Ok, This Time Strawberries And Lime

I didn't have time to go with what I had intended when I put that last post together. I got so caught up in putting all the clamming stuff up that I totally forgot to take down the promise in the title of strawberries and Lime. I had a full day. And since I like to leave behind the traces of my forgetfulness, I thought I'd just leave the Strawberries and Lime part in the title of the post.

After clamming, I drove to the south end of the bridge to get more salt water for my 55 gallon cold water aquarium. The aquarium is really cool. I have set the chiller to 54 degrees. Now, that's cool. But the aquarium is another post.

After hitting the beach for the razor clams, and driving to the south end of the bridge for the water, I then drove out to the Valley and picked strawberries. While there, Lime and I had a wild time exchanging camera phone pictures of what we were doing on our respective coasts. She will tell you that she lives on the "right" coast. That means, by that definition, that I either live at the left coast or perhaps, at the wrong coast. I didn't push her for clarification.

So, in the course of our conversating (got that from some movie), I ask Lime if her phone can receive photos. She "thinks" it can. Right. So then she says that it can. Yes, it can. It can receive pictures, but she has no idea how to take pictures and even less of an idea about how to send them. She suggests that I teach her. Well, it didn't take Little Girl Limers half a second to reveal her eavesdropping when she shouted that SHE would teach her mother all about it. A kid? Picture phone savvy? What's HUD spelled backwards? It wasn't long before I had received on my phone the very first phone pic Lime has ever sent. Ladies and Geltlemen, I give you......SPARTACUS!






This is where you want to go to pick the sweetest, most flavorful strawberries this side of heaven:





We talked for about a half hour. In that time, I had filled (single-handedly) about half this box with berries. I was bluetooth enabled, but had to hold the phone out of my pocket to keep the reception in good order.




This is a scale. It measures in in pounds, not kilograms (Blue and Sheila!). The price per POUND is depicted on the right. Not bad...EH?





On the phone to Limers, I described the YOOOOGE field of mint that I saw on the out to the strawberry fields (but not forever). She reminded me that when she was out here on the "left" coast, she saw mint and parsley fields. I haven't seen the latter yet. But this field was over 100 acres and it smelled divine.



Here is a closeup:



The bridge behind me spans the Yaquina (yuh-KWIN-uh) River and Bay. The rocks are visible because of the minus tide. They are not visible even on a regular low tide. Lots of critters for the aquarium out here. This was taken right after the razor clamming venture.



This sea star is doing great in the tank, eating the little mussels I picked for meals in the new home. If you look closely, you will see that it is regenerating a leg.




Aquarium teasers:

Happy in the new digs...



The fish is found in tide pools. It is called, aptly, a tide pool fish. The interesting thing about these fish is that they will feed up and down the beach, along the rocks, throughout the high tide, but will always find their way back to the very same tidepool they started out from. How do we know this? They done studies, that's how we know. (SORRY, LOGO!!! Did that make your ears eyes bleed? HA!) The clam is a cockle. There is a California mussel in there, too. Found in Oregon, though. And my favorite of all, a monkeyface prickleback eel, poised just off the top of the fish. You can see the eel's head if you enlarge the picture. Be sure to go to the link and click on the picture to see how big these fellas can get.