The Spaceship

This house is called the Spaceship because of all it's blazing lights.

Source: Stop Demolishing Portland

"This house sold earlier this year for $900,000.
It's a great example of the realities of the City's claim that we have to accept all this redevelopment to 'increase density' to accommodate the "climate refugees".

No one lives there.
It's owned by someone with an address in Vegas that's a building on the strip - $1.3-million-and-up condos.
This house is used only as an Airbnb - I got that from a neighbor, and there's a recent complaint about it, filed at the City.

It was completed in 2015 but has already had serious water-intrusion problems.
If you're familiar with University Park, you'll see how-ridiculous this house looks at the location."

Quote from Stop Demolishing Portland

Recommended Video... "Back in Time for Dinner"

I found this British series:  "One British family embarks on an extraordinary time-traveling adventure to discover how a post-war revolutions in the food we eat has transformed the way we live."

It starts in 1950.  England was still on food rationing through much of the fifties.   There is an episode from each decade.  It's really interesting.

There is also a series with the same family call Back in Time for Christmas, covering the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Loving the gorge to death

Unbridled growth is destroying us.  These people are lined up to climb over a giant log jam in Oneonta gorge.  Does this look like a natural spot?  Too many people.

Source

"It is so depressing to see such beautiful nature treated like an amusement park. I personally blame Instagram and people going places they see on there to take the same picture for "likes". The amount of selfie-sticks and pooh-bears at Oneanta Gorge the past couple of years have turned it from one of the most magical little hikes in Oregon into a barely recognizable shizshow of crowds. Side-note, someone is going to have an accident at the log-jam there and I am curious to see how this looks in 10 years..."

Source

Look what I found

I shared my cosmos Diablo with neighbors on the street as I mentioned here.  I was walking down the street and found this sign that Mary made.  I was touched.

The greedy idiots are still destroying Portland

There are lots of demolitions of wonderful houses.  Every now and then people get excited about a specific grand home and they save it.  I am more upset by the many less expensive less grand but still wonderful bungalows that get destroyed every day, especially by the hated Vic Remmers, AKA Everett Custom Homes.  May a curse be on you if you buy one.  There is already a curse on him.

Here is a grand home in Eastmoreland (a pricey Portland neighborhood) that Remmers is slated to demolish.  Boy is he ever greedy.  And Portland lets him get away with it.  I am losing respect for my beloved city.

Source

More on the house here.  And Zillow still has the listing photos.

Garden in August

 I cut down quite a bit of the bee balm.  Bee balm is pretty tough here and does okay with things like being cut to the ground.  I moved a few pots in to fill the space a little.  Looks pretty good.

Here is the other side of the front.  Our yard is so small.  It doesn't look like it here, though.

The cosmos lady

We just had three days of 100 degree weather.  These photos were taken before the heat spell.

Cosmos 'Diablo'.

This year I shared my seedlings and there are three houses up the street with this cosmos blooming.  I am so pleased about that.  Makes me feel like kin to the Lupin Lady, Miss Rumphius.   My neighbor gave me that book some 30 years ago because she said it reminded her of me, always sharing my plants.

Quoted from Amazon

Barbara Cooney's story of Alice Rumphius, who longed to travel the world, live in a house by the sea, and do something to make the world more beautiful, has a timeless quality that resonates with each new generation. The countless lupines that bloom along the coast of Maine are the legacy of the real Miss Rumphius, the Lupine Lady, who scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went. Miss Rumphius

 received the American Book Award in the year of publication.

The heat pretty much finished the bee balm.

The cleomes have too much purple.  My fault.  When I thinned them, I had a strong preference for those with purple tinged leaves.  But there are some later pink ones coming along.

Small simple piece

Torn strips of fabric applied to batting with misty fuse and hand quilted.

Walking in the neighborhood

These people seem to have folks living in their yard.  It's been going on a LONG time....

It isn't this house.  I just like this house.  Things are all jumbled together in Portland, though.  Homeless.  Nice houses.  Etc.

I like these art deco chairs.

Community garden

Homeless car campers

Homeless campers along the edge of the park.

Cleaning the roof with Dave and Nancy

We helped our friends Dave and Nancy clean the roof on their cabin.   The goal was to clean the roof without a ladder.

Dave threw a tennis ball tied to fishing line over the roof .

Then a (too long) rope was tied to the fishing line and pulled over.

And the double broom thing they made was attached and pulled up.

The rope was pulled back and forth to sweep the roof.

Dave and Nancy got the buggy uneven side.

Nancy and I went for a walk.  It was so quiet there.

It hasn't gotten better...

"Mike Jenkins, also known as Pork Chop, said he moved to the Laurelhurst Park area from the Springwater Corridor. He said many others will make the same move when the corridor is swept by the city...“They’re coming,” Jenkins said. “Down here in Laurelhurst Park. Put ’em on Hawthorne. I’m gonna put ’em on Belmont, I’m gonna put ’em right in front of shopping centers.”"



Laurelhurst Park camping

And a quote from Nextdoor:

"Is this basically him saying 'If you won't let us utterly destroy a protected natural area, I'm going to make sure we shove ourselves in your face as much as possible.'?

That's the same entitled mentality of the people on SE Hawthorne who painted a sign saying that people had better start giving them moe money when they pass or they're going to be forced to continue breaking into houses to steal. JUST because you don't have a fixed address, that doesn't mean that 1) I owe you ANYTHING, 2) You can threaten me with "Let me continue my criminal behavior or else!''

And another quote:

"This used to be something that I saw more frequently at Col Summers Park last year and the year before-, but I think it was more if we, as neighbors called in. It wasn't proactive, but reactive. To be honest, I don't think police will even come unless there is a direct threat of violence or a weapon involved."

More of how it is here:

Daycare wagon stolen and found on Springwater Trail

Homeless campers build tunnel along river destroying trees

The horror of living in Lents

Springwater sweep postponed

Gentrification in Portland

I like this process

I like playing with my quilt process so that it emphasizes spending the most time on my favorite aspects which are playing with color and hand quilting.

In this case, I fused  wonder under onto a small rectangle of cotton batting and arranged colored blocks of fabric on top of the batting and then fused  them together.  This left everything pretty well anchored to the batting with free edges where the blocks overlapped.   I like the free edges.  I then big stitch quilted the piece with Valdani perle cotton, size 8.   And now I am playing with fusing small strips on top.  They aren't fused yet, just pinned on.  I like this process. It is fun.

I left it un-square because it might become part of something else.

Oooh Oooh that smell...

For some time there was this bad smell when I opened the basement door.  I could not track it down.   And then I realized that the landing linoleum was installed on particle board that had become wet and stinky.  So, yesterday John tackled removing the particle board.

Here is the failed particle board.  I am very anti particle board.  It's just too susceptible to moisture.  It says cheap construction to me.  John says the landing was also bad because it changed the stair height so the riser intervals were not the same.  How did it take us so long to figure this out?  And why didn't John figure it out, huh, Dave?

This is the landing now.  John cleaned the mastic off and washed it.  And today he patched it.  Then he will paint it with sharkskin floor paint.  Linoleum just inside an outside door is a bad idea anyway.  It got very slick when it was wet and even worse when it was icy.

Whatever will we do when we get too old to do stuff like this ourselves?

Fun with Flags

I have this continuing desire to big stitch quilt.  And I try quilting various things, looking for the perfect quilting experience.

Here I tried breaking the space up and then just quilting the spaces.  The piece looked like it belonged in "Fun with Flags" from the "Big Bang Theory".  And that ruined it for me.

But if I crop it severely, I rather like the cropped part.

And if you are not familiar with Fun with Flags, check it out here.

Roses in August

This has been a peculiar season.  It started dry and warm and then in very early June we had a hot spell with 100 degree temps.  The roses were early and in full bloom when the heat hit and it pretty much finished their flowers.  Then it cooled off for the rest of June and all of July; it hardly hit 80, many days not even 70.  It's been a great summer.  The best we've had in several years.  And now we are having a second rose season.  The flowers aren't as plentiful or as large but they are delicate with gorgeous colors.

This beauty is blooming with  salvia Amistad.  I think they look great together.  There is bee balm on the left and a big hardy fuschia on the right.  Hummingbird paradise.