping up her activity level. Hold on Ellie, hold on!

My laptop is in for servicing at a Mac reseller near work and won’t be back until next week. They were having trouble reproducing a couple of the problems so I may take it to Apple after that. It turns three years old next month, which not so coincidentally is also when its warranty runs out.

I can’t do any photo editing from the old computers so posts will continue to be slow until I’m back up and running. Lots of pictures to come.

In your face, 2005!

I hadn’t planned on writing that much after crossing the 50,000 threshold two days ago, and only a modest effort yesterday, but I had a lot of seat time on the MAX today and Ellie wasn’t hedgehogging me too much tonight, so that left more time for writing than usual. And then I thought it would be nice to get at least 55,000 words, and by then I was within shouting distance of my previous total, so …

I’ve got a backlog building of pictures to edit, as well as edited pictures to put online, so stay tuned. In addition to the recent pictures of Scout, there are pictures coming of Sam, Emma, and Ellie as I’ve tried to get at least one decent picture of the pets with the new camera.

There are also wildlife pictures to come, as I went to Ridgefield 3 out of the 4 days of the Thanksgiving break, and remembered to bring a battery for the new camera 2 out of 3 times! Did I see bald eagles? Great blue herons? Great white sharks?

You’ll have to tune in to find out!