April went where, exactly?

I want to talk about my birding excursion to eastern Oregon last week, but realized that more than a month has gone by since I last posted here. What the hell happened to April?

Well, I finished the coursework for my master gardener certification. The final was 65 questions, multiple choice, open book, with a week to complete. I, um, aced it. Now I'm focusing on logging the required volunteer "payback" hours. Besides my Monday gig at the Rhody Garden, I did a shift at the Hardy Plant Society's massive sale at Expo, which brought with it early (as in before the hall opens to the public) shopping privileges. I bought some shade plants to complement the hostas I've been plunking in to colonize the dim reaches of our backyard. My purchases included a tall, handsome Jack-in-the-pulpit, sweet woodruff in a 4" pot, two epimediums (epimedia?) to replace the one I killed last year, and a couple of species new to me, a brunnera and a pulmonaria, a.k.a lungwort. The latter is much prettier than its name suggests. It had an abundance of flowers, both blue and coral-pink, when I got it. I subsequently heard that the blue blossoms turn pink, and vice versa, when the flower is pollinated. Kind of like a home pregnancy test. That's it in the pic just below. The tiny woodruff specimen has already tripled in size, which is what you want in a ground cover, since I planted it three weeks ago.

Gail Langellotto, our OSU Extension online instructor, was the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Multnomah County Master Gardeners, where they feted this year's crop of interns with a potluck, so I got to meet her as well as some of the local MGs en masse. Gail is much more petite and funny in person. She gave an entertaining and informative lecture that included weird facts about insect sex and great closeups of her favorite spiders, the Wolfs. The MGs seem like a friendly, down-to-earth (pun intended) bunch. I'll attend a couple more meetings, at least, and see if I want to get more involved with the group.

April was a good month for live music. We heard Arlo Guthrie in a magnificent venue, Beth Israel synagogue in NW Portland. Our tickets were for the very last row but, due to a screwup involving actual vs. theoretical chairs, and the fact that the expensive patron section down front was apparently not sold out, we ended up with seats in the third row. What a treat. He didn't do Alice's Restaurant, but it was a joy to see ol' Arlo (oops; he's younger than me) still ramblin' along. The following week was Portland's own Storm Large (who started out as a club rock 'n' roller but did a credible job last season as Sally Bowles in Cabaret) in Crazy Enough, her autobiographical one-woman show at Portland Center Stage. She was stunningly good -- funny, raucous, touching. The week after that we went to Carvlin Hall, the regular venue for the Portland Folk Music Society's monthly concerts, to see the Berrymans. We first heard them when they were in town a couple of years ago, and I promptly bought most of their CDs. Lou and Peter play accordion and guitar, respectively, and write some of the funniest, most verbally complex songs I've ever heard. I'm a sucker for clever lyrics; what can I say? A full concert is almost too rich, like eating a box of See's chocolates at one sitting, but I can stand pigging out on the Berrymans every once in a while.

Speaking of eating, although we've cut way back on expensive restaurants, we did manage to score some noteworthy meals out last month: the fun and funky Porque Non? on Hawthorne; the bunker-like Alexis at the corner of 2nd and West Burnside, which turns out to have tasty, reasonably-priced Greek food, friendly, efficient and adorable waiters, and an authentic but not over-the-top atmosphere; the big-deal Heathman, where we'd never been before but used the occasion of our 27th wedding anniversary to investigate. Another, unexpected, treat was dinner (at Pastini on NE Broadway) with John Bryans, my longtime publisher, who was in town for a conference and remembered, just in time to connect, that I live in Portland, now.

Toward the end of the month, my art quilt group went on its annual retreat. This was our third trip to the Tillamook area, which offers both beach access and ice cream for lunch. Our rental this year had a spectacular ocean view, with Three Arch Rocks positioned just so. Terry and Gerrie both did a great job blogging our stay; so just click on their names if you care to read all about it. They got some good photos, too.

Two days after I returned from retreat, Jer's daughter Lauren and her partner Annette arrived for a quick overnight visit. They were en route home to Michigan from Bandon Dunes, on the southern Oregon coast, where the movie Golf in the Kingdom -- in which they have, comme une dit, an "interest" -- is being shot. Jer got to hang out with them the following morning, while I reported for duty at Taste of the Nation. This was my second year volunteering for TOTN, a benefit at which some of the best restaurants, wineries and micro-breweries in the area (fewer this year than previously, thanks again to the wretched economy) dish up tasty morsels and sips. I'd told the organizers that I wanted to be kept busy this year; last time, there seemed to be too many hands for too few jobs. Be careful what you wish for; I spent hours wrangling pipe and drape (picture those curtained partitions in exhibit halls) to help transform a cavernous auto showroom into a warmer and more elegant space. I worked alongside folks a third of my age and three times my strength; it felt good, though, and I had just enough energy left to hook up with Jerry when he arrived as a paying guest and make the food and drink rounds with him.

April is income tax month, of course. The good news is that, thanks to faithfully paying estimated quarterlies, we got a chunk back this year from the Feds. It's not as if they gave us a gift, but it kinda feels that way. When my brother Larry was here in March, he allowed me almost unlimited playtime with his iPhone. Shortly after he left, a piece of trim fell off my own perfectly functional, if unexciting, cell phone, rendering it painfully tacky-looking. That, plus the prospect of a tax refund, was slim but sufficient justification for Gadget Girl to indulge in an iPhone for herself. I love love love it. If I were still toiling in infotech and traveling as much as I used to, I would have bought one "for the business" months ago. As it is, I had to work hard to rationalize the purchase, but (as you see) I managed. Jerry got a new phone, too, to replace the hand-me-down StarTAC I'd nominally reassigned to him five or six years ago. It's a plain vanilla generic model, but much easier to operate than his old one, and he's actually getting into the habit of using it. Let me know if you want his number so he can practice answering.

A small dinner party or two, an art exhibit, Frost/Nixon at Portland Center Stage, chats with neighbors, my usual weekly volunteer gigs... I think that about covers it for April. Sometime in mid-March my dear friend Libbi and I tried to find one morning that would work for both of us for brunch. The first possibility was May 8th, this coming Friday. That's the kind of month it was.

In the few days I was out of town this past week, our modest veggie patch burgeoned into edible-size spinach and butter lettuce, and most of the trees leafed out (the photo at the top of this post is our backyard pink chestnut, bare just a few weeks ago). Those so-called April showers are lingering into May. At this very moment, though, there's a sunbreak. I need to get out and garden. Whoops; rain again. I missed last Saturday's reportedly spectacular windstorm, but saw some of the damage -- a big elm down at SE 36th and Ogden (Jer was out the next day taking photos) and, around the corner on Knapp, a house where a tree fell and badly smashed a corner of the roof.

The mail arrived a little while ago, including a Penzey's Spices catalog labeled "Early Summer." Who are they kidding? I'm just grateful that spring has finally arrived.

Net arts, Ne tarts, Knee tarts, Neat Arts... Netarts

Netarts (KNEE-tarts) is on the Oregon coast, just west of Tillamook. My art quilt group spent last weekend there on its annual retreat. We rented a couple of condos right on the ocean; the photo illustrates our not-too-shabby view. Both Gerrie and Terry blogged about our doings in great detail, thus saving me the effort, thank you very much. They both got amusing shots of moi, getting in touch with my internal Resourceful Pioneer Woman, the morning that the power went out. I've posted a mere three dozen or so beach-and-environs photos on my Flickr site.

One morning, we visited the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center. Both Terry (in red, next to me) and Gerrie (in blue, on the right) have pieces in the current show, It's Good to be Green. Here we are gathered around Terry's entry. I like the way her gardener-girl seems to be part of our group.

Of course we made more than one stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, as documented on those other blogs, for our traditional ice cream lunch and discount dairy product shopping. This stunning example of cheddar-craft stopped me in my tracks. Tillamook: No Country for Vegans.

Here's another work of art, the dinner Chef Jerub prepared the evening I got home: Chicken in puff pastry and asparagus with a creamy pesto sauce. Yum.

Michigeese and Michiganders

We just spent a few days in southwestern Michigan, a couple of blocks from the lake, visiting Jer's daughter Lauren and her partner Annette. We also got to see Colleen, Jerry's favorite ex-wife, and meet her new guy, Larry, as well as reconnect with Bill and Alan, who were good friends of Lauren's late brother, Marc. Confused yet? A diagram would probably help. Ages ago, when Lauren lived in San Francisco, she and Marc, Colleen, Jerry and I went out to dinner at Khan Toke, a Thai restaurant in the Richmond District where Lauren was a regular. She introduced us to the proprietor as follows: "This is my brother, my mother, her second husband, and his third wife."

L&A have a lovely home with a huge, meandering deck on eight acres in the midst of dense woods. It's a ten-minute stroll to Lake Michigan. In their 'hood, modest lake cabins coexist with vacation McMansions but mailboxes seem to be a universal form of self-expression.

Lauren and Annette took us to two or three excellent art galleries. They fed us well, and we made serious inroads into their wine cellar and their schnapps collection. Colleen invited us to her house for dinner one evening, and we also sampled a few local eateries and drinkeries. We pretty much closed one fine establishment, The What Not Inn, where we dropped in for a drink after dinner in downtown (ha) Douglas. When they get out the vacuum cleaners and start stacking the chairs, you know it's time to go home.

By some miracle of scheduling, our visit happened to coincide with the Fennville Goose Festival, a classic small-town celebration. That's Mother Goose herself on the Lions Club float. What a thrill; we were this close to her.

Every morning (except for the day we left, when it was raining heavily) Jer and I took a long walk along the lakeshore. If you've never seen Lake Michigan, think "ocean" instead. It's enormous; you can't see the opposite shore. The beach was almost deserted. Some vestiges of summer activity remained but, for the most part, the cottages along the bluff seemed uninhabited; the season's over.

I put a few artsy beach shots up on Flickr, but here's a gratuitous shot of construction fencing, just for Gerrie. Ladybugs had gathered on it for no reason I could discern. Color-camouflage, maybe?

Beach Break

Jer and I took a midweek break and headed to Newport for a couple of days. We stayed at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Nye Beach, which I'd heard of and wanted to visit even before we moved to Oregon. "You'll either love it or hate it," folks said; we loved it, as I knew we would. It's a rickety four-storey structure built in the early 1900s, perched on a bluff, and geared toward book lovers. (The original Sylvia Beach operated the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris during the Hemingway-James Joyce-D.H. Lawrence-golden expat years.) No phones, no TV, no Internet. But there is a library on the top floor, with funky yet comfortable chairs facing the ocean, where I spent about six hours one foggy afternoon.

Each room is named after a writer. We stayed in Emily Dickinson. The in-room reading material included several biographies and volumes of her poetry, plus a couple of creepy portraits. Stell-a is, of course, the Tennessee Williams room. The F. Scott Fitzgerald room is reputedly furnished with several bottles of gin. Two cats have the run of the establishment; the orange guy, whose name I didn't catch, beats on Shelly, the tabby; then she chases him, and so on ad infinitum.

Breakfast is included in the room rate. Dinner, served family-style, is available for a reasonable fee. We ate at the hotel the first night. When the hostess announced that a round of Two Truths and a Lie was a dinnertime tradition at the Sylvia Beach, my stomach turned over; I am so averse to "icebreakers" and get-acquainted games of any kind. But we were seated with half a dozen accomplished and entertaining liars and, fortified with a couple of glasses of wine, actually had a great time trying to figure out which of each person's three autobiographical statements was, in fact, not true. Despite my inability to remember the title of my supposed doctoral thesis, most people thought I was lying about being tattooed. I guess I just don't look the type. My husband is sociopathically adept at keeping a straight face while describing his totally bogus career as a travel writer.

At breakfast the next morning we sat with two of our tablemates from the night before, about whom we knew a great deal, of course, already, plus another couple from Portland. The conversation ranged from spirituality and religion to global warming to family dynamics -- definitely not small talk. One of the side effects of staying at a hotel that caters to readers, the proprietors have obviously figured out, is informed and quick-witted discussion. The restaurant is called Tables of Content, which sounds a bit twee but which turns out to be a brilliantly appropriate name. The next evening's dinner we'd booked at April's, across the street. Our meal was very good, but not nearly as much fun as the night before.

We really enjoyed Nye Beach itself. The coastline is beautiful and the community seems artsy and laid-back. Benches seem to be a local form of self-expression. That, and signs of various kinds. I'll put up a few examples on flickr