Your cousin Kestrel had her 12th birthday party the other day, and it was delightful. She invited friends to a Fairy Tea Party at Laurelhurst Park, just a few blocks from our house.
I made tiny fairy cookies to help celebrate. Sugar cookies were cut in hearts about an inch long and made into sandwiches.
Chocolate chip cookies made with 13 grams of dough were sufficiently delicate, and pink pinwheels felt like they fit right in with the elves, fauns, and other fairy folk.
Auntie Katie and Kestrel made the foresty cake and even some cucumber sandwiches, as well as tea…. It was a tea party, after all.
It felt sort of like glamping in Rivendell.
Kids and Moms all worked together to set up, serve, celebrate, and finally break camp.
It is always interesting to see Kes’s circle of friends as they grow and change. They are all becoming such caring, gentle, interesting people. Happy birthday, Kestrel!
You have seen these delightful murals when you visited Portland….you even had your picture taken with one, years ago when you were a tiny Liza.
Well, last Saturday, Auntie Bridgett and I got to make some tiny bots with the fellow who started it all, Gary Hirsch. Gary was running a bot-making workshop at the SideStreet Art Gallery and we were offered two spare spaces. Yes, please! SideStreet Arts is the only gallery that offers his bots and other artwork for sale.
Gary started the session off with some fun improvisation games, to get us thinking together and “outside the box”. It was fun to talk to new people.
The supplies are very basic. Classic, heavy dominoes and oil-based Sharpie markers make for a non-spilly sort of table. Gary asked us to think of someone who might need extra encouragement or recognition, and to keep them in mind as we made the bots.
Carol, a lady at our table, thought of her pets.
Auntie Bridgett thought about bees and people in her improvisation group.
I thought about Ruth, the lady who manages the Blair Community Garden. She works very hard and makes the world happier, healthier, and more beautiful. I will pass it along to her when I see her.
And, of course, whenever I have been making art or looking at art, I always find art out in the world. Look at how these tiny fragile tendrils growing around the gallery door go with the bright pink and green of the new sign!
The Visitor’s Center at Fort Vancouver is small, but full of wonderful information and beautiful art.
Walking into the Center, I was struck by how this sign affected me. Growing up, when I saw this sign, I knew we were in for a treat. My dad loved the Park Service and always made our visits special. The National Parks were his Happy Place.
This picture of he and Momma was taken on our last outing together at Point Lobos in California.
The Visitor’s Center displays were full of the art and history of the place. And since there was history, there was a chamber pot. This was from the Fort’s time under American rule at the beginning of the 19th century. It was found by archeologists who are still studying the fort’s past.
In the main part of the space was a wonderful display of contemporary Native art. Toma Villa’s imposing but inviting sculpture called SpiritPole was made of one massive cedar tree which he cut in half longwise and hollowed out, making two tall, curved pieces. He then carved openings which he filled with cast glass pieces representing people, air, water, fire, and animals of the northwest.
The skill and vision this piece displayed was amazing. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
The unique glass and ceramic art of Lillian Pitt were also featured. I love that art by contemporary indigenous people is valued here.
These hand-formed glass pieces have air bubbles and textures that let the light play inside them, allowing them to come alive in my imagination.
After our delicious lunch at Twigs in Vancouver, we got in our cars and headed just a little out of town to visit historic Fort Vancouver. This was first founded by the British in the 1820s as a way of protecting their settlers in the area when this part of the Pacific Northwest was claimed by England, along with the rest of Canada.
The fort was home to hundreds of soldiers, merchants, and indigenous people, along with native Hawaiian craftsmen hired to keep the fort running. It was a very diverse population for its time.
In 1846, after a shift in the border between Canada and the US, the English abandoned the Fort Vancouver and American troops took over. They let the fort fall into disrepair and it eventually burned down under not-so-mysterious circumstances.
The Fort Vancouver we can walk around in today is a 1970s reconstruction, based in maps and descriptions from the 1820s. Still, it lets us see what life was like for all those folks so many years ago.
This thick, cool arbor made for fine summer shade and grapes to be harvested in the fall.
The bakery must have been kept busy all day making biscuits for travelers as well as bread for the hundreds of folks at the Fort.
The view from the bastion tower was very cool. I hope they never had to fire this one! It’s pointed into the fort!
Grandpa Nelson and I walked around the 1976 reconstruction of the old fort, which was enclosed by pointy wooden ramparts. It included a replica of First Factor Dr. McLoughlin’s beautiful house and buildings for the bakery, the jail, the infirmary (doctor’s office) .
On that hot afternoon, we could certainly sympathize with the soldiers who had been stationed here, exposed to heat and cold, rain and snow, with only thin wooden walls between them and the elements.
The gardens and livestock were outside the gates, where there is now a lovely, well kept flower and vegetable garden. I imagine it was a bit more rustic when every drop of water had to be carried by bucket. Still, the dahlias were gorgeous.
There are other sections of Fort Vancouver, including stately officers’ houses from the World War II era when General John Marshall was in charge here, but we didn’t visit those. We ran out of oomph and went for ice cream at Ice Cream Renaissance , then said good-bye to dear Julie and Carl and headed back across the river to have a nice rest at home.
Last week we visited Vancouver, Washington, for the first time since we have lived in Portland. I know that’s silly; it is only a twenty minute drive over the Columbia River, and we have gone PAST Vancouver on the way to other places…. But this time we crossed the river and spent the whole day!
On the way across the river, we had a hazy but lovely view of Mt. Adams. We went to see Auntie Bridgett’s oldest friend, Julie, and her husband Carl, who are visiting cousins in Kalama. Bridgett and Julie have been friends since high school!
They suggested having lunch at a place called Twigs. It was a stunningly great idea!
Twigs is smack dab on the newly developed Waterfront along the Columbia River, and is bright, modern, interesting, and great for people. The views of the river are beautiful.
Before we settled down to lunch, we walked along the promenade, caught up on news, and enjoyed the scenery. The Columbia River Water Feature (Yes, I wish it had a more romantic name….) has lots of places for kids to splash and lay in the water, which was perfect on such a hot day!
The Water Feature is an artistic interpretation of the river itself, and has beautifully rendered maps of the Columbia Watershed and bits of poetic history.
Further along we found a Peace Pole, with hopes for Peace in Earth expressed in many languages, including Braille, Russian, and Sign language.
When our appetites for lunch overcame the beautiful views, we headed back to Twigs for delicious salads and a nice, air conditioned respite before the next part of our adventure.
A nice waitress named Tabitha took our picture…. Aren’t we cute?
I have been a student for most of my life. I went to school, like everybody, then college. When I started teaching, there were constant classes (some of which I appreciated more than others) to keep my skills fresh.
When Auntie Bridgett fell in love with France in 2008, she decided to learn French, and I went along for the ride. We took lessons with Veronique Sepulchre and Shawn Quiane, and kept getting better at it. We felt very clever.
Then we returned to France and discovered that while we could read signs and plaques in museums, our lack of spoken language skills left us feeling tongue-tied and a little stupid. Clearly, more work was needed.
Enter Duolingo! This is a free (though you can pay and get extra lessons, if you like) on-line language learning site. You learn at your own speed and can repeat any lesson as many times as you like. There is even a listening component to help with grasping a new language racing by at conversational speed.
When you moved to Denmark, I decided I needed to learn Danish, and Duolingo had me covered. (This little guy at Tivoli is saying “We are building something new here.”) So I have enjoyed a double dollop of language.
And as of this morning, I have been on Duolingo every darn day for 1,300 days!
I thank Auntie Bridgett for being a good example and Mouse the cat for pinning me down on the couch until I finish my allotted hour.
Today I just want to share some pictures I’ve taken lately that wouldn’t fit in the stories I was telling. So here they are.
We picked this pillow up at IKEA when we were replacing a broken bed. It looked so much like Mouse, we couldn’t resist! It sits in her chair. Don’t they look cute together?
This is some of the incredibly funky art at the McMenamin’s Barley Mill, their first restaurant, which celebrated its Fortieth Anniversary last week. The theme of the restaurant is the Grateful Dead and their leader, Jerry Garcia.
I made this piece of collage with Ruthie Inman last week. It shows how I feel, sometimes, when my head is so full of creative ideas.
Here is one of the flowers growing in my other friend Ruth’s garden; a delicate grey-lavender poppy, set against the bright green of the foliage.
And finally, these are the shadows that a few houseplants cast on my wall every evening at sunset. The low light turns everything a magical orange.
We spent Saturday at Nordic Fest here in Portland and learned a lot about your part of the world.
We learned (and I am going to try and remember) which flag honors which country. Here they are, left to right: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden.
We learned that there are many kinds of Mead, an ancient honey wine made by the Vikings. Those we tried were made by Oran Mor in Roseburg, and were all delicious, especially when served by a lovely young lady. We bought a bottle of Odin’s Eye.
We learned about making Viking Weave jewelry from Liane Lawrence. First you weave the silver thread around a dowel, then you pull it through different sized openings to gradually make it tighter and stronger. We were amazed at the delicacy and beauty of it.
We learned that handmade flower wreaths look good on any hat,
And any head.
We also heard (and got to join in on) lovely music, saw delightful dances, and ate yummy cheese sandwiches and aebleskivers.
AND, possibly most important, we learned that Nordic Northwest offers Danish language conversation practice groups! Maybe I will get up my nerve, hop on the bus, head over there, and learn some more.
I have been distracted by all sorts of activities since the beginning of the month, but my garden has been growing like crazy anyway. I went over Tuesday and had a good time getting my hands in the dirt and pulling a box full of weeds.
It sure cleans up pretty, doesn’t it?
The yellow summer squash are getting tall, and I put a loop of yarn on the pumpkin to encourage it to climb on the ladder rather than the tomato cages.
All the tomatoes are above their cages and in need of extra support.
We are eating lettuce and radicchio everyday from the plot, laughing at the cost of organic greens in the market.
Auntie Bridgett has named our two dahlias Laverne and Shirley, and they are both doing well! No buds yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
So Huckleberry Finn and I are spending some quality time in the garden. All in all, summer is here and the gardening is lovely!
Wednesday was the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. It was also a warm, lovely day. One of our favorite places, the Crystal Spring Rhododendron Garden, was offering late hours and bluegrass music. We’d be fools not to go!
Since the garden’s parking lot is tiny, we took the bus down. It was a two bus trip, the 75 to the 19. But it only took about a half hour, and saved a lot of stress. Once we got to the garden, we saw that the fountain was celebrating Pride. Look at that rainbow!
A bluegrass duo called Whiskey Deaf were playing to a good sized crowd on the lawn. The crowd was the usual Portland collection of people, dogs, kids, and picnics. It was delightful.
I loved letting my mind wander to the way the light was changing as the sun neared the horizon, the tree tops were swaying, and the breeze was ruffling the bushes.
As we walked out of the gardens, the sun was making magic over the lake and through the trees and the world felt peaceful.
And as we waited for the bus, a silver slipper of moon rose to sit with Venus among the pine branches.
Dear Liza 