Posts Tagged ‘spring’
This category is such a gimme—in Portland—in spring!
Scott and I take a walk every day after lunch—longer and longer, as the weather improves. And I often take an earlier walk with Huck or Rilla or both. Some days, after Scott and I return, I go back out, another ramble through the streets of Northeast PDX, by myself. With music or with silence. I love walking to a soundtrack, but a quiet walk provides the white space I’ve been seeking. I sometimes find it hard to choose.
In bloom this week: daffodils (the earliest risers now fading, but big lush clumps of them still nodding in full glory); cherry blossoms and tulip magnolias; a few flowers left on the flowering plums & Bartlett pears, but those are mostly leafing out; tulips beginning to open; a profusion of grape hyacinths (my favorite bulbs); wild violets in the lawns; camellias already dropping petals in a thick carpet on the sidewalk and grass; vinca and lantana; a few early rhododendrons.
Bees ecstatic in the cherry blossoms.
Last year’s green onions, neglected, fattening with bloom.
Poems by Thomas A. Clark, who continues to delight me.
to feel while the wind
howls over stones
or tears at the meadow grasses
quiet in your bones
The captivating videos of Abe Haruya, porcelain artist
Oh and so much spring
My Homebound conference Prairie Thief readaloud this week has been a lot of fun. I love the first few minutes when the chat is open, and families pour into the Zoom room and greet us from all over the world. You can watch replays of the first four days at the Homebound page.
I’ll continue today at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific (register at the same link), and next week I’ll keep reading the book on Instagram Live (sharing to FB if you prefer to watch there) until we get to the end!
My own kids tuned in to the Jim Weiss storytelling broadcast on Tuesday, and I’m looking forward to enjoying the replays of his other days, as well as all the talks by Julie Bogart & Susan Wise Bauer & other special guests. Totally worth checking out the lineup!
***
Meanwhile, life at home. We’ve had a lot of rain, which is nice for my garden, still in fledgling form. Tulip magnolias and camellias in riotous bloom all over the neighborhood, and cherry blossoms, forsythia, daffodils, the first tulips. We can go out walking as long as we keep our distance from other strolling neighbors. Everyone does a little dance at intersections, slowing down, speeding up, crossing over, smiling and nodding at one another. We’re glad to see each other and chat from driveway to porch. Yesterday, the neighbor with the two pet goats was taking them out for a walk. The day before, it was the neighbor with the very large pet pig. Northeast Portland: an urban petting zoo. Except—no petting just now, only waving.
My injured thumb (I took a spill last weekend) is slowly improving, which is good because the constraints on typing and stitching have just about driven me round the bend. I do can both for little bits of time, but not the long stretches I crave. Or need, where typing (and therefore work) is concerned.
Yesterday, combating cabin fever, I bought a stop motion app for the kids’ iPad. (Stop Motion Pro for $4.99, purchased on the recommendation of a local stop motion animation teacher.) The short videos Huck and Rilla have come up with so far are downright enchanting. One of them can’t be shared yet because it’s a birthday message for someone special, but I’ll see if I can get permission to share the others. They started with a busy Hotwheels scene on our dinner table, which is probably the heaviest traffic you’ll find in Portland these days.
There, my thumb is ordering me to take a rest. I hope you’re all staying well and comfortable, with everything you need to make hunkering down as pleasant as possible. I’d love to hear how you’re managing!
Related: Tell Me Three Things
1.
I was looking for something in Dropbox and found a bundle of design elements I bought for my website a zillion years ago. Lots of pretty watercolor images and other goodies. There don’t seem to be any designer credits in the files, though surely there was documentation somewhere? I haven’t looked through all the files—much of it looks like things easily created in Canva now—but there was a folder full of watercolored butterflies, moths, leaves, and other bits of nature. I grabbed the image above to brighten up this post, and it turned into a twenty-minute effort to find a designer name in order to credit the artist. I mean, the entire purpose of a design elements package like this is that you’re allowed unlimited (and uncredited) use of the images. But someone made this art and it bugs me not to be able to say who.
Those lost minutes exemplify my theory that everything in modern life takes a minimum of 20 minutes longer than than you think it will. Especially internetty things. We’ve built a rabbit warren and we’re forever getting lost in meandering tunnels. And every seemingly simple task involves half a dozen steps, at least one of which will rack up your extra 20 minutes.
2.
As of yesterday, we are now a one-vehicle family. Since our move to Portland, I don’t drive much at all. Our old Saturn was out of commission for a long while, but we got it running again last fall and decided not to renew the minivan lease when it expired. This after I did the math and realized just how much each infrequent van trip was costing us each month. I’d rather take a Lyft if I’m going across the river, anyway—I loathe hunting for parking downtown. And we do most of our daily errands on foot now: possibly my most favorite thing of the many things I love about living here. Groceries a block away. Dozens of cafes, pubs, and restaurants within walking distance. Two bus lines moments from our door, making it easy for my older kids to commute to work and school and Powell’s Books and other essential destinations. I could even walk to my doctor’s office if I needed to. I don’t tend to, because it’s next door to a grocery store I like, and the walk home is uphill. But I could.
Of course this means we’re now three seats short for a whole-family excursion, but an occasional rental (or two Lyfts) is still a lot cheaper than keeping the Odyssey.
Scott and I had been worriting over the end-of-lease busywork for a while, and yesterday’s turn-in appointment felt a bit anticlimactic—we’d had no one big family moment where we said goodbye to the minivan that bridged our time between San Diego and Portland. It’s just suddenly…gone. Along with (we just this minute realized) my I’d Rather Be Reading Betsy-Tacy license plate frame. Whoops. Scott’s making a call to the dealer as I type. Fingers crossed!
3.
I got the stitches out of my nose on Thursday! And things are looking pretty good. Still in my jammies this morning so no pics:) There’s one small bump of scar tissue on the bridge of my nose that I’m worried is going to hang out and look like a perpetual pimple, but other than that I’m really quite amazed at how well the incisions have healed already. The scar is a faint red line zigzagging along my nose, and it’ll fade. There’s still some swelling so that my nostrils aren’t in exactly the same places they used to be. In a few weeks I’m supposed to start kneading and massaging the tissue daily to help break down scar tissue and restore the original shape. I’m hoping that means the one little scar bump will flatten out as well? If not, it’s only noticeable in profile. I’ll live. 🙂
I’m not yet able to put sunscreen on it, which means I’m going to have to overcome my aversion to wearing hats long enough to get my walks in—spring has arrived in full force and I need to be out in it! Cherry blossoms, plum blossoms, daffodils, grape hyacinths, hellebores—oh it’s a magical time! Rilla just noticed the neighbor’s clematis vines have climbed into the hedgehog tree. The tree (a dogwood) hasn’t yet begun to leaf out, but its bare limbs are clothed in a green shawl embroidered all over with starry white flowers.
Oh gosh, that makes me want a leaf-green shawl I could stitch all over with little white flowers. —Because that’s what I need: another stitching project. I have so many going at once right now! I spent some time reorganizing my studio this week, and now everything has a place again and I know what I’ve got in progress. A few things are quite close to being finished. Why am I still writing? There’s stitching to be done!
The view out my studio window this morning. If you’re wondering whether I got any writing done, there’s your answer. I called Huck, my early bird, to see the spectacle and we stood at the kitchen door and just stared and stared. This undoctored iPhone photo doesn’t do it justice. All of Portland was agog—the Portland subred is one breathtaking pic after another today. Ditto the #portlandsunrise hashtag on Instagram.
Rilla’s a cloud spotter (The Cloud Collector’s Handbook is a favorite tome) but a late sleeper—oh the dilemma for a doting mom! I let her sleep. She said (considerably later in the morning) it was the right call. I’m counting on her to educate me about this type of cloud formation, though! We’d have jumped on it already, but I got wrapped up in an Instant Pot burn-error situation and morning ran away from me. (Aloo gobi, one of my favorite dishes. Three burn errors. But eventually an entirely scrumptious lunch, and plenty for later.)
We’re nearing the end of Moominland Midwinter and I’m going to miss it! We all laugh and laugh and laugh. At Little My, especially. Spring is coming back to Moominvalley, and it feels like that here, too, only we bypassed the months of snow and ice. So far. Ice could still happen. Hear that, all you trees bursting into premature bloom? You worry me! (As much as I love you.)
January! Yikes!
My parents were here for Wonderboy’s spring break, and Portland greeted them with an explosion of bloom. Their visit overlapped with the Association of Writing Programs Conference (AWP), which meant I had friends in town and poets I love, and though I didn’t attend the conference proper I found time to slip away to a few offsite events and spent most of Saturday at the book fair, aka heaven. Cherry blossoms, daffodils, good company, blue skies, and poetry at every turn.
Now I’m collecting my thoughts for the final push on my novel revision (two more weeks!) and plugging away at other work. It’s challenging at this time of year. When I’m inside, I want to be outside. The grape hyacinths and euphorbia are in bloom, and camellia and hellebore, and tulips are beginning to open! And tulip magnolias in their glory. Focus, Lissa. Focus.
On Patreon this weekend, I wrote about my weekly meandering through various books of poems and artists’ journals in my morning poetry hour. It’s a while since I’ve explained my Patreon here, so a quick refresher: you can subscribe for as little as $1/month, which grants access to a weekly post about my reading and writing life (including sneak peeks at the book in progress, as it begins to move through the various stages of publishing). At the $3+ tier, you’re invited to join my weekly coffee hour, a casual, chatty, unrecorded Google Hangout where you can pop in and pick my brain about anything you like.
Tomorrow I’m off to Salem for a monthly meeting of folks in the intellectual and developmental disabilities supports community. And then on Wednesday: it’s back to high tide for Huck, Rilla, and me. Another milestone today: it was Beanie’s first day of school—and college! Bean and Rose are taking an oceanography class together. We have a few more months before Beanie officially graduates from our homeschool, and then—gulp—I’ll be down to just two students here in Bonny Glen Academy. Talk about the tides!
“You are doing TREE-mendous work!”
That’s what a neighbor said to us today when he and his dog passed us in the park where Huck, Rilla, and I were using printouts of the Portland Tree Map to identify the blossom-laden trees we’ve been swooning over these past couple of weeks. Does your area have one of these?
I mean, this is just heaven on a web page as far as I’m concerned. Whenever I move to a new part of the country I have a burning need to learn the names of All The Things as soon as possible. I’m a little slow out of the gate this time around, but then again I wasn’t exactly up for long leisurely walks last summer or fall. I was scrolling back through my Instagram the other day and came across a caption from October in which I talked about how happy I was to finally be able to take a walk around the block again. These days I’m averaging almost four miles a day—because spring.
“Children should be made early intimate with the trees, too; should pick out half a dozen trees, oak, elm, ash, beech, in their winter nakedness, and take these to be their year-long friends” (Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p. 52).
Happy First Day of Spring, my friends!
