Ashland, Oregon

I have not posted on this blog for quite a while, not in fact, since we ended our summer long travels. I had always intended this blog to be a way to challenge myself to keep taking photographs wherever I might be and to try and relate what they might mean to me. I hope that you will still want to come with me on the ride, even though we are not planning any worldwide trips soon.
When we returned to southern Oregon, we wanted to find a place to live in or around the town of Ashland. We were very familiar with the town, as we had been participants in the artist community for some years, so we kind of knew where we wanted to be. Top of our wish list was a quiet location. Having lived in the middle of a 26 acre piece of land, we had become accustomed to the quiet, and neighbors some distance away.
Within a very short time, we were planning to move into a house on a cul-de-sac, in a quiet neighborhood, we felt very lucky and blessed.

The house is set back from the street and has a large redwood tree that we can see from any window in the front of the house.

As you can see we were rather pleased with ourselves!
The entry porch is proving a boon now as the rainy season is with us, and, thankfully, we are  getting quite a lot of rain and snow this year.

The neighborhood has streets with lots of large trees which provided us with great fall colour plus, it is a great area for walking. In fact we are very close to extensive walking trails that cover the mountains behind the house. For us, it is a 10 min walk to the trail head.

We are looking forward to exploring these trails more extensively in the spring.
We had our first snow just before Christmas, just about 12 inches or so. It did mean I had to borrow a snow shovel from our neighbor to dig our way to the street and through the berm deposited by the snowplough!
I have now managed to buy our own, but only after the local hardware sold out twice before I could buy one.

Mailboxes on our walk.
The snow has gone now, but there is still plenty on the hills and the nearby ski resort.

Now our morning walk looks like this. We are at about 2,200 ft elevation and if we were 500 ft higher we would still have snow!
One set of grandchildren and their parents came to visit after Christmas and had a lot of fun in the snow at the house and on the mountain.

Ready for the next ski lesson. These guys got their first lesson when they were five years old on this same mountain, now they are skiing parallel turns and some black diamond runs as fearless ten year-olds.

A small hill and a plastic sled creates a lot of fun as well.

One of the challenges of moving into a new house seems to be that none of the old furniture fits and all of the cupboards have become smaller or our "stuff" has expanded! We are still going through the process of figuring all this out. The local charity shops are benefiting big time from our attempt to downsize.
We have read the book " The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo, and it is a lot of help. We like the description of only keeping those items that "bring you joy".
We have done a good job with clothes, but are now struggling with books.

We had to buy more bookcases and still have many boxes of books to open. It is quite amazing as we had sorted and got rid of many boxes before we packed everything into storage.
It is, however, fun to look at books that one has owned for a long time and which bring back special memories.

This is one such book, and is one of the first that I owned and read completely. It was a gift from my aunt Nell on my tenth birthday. I have kept it with me throughout all of the past sixty plus years and the many moves I have made.

Moving into an urban area is quite a change for us, the grocery store is now five minutes away instead of thirty five to forty. The noises of the countryside, tractors and chainsaws are replaced by leaf blowers and the distant sound of trucks climbing the hill as they drive south on Interstate 5.
(I find leaf blowers very intrusive, why is there such a fear of leaves, or why not use a rake?)

The town of Ashland does a fine job of dressing itself for the winter holiday season, with all of the downtown area festooned in lights.

I never make New Year resolutions, but I do try and set some goals for the year. One of those goals is to make an effort to post more on this blog, I hope you will come along with me.