How the garden grows -- veggies

As much of the country experiences a hot summer, in the Northwest, we are having cooler than average temperatures. My zucchini plants seem stuck in a rut, with tiny fruit. However, kale is king, and growing abundantly (last week I gathered a 5-gallon bucket full of kale leaves). The artichoke plants seem happy as well. Today, I harvested my elephant garlic. So without any farming skills, we are occasionally able to eat home-grown produce.

Fishing and gathering wild things

The season has begun! On Saturday, I gathered the first chanterelles of the year (bottom photo). On Sunday, we collected 12 Dungeness crabs. And today, Bori caught 2 Chinook salmon, his first of the year (top photo). So the freezer is filling up.

A day at the beach, for turkey vultures

From spring through fall, we often see turkey vultures soaring in the skies above us, or feasting on road kill. But we have never seen them sunning themselves with their wings spread. They were acting like solar cells, just as cormorants and anhingas do.

Some birds from the Cascades

As a result of heavy snow levels, and cool spring weather, many of the anticipated summer wildflowers had not yet bloomed, and few of the ducks we encountered had ducklings.

Instead, we encountered white pelicans on 2 lakes (bottom photo).

Gaggles of Canada geese were seen on several lakes. The group at Hosmer Lake seemed very disciplined, walking in straight lines and swimming in straight lines (middle photo).

And western grebes were busy fishing on Odell Lake (top photo).

Summer in the Cascades

We have just returned from a trip into the Cascades. As lots of snow fell in the Cascades this year, including several inches in June, "summer" seems like more of a state of mind (or calendar) than an actual season. And yes, we needed to wear lots of fleece in the morning or evenings.

Odell Lake is located just below Diamond Peak (bottom photo), which was covered with more snow than we had ever seen during our "summer" trips. Any wind blowing down past the mountain was chilled by the time it hit the lake.

Impressive snow drifts remained across several of the hiking trails in the area.

As one consequences of all the snow, and the cool spring, streams were running fast and high, and lake levels were higher than usual. The top photo is of the marsh at the south end of Davis Lake, which was submerged by about 3 extra feet of water.

The Cascade Lakes Highway has been plowed (from the south) through to Mount Bachelor, which was open for skiing on the Fourth of July. The snow banks were impressive to drive through.