OREGON!!

So Thursday Morning we left at 6:15am and made it to Oregon by about 5pm. We were met by Jeff, our project site supervisor, basically our go to man! He helped us get settled into the house that we will be living in. It is located pretty much right in the middle of the garden! The Gardens used to be an old Arabian horse farm and so the house that we are living in is the farmers house. We are split up between three rooms downstairs, however we get the whole house to ourselves. The house used to be used as a business office so there is still a lot of desks, papers, and computers set up but no one is actually working out of the house. Thursday night we just got unpacked, took a driving tour of the gardens and then headed downtown Silverton to get a bite to eat. Which was some good food!!

Friday morning we met Jeff at 8am and got a small tour of the garden, we met with a lady to learn about the 5th grade education program that the garden holds, we took a tour of the Waste water treatment plant (I'll tell you why in a min), we learned about the wetlands in the Garden, took a tour of the Frank Loyd Wright house located on the garden grounds, and took a small tour of downtown Silverton. At night we went into Salem to get grocerys and a trip to Walmart to get some blankets cause most of us froze in the house during the night! :D

So the Waste Water Treatment plant... you ask why in the world would you take a tour of the waste water treatment plant of all things... Well, it is actually a very important part of why the gardens are here in Silverton. Back in the day when they were deciding to build the gardens the city of Silverton was having a problem with their water. When the water would leave the waste water treatment plant it was too hot and started killing off the fish population when it was released into the creeks and rivers. So they came up with a plan to create this wetland. So they decided to offer this land to the organizations that was planning on building the gardens somewhere else and it worked. The gardens wetlands is made up of a series of ponds that are layered through the garden. The water then gets pumped a mile from the waste water treatment plant into the gardens wetlands. The water then flows through the series of ponds and it get cooled but also provided nutrients to the plants around the wetlands ponds. Thus making for a beautiful wetlands and also a unique way of solving the problem of killing off the fish population of too hot of water! Its pretty neat I think!

So thats all I've got, i'm sitting here in a coffee shop in downtown silverton cause we don't get internet at the garden... we are suppose to in a few places but its not working so hopefully they get it to work but for now we just walk the mile into town and sit at a coffee shop. I'll have to post pictures later but for now thats all I've got!