Week 49 -Oregon City - November 24 - November 30, 2025

This was the week of Thanksgiving...and Ivan and his family came on Wednesday and stayed through until 5 am Sunday morning.  It was great to have them here for all of the family festivities....also ..... exhausting.  We live kinda a quiet life and suddenly five extra people makes for a lot of activity....and we love it.

We went to Nancy's for Tukey Dinner.  Lots of people.  All of our children were there and all but one grandchild...so we had a full house.

Archer and Sam

Paul ate himself into a Thanksgiving stupor.

There were puzzles and all sorts of craft activities for the kids.

Saturday we went to a Friendsgiving hosted by Mary Jean Williams.  I thought there would be more musicians but there were only three guitars and one clarinet....and some people were singing. 

I found another huge maple tree limb tht had fallen in the "deep" section of Sector 5.  It was steep and slippery, but I, eventually, got the limbs cut off and moved to Sector 2 where I could use the ATV to pull the limbs up to the wood pile.

 Week 48 - Oregon City - 17 November - 23 November 2025

I did a lot of cleaning up in the woods.  In Sector 5, I pulled up all of the maple branches and fir boughs which had fallen, cut off side branches and made piles ready to pull up to the house and to be turned into firewood.

I also worked in Far West Sector where the big maple had  fallen over the spring.  I need to keep working on the tree so that Steve Smith can come and help me cut it up into firewood size pieces.

The workers next door finished the fence.  I took this photo with early morning sunlight.

At the entrance to the development, a sign has been put up along with some banners/flags flapping in the wind and some cutesy plants to make it look inviting.   Some nice maples were planted, and we don't know how far west alongside the fence they will be planted.

Friday began with a spectacular sunrise.

I finally got tired of the pile of branches I have brought up from the woods, and, unfortunately, just left in a pile. It was time to make the pile go away.  The pieces are now in the basement or in a box (ready for Sutton Lake) under the canopy.

Bruce ands Vonda came up for the weekend.  Paul has been set apart as the Second Counselor in the Bishopric, and Bruce cam up for the occasion.  The best thing is that he wanted the old disc that has been knocking around here for about 40 years.  The troops loaded it up.

And.... it's off..... to Utah to live on Bruce's farm in LaSalle, Utah.

Saturday night we went to Abby's last performance of "The Addams Family".  Those kids sang their hearts out!  Abby was the mother of the young man who wanted to marry  Wednesday.  Honestly, I didn't understand what was going on....I never watched the tv program when I was a kid.

Sunday - we celebrated Gretchen's birthday....singing and cake as usual.

 Week 47 - Oregon City - November 10 - November16, 2025

I walked in the woods only once this week (because we were intensely planting Arbs).  As I was getting ready to head out, I called the cats, and they obediently appeared and headed out with me.  Down near Malcolm's Bridge (where the creek flows out and over the cliff down to Eda Creek), Jack and Zelensky caught up with me.  They were racing each other and ended at the spot where a fallen cedar hangs out over the cliff.  They raced up onto the logs and then pretended they were just 'chillin'.

This whole week was devoted to planting the Arbs.  

First we had to do something about the shooting berm.  We realized that a part of the northern end had to be moved.  I had the idea to talk to Troy (one of the excavation worker-guys next door) and ask if he would help us.  I did ask him and he, easily, said "yes " - like something that would take days for us to move could be done in just a few scoops from his big machine.  Impossible for us, "no sweat" for him.  Dad marked the berm with spray paint.

And then, when we weren't even watching, Troy did his magic.

Later on in the week, we realized that we needed to level out that four feet of ground between the berm and the property line.  The land developers (from next door) were starting to build a fence, and it became apparent that we needed to plant eight Arbs between the berm and the fence.  Dad, with all of the skill of a professional tractor operator, took the Kubota and wiggled between the berm and the metal posts (for the fence), dropped the front end scoop, tilted it, and moved forward, scooping up the excess soil.  A little shoveling on my part, and the ground was level!                                                                                                                       

We worked on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and on Friday and got the 158 trees PLANTED!  Warren and Whitney came and helped on Saturday afternoon.  Paul came one afternoon.  And Whitney came two more times - one time even when we told her she didn't need to come ' she is a rock star!

Here is a perfect hole dug by the augur (which saved our but_ _ _.

We kept track of the number of trees planted by counting empty containers.

The falling leaves of the October Glory maples made lovely ornaments on the Arbs.

A view to the west with Whitney in her professional planter pose.

And to the east.

We ended up in the middle of the tree line with empty spaces for eight trees......the trees that we, at the last minute, planted where the berm had been.  We had to order eight more trees from Brian Fish to finish out the row of trees. The next photos show the last Arbs tht we planted.

The property line that we were digging along e,xactly followed the "invisible fence wire" that we had buried for Shep.  We were constantly unwinding the wire from the tip of the augur.

Sunday was the Primary Sacrament Meeting presentation.  Our grandchildren were very cute.

Coming home from church, in gloomy winter weather with a white sky, I took this "final" photo of the whole east to west line of trees! Rock on Emerald Green Arborvitaes.

 Week 46 - Oregon City -November 3 - November9, 2025

Gotta start out with a photo of the cats....wondering if it is time to get out of bed.

TUESDAY

Dad worked a lot on the augur borrowed from Gary Clark.   It had been retrieved from Gary's place where it was nestled in a blackberry bramble and all metal parts were severely rusted and other parts were clogged with mud.  After a lot of time in the barn, watching You tube videos, Dad actually freed all moving parts from rust and mud and had the augur hooked up to the Kubota and working!  

WEDNESDAY - I was shocked to get a text from Cohen Fish regarding the 150 Arborvitae,  5-ft trees we'd ordered. I thought they were coming next Wednesday!!  But their truck arrived, full of trees.

Cohen and Brian unloaded all of them and lined them up along the property line.

FRIDAY - we started first thing in the morning, and I think we planted 25 trees.

Ta-Dah!  Our first tree!

SATURDAY - we went to Tyler's final cross country track meet of the season.  It was held at the Western Oregon University campus.  It was fun!  Tyler did well for his first season!

Afterwards we went to a pizza place for some really tasty pizzas.

Saturday night, after Tyler's cross country meet, Warren and Whitney came and helped us plant a bunch of trees.  It was nice having their help - we were a lot faster with them.

 SUNDAY- in the afternoon, we planted more trees.  I think we did 15 trees.  When I count the empty nursery containers, I come up with a total of 55 planted Arbs!!!!