Dear Liza,
You remember my old friend Inez don Carlos? She writes the fun “Gulliver the Traveling Cat” postcards and sends them to classrooms. She lived in Salinas for a while and has now moved to Missoula, Montana, but this weekend she was in Portland!
It was so much fun showing her my new city. She reads this blog, so she recognized the Lone Fir Cemetery and other places I write about.
She wanted to see two things first: The Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden, up in Washington Park. Since she brought her car, our first chore was finding a place to park! It was a Saturday of a long holiday weekend, there were hundreds of cars and thousands of people… the gardens had fellows out directing traffic and calming nerves.
Once we got parked, though, we were fine. The roses are all blooming and we found some really nice smelling ones. I can’t tell you what they were called, though, because so many were not labeled.
It was a joy to see so many people wandering between the rows, leaning in to smell the roses, holding their little ones up to feel the soft petals, warning them about the thorns.
Inez is a social person. She was very good about noticing families trying to take selfies and asking if they wanted a picture of them all together. We had such nice chats with people from all over!
We found this lovely fairy person being photographed. She was having so much fun and was so lovely!
When we had seen all the roses and were getting a bit peckish (that means hungry), we headed up the hill to the Japanese Garden. I will tell you about that tomorrow!
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 