Week 1: June 10-16

A Year in the Willamette Valley

Hello, Nature Lovers!

Welcome to my new weekly series, A Year in the Willamette Valley! Each week, I will be sharing a haiku comic, and sometimes an essay or other art, to chronicle the changes I see as I take my walks.

Before we get to this week’s installment, I want to address some likely questions.

Why am I starting this in the middle of June and not in January or the beginning of some month?

I believe in the Chinese proverb:

植木之时，上时者昔，次之者今

This is usually translated into English as “The best time to plant a shade tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

I didn’t have this idea at the start of the year, and I saw no reason to delay implementing it.

Why am I counting weeks from Monday to Sunday?

This is how I experience weeks. Sunday feels like the end of a week, and since this is my project, this is how I’ll measure the weeks in the Willamette Valley.

How do you pronounce Willamette?

It rhymes with “damn it”.

What’s your goal?

I don’t have a goal for this project. I’m just curious what it will be like to document the area I’ve lived in for 25 years on a weekly basis.

Summer’s Prelude

I’ve named the first two weeks of June Sheryl Crow Weather.

Blackberries are an invasive species in the Willamette Valley. They tend to take over and crowd out everything else. However, it is delightful to find ripe blackberries along the trail near Pringle Creek and the Willamette River in late August.

These plants are just now blooming, and the bees and other pollinators are loving it.

A few years ago, the Salem Parks division tried bringing goats to Minto-Brown Island Park to tame the blackberries. It worked for a season.

In our yard, thick blackberry thickets constantly have to be cut back, and it often feels like a losing battle. We will not be getting any goats to help out.

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Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,