Portland is changing with the seasons, as it should. Fruit is becoming ripe all over the neighborhood, and folks are more than willing to share!
A house a few blocks away has a gigantic Asian Pear tree with more fruit than they can handle, so they offer a ladder, a nifty bucket-on-a-stick grabber, and even paper sacks to take your fresh fruit home. Thanks, neighbors!
As we walk around, we keep having to look UP… to see flowers! Sunflowers have hit their growth spurts and some are ten feet high!
And then there are Amaranths, these red feathery beasts, taller than me and absolutely magical looking.
Even Laurelhurst Park is getting into the change. While some late linden trees are still blooming, giving the scent we call “Portland Summer”, some others are already turning yellow.
Soon this part of the park, which we call the Middle Heights, will be bathed in cool autumn sunshine as all the leaves turn the ground bright yellow.
So much is going on here in Portland! The rains have started for sure, with two and a half inches just this past weekend. As the leaves fall in Laurelhurst Park, what was the darkest part of the park is becoming the lightest, with a thin veil of yellow leaves creating a wonderful light.
The weather is getting colder, hovering about 48 degrees at night and 55 degrees during the day. All this means adjustments have to be made.
Vacuuming the Lone Fir CemeteryNewly Light Forest
The city is keeping up with the leaves by using giant, ride-on lawn vacuums to clean the paths in our Laurelhurst Park, because all the leaves get slippery and really dangerous to walk on when they start to rot. This picture shows the difference between a clean path, and a not-clean path.
Yes, there is a path there!
There is also a truck that drives through Lone Fir Cemetery and blows the leaves and chestnuts off the paths, and ride-on mowers that mow the grass and vacuum up the leaves off the graves.
At our house, we are getting ready for colder weather, too. We found some big saucers to put our potted geraniums on inside, because the freezing weather that is coming will be too cold for them to stay on the back stairs. These are Great Grandma Billie’s geraniums, and I love them very much and want to protect them. We have also put matches, candles and flashlights on the counters, just in case we have a blackout from trees falling on power lines.
Happy ferns
Plants and animals are adjusting, too. The old Labrador down the street is spending less time on her porch, ferns are growing out of the bark on almost every tree, and moss is blooming on stone walls, sidewalk cracks, and tiny libraries. Mushrooms are springing up at the bases of trees.
Mushrooms!
Oh, and remember the linden trees? They smelled so pretty and gave us shade? Well now, they are making berries for the birds. The petals, instead of falling off, have become thick and waxy, with beautiful blue berries in the center. Amazing!
Linden Berries
All these changes are fun to watch, because I don’t know what’s coming next! But I will tell you about it, whatever it may be.
Dear Liza 