A Master Gardener once told me that Portland, Oregon is a dumb place to grow roses. Apparently, they enjoy the desert-type climates of California much better than our dark, cold and rainy days.
And yet, Portland is well known as the City of Roses. We have a Rose Festival, for goodness sake and everyone seems to want to go to the Washington Park Rose Garden when they visit. If they are so darn hard to maintain here, why do we Portlanders insist on growing them?
This grass needs you to know its nationality. Friday, I was exhausted. “You would think,” I told one of my colleagues, “that I had worked 40 hours this week and done six interviews and a kindergarten roundup. However, due to my 32 hour a week work schedule and several conflicts, I did none of them. Still, I could hardly motivate myself to get to the ballet Friday night. When I came home, I was the kind of tired where it seems like a better option to sit on the couch and stare at the wall because going to be takes to much energy.
Saturday was a different matter. I woke up remarkably refreshed–a well rested rising being a rare occurrence in my life. I went to the gym, did laundry, hung it to dry, harvested some greens and radish from the backyard, cooked and ate them, spent several hours alternating through homework and planting root vegetables in the garden, folded and put away all of my laundry and hung out with Matt. All with a level of energy I haven’t had in forever.
It was the sun. Yesterday the sun shown all day. It was warm, and promised of summer. The vegetable beds dried out. The mustard plant flowered. The asparagus shot up. The cilantro threatened to bolt. It warmed my back as I was planting seeds and Matt came back from his bike ride with a sunburn.
It rained all of May. If you live in Portland, you know what I mean. It rains a lot here, yes, but this rain was persistently nasty and cold. I’ve only worn sandals once this year. My summer clothes sit in a box under my bed. There is threat that the strawberries will rot in the field, if it doesn’t warm up. We’ve had a month solid of March rain, with its reminders of winter, rather than May rain, with its promise of summer. Today it is raining again. I think I’ll be okay, thanks to that one glorious day of sun.
Take the Quiz here!
Not this year. Day after day the rain hammers us. If we don’t get rain, we get gray skies all day long. And cold? It has been freezing. I’ve not worn sandals once and it is JUNE. One of my workmates checked into prices for a last-minute ticket to Las Vegas for the weekend where it is a lovely 90 degrees. But nothin’ doing. There were no cheap flights and so we are left huddled under blankets and longing for warm spring to arrive. Perhaps even before summer does.
ps. The child on the front who is most probably unmotivated, slow or discipline-problemed? What were they thinking?
When I moved to the Kenton neighborhood in 2007, G&H Meat Market was the typical business in downtown Kenton. You could buy large packages of different cuts of meat and there were also basic grocery items available. It was a no-frills operation. I went in once, but none of the meat was free-range, organic, etc. and the standoffish attitude from the proprietor reminded me of South Boston, so I never bought anything from this store.
