sprig to twig

Whenever I get to a rendevous early, out comes the camera for a tour of the neighborhood. I like to meet people at my son Din’s coffee shop, Ristretto Roasters over on Williams St in North Portland. Not only is the coffee extra special, but I just might run into Din or Nancy and get caught up on their busy lives. Anyway, here are a few shots of the surrounding neighborhood.

Heading down a side street, this guy was the first thing to catch my eye. I knew this was going to be a fun walk.

Recently completed hardscapes in this garden, a half-block away from the gargoyle, were of a more serious nature. The impressive gates lead into a vegetable plot. In the foreground, curved beds are separated from pathways by cor-ten steel barriers.

Here, square metal boxes are set within the curved bed. The plantings are all brand new. It will be interesting to revisit this garden as it grows into its “bones”.

Turn a corner, and WOW…these people are not afraid of COLOR.

So of course there was an abundance of colorful plant material about. I hadn’t seen this Echinacea before, but now I will be on the lookout.

This has got to be what is meant by “vine covered cottage”…and around back, a vegetable garden.

Across the street was this understated, subtle paint job with a jungle in front.

Time to get back for my coffee fix. As so often happens on these expeditions, I was surprised at how far I had wandered. This whole block of parking strip was barkdust mulched with the occasional rock to break the monotony, but clustered near the corner was a mature clump of yuccas. The city might have something to say about that spilling over the curb, but I find it charming.

Back on Williams, intense efforts to bring the neighborhood back from the brink have resulted in lots of new construction.

New projects are going forward even in this down economy.

With gentrification come many things, but in this case the neighborhood has kept its sense of humor and identity.

…right down to the large corner lot devoted to a thriving community garden. And now for arguably the best cup of coffee in Portland. Hey! Other people swear by it…not just his mom.

A long time ago, the Portland Art Museum had a show of folk art. The pieces were all cobbled together from life’s detritus: everything from barn boards to cast off toilets. One hallway featured wall-sized mural/photos of the artists, mainly gap-toothed black men leaning against equally gap-toothed fences enclosing yards full of “junk”. The striking thing was the rapturous look on the faces of these makers of things. Some time later, R asked me…if I were to be reincarnated, what would I like to come back as? I didn’t need a second to think it over. “One of those old black guys.” Now here’s the thing. Most of the pieces in that show would seem tacky, even laughable, to most observers. Someone with a critical eye saw the heart in them, put them in a museum and called them “Art”. I was reminded of that show the other day as I walked around the neighborhood. People seem to share an impulse to make things. They might be embarassed to show them off indoors, but outside…anything goes.

I will start with the one piece that I think qualifies as “Art” (just my opinion) and got me looking around with this theme in mind. The bee sits unceremoniously in a yard that is not particularly well-tended. I hope to see the owner out and about one of these days so I can ask him about it.

Two of our neighbors spend their days building bird houses and feeders. I guess you would call this more of a cottage industry, but the impulse seems similar. Jim is out in his workshop at the break of each day with the coffee on and the latest neighborhood gossip to share if you care to stop by. He introduced Virgil, across the street, to woodworking, and now they seem to be engaged in a kind of friendly one-upsmanship with their designs.

Jim built this gate between his place and ours.

Every year, a family of swallows takes up residence. As evening falls, they can be seen swooping into that little hole at top speed. (we never lack for entertainment around here)

In the folk art department, everything benefits from a patina of age.

An old rusty saw blade becomes a sun face.

This piece of equipment actually gets used, but it sure looks like it has potential as art somewhere in its future.

Which brings me to my own little chicks pecking around the vegetable raised beds. These were a gift. R slapped his forehead and cried “What Were They Thinking?” I think they’re kinda charming…which just goes to show how “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” got to be such a cliche. When we first saw our present home, I was ready to run screaming from the room. Everything was dark pressed-plywood paneling and sculptured wall to wall carpeting, with an orange fireplace smack in the middle of the living room. It was only as I began to remove the ornate brass fixtures for the fully lined, nubbly plaid draperies that I realized with what care everything had been installed. It sure wasn’t our taste, but it was executed with a thoroughness and precision one had to admire. I got to thinking that the next caretaker of this place might take one look at our faux-painted walls and hardwood floors; our oddball taste in plant material and think to themselves…”What Were They Thinking? Well, with a lot of work, we can fix this.”

Remember the big blowup bunny? Between that and the chain link fence, you might think this yard was a lost cause, but you would be wrong. I aimed my camera over the fence to capture only a small section of this large drift of daffodils.

Talk about lucky grandkids! Right in front of the daffodil border sits this playhouse.

Hanging on the gate, nearly enough to make one forget the chain-linkiness of it, is a charming welcome sign cut from metal and allowed to accumulate a lovely patina of rust.

Peeking through the fence up the road, you can see a plowed garden plot big enough to feed the entire neighborhood. They don’t, but they do leave a hedge of blackberries along the fence line for the express purpose of letting neighbors pick them.

The folks with the Seussian arborvitae suffered a setback when the winter wiped out new landscaping heavily dependent upon flax, but some of the older, heartier shrubs survived.

Meanwhile, in the land of the lollipop shrubs, this line of weeping cherries more than makes up for any surrounding silliness, as I hope this tour kind of makes up for earlier snarkiness (not that I pledge to give up snarkiness on anything like a permanent basis).

One of the things I like best about wildflowers is the way they sprinkle themselves sparsely and with great delicacy about the landscape. I almost missed this wild rose. When I looked closely, I discovered that there were quite a few of them in the area, in several stages of development. If you look closely, you may be able to spot a few too.

The trilliums have been out for a month now. They start out pristine white. As they age, they take on pinkish hues, until they become almost purple right before they give up the ghost entirely. This clump shows the whole gamut.

I think these are candy flower, or Claytonia Siberica. I base that assumption on the leaves, which look like Miner’s lettuce, also known as Claytonia. This police work is fun and frustrating in equal measure.

No such luck identifying this one. I picked a sample of each specimen to bring home, but after stopping to chat with a couple of neighbors they were wilted beyond recognition.

Small trees with these fuzzy blooms are all over the woods. Bet someone can tell me what it is. ID update: Megan says it is native elderberry. That would jibe with the bright red berries that come later.

These are obviously some sort of wild violet. I always called them dog toothed violets, then was told that’s the name for trout lilies. It becomes ever more obvious why we need botanical Latin, painful though that may be.

I’m looking forward to the march of the wildflowers, and hope to chronicle their appearance here. Maybe, with your help, we can put names to them in the process.

No, I will not try to trick you. Instead, in the spirit of this crazy holiday, I thought I would share some of the weirdness from my latest walk around the ‘hood.

I am continually having to talk Richard out of arborvitae. Admittedly, they are serviceable in some situations, but here is what happens when left to their own devices for too long.

Ah, country living. These people built their, um, dwelling smack in the right of way for the extension of our road. When the authorities came to evict, out came the shotguns. No further action has been taken.

At the other end of the spectrum is the neighbor who carries tidiness to extremes. Crews are in almost constant motion mulching, mowing and giving the lollipops their haircuts.

This tree is on that same property. I find it strangely wonderful. Have you ever seen anything quite like it?

Here is evil ivy at work. See how it climbs trees, then puts them in a death grip?

Is this what the Easter Bunny really looks like? I hope not! People around here seem to have a thing for these inflatable monstrosities. Wendy, over at Greenish Thumb made an excellent point about snootiness in talking about others’ gardens, and now I am feeling sheepish about this post. I will try to compensate next time by showing some of the delights, some in the very same gardens shown here. Above all, I must declare these biases to be mine alone. Yours may be different, and you may even convert me. After all, I am beginning to feel twinges of affinity to pink, thanks to Grace.

A few posts ago, we went for a walk in our woods. This time, we’re trying to locate the markers that tell us where our property ends. Machete in hand, Richard leads the way.

The first thing to stop me in my tracks were these trilliums. A smattering of them were sprinkled across the forest floor, with many more just emerging. I will have to go back in a week or so. You can see how here at the forest’s edge they are pushing through a carpet of English ivy. We have been hacking away at the ivy, with the help of neighbors, but it is persistent stuff, and has nearly strangled some magnificent trees.

As we dive deeper into the woods, the ivy and blackberries give way to natives like these fiddleheads. They are said to be a culinary delicacy, but the one time I ordered them in a restaurant they were a feast for the eyes, but just so so on the tongue. I would rather leave them in the woods where they arguably belong.

Patches of oxalis are just beginning to produce flowers, not that they depend on floral display for their charm.

Working our way to the bottom of the ravine, things begin to get boggy. This was one of only two skunk cabbage to come early to the party, but already our noses alerted us to their presence. There will be lots of them later on, so stand back.

Here is one of three itty bitty streams (or are they creeks?) that converge at the bottom and then empty into a small lake out by the main road. The whole area is boggy now. I jumped across the creek and went in to my knees…glad there was a hiking buddy to pull me out.

Love these patches of native Mahonia.

I leave you with the oddity of the day: a tree growing out of the stump of one of its ancestors. Can you see the roots embracing the sides of the stump? Always something new to see out there. Thanks for coming along.

I have, in fact, been sticking with my commitment to take my camera along on walks. It somehow prompts more attention to details like this tree, whose catkins have tassled up delightfully.

Then there was this holly growing up through a tall cedar and loaded with bright red berries.

Here’s where the warning part comes in. In order to get these shots, and some of a gnarly old apple tree still hanging on to aging, bronzed apples (that didn’t turn out), I found myself scrambling up brushy embankments. A day later, my face began to itch something fierce. Before long, I looked like a victim of something between jungle rot and teen acne. Now, I know what poison oak looks like. My cousin Billy was my partner in crime in the early years. We found some fabulously shiny and colorful leaves in the woods one fall day, and thought that armloads of boughs would please our mothers no end. Quite the contrary, as soon as they spotted us they snatched us up, branches flying, stripped us down and scrubbed us raw with lye soap. We got out of it scot-free, but Aunt Florine swelled up until her eyes were mere slits. Lesson learned. Poison Oak sports oak-shaped leaves with a surface that gets its shine from the sap that causes all the trouble. I didn’t spot any on this expedition, but it must have been lurking there somewhere. My advice is to stick to trails at least until things leaf out and you can tell what you are getting yourself into. Regular applications of tea tree oil have calmed down the itch enough that I can resist the scratching that spreads it around.

Yesterday brought light spilling across the breakfast table. A walk was called for.

The path down through the back of our property gets pretty overgrown by mid summer, but right now the extreme weather has beaten back the blackberries (see…some good did come of it) to reveal great swathes of sword ferns.

A big old hemlock has moss-covered stumps of limbs that look almost like spokes interspersed with the living branches. The close-up view is a nice reward for tramping through brambles.

The way the moss captures the light turns everything sculptural.

I love the way ferns grow out of the mossy trees. Those Oregon grape look so much happier than the ones I planted.

Color, texture…the forest floor has it all.

Now that’s texture!

The people before us sold off many of the large cedars on the property. It was a scarred landscape, but even the stumps are being reclaimed by nature and draped in beauty. She does a better job than I could dream of, so whenever I become frustrated by lack of progress in the cultivated garden all I need do is take a stroll back here. Hope you enjoyed coming with me this time.