On February 1st the newly appointed Oregon State Forester, Doug Decker, began work here in Salem. Coincidentally he’s my brother (!), and yesterday R & I were invited to bring our lunches (note the apostrophe problem here…oops…you’d need TOOLS to edit it…) and see the new office…just blocks from our house. The building sits on […]
Category: Salem
Bush House Conservatory…
In the local preservation world in ANY region, it seems there are often more sad stories about the buildings lost than happy ones…but here is a very happy one indeed. In our local wonderful Bush’s Pasture Park stands the amazing Bush House Museum. Behind the museum (another story for another day) is the small and […]
RAIN…
Yesterday it felt almost scary, it rained so much. Finally we MADE ourselves leave the house for a coffee… and a look at the RR bridge looking faintly like a Whistler painting… and the other two bridges (…got pretty wet getting this picture…) and it seemed eerily beautiful in the pouring rain…
…And More Snow…
Well I got thinking I had a photo of our early Salem years…a snow storm in Bush Park…in the corner of the park near Deepwood gardens…and I found it…December 1971, before I REALLY realized it doesn’t snow that often in Oregon (unlike the mid-west). My memory of that year is being amazed that city snow […]
Winter Wonderland….
I was going through some historic images today of the Lord & Schryver garden at Deepwood and found these wonderful shots from the 1950’s of a snow storm in the scroll garden plus this lovely one that ALMOST gets you in the mood for snow!
Shelton Ditch Enhancement Project
In November I wrote a couple of posts about two Willamette University grads planting creek-side in Salem. The name of the project is the Shelton Ditch Enhancement Project. I stopped to get a few photos of the newly planted area today and here’s the plant list from Luke: Tree Alnus rhombifolia (White Alder) Fraxinus latifolia […]
MAD Chapter 2
It’s sooooo cold here today. I went by the creek planting site this morning on my way back from the last Thanksgiving errands, and though all the holes were neatly dug, the planters weren’t there…too cold I thought: but on our way to coffee we did a quick drive by just in case and found […]
Making a Difference…(and the historic perspective)
Luke Westphal and Caprielle Barlow both graduated from Willamette University last spring…she in bio/chem, he in environmental science. For his senior thesis project Luke designed an area in the ODOT right of way under the Mission Street fly-over in which his idea was to rid the creek bank of the invasive species growing there (mostly […]
The Bush Conservatory
The Friends of Bush Gardens’ restoration committee raised the necessary $250,000 to restore the lovely little conservatory behind the Bush House Museum. It was in dangerous condition and the group took on RESTORATION, rather than replacing the building (HOORAY!!). Here is the before picture: and when I was in the park the other day I […]
Denison Farms…
We get the CSA veg box each week from June to November, and enjoy it all, but there is usually ONE week in the fall where the assemblage is absolutely gorgeous and this was the week:
On The Way 