Mosaic Monday - desert wildflowers

(click image to enlarge)

I heard a neighbor thinks that all Central Oregon is, is desert. Well nowhere is really ever "all" one thing or another so I took some photos of wildflowers to show off some of the beauty you can find there too.

Wild lupine and vetch are the only ones I recognize. The yellow one has a plant and stem that really reminds me of a dandelion. The small pink ones remind me of carnations. Anybody have a guess?

Be sure to visit Little Red House to see all the lovely mosaics.

The Cowboy Dinner Tree

Care to go on an adventure? Some friends of mine were curious about a place I'm always waxing poetic about: The Cowboy Dinner Tree in Silver Lake, Oregon. Getting there reminds me of a quote from the play Quilters, "It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here."

We were having a family get-together in Sunriver, so the drive wasn't too far.

If you enlarge this photo you may see what I was trying to capture - the whole side of the road was purple with wild lupine, it was so beautiful! And it was uncharacteristically cloudy that day.


The hills are aliiiiiiive with juniper and sagebrush. :)


Rolling, rolling, rolling.... behind all my other family member's vehicles which almost all happen to be red.


Ah! Made it!
The place looks like a shack but don't let the humble exterior fool you!
Reservations have to be made sometimes months in advance.


There's a story about a chuck wagon waiting here at the halfway point for cowboys driving stock and thus explains the name. By the way it smells delightful as you go inside because the grill is outside over to the right.


Before we go inside I want to make a disclaimer that some of my photos aren't the greatest and I had to use flash because, as they say on their website, "No credit cards, no electricity, no kidding."

You can have water or coffee but most of us prefer pink lemonade or....

Iced tea.

You can see the remains of someone's salad there, which is served with their homemade honey mustard and ranch dressings. Bean soup is the next course but I don't eat beans (and yes I catch a lot of flak for that) so I didn't take the time to photograph it. :)

The fluffiest, yummiest dinner roll/biscuits.


And when your entree arrives you will be getting one of two choices which you were asked to specify when you made your reservation. Did you order chicken? Well you get the whole chicken. And a baked potato just in case that plus all the previous courses didn't satisfy you.


Or did you order steak? Which is about 2 and 1/2 inches thick and as big as my face.


And if you're STILL hungry there's always dessert which usually reflects the season. This time it was shortbread and berries with real cream. REAL CREAM. Oh my goodness I think my mouth is actually watering at the memory.

Word to the wise - bring a cooler to take your leftovers home!

And since we had those uncharacteristic clouds that day we also got an interesting sunset.


The Cowboy Dinner Tree website, for more information, can be found here.

Happy eating!

Rocket Cloud

I was playing in my garden the other evening and heard a crow caw-cawing close by. Thinking it somewhat strange I looked up to find these bizarre streaked clouds going quite a ways across the sky. I wish I had panoramic capabilities on my camera! I've never seen anything quite like it so I snapped happily away. In this shot it looks like that cloud in the corner is moving so fast it has jet streams. :)

Scarlet poppy

I know I keep saying it but I really love my box garden full of flowers. It just delights me more than I can say.

And far and wide, in a scarlet tide, The poppy's bonfire spread.

~Bayard Taylor



Updated July 8th.

I'm always taking close-up photos so here's a shot of my whole box garden. It's probably 4 feet wide by 20 feet long. I used to plant my onions there until the deer decided they LOVED playing "king of the mountain" and kept eating all their tops off. Now it's a nice spot for poppies, daisies, cornflowers and perennial flax.



See more of my poppies [here].
   

Fragrant Acres

I have a dream of covering this place in herbs and wildflowers and calling it "Fragrant Acres" - doesn't it seem fun to name your home?

This is an old potting table that I recently cleaned off (you may not recognize it without the table and tea party treats from this post) and I potted some oregano in an old coffee pot and these lavender stems were some I accidentally broke off while cleaning my herb garden. I'll let them dry here and do something fabulous with them later. :)

I'm away and not sure how long I'll be gone (people like kidnapping me and not giving me details) so I thought I'd set up some "photo a day" posts in my absence.