Walking in the neighborhood

We run most of our errands on foot and the walks are enjoyable.  We vary the route and see different things.  With the threat and reality of demolition and destruction everywhere, things seem especially precious.  Here are some of the things I saw these past few days.

This one was from the window of the car.  The man-made stuff is pretty ugly but what a sky!

This trim is like lace.   I bet it is difficult to paint but it sure looks cool.

I got his picture just before a Fred Meyer employee asked him nicely to move along.  I admired his look.

The sign is for Fix Portland Zoning.

Almost home...

Home.

Small quilting things

I haven't posted anything quilted in a month.   I have been doing a little quilting most days but only small things and most of them may never be finished.   I've been working on small pieces and just enjoying doing it.

Here are a few things from this last month.

Wanda made this little piece and I quilted it.

These two are still in progress.

Don't move to Portland

Portland is going through phenomenal growth and that has raised housing prices causing many people to lose their homes, especially renters.  In addition, much of the city land that homeless used to camp on has been or is being developed, says the mayor.   So, help the homeless and the poor who are losing their homes to development.  Don't move to Portland.  

We've always had homeless people in Portland and people are pretty tolerant of the homeless.   But the problem has become too large to handle.  In addition, we have a relatively new homeless element in Portland that is pretty scary and very destructive.  Not all of the homeless, but some of them.  The scary ones are mostly young and they are not interested in another lifestyle.  They want to live on the street.  They say they like the freedom.

They are camping all over our city.  And they do not clean up after themselves.  Our police and parks departments are having to clean up deplorable messes.... needles, human feces, huge piles of garbage.   The parks people empty shit buckets for the homeless.  That sounds bad to me but they say having to do that is preferable to cleaning up the other places they poop.

I am seriously concerned about Portland, which is a place I love.  The growth is killing us.

This is the most insightful article I have read on our homeless situation.

And this is the kind of mess I mean....

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And besides the homeless, we have horrible construction site messes everywhere, making it difficult to walk.  It's even hard in the day time let alone at night.

Rinky Dink Project.... tote bag bottom

John made plywood bottoms for our tote bags.  The plywood bottom distributes the weight and allows the bag to carry more  stuff without crushing things.  He uses quarter inch baltic birch plywood.

This one has been stained red.

There it is in the bottom of the bag.

This post is for Sharon.

Warning to the mongol hordes

Portland is growing way too fast and the unbridled growth is causing many problems including making it difficult (and expensive) to find housing.  I blame the growth on Portlandia and the New York Times for presenting  a false view of life in Portland. 

It took a young couple six months to find a house to rent.  They are just the kind of people anyone would want to rent to.... responsible trustworthy people with excellent jobs making good money.   Furthermore the young man is very rooted in this community.  By that I mean he grew up here in a well liked, trustworthy and social family making him is well-connected in the community... he had that HUGE advantage going for him.  Still it took six months to find a house to rent.

The house they found was infested with rats.   Rats are pretty common in Portland and with all the sewer work they have been more problematic in recent years.  But this house had them in the basement, which is not all that common.   Even a rat infested house was so hard to come by that they stayed in the house for a year, trying to eradicate the rats.   They never beat the rat problem.

Still want to move to Portland?

Mid May front garden

We had our inch of rain a few days ago and had to spend yesterday supporting plants that were dragged down by the weight of the water on them.  Then I took some photos.

This is the fairy garden.  It borders the stairs in the front.  The gardens on either side of the stairs are my play areas.

This is from the front steps.  Our neighbor's house makes a nice back drop.  

There are fewer pots this year.  It's looking like a hot summer ahead  like last year.  The garden became too much of a chore in the heat last summer.  We still have two large patches of bee balm for the hummingbirds and bees.  John put in small sprinklers to help with that.  Last year I tried to keep them blooming all summer.  This year I intend to cut the bee balm down much earlier.

We spread some new wood chips on the path.  I can't wait till they lose their redness and turn more brown.

Rinky Dink Project

We needed a place to hang wet kitchen towels.  John made this little towel rack out of cherry for the back of the basement door.  He used a keyhole router bit to make it removable for those times when we need to get large objects through the doorway.

The keyhole on the back.  It mounts on two screw heads in the door.  Nice job, John!  Pretty classy for rinky dink.