Wild Tiger Lily and Farewell T-Bird

Hello, thanks for stopping in.  How's your almost Summer going?  We're in heaven around here as we've had a lot of sunny pretty days.  On Saturday Dayle washed his little T-Bird convertible and asked me if I wanted to go on a ride to Vista House to dry it off.  Sure!  I hopped in and the top was down and off we went.  Dayle spotted them first.. my favorite wildflower was in bloom on the way to Vista House!  He pulled over and I went on the hunt for a good photograph of these beauties.  This is my favorite shot.  It's funny how hard it is to get just the right shot of these.  I put the camera low to get the underside and my Lumix camera performed a miracle and this is so good that you can see the little hairs on the flower!

I do hope you don't mind how many shots I'm sharing, but you'll see, each one shows a different personality and shade of color depending on the light.  

Sunny with a spider web.

When they are in the wild you might actually miss them.. they are shy.

Backlit by sunny green leaves and the blue of the river and of Washington across the river.

Hello?  Look up!

Standing tall and reaching for the sun.

Oh my lovely favorite wildflower, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.. 

There you are!

There is a cliff across from the flowers, I snapped this little group of wildflowers on the arid vertical cliff.  

Dayle waits patiently while I snap away.  That is the Historic Columbia River Highway there that hugs the cliff from Portland Women's Forum State Scenic Viewpoint to the Vista House.

Then on to Vista House for a drive around the building.. for new readers, this historic building sits 733 feet above the Columbia River and those mountains and fields you see past it are Washington State - the Vista House is in Oregon.  Vista House was built between 1916 and 1918 and was dedicated on May 5th, 1918.  I served as the Executive Director of the Friends of Vista House for 15 years and was part of the founding team of the Friends group.

And of course we can't pass up a visit to the Portland Women's Forum for photos of the gorge and VH.  It really was a perfect day.

I have sailed that river in my little 14 foot Sunfish with my husband, sister and brother once.  We sailed our 26 foot Stargazer through the lock of the Bonneville Dam you see down there and docked our boat for the weekend at Beacon Rock you see in the distance.  It's quite a nice place to live and play, I must say.

Vista House from Portland Women's Forum.  

Dayle has been cleaning and waxing his 2002 Thunderbird as we're going to trade it in on a new car for us.  More on that soon.  We've sure enjoyed this car but it's not sensible to keep this as we don't use it often.  Kind of sad to say goodbye to it.

I decided to clear all my plants out of the window and clean my galvanized pan and clean up the plants.  Doesn't it look nice?  While I had the plants out, hubby washed the windows and the leaded glass window.  Do you know what is missing?  My 3 varieties of Christmas Cactus - they all looked a bit burned up so I'm going to pot them all together in a big pot and put it in our family room bay window where we have bamboo shades for really hot and sunny times.  

I think I might need a pot of succulents.. what do you think?

How about some dessert after all of that?  These are Hood strawberries and they are local and very, very sweet.  We've eaten them straight out of the box after washing them - and then last night Kristi cut some up and put sugar on top and then we had strawberry shortcake with whipped cream on top!  Yum!

OK, I need to pack my swim bag - Gracie is back from a weeklong trip to California and she'll be swimming with me today.  First, a bowl of watermelon for lunch before I head out.  Tomorrow we'll be going to look at a new car.  :-D  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)