The Oregon Garden 6-23-07

Yesterday was a field trip day. We went to the Oregon Garden in Silverton which is a 15 minute drive east of Salem. This whole area is very agricultural. Lots of blueberries are farmed and here Linn County claims to be the grass seed capital of the world. There are two huge Iris growers up here, Cooleys and Schreiners, one of these years we have to get here the end of May so we can see all of them in bloom, it would be stunning. Lots of flower seeds are grown too; these first 3 pictures are of a California Poppy field and some mystery flowers that we were able to get close to. We keep seeing ribbons of color way off in the distance here and there.

So anyway, the Oregon Garden was fabulous. It has only been open for 6 years and is 80 acres. It is on what used to be an Arabian horse ranch. We spent over 4 hours there. Amazing the growth that it already has and I think in a few years it will rival Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C. The different gardens flow together nicely and there are rest rooms placed throughout and a little café on site so we didn’t have to leave and come back. We could have brought a picnic, but we didn’t think about it. There are many water gardens and fountains and there is a tram that runs throughout so you can jump on it if you get tired. There were lots of places to sit and rest if needed. I took 154 pictures and I whittled it down to this first batch, I’ll probably bore you with more over the next few days. We were really glad we saw it and if I lived here I would have a season pass so I could the garden through all seasons!

Today was jogging day 6. It was a cool morning and it took longer to get warmed up. I tried to start jogging where I had on day 5 but the pain and stiffness was too much. So I walked more to get warmed up and then I jogged as far as I could and then walked for just a teeny bit and jogged again. I was jogging REALLY slowly though, I decided to slow down, hoping that I could jog for longer stretches, Larry could walk fast beside me and keep up, but all I cared about was putting my body through the jogging motions. Larry goes off ahead of me and puts on at least another mile going back and forth while I slog along. But my strategy worked for me today, because I was able to keep jogging more and when we got home we had gotten back the three minutes we lost on our last jog, so I was happy with that!

It is so weird to me how really AWFUL this jogging and pushing my body feels, yet at the same time I feel so good…when I’m done huffing and puffing and dripping sweat and can move again I notice how much better I feel overall. Makes a person want to eat a donut! And that starts to piss me off too because now I don’t want to eat as much, which means it WORKS…Exercise the 8 letter cuss word!

Tonight Seth is spending the night, so we’ll be busy. Can you find the Bullfrog in the picture of the green leaves on the water?