A day at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

A couple of weeks ago our plein air group enjoyed a day at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport where I shot over 350 photos, painted a small pastel of the tidal flats, and enjoyed an hour of having the place almost completely to myself! Our aquarium connection used to work there and she was able to gain us entrance an hour before it was opened to the public. After that we had to work around the crowds of people jockeying to see the exhibits. 

Here are some of my favorite photos from that day: 

And last, but not least, the otters---I have a ton more besides these three, but thought I better post just a few this time. The silver faced otter in the first two photos is Aialik, he's 13 years old and weighs 82 lbs. 

From the Garden

Last week, I spent some time in our little garden harvesting some of our bounty, and was blown away to be picking ripe strawberries still in September! These are not everbearing strawberries but are Hoods, a variety that produces amazingly sweet strawberries, but just during a few weeks, usually in June. This is an example of what an odd season we've had this year for growing produce. There were more strawberries than what you see in the photo below, but they never made it inside for some reason...

Another oddity, but maybe less so, is we still had pea pods to pick! Considering how it was probably July before I planted the seeds, that's more my fault so I can't really blame the late season. Time to pull up those plants now. I wonder if it's too late to plant peas for a fall crop? Anyone know? If you're thinking those littlest tomatoes look really small, that's because they are! They're current tomatoes, and are about the size of a small blueberry, and bursting with flavor! There are more than 150 current tomatoes in that bowl---just from one plant.



This is summer to me: home grown tomatoes.