Waking to the Wallowas

We’re heading out to our property in Flora, Oregon.  We stayed the night in Enterprise to avoid navigating our muddy, mile-long driveway in the dark and also to sort out exchanging our tractor for another model that starts better.  While my partner works on the tractor issue, I’m taking advantage of views of the Wallowa Mountains and my last few moments of high speed internet.

Wallowa Mountains from Enterprise, Oregon

I’m assured that we’ll have a dial-up internet connection at our place.   But that remains untested.  Right now our landline phone is hooked up to the crumbling, packrat-infested house.  We relay that to our yurt though a handset protected by a plastic container placed some fifty feet up a ponderosa pine tree (add that to the many reasons I appreciate ponderosa pines).   I’m not sure where our modem fits into this funky system, but I imagine my only hope for an internet connection will be sitting either in baking sun or pouring rain on the stoop of the old house waiting for a dial tone.   But at least while I wait, I can inhale piney smells and listen to nuthatches, woodpeckers, and wild turkeys.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be planting fruit trees, berries, potatoes, onions, asparagus, and various transplants I brought from my urban garden in Portland.  I’m looking forward to the physical work but will have little time to write.  So except for “Species of the Week,” which I’ll try to keep up with, this will be more of a photo blog than a word blog.  That’s assuming, of course, I can get some sort of internet connection.