Too busy bee, or not too busy bee?
The Great Poppy Blossom Pollen Frenzy of 2021:
The last 3 months have been a richly-colored blur of a whole variety of emotions, challenges, and small (and large) victories. Charlotte's cancer treatment seems to be making significant progress. Her blood tests indicate a steady decline in tumor markers over the last two months, and she is feeling more herself again now that they removed the chemotherapy from her treatment plan and are just administering immunotherapy infusions every 2 weeks, thus eliminating the awful debilitating side effects she had to endure the first half of this year. The immunotherapy enables her own immune system to fight the cancer rather than using poisons to do the job.
Not only is Charlotte regaining a feeling of semi-normalcy in her bodily well-being, but at the same time we are vaccinated and Covid restrictions are lifting, so short trips and visits with friends and family are on the table once again - hurray! Charlotte was able to visit her brother recently, and back in June I was able to go up to Yachats, Oregon to rendezvous with Andria and the kids at my dad and Gail's gorgeous home by the river, "River Song":
My pictures from the trip are just random snippets of all we did in the brief couple of days I was there. I guess our group pictures were all on other peoples' phones/cameras. Anyway, I'll just do a little photo dump:
I came to Oregon at the perfect time to see the Rhododendron show!
I love my dad's yard art creations:
Columbine in front of Azalea blooms + an interesting woodland bloom, possibly Heuchera?
Susanna's love for nature, science, and snails had us running through the paths collecting specimens and speculating various hypotheses... always an adventure with her!!
It was great to see Miss Daisy again too, the sweet pooch!
It was a brief but momentous visit to Yachats after not seeing Andria and the kids or Dad and Gail in about 18 months - oh my! I look forward to seeing more of everybody now that we are traveling again, and I look forward to coming up to Yachats more often.
An interesting observation on my flight back to California: I was stunned by the swaths of what I am 99% sure is invasive broom, a plant that is a scourge of California and Oregon hillsides alike, easily identified by its profusion of yellow blooms in spring. You can see clearly in this picture how it takes advantage of clear-cut sites to completely choke out all other plantlife.
Oh no!
It was a great visit and wonderful to be together again. The yard looks so green compared to now in our current drought.
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