A (very long) Day in Portland.

to begin a little blogumenation of our recent trip...we finished up our works around 3:30 on Thursday, July 2nd and Donna took us to the airport and we flew to Portland, Oregon. Picked up our rental car around midnight and drove into downtown, checked into our hotel and crashed. The next morning, we had a packed day. With only 1.5 days in the city, we had to fit in a lot of stuff. We started out our day with a maple bacon donut from Voodoo Donuts and some coffee from Stumptown. (no, they didn't have tshirts....but they did have coffee mugs, so we got one of those)




The we headed south to the Sellwood neighborhood to walk around in the park and the neighborhood which is like Portland's version of Decatur or Grant Park maybe.

The Sellwood neighborhood borders the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. Lots of birds here...

Everybody has a beautiful garden in Portland, lots of interesting flowers and vegetables.

A cob bus stop!

Jeff...waiting for the bus.

After our walk around the neighborhood, we walked to Bertie Lou's for breakfast. I highly recommend this little spot...such a delicious breakfast we had.

and then we went into Oaks Bottom and walked down the trails.

We rented bikes and rode along the river.

That night we went to dinner at a place called Noble Rot. They have a rooftop garden where they grow all their produce and we got the tour from the owner. all of their veggies are grown in baby pools.

well, and some things grown in these greenhouse box things.

here are the stairs to the roof....and i'm scared of heights even with a sturdy ladder. it was worth the climb though.

and then we got to eat it! here's our dinner. it was superb. I highly recommend this restaurant if you are going to Portland anytime soon!

here we are:

to top off the night, we went to a little dessert place called Pix and they have some o so delicious things to taste. here's what we got.

and if you look real close, there's us in the mirror.

and that concludes our first day in Portland.

Summertimes

Hi there. It's been a month or so, and as usual, i've got some catching up to do. These pics were taken before we left for our trip, so around the end of June. The garden has progressed a lot in these pics but i really need to take some pics now b/c it's at it's peak....tomatoes and peppers galore. anyway, here's lita and her peanut butter jar.

In this picture you can see the mystery vegetable that is no longer a mystery. I thought it might be cucumbers but it ended up being butternut squash! and, as you can see, it's basically taken over the whole front of the garden and beyond. There's a picuture a few below this one that shows their size next to my foot, but now they are pretty much done growing except for a couple and i'll just leave them there on the vine until we are ready to eat or until the first frost...ha, probably until we are ready to eat then....first frost might not be for a few months...

I bought the dogs a pool to sit in while i'm in the garden on hot days. Donna was the first one in it after a long workout. Abe joined her. Lita hasn't figured out the joys of the kiddie pool yet.

I made blackberry cobbler one night. Abe decided that jeff did not do a good enough job cleaning out his bowl...and this is what I found the next morning when i walked out of the bedroom.

a neat little plant my grandpa stullken gave me...don't know what it's called.

baby zebra tomatos! I have to watch these around the squirrels. they keep getting them before i do. I read that if you put panty hose over them or sprinkle the plant with black pepper the squirrels won't get them. i'll have sexy sneezy tomatos this week if i want to have any tomatos at all.

more garden progress...the peppers are on the left in the back...they are HUGE now...and i have some dark purples ones which is fun.

those squash.

a compost project. I had tons of acorns and sticks in my compost that fell in from a dying tree but other than that it was ready to use, so i sifted it.

garlic harvest.

the trees.

we planted 9 thuja green giants along the back fence...one day we might not have to have a backyard lit up by glaring lights from Kroger and Burger King!

the garden.

the pole beans...just now flowering, almost all the way up the poles.

tomatos, peppers

i'm not really sure what this is...transplanted it from the compost to see what would happen.


mom, here's the vibernum and red maple behind/below it.

and the blue sage...blooming.

2 stages of compost, and leaf mold bin

lemon balm, basil


strawberry spinach

grandpa's admirer lettuce

rainbow chard

avocado trees, transplanted from compost

a salad.

One night last week i got ready to put a salad together for dinner...got the container of kale out of the fridge and discovered this...yuck. brown and sour tasting. so, i decided to venture out into the garden to see if i could finally pick enough stuff to make a decent salad.

And, I could! Grandpa's Admirer lettuce, blue dwarf kale, rainbow chard, strawberry spinach (with the little red berries!) and english peas.

then i went a little nutty and arranged it all on a plate, paraded the plate into the office, probably sang some sort of ridiculous song announcing mine and the plate's entrance and showed my little harvest proudly to jeff. and....he humored me and I went back into the kitchen and made a salad. what can i say, first summer harvest....i was proud, AM proud, okay?

Trip to Tom and Sharons

Last weekend the four of us (dogs and craven's) drove to Windermere to visit with Tom and Sharon and Kath and Kate. We had lunch by the pool one afternoon. It was a great visit, lots of long walks and movie going and all. Abe even jumped in the pool one day!