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All of the banner background photos on this site were taken by Whitey.
Above is a close-up of the bark of incense-cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) in winter.
The appearance of the two tubs at the entrance to my property--placed in the street to prevent people from parking cars in front of my walkway/bikeway--changes seasonally. In summer, they're filled with geraniums, sweet alyssum, and marigolds. In spring, there are flowering bulbs such as tulips and daffodils. But in winter, I simply poke boughs of suitable evergreen plants (both needle-leafed and broad-leafed) into the soil, and our cool and damp winter climate here maintains the plants until spring. Here, native incense-cedar boughs (Calocedrus decurrens) covered with yellowish pollen cones join English holly (Ilex aquifolium) to welcome visitors and passersby.
And a Happy New Year to all—the current political situation notwithstanding.
But let’s focus on Happy Things! Well, we finally got our first hard freeze of the season—only a couple of months late. Eugene’s average first-freeze date is 25 October. But this (well, last) year, November went by without a freeze. And so did December! It wasn’t until this past week that the temperature graciously dipped to 28 degrees Fahrenheit, finally annihilating my nasturtiums—which never before had bloomed past, say, mid-November.
In the Hen House, Ephedra, Forsythia, Geranium, and Hesperis—who hatched on 28 May—are now full-grown ladies and doing what grown-up hens do: lay eggs. From the four hens, I’m now getting four eggs on alternate days, and three eggs in between those days. That means that three of the hens are laying daily and one is laying every other day. We all have our routines, you know.
Then there’s The Fog. In Western Oregon, fog is a summertime phenomenon on the coast, where, thanks to the cold Pacific Ocean waters, it keeps the daily high temperatures in the 60s most days and seldom burns off before noon. In winter, however, in between storms, the coast is generally clear and mild, with daytime highs in the 50s and even 60s. During those periods, the inland Willamette Valley—hemmed in on the west by the Coast Range and on the east by the Cascade Mountains—ends up being the foggy place. And temperature inversions are common. That is, usually, the higher you go in the atmosphere, the colder the air; but during an inversion, cold air is trapped near the surface and, as you go higher, the air gets warmer.
How warm? Right now, we’re having a serious inversion. It hasn’t rained in about a week, and there’s no rain in the forecast for at least another week. The Willamette Valley is filled with stagnant, cold air and most days covered with a blanket of fog. But the fog layer isn’t very thick, and above it the sun is shining. As I’ve explained here before, all one needs to do to escape the fog—and I need to escape it every few days or I go crazy—is to go west into the Coast Range or to the coast, or east into the Cascades. Or go straight up. We have the LinkLane bus to the coast ($5 one-way to Florence) and the Lane Transit District bus to McKenze Bridge ($1.75 one-way and free for seniors like me). I can exercise either of those options or . . . I can go “straight up.” That is, I can climb up Spencer Butte on the south edge of Eugene which is just over 2,000 feet in elevation.
Downtown Eugene lies at about 400 feet above sea level and the top of the fog layer is at 1700 feet a.s.l. So the top few hundred feet of Spencer Butte are ALWAYS above the fog. Great! But I personally prefer taking the McKenzie bus into the Cascades for a fog-free day, where I can be alone and not hear any city sounds. (Spencer Butte, on the other hand, is a very popular hiking destination locally, plus one can hear train horns and incoming airplanes and leaf-blowers and barking dogs and sometimes loud people. No thanks. Not if I have another option.)
Okay, now back to my earlier question: How warm? Yesterday, 15 January 2026, I took the McKenzie bus into the Cascades and we were out of the fog by the time the bus got to Leaburg, about 20 miles away. But the air was still pretty cold. After getting off the bus at McKenzie River Ranger Station, however, which lies at about 1,500 feet a.s.l., I ascended the nearby ridge to spend the day at about 2,000 feet elevation. So I would be above the 1,700-foot cold air layer. The air was already decidedly warmer (50s) by late forenoon—while Eugene midday was still 39 degrees—but by 2:30 in the afternoon, it had reached, yes, 74 degrees! That ties my previous record for warmest winter day on that ridge, which was in February of maybe 2000. I had to move into the shade from my basking spot, it had gotten so warm!
And now, as I write this at the Law School library on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene on the morning of 16 January 2026, the fog is back. But my cheeks are still rosy from my little adventure yesterday. Yay!
Geranium is telling me here that she and two of her sisters have already laid their eggs for that day. You can just see the tops of the eggs here in the hens' nest box.
Still eating fresh tomatoes in January, no kidding. I finally removed the vines from the trellis outside the kitchen window the last week of December--they still hadn't frozen--then hung the vines inside in a south window (see them?) where their tomatoes continue to ripen and brighten my winter days.
My favorite kind of sky: blue-and-white. This photo was taken in mid-December near Vida, Oregon.
(This page updated 16 January 2026.)
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