Vantucky

One of the many things I did over the past month+ since falling into blog oblivion was to attend a library conference in Vancouver. That's Washington's Vancouver, not the highly desirable, very cosmo, soul-enchanting city in British Columbia. Our own Vancouver is directly across the Columbia River from Portland, OR, and serves as its less popular big sister who keeps getting passed up for the dance. I have to tell you that I found her to have a lovely personality, a strong back, and a good sense of rhythm.

Being that close to Portland made it a prime op to dine with my favorite brother in the whole entire world. Here he is doing his thing. Looks a lot like my thing, doesn't it?













Unfortunately, I took a whole lot of extremely boring conference pictures. Lucky for you, I will not be sharing any of those. Instead, I'll tell you about going in search of a really old apple tree. I mean a Really Old apple tree.

I heard tell there was this tree, see, somewhere along the Mighty Columbia, and it was considered the oldest known tree from Washington's earliest apple-growing roots. Who wouldn't want to see that?!

I would have been helpless in finding this fabled tree, what with all the other trees distracting me, if it weren't for a most fortuitous sign.
















Following the arrow, I went under a rail overpass & voilà! Pommier! In bloom, no less.

















And nearby was this Official Rock, proclaiming:














So it was all true about the Really Old apple tree. That made my entire conference experience 10 times better.

Upon my return home, the oddities continued with Eartha greeting me enthusiastically.



















And the day finished with yet another freak snow occurrence! Check out these chilly buds. -k8-