The Road Less Traveled

Harvest time along the Fruit Loop

I don’t like to say that any one season is my favorite, but I have to say that this particular fall has been especially beautiful.  I’ve been taking advantage of the fall colors to go out and practice my photography.   So recently I spent a wet weekend day driving the Fruit Loop with a new photography buddy, Brian. (Check out some of his stellar work here.)   For the uninitiated, the Fruit Loop is a 35 mile circuit through orchards, wineries, farms and fabulous fall colors starting in Hood River, Oregon.   (Read on after the break…) (more…)

I’m not really a gardener, as any of my friends could tell you.  But I do love flowers.  Years ago, during my Park Ranger days, I would lead folks on guided walks looking at wildflowers in the the meadows of the sub-alpine (at Olympic National Park) and the tundra (at Denali National Park), which I loved.  But gardening – not my thing.  That was until recently when I went to the Dahlia Festival in Canby recently.  WOW!

I always thought of dahlias as looking like this:

My image of what a dahlia looks like

Something with firm flower heads made up of tight little coiled tunnels that catch the rain.   Beautiful, but I thought that was pretty much it, in a variety of colors.  Well, not being a gardener I was delighted to discover that they range from delicate and graceful to huge and gaudy, and everything in between.

Who knew a dahlia could look like this?

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