An Oregon Adventure

Amy and I have meant to have a garden for a long time, but with moving almost every year, we never really were able. All that changed this year; Laura’s ( a girl that Amy used to work with at Full City) Dad and Step Mom had extra land in North Eugene. Just north of the city limit.

Amy, Mike, Laura, her fiance Chris, and I, have been working off and on for the last month or so, to turn a field of grass into a working garden. Our time was pretty limited because of frequent spring rains.

On Amy’s direction, we started double digging. Double digging consists of digging a shovel length into the ground, moving that dirt a foot, and then aerating the hole(trough) by poking it with a pitch fork. You then dig a parallel trough and fill the first trough with this dirt. Sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Results in a slightly raised bed of soft dirt. You also remove rocks as you come upon them; we also took turns turning the soil to get more rocks out because our garden is on the site of some ancient river bed, in some places it is literally thick walls of rounded stones.

To combat the rocks, I devised a wood framed sieve to sift out the rocks and worms. This worked well, but reduced the soil volume of one bed so much we had to buy about 8 bags of soil to fill it up! Also noteworthy is the outrageous depth Mike and I dug down for the large bed that was completely sifted through.

Here’s the skinny:

In the pictures below, the small bed was double dug primarily by Amy and has a raised bed. The large bed was completely sifted through (resulting in two huge piles of rocks!) and dug primarily by Mike, Chris, and I.

-Our first two beds. We’re not quite done planting them.

-The bed that Amy double dug.

-I buried a peace sign for good luck at the bottom of the three feet deep pit Mike, Chris, and I dug.

-Here’s the handy screen I built.

Amy and I are taking advantage of insurance and finally got in to get our eyes checked. The good news is that with glasses we both are better than 20/20. And contacts for Amy and new glasses for me a total of about $80! Not bad.

Amy also got her hair cut. It’s something totally different and makes her look sexy!

Here are the sideways pics to prove it.

Last Friday Amy and I had a terrifying and thought provoking experience.  Allow me to explain:

Friday evening we ordered Lotus Garden for pick up, and because it was mucky and rainy, we decided to drive.  It’s a short drive; Down 5th several blocks and then a right turn onto Charnelton to go 3.5 blocks more.  We turned onto Charnelton, drove a block and stopped at a light.  Because there was a cyclist in the bike lane to my right, I pulled out slower than normal, and took my time getting up to speed (cyclists look after each other).  Just as we were about to pass under the green light at the next block, out of nowhere an SUV came from the right and literally flew through the red light a mere 15-20 ft in front of us!  I hit the breaks pretty heavy, the light turned yellow, and we came to a stop at the intersection.

We thought about how, if I would have been driving as fast as I normally do, we would have surely been hit by the SUV.  Normally, I pull out of lights pretty quick, and am a relatively aggressive driver.  Because of the cyclist I took it slow: and afterward Amy also commented about how at the time she made a mental note of how slow I was driving because it was unusual.  And considering how fast the SUV was going, our accident would almost certainly have been deadly.

Food for thought.

As everyone should know by now, April 3rd is the hallowed day of Feazel Day. The reason for the delay in posting is because, a few years back, Amy and I decided to start observing Feazel Day on the nearest weekend to the 3rd, to encourage increased participation from friends and family. And while this year has come and gone a little bit under the radar, we wanted to take a moment to wish everyone happiness on this, most important of days (For information on Feazel Day, check out www.gox-tapes.com.

Every Feazel Day is different and has its own flavor; this year is no exception. Because we’ve been so busy of late, we’re keeping things low-key; Mike is hanging out, we’re gonna cook up some yummy breakfast and then walk down to the first Saturday Market of the year. Later today. we’ll post some pictures of the day’s festivities.

Without further ado, pictures from Spencer Butte.

So not much new to report on the Rory and Amy front. Rory is on Spring Break (well deserved) and I and working my butt off at ye olde coffee shop. Oh and Rory went to the dentist today, no cavities. Exciting. Other than that it has been great having my brother Mike in town. The three of us have been cooking some insanely yummy food (tonight was stir-fried vegetables with an “amy-made” peanut sauce and brown jasmine rice). We have also been getting great exercise bike riding all over Eugene and hiking Spencer Butte in town. Here are some picks from our latest excursion up the Butte in the early morning before the clouds lifted. We got up close and personal with a friendly squirrel and saw 3 turkey vultures chillin’ on a tree.

In Mike news, it has been just over a week of being in Eugene and my enterprising sibling has already landed a sweet job at an upscale restaurant in downtown as a cook! Not only that be he found a place to live today, renting a room in the southern part of town. We have enjoyed his company but a 500 sq ft apartment with 3 adults, 2 cats, and 5 bikes is a little cramped. Anyway it is going to be great having a relation in Eugene ( I would have never guessed) while we are here.

Sorry no pictures, can’t seem to get it working!

Amy’s brother Mike had been working in the boondocks outside Sacramento; he was getting good money to do hardcore labor. And while I’ll leave it for him to describe the miserable details for any who want to know, let me say this: he had to dig a hole in the ground to poop! Well, apparently the work was way hardcore. Last Friday, after Amy and I finally settled down to relax and watch a movie, we got a phone call from Mike, and he was calling from the Eugene library! Mike regaled us with his tales of woe, and we were more than happy to hole him up for a bit until he can find a job and his own pad. Not sure how long he wants to stay in Eugene, but he said he wants to get some good hiking in and really enjoy the Oregon outdoors before he moves on. So, my guess is he’ll maybe stay for at least a couple months (purely conjecture of course).

Meanwhile, with Mike’s help we are almost done installing homemade screens and screen door for our front porch. This will make the space much more usable, and in the summer months, it could well be the coolest place around (being shaded and surrounded by rhodedendrons). We’ll put some pictures up when the project is done, hopefully this coming weekend.

From time to time I get the urge to watch the Lord of the Rings in a big way. All three movies, extended edition, in a single day. This last Saturday, my friend Matt and I started the day with a lunch of TLT’s (tempeh, lettuce, tomato) and around 12:45pm, we began Fellowship of the Ring. We then a took short break and walked around town a little to stretch our legs. It was a beautiful day and we got some nice pictures of early cherry blossoms.
Our friend Cassie came over around 5:00pm, and with Amy, we then watched Two Towers. After Two Towers, Cassie went home, Amy went on the computer and then to bed, leaving Matt and I to finish Return of the King. Although we both had our drowsy moments, I can proudly say that I was awake at nearly 2:00am to see Samwise returning home to Bag End after seeing Frodo off at the Grey Havens.

Although Eugene is truly an eclectic, unique, and in many ways an amazing place, it also has its dark side. The murky depths of Eugene includes such chronic problems as: large number of homeless people, meth and drug addicts in high numbers, drug-related theft, people in need of psychiatric care roaming the streets instead of being in a home, crumbling infrastructure. Indeed, many of these problems relate to each other and are a result, more or less, of both institutionalized, intergenerational poverty and a large population that engages in high-risk behaviors such as the ‘drug, alcohol, and hippy-party life style.

Living in our gated oasis, we sometimes forget how close these problems hit home: I say sometimes, because a quick walk around the block reveals all the above problems. Yesterday, however, another related problem reared its ugly head: discarded needles!

Sunday morning, I stepped out onto my front porch and saw just off the sidewalk, a syringe and plastic glove. Saturday night, someone must have used our porch as a stoop to shoot up on! Besides being immensely pissed that someone would use my porch for such a stupid thing, this also upsets and saddens us. It is sad that some people are so addicted and down and out that they behave this way, and upset that more is not being done to stem the tide of poverty that so often leads to such poor decision making (or lack thereof). Below are two pictures: the first a close-up, and the second a wide shot to illustrate how close to our house I found it.

Today was classic Eugene spring weather. Periods of sun scattered about dark clouds and heavy rains. I got caught in one of those today. I biked to work and picked up a few things to do at home, when dark and ominous clouds rolled in. By the time I left the school, it had started raining, and hard.
Nevertheless, I rode down the river path and after six miles of riding through heavy rain, got to Full City to await the end of Amy’s shift of work.