Dekum Street (where my eyes are drawn)

Posted on July 8, 2012 | 3 Comments

loving the view on Dekum Street

Sipping a cider at Good Neighbor

gazing at the evening sky from my streetcorner

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Posted in Local Grrl, Photography

Weekend in Pictures

Posted on July 8, 2012 | 4 Comments

i’m uncomfortably hot.  yes, commence eye rolling to all of y’all who’ve already been dealing with the heat for a while, but 89 degrees is too hot for me.  the mornings for me are brilliant, so i try to get a lot done then, but the rest of the afternoon and evening see my house get up into the high 70′s and make me think of all the things i would still like to do in order to cool my home.

energy star windows? check.  whole house blown-in insulation?  check.  ceiling fan?  check.  popsicles made from mango lemonade in bpa-free molds? check.

however, this year without the big ailanthus tree, while i no longer have an invasive species, i’ve also lost the shade that normally covers my home in the afternoons.  i’m not a fan of blinds, so am contemplating how i want to tackle this next.  maybe roman shades.  in the meantime, here are some glimpses from my weekend…

daisies from the garden always make my kitchen window happy

got a copy of the original property lines while applying for refinance- see how the trolley used to run diagonally through my plot? kinda cool. (and explains the weird corner that juts out in the back yard)

last cappuccino made for me before my ‘best tenant ever’ moved out – waaaaaah!

my poor girl can’t get her legs under her :-(                    honestly i’m just not ready to do this, y’all.

watching a bluejay from my own backyard perch                      (special fun camera phone effect)

sitting under a tree eating blackberries from the king farmers market, reading a book by maya angelou and loving the breeze and shade on this hot day

sunday afternoon under the fan, watching ‘the wedding singer’ and ‘the man with two brains’, eatin’ a mango popsicle and trying to move as little as possible

oh, and some surprisingly insightful food for thought that came in earlier in the week for this aquarian…

“Due to the pressure-packed influences currently coming to bear on your destiny, you have Official Cosmic Permission to fling three dishes against the wall. (But no more than three.) … Please understand, however, that taking actions like these should be just the initial phase of your master plan for the week. In the next phase, you should capitalize on all the energy you’ve made available for yourself through purgative acts like the ones I mentioned. Capitalize how? For starters, you could dream and scheme about how you will liberate yourself from things that make you angry and frustrated.”
(Breszny) 

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Posted in Weekend in Pictures

Magpie 125

Posted on July 8, 2012 | 10 Comments

http://magpietales.blogspot.com

they came to see my home, they asked me if i was leaving.  no no no no, and a firm no.  i’ve been here six years, you see.  i’ve pulled that grass in hunks of the ground and built that garden and painted those walls.  i’ve come in to find my possessions strewn everywhere and a bedroom window pried open.  i’ve had hope and i’ve had desperation and i’ve had love and i’ve fallen to my knees wailing when my father died.  i’ve slipped down the stairs and i’ve preserved fifty cans of apples and pears and peaches.  i’ve built things in this home.  i’ve sewn a quilt together and i’ve made a thousand truffles.  i’ve seen my dog go from lively and hyperactive to a soft moan she does now in the frustration that she cannot stand up without my assistance.  i have seen the cycles and i have watched my garden grow, and die back, and grow again.  i’ve had a drunken ex crying on my front porch and i’ve sat on that same porch with my dog in the sunshine, leaning against me and watching the world go by.

how do i sit on a sunday morning and feel the morning breeze on my skin and see sunlight making shapes on these oak floors and not feel i am home.

i can’t wait til you are home.  you’ll see what i mean.

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Posted in Notebook

in the morning, i am reminded

Posted on July 7, 2012 | 1 Comment

if ever in doubt, send me daisies…
(spotted on my street, june 2012)

“Maybe you don’t need the whole world to love you, you know?  Maybe you just need one person.”
~ Kermit the Frog

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Posted in Photography

EcoGrrl-icious

Posted on July 6, 2012 | 9 Comments

my first tater harvest, wa-hoo!

Ahh, happy sigh.  Summer is finally here in Stumptown and thus far has arrived in very good ways – mid to upper 70s, stretching into the low 80s, where my ceiling fan and a few open windows do the trick.  (my apologies to those suffering in the muggier areas of the country).  I’m just starting to harvest from the garden (beyond greens), and am looking forward to scheduling some time to go berry picking.  This is livin’ :-)

* For those of you who haven’t been blessed with precipitation this season, Ten Tips For Tolerating Draught in Your Garden is a great summary from the great folks at the NRDC.  I’ll especially attest for the recommendation to trim the bottoms of your tomato plants so the energy goes into the fruit rather than the leaves – I call it “giving them a haircut” :-)

* I’m a bit late commenting on this, but I loved the article, Returning to Celilo, in Edible Portland’s Spring 2012 edition (pp. 20-24).  Celilo Falls was for over 10,000 years an integral part of our local tribes’ livelihoods and described as “one of the most culturally significant natural wonders of the Americas”.  Yet in 1957, it was deliberately flooded by the US Army Corps of Engineers to build The Dalles Dam, another example of our government’s historical disregard for Native Americans.  The tribes were then relocated downstream, with the I-84 freeway placed between them and their sacred fishing grounds.

* Well, never say never.  I said you wouldn’t catch me dead in Birkenstocks.  But, unlike the hippie-dippy ones that you’re used to seeing on folks, their Gizeh Insignia Birko-Flor is actually kinda cute for tooling around the garden and walking around the ‘hood. (Here’s what a real shoe company does about sustainability, by the way).  Consider this on my wish list.

* As I said earlier, it’s definitely time to go berry picking.  As the spring wind and rain blew off most of my blueberry blossom, the folks at Sauvie Island Farms will see me very soon – I like to get a Zipcar for a few hours and drive out onto the island, pick about 30-40 pounds worth, freeze ‘em on cookie sheets, then pour them into canning jars for the freezer. This makes them way easier to use than bags and eliminates icky plastic.

* And while were at the topic of preservation, I am somewhat seriously considering finally dipping my toes into the pool that is pressure canning.  Upon reading about pressure canning your dry beans, I was immediately smitten.  While the blogger Wife Meets Life focuses on black beans, I have a thing for garbanzo beans that could really be awesomely taken advantage of.  Anyone got recommendations for what pressure canners they like?

So yes, I’m going to be, as you can probably guess, back in my garden this weekend.  It’s early morning right now and I’m doing my best to not go into the garden as it’s my last day of working in the office and I could easily get ‘stuck’ out amongst the ever-growing tomato bushes (I’m going remote starting next week while preparing for my next chapter – kinda awesome).  Life’s pretty sweet.

You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt. 
~Author Unknown

serious chard, serious kale – yes this is a full size sink. whew!  thank goodness for housemates!

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Posted in EcoGrrl-icious