Rhododendron and Bonsai Garden

I'd always vaguely taken note of the signs for the Rhododendron and Bonsai Garden off I-5 whenever we drive down south towards Portland, but never really thought about going until this was featured in a magazine recently as a "hidden gem". The article and website noted that peak blooming times for rhodies are March - May so I insisted we mosey on down there last weekend despite the iffy weather!

I'm really glad we sucked it up and went despite the drizzle because the gardens were actually quite pretty. Even better, we couldn't see where to buy entrance tickets and no one stopped us from walking in so our little afternoon trip was free! There's several different gardens to explore and it was interesting that so many Rhodies were from the Asia Pacific corridor like China, Papa New Guinea and Indonesia and even Nepal. We didn't have much time to check out the Bonsai garden but it was fun to look at these trees that are decades old and only a foot or two tall. Evie and Nora were bored but Scott liked reading up about each type of tree.

Here's a few pics of our outing.

cool little Pitcher plant

Spring time = ferns onrolling.

Nora was in a BAD mood for most of the afternoon and refused to take decent photo.

Evie decided purple was her favorite.

Pretty pathway all awash in color!

Gazebo stop to eat a snack.

Smiles because they got to have some nuts!

A formal upright maple bonsai

Comments

Happy new year!!

Goodness, it's already 2025! It's been a really long time since we posted! We had a very lazy new year. We flew back from LA on the evening of the 31st so spent the last remaining hours of 2024 cozying up on the couch and then fell asleep before it even hit midnight! On New Years day, we slept in, cleaned up the house and then did a quick hike the next day. All in all, a good start to the year! Nora's new blanket hoodie. Cold and muddy trails. We're not in LA anymore! We hiked the Primrose trail that follows Coal Creek.

1 week checkup

We took Nora to her one week check up today and guess what? We have a porker on our hands! She weighed in at a whopping 6 lbs. 5.5 oz. That's 2.5 oz more than her birth weight! They want the baby to be back at birth weight within 2 weeks so she beat that milestone pretty handily. Hooray! So far, she's been better than Evie at eating (she doesn't take nearly as long, although she falls asleep VERY often) but she's not as good as Evie at pooping. Poor thing always seems to have tummy issues - she's very squirmy and fussy when she doesn't burp or poop. The doc doesn't think it's a big problem though since she still has lots of wet diapers, but we'll have to keep a better eye on it now. We'll have another doctor check up (with shots!) next week.

Salmon

The other weekend, Scott arranged for us to get a private tour of the Salmon hatchery on Orcas Island. It's surprising that we've been going to Orcas for over 10 years now and never noticed this place before! The tour started down by the waters along Eastsound where Mike, the facilities manager, showed us where the Salmon come in from the ocean ever year. There is a fish ladder down there and a little dock that lets them catch the spawning salmon and they can quickly fertilize the eggs. Then we drove up to the main hatchery where he walked us through where the eggs incubate until they are little hatchlings before being moved to larger swimming pools. It was an interesting little tour to learn all about the life of the salmon. This hatchery focuses on Chinook (King) salmon, and out of the 800,000 baby salmon they release back to the water, about 800-900 come back to spawn. The rest are eaten up by whales in the Pacific ocean or caught by commercial fisherman out in the open w...

Simpsons in Seattle

Search This Blog