Wishing a bon voyage to the garden bloggers flinging their way to Portland, Oregon for the 7th annual Garden Bloggers Fling.  Lucky gardeners!!  Oregon Bounty is the Oregon gardening battle cry and appropriately so, because (it seems to me) that Oregonians can grow anything.  I’ve spent some time in Portland and other Oregon venues (love the Willamette Valley!) over the past few years and love it more with each visit.  Polite drivers, Stumptown coffee (which is available here in Austin at selected places), Saint Cupcake, Powell’s Books, Moonstruck Chocolate, fabulous eateries everywhere, great climate and nice people.

Oh, yeah–incredible gardens, parks and miles of trails.

I was in Oregon for a couple of weeks in June and can share a bit of Portlandia.  I promise there are no pictures of nekkid (as we say here in Texas) bicyclists.

Really I don’t think anyone wants to see that.

But you might want to see a photo of a lovely Portland painter in the International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park.

Or a photo of a winning dragon boat during Portland’s Dragon Boat Race along the Willamette River during the Portland Rose Festival.

Outside of Portland, where I spent most of my time this trip, maybe you’re interested in seeing some beautiful wildflowers that I saw.  Most of the wildflowers I observed were on my hikes in and around the Three Capes area of the Oregon Coast.

My college roommate, maid of honor and long time great friend, Dr. Linda Hardison, heads up the Oregon Flora Project and I’m plugging the Project’s work. I used the Oregon Flora Project’s newly published smart phone app to identify the flowers that I saw.   Here is a tiny sampling of the almost 1000 native wildflowers of Oregon.  Any identification mistakes are mine alone due to the less-than-stellar quality of my photos and my limited abilities as a botanist.

Great Betony or Cooley’s Hedge Nettle, Stachys cooleyae:

Short-styled Thistle, Cirsium brevistylum:

Oregon Bigroot, Marah oregana:

Littleleaf Miner’s Lettuce, Montia parvifolia:

And some of the same growing out of a fallen log:

Small Headed Clover, Trifolium microcephalum:

Fewleaf Thistle, Cirsium remotifolium:

Sylvan Goatsbeard, Aruncus dioicus:

Oregon Iris, Iris tenax:

Common Selfheal, Prunella vulgaris:

Cow Parsnip, Heracleum maximum, with the Pacific Ocean in the background:

Big-ass Slug:

I think it’s a Banana Slug, but I’m not quite sure.

A Texas girl enjoying a stroll through an old-growth forest–in June–with a sweater on.

Sweet!

Oregon bound garden bloggers, have fun because there’s so much to do–just watch out for those nekkid bicyclists!