I don’t mean to criticize the rest of the country, but my area in Oregon is a better place to live than anywhere else. I don’t even have to wear my sunglasses anymore because the cedar and pines absorb enough light so you don’t have to squint in the direct sunlight. The water out of my spring tastes better than any I’ve drunk in the last three weeks. The temperature is a humidity-free 75 degrees. My garden soil is thick, rich loam that will grow anything. The air I’m breathing, which comes off hundreds of miles of Pacific Ocean, is probably the cleanest on earth. Even my neighbors are nice, and the nearest is at least a half-mile away. Dorothy was right. But I guess I’m just bragging, as people are wont to do of their own country neighborhood. We stopped in the redwoods, at the Richardson Grove in northern California, 70 miles south of Gold Beach for our final relaxation spot. Hundreds of different types of wildflowers seemed to line the highways leading to our home. When we did get home, about 11 pm, we unloaded quickly and slept for about 10 hours. One of our cats, a black one named Blackie, died while we were gone, but the other four and Molly, our black lab, were well cared for by Silveira. The chickens were fine too, even Larry Bird, out rooster, who Silveira said he would have liked to have killed at 4 each morning. But there was lots of work to do today after three weeks away from home. The garden beds were overgrown and the grass was high, so we all spent the day outside cutting grass and pulling weeds. We even had a couple of cords of wood that a neighbor had dropped to stack. Jet lag began to set in about 5 in the evening, and I realized the best thing for this Irishman to do was write a blog entry and have a beer.

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