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Southern Oregon University’s Plunkett Center sits on the corner of Mountain and Siskiyou. The building serves as the home of the foundation and alumni relations. A beautiful building in any season, my favorite is April when one of the two trees in front of it is always in bloom. The tree on the right of the building (center of this photograph) had yet to bloom when I took this picture in early April.
My daughter’s soccer team was getting beat pretty badly a couple Saturday’s ago. The weather was perfect though, and I started taking more pictures of the scenery than the game. This is from the lower soccer field at Ashland Middle School.
A different angle on the same field and same goal can be seen here.
Last year my wife planted these flowers (six different kinds–only two and a bit of a third can be seen in this photograph) in the planter box on our deck. After a month or two they died, as flowers do, which was good actually. Normally we plant something and the deer eat them by the next morning. The deer didn’t touch these.
We did nothing to the planter box over the winter. The dead flowers remained. This spring they have all come back to life and have been giving us great visual pleasure for the past month plus. Incredible flowers these are–to be able to bounce back like this after sitting under snow and freezing temperatures all winter and at the same time not be tempting to the deer.
I recently started following a group called Japan_Blogs on Twitter. I was skeptical of Twitter at first because it seemed like mostly garbage, but if you are careful about who you follow you can actually get good information delivered to you very efficiently.
A few days ago I decided to add my other blog to Japan_Blogs on Twitter. As soon as I did so my traffic doubled, and it has remained at twice its former level since. So I figured why not find something similar for this blog? It turns out there wasn’t anything similar so I have created it with Oregon_Blogs and added some of my favorite Oregon blogs to the mix.
If you have a blog that deals in some way, shape, or form with Oregon (maybe photography, Oregon travel, living in Oregon, etc.) then you can have your blog automatically fed through Twitter to anyone interested. Simply leave a reply to this message and include your feed URL in the message. I’ll take it from there.
You need not use Twitter or even have a Twitter account to use this free service. Your content will not be posted on Twitter in total. What will happen is the first few words of your blog posts will be posted with a link back to your blog. Those interested will click the links, driving more traffic to your blog.
On the side of Lithia Park away from the plaza there exists a swimming reservoir that mostly just locals know about. The water is extremely cold, but it’s a nice place on a hot day. Nude sunbathers are out on occasion too.
I took this picture about a month ago when no one was there. Last time I rode by, on a warmer day, there were kids swinging on a rope into the water. That would have made for a better picture, but I didn’t have my camera with me.
I probably should have waited another week or two to take this one as the leaves are just beginning to appear. In a few weeks this tree will be really green. Oh well. Here is what it looked like last fall.
Even the cemeteries are screaming new life at this time of year.
A fog was hanging over the valley as I woke up last week to this scene.
My daughter celebrated her 11th birthday this past weekend by having 7 friends over for a slumber party. This was the designated sleeping room complete with lanterns, candles, and–on the evening of the event–a roaring fire in the fireplace.
Many cities have a sister city, or two, or more. Your town probably has one too. Chances are you don’t even know what other places form such a partnership with yours. For instance, I lived in San Jose, California for more than six years but I didn’t know San Jose had eight sister cities, let alone what those eight were.
That isn’t the case with Ashland. We have perhaps the best sister city relationship on the planet. It is with Guanajuato, Mexico near Leon. Not only would more than 9 out of 10 people in Ashland be able to identify Guanajuato as Ashland’s sister city, but a significant portion of the population has participated in some way with that relationship. For instance, my kids had people from Guanajuato visit their school classes this past week. I’ve even been to Guanajuato–not once but three times thanks to the Ashland-Guanajuato partnership.
This week we are celebrating the 40 years of ongoing and ever-growing partnerships between Ashland and Guanajuato. As part of the celebrations the town’s main street of Siskiyou Boulevard has been lined with American and Mexican flags.
