A Master Gardener once told me that Portland, Oregon is a dumb place to grow roses. Apparently, they enjoy the desert-type climates of California much better than our dark, cold and rainy days.
And yet, Portland is well known as the City of Roses. We have a Rose Festival, for goodness sake and everyone seems to want to go to the Washington Park Rose Garden when they visit. If they are so darn hard to maintain here, why do we Portlanders insist on growing them?
Friday, I was exhausted. “You would think,” I told one of my colleagues, “that I had worked 40 hours this week and done six interviews and a kindergarten roundup. However, due to my 32 hour a week work schedule and several conflicts, I did none of them. Still, I could hardly motivate myself to get to the ballet Friday night. When I came home, I was the kind of tired where it seems like a better option to sit on the couch and stare at the wall because going to be takes to much energy.
Saturday was a different matter. I woke up remarkably refreshed–a well rested rising being a rare occurrence in my life. I went to the gym, did laundry, hung it to dry, harvested some greens and radish from the backyard, cooked and ate them, spent several hours alternating through homework and planting root vegetables in the garden, folded and put away all of my laundry and hung out with Matt. All with a level of energy I haven’t had in forever.
It was the sun. Yesterday the sun shown all day. It was warm, and promised of summer. The vegetable beds dried out. The mustard plant flowered. The asparagus shot up. The cilantro threatened to bolt. It warmed my back as I was planting seeds and Matt came back from his bike ride with a sunburn.
It rained all of May. If you live in Portland, you know what I mean. It rains a lot here, yes, but this rain was persistently nasty and cold. I’ve only worn sandals once this year. My summer clothes sit in a box under my bed. There is threat that the strawberries will rot in the field, if it doesn’t warm up. We’ve had a month solid of March rain, with its reminders of winter, rather than May rain, with its promise of summer. Today it is raining again. I think I’ll be okay, thanks to that one glorious day of sun.
Not this year. Day after day the rain hammers us. If we don’t get rain, we get gray skies all day long. And cold? It has been freezing. I’ve not worn sandals once and it is JUNE. One of my workmates checked into prices for a last-minute ticket to Las Vegas for the weekend where it is a lovely 90 degrees. But nothin’ doing. There were no cheap flights and so we are left huddled under blankets and longing for warm spring to arrive. Perhaps even before summer does.
Having received my master’s degree from Portland State University, I spent a lot of time in the School of Education building. For unknown reasons, the School of Education shares a building with the School of Business on the PSU campus. I always felt that the building accurately mirrored society’s view of both education and business.
I happened to be walking through Northwest Portland today and came upon a very fun find in this tiny building. “Is that a shipping container?” I thought to myself, and I strolled closer to investigate.
Indeed, it is a shipping container, modified to be a business! This pop up second story probably lets in a lot of light.
Or maybe I just want to live in a shipping container home. See here.
However this gentleman has apparently not gotten the message. Those familiar with the cruder–and less generous–side of that decade know that this sticker says, “Grass or Ass. Nobody rides for free.”
I felt a little sad for the trees, but not knowing anything about the situation, I didn’t get too worked up. It must have been an interesting task to cut them down without also taking down the power lines.
The beautiful Portland Park Blocks are split into two sections: the North Park Blocks and the South Park Blocks. The South Park Blocks start at PSU and run North past a number of churches, the PCPA, and the Schnitz where they run smack in to the Arlington Club. From there, there is a run of blocks of normal commercial development before the park picks up again just North of Burnside. Some people dream of demolishing all of those buildings and connecting the park blocks, which will most likely not happen in my lifetime. The park blocks don’t really connect anyway, as the North Park Blocks are one block East of the South Park Blocks.
At any rate, awhile ago there was an open block that was being used as a parking lot and the powers that be got together and suddenly (actually it took a long time and was delayed for seemingly ever) there is a park where there once was a parking lot. So I bring you my review of Simon and Helen Director Park.
It looks better than a parking lot. But I think the scale is weird. The Southwest corner has a large awning type thing that is very very high and I think it makes the rest of the park look small. It looks like it is looming over the tiny people, ready to stomp on them. Interestingly, the picture of the artists rendering in the link above cuts off this structure almost entirely.
I do like the granite color they have chosen. However, I’m still distracted by the large sheet of glass, ready to cause mayhem above me. Aside from the height of the roof, the supporting beams seem too thin and thus out of scale.
Unlike Pioneer Courthouse Square, which really is Portland’s Living Room, there also seem to be few places to sit. I think this makes the chances of the park becoming a cold, windswept plaza even more likely.
Here’s the Teacher’s Fountain in recognition of teachers “selfless and untiring efforts to inspire the hearts and minds of their students.” Right now it looks like a granite ball. Yay. A ball. But perhaps that water in the artists rendering has something to do with it.
Here is a closer look at the out of proportion glass cover, with actual human people so you can get a sense of scale. The building on the left will be a restaurant of some sort.
In conclusion, I’m not immediately charmed by Director Park. We shall see if my view changes over time.
I’ve always liked the look of red leaves against the bright green grass. In Portland, most people don’t water their lawns during the summer and they become yellow and brown. With the return of the autumn rains, they green back up, just in time for autumn colored leaves to fall on them.
