Rose Hips

Beach Rose - Rosa rugosa

I decided I should try and make it a habit to take my camera with me on my walk to work. I was surprised to see this rosebush blooming at this time of the year, but apparently it's normal with this type of rose.

Rose hips - Rosa rugosa

I seem to remember having rose hip tea but I don't remember if I liked it or not. However, the ones around here are giant and somewhat tasty looking.

I did a quick search for recipes and came up with rose hip jelly, jam, syrup, crepes, soup, and dip. Interesting. Maybe I should pick some?

Are you famous?

I am decidedly not famous, and that is just fine with me. However, I have discovered that my sister Becca (#271) is pictured on a table in Chapel Hill, NC.

Google Gadgets

We have a lot to do today, but I didn't want to wake Sami. I started browsing Google Gadgets and was amazed by all the random things they had for people to put on their webpages. I found a few penguin games I've added here, and a quick search for penguins gives a whole list of other penguin related widgets. It's amazing what people decide to create and give out to the world for free. Ok, I guess they're not really free - there are advertisements. But I set the windows up so you can scroll past them and they won't be distracting you.

PS - Turn on your sound for sound effects.

Weather Widget

I had trouble staying asleep this morning, so I read some news online, checked my email and looked over my blog post from yesterday. It got me to thinking about weather and about how it would be cool to have a little weather forecast on the sidebar. So I did a search on google and found that actually there are a lot of different "widgets" (pieces of code you can cut and paste into your blog) for weather. I found a nice looking customizable one on Weather.com but unfortunately I couldn't get it to work properly on my page. Then I found the one on Weather Underground. That one shows weather in both Fahrenheit and Celsius and gives some information about wind etc. but I didn't like their icons or backgrounds. In the end I settled on one on a site called weather.ibegin.com. It doesn't give temperature in Celsius, or windchill or anything fancy, but it's simple and the icons are nice. As far as I can tell, the forecast is correct. (it's still dark out there) What do you think?

PS - Because it was dark and I was thinking about it, I added a sunrise chart from Weather Underground to the bottom of the ibegin widget.

Fall is Here

I'm working at the Rock Creek Library this fall. I'm also taking a Spanish class at Rock Creek on Monday and Wednesday evenings. I decided that instead of buying a parking permit for the fall term, I would park at the nearby shopping center and walk to campus. That way I would have to walk (and get some exercise) every day, even if the weather was bad and I'd rather stay indoors. The distance is just under a mile. I've taken a few different routes though the neighborhood. (map) So far, I've been lucky. Although it's rained a lot this week, it hasn't really been raining during my walks any day this week.

Yesterday, it had rained a lot just before I started my walk to work. The sheep (for the vet tech program) were all sitting under the trees and the light was shining though the mist just so, and everything was sparkly... of course I didn't have my camera with me. Today I took the camera and got some nice pictures of the fall leaves in the shopping center parking lot, but unfortunately the sheep weren't posing today.

In Oregon, we don't have a lot of native trees that turn bright colors in the fall. All of the ones in these pictures are introduced species that are planted for their ornamental value.

Below left: Ash - Fraxinus sp. Right: Japanese Maple - Acer palmatum.

Sweetgum - Liquidambar styraciflua

Cedar Waxwing - Bombycilla cedrorum

These birds are relatives of the bright red cardinal most people are familiar with. We don't have cardinals in Oregon.

This tree on campus was just full of the waxwings, but a bus drove by and scared them away before I could get any more photos.

Hummingbird

I saw this little bird on my walk back to the car after work. I couldn't tell the species since I only saw him in profile.

We have a couple of common species of hummingbirds in Oregon. Usually they go south for the winter.

(?) - sp.

Back in the parking lot and ready to head home.