Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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A landscape fitting for a heat wave by Waitsburg photographer Bill Rodgers....
"Frost in the Hollow. Cold temperatures and a foggy inversion created a fairyland of frosty trees and weeds in the greater Walla Walla Valley early this week. The photographer looks forward to many more until mid-February, when weather conditions no longer favor the creation of freezing fog....
Coming soon. Ready for even more green and the sweet scent of Locust blossoms? In about three weeks, this is what it will look like on Sapolil road…at least it did A few years ago.... Full story
Last weekend, Terry Lawhead and I ventured down to Halfway, Oregon to gather winter photographs and impressions of the area for Volume 6 of "The Blues". This will be the latest in the series of books published by the Blue Mountain Land Trust. Taking the long way, through Tollgate, Imbler, Cove, Medical Springs, Keating, and Richland, Oregon, we were amazed at the substantial difference in snow depths along the way, which increased at lower elevations. My best guess is that the difference in...
Although winter is starting to melt away, remnant drifts remind us of our recent big snow and decorate the hills with elegant accents. Driving back from "town" via Spring Creek on Monday was a feast for the photographer's eyes. This scene was shot from Ferris Road near its intersection with Middle Waitsburg Road - which someday may actually reopen for through traffic!...
A stunning view from the water tower above the City of Waitsburg. Local photographer , Bill Rodgers, catches the crisp morning light that illuminates the fields and hills surrounding the city....
Winter wheat starts its spring growth spurt along Middle Waitsburg Road. As is usual this time of year, the Black Locust have yet to leaf out....
Early spring in 2019, just outside the City of Waitsburg, along the Touchet River from Bolles Road. After last week's heavy snowfall, blocked roads, fear of flooding from too fast snow melt, it is good to remember what we will soon be enjoying....
Autumn red leaves hang on as winter snows take over. An aging barn stands strong, ready to take on another year of agriculture in Waitsburg....
Classic red barns stand out against winter blue skies and white dashes of snow. Soon, they will be complemented with lush greens of an eastern Washington spring.... Full story
Frost on Walnut Trees, 2021. Bill Rodgers was out at one of his favorite spots last Sunday and took this stunning photo through freshly frosted trees looking north up Whiskey Creek Valley....
Several people have asked me about how I prepare my collection of 160 varieties of tall bearded iris for winter. Here is what I do: NOTHING! Iris are quite frost-hardy, so they do not need to be mulched. In fact, mulch is hard to remove, will retain too much moisture in the spring, and you will risk the new growth and root rotting. I wait until early spring to remove the previous season's leaves, for several reasons. This has been my procedure for about 15 years, and it really seems to work in...
"Home", 2020. That's Waitsburg this morning from Cell Tower Hill. My house is behind the big tree circled in blue and labelled "HOME." "Downtown" is right there in the center of the photo, and Ten Ton Coffee is right in the middle of it (another story). The dark hills in the distance are the Blue Mountains. The sky in the image is rather dull because of the smoke from the Oregon wildfires. It got worse as the day and the atmosphere evolved. Of all the small wheat towns in Eastern Washington that...
This was the fifth of the Botany in the Blues series of workshops since the first outing in 2018. Mr. Doyle also led a botanical excursion to Zumwalt Prairie in 2019 for the Blue Mountain Land Trust. Both of this year's workshops included an online instructional session several days before each of the field trips. Additional sessions of the popular Botany in the Blues workshops are anticipated in 2021....
“Waiting for harvest”, This month you can see more of Bill Rodgers’ stunning photography of the area he calls “The Wallouse”. The exhibit will open on Tuesday, July 28 at the Wenaha Gallery at 219 E. Main St in Dayton. Learn more about local barns on page 10....
Comet Neowise was discovered on March 27, 2020, by the infra-red Neowise telescope placed in orbit in 2009. It promises to be one of the more visible comets for viewing in a quite a while. A retrograde comet (it moves around the sun in the opposite direction of the Sun's rotation), Neowise orbits the sun once every 6,766 years - which means that no one will see it for a very long time. Don't miss it this time around if you want to see it! Comets are rather large frozen snowballs composed of...
I needed to get out of town for a while last Saturday morning, so pointed my old RAV4 northward, with no particular place to go (thank you, Chuck Berry). My friend Leslie Cain called it "noodling," which is what I now call what Renny Russell (of On The Loose fame, Google it)) and Bill Wayne taught me to call "ramblin'" when I hung out with them during Spring Break in Penasco, New Mexico in 1969. Either way, noodling or ramblin' around the gravel roads surrounding Waitsburg never gets old for me,...