Mother's Day at the Duck Pond

Surely spring has arrived in Portland. Last weekend there were plant sales all over town. I hit three in the immediate area on Saturday, and came home with four tomato plants (please oh please let this be a better season than last), yet another ornamental grass I'll stick somewhere out front, a hardy begonia and an epimedium, both ostensibly shade-lovers, for the dim recesses of the back yard, plus a sweet little birdhouse-on-a-stick garden sculpture/ornament thingy.


The Eastmoreland Garden and Woodstock sales were low key, laid back, and laden with bargains. Not so the one at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden; cars were parked up and down 28th Avenue, and the Reed lot across the street was filled. On Sunday, I dragged Jer back there, along with our friends Jen and Drew, who were visiting from the Bay Area. This time I took my camera, because the rhodies and azaleas were just about at their peak.


Crystal Springs Lake, a.k.a. the duck pond -- a marvelous understatement -- is a year-round waterfowl habitat. This time of year, the duckling and gosling population is blossoming as well. I especially love the wood duck chicks, which are as exquisitely marked as their parents.


Jen's lovely daughter Laura, who goes to Reed, came over for Mother's Day brunch. Jer made strawberry and toasted-almond pancakes, and champagne was poured.


So, here's to moms, including mine, who was very much in my thoughts last weekend. She had an incredible green thumb, and I've inherited her love of gardening, among many other things. Yes, that's me in the picture; it was cold in Chicago in December 1947.

Birds in the 'hood

I took advantage of my new camera's super zoom to catch these exotic creatures in their native habitat. Flamingos in Oregon; who knew? The vulture, I assume, is a leftover from Hallowe'en; if not, I wonder about the folks in that house.

Speaking of avian leftovers, Chef Jerub tried a new chicken recipe a couple of nights ago. It turned out to be an exciting evening at Casa Jereva. You stuff herbs under the skin and roast the bird at a very high temperature in a preheated pan. Our smoke alarms went crazy, the oven was coated with charred grease, and our enameled roasting pan will never be the same.

The recipe is an adaptation of a Zuni Cafe dish, and would be far less disruptive to prepare in a restaurant kitchen. If you'd like to trash your house, or perhaps have an industrial-strength exhaust fan in your kitchen, it was published in The Oregonian food section on October 9th, 2oo7 (the link will only work for six months from pub date) and in Judy Rodgers' Zuni Cafe Cookbook. We annotated the clipping with the appropriate warnings, and probably won't risk making it again, at least not in our house, which still smells like hot chicken fat. It was delicious, though. And heating up the leftovers won't be nearly as traumatic.

New camera; please bear with me

After months of research, dithering, and soul-searching, I gave in and bought a new digital camera. It's a Canon Powershot S5 IS. My old one's a Powershot also, and served me well for six or seven years. But I kept bumping up against its limitations, especially zoom-wise. Also, I knew that my low-light photos and less-than-steady hand would benefit from image stabilization, which is fairly standard in today's generation of cameras but wasn't even a gleam in the eye of Canon's R&D department when my S20 came out. And... I'll stop rationalizing now. I love this camera.

I took it on its first outing, with a couple of birding friends, to the Crystal Springs Rhody Garden, and put the zoom through its paces. The great blue heron was all the way across the lake. The squirrel was maybe 20 feet up a tree, the wood duck about as far away. The cormorant on the pilings and the crows perched overhead, I know from previous futile efforts, would have been nearly invisible without whatever fraction of the 12x zoom I deployed to frame them. I love the feeling of-lots-more-zoom-if-I-need-it; I can actually pull back and hold some in reserve. Yowzah. I admit it; I'm a zoom slut.

At the other end of the focal length, the macro's pretty impressive, too. I know nothing about image stabilization technology, but it seems to kick in, like Superman, wherever it senses it's needed. I got totally into this gorgeous red amaryllis. Literally. Must avoid getting pollen on lens in the future.

Adorable-cat portraits, a significant portion of my repertoire, have turned out fine so far. Note Abbie's festive bandage. A little late for the holidays, alas; he had an ingrown claw extracted from his paw-pad, poor baby, and managed to tolerate the Santa-hat sock dealie long enough for a couple of humiliating photographs.

So. This is the last big-ticket solely-for-my-own pleasure item I'm going to buy this year. Stop looking at me like that, China Rose.

Pretty swift

For the last 25 years, a huge flock of migrating Vaux's swifts has roosted for several weeks in the Chapman School chimney in Northwest Portland. Toward sunset they gather for the night and spiral into the chimney. The peak period is now, in mid-September. I thought this phenom -- "the Chapman School swifts" is how everybody refers to it -- was so cool when I first heard about it, shortly after we moved to town. Jer and I finally got off our butts the other night and drove over to see it for ourselves.

I'm bad at estimating crowd sizes but, according to Portland Audubon, the Chapman School colony typically numbers 10,000 to 15,000 birds. Some years the count's been higher than 30,000. I took these photos at highest resolution so you should be able to discern a few hundred swift-like specks if you click to enlarge them.

I've seen masses of birds take to the air before; it's always a dramatic sight. But the Chapman display was particularly striking because of the chimney as a focal point and the swirling aerobatics that accompanied the ultimate funneling-down. The drama was enhanced by a hawk (Cooper's?) that perched on the rim of the chimney itself and, before too long, snagged a swift for supper. Oops; make that 9,999. A while later, another raptor rocketed through the swarm but emerged empty-taloned and sat watching from the tip of a distant tree. Raptors put in an appearance most evenings during the season, according to the Audubon Society. They're no dummies; for predators, this is like buffet time on a cruise ship.

The surrounding scene, a gaggle of non-migrating humans numbering 200 or so, was quintessential Portland -- young parents picnicking with their kids, hipsters and skateboarders, Tilley-hat-wearing birders and old farts like us -- low-key, friendly and appreciative.

It was a misty evening, on the verge of rain, and after the last of the swifts had spun themselves into the chimney, Jer and I were happy to get back in the car and turn on the heat til we dried off and warmed up a little. What a contrast with the day before, when temps were in the high 80s and we'd closed the house and lowered the blinds to keep it cool. We cruised down NW 21st Ave. and, after turning thumbs down on a 40-minute wait at Cafe Mingo, ended up at Serratto a block or two away. I'd never even heard of the place, though it turned out that the Food Dude gave it a pretty good review two years ago. We'd give it a couple of stars, too. I didn't even considering ordering something with wings for dinner.

Whoosh

The last couple of weeks have flown by. How, with no regular job obligations and precious few fixed commitments of any kind, can life possibly be so busy? Just for the record, here's a blessedly brief summary of what's been going on:

--A birthday party for a friend who volunteers at a homeless shelter downtown. He requested socks for his clients in lieu of gifts for himself. You go, Richard.

-- The Woodstock neighborhood picnic, featuring lion dancers and belly dancers. Pictured is Grace, who sunlights as a master gardener and (our) landscape designer.

-- A "Chef in my Garden" benefit for Growing Gardens hosted by "Tomato Bob" and his wife Marilyn at their home in Oregon City. The chef was Adam Sappington, owner of The Country Cat restaurant. Perfect weather, delicious food, copious wine, interesting dining companions. Bob grows four dozen varieties of tomatoes, and we all went home with a few.

-- An Underground Portland walking tour featuring glimpses of the so-called Shanghai Tunnels and other aspects of the city's seamy past and present. I've wanted to do some of these walks since before we moved here; we're signed up for a couple more, with different itineraries, in the next few weeks.

-- A visit with our friends Mona and Rob, whom we first met when they moved to Sea Ranch. Mona and I bonded immediately over our mutual homesickness for Berkeley. They've since relocated to Sebastopol, though in retrospect it's clear that they should have moved to Portland instead. We did the full-out tour guide number: The Chinese Garden, Contemporary Craft Museum (with side excursion -- Rob's a copper-lamp artisan -- to our friend Larry's lighting store, Lumen Essence, on the North Park Blocks), Powell's, windowshopping in the Pearl, the Japanese Garden, the Rose Garden, and the farmers' market, plus dinner at home one night and dinner out the next.

-- Keb' Mo' and Robert Cray in concert at the Zoo. The music was fine, the crowd mellow, and the weather, again, was perfect. I spotted one friend in the crowd, and Jer ran into another; an increasingly frequent indication that we're getting to know more people around town. But the highlight of the evening, as far as I'm concerned, was the pre-show raptor fly-by. I was standing in the concession line at the time, and almost dropped my noodles along with my jaw. The experience of a bald eagle zooming by at eye level was, in itself, worth the price of admission.

Grizzly Man and Grisly Men

We went to OMSI to see Bodyworlds, the controversial exhibit of partially-dissected and "plastinated" bodies, the day after it opened. I thought it was beautifully done and emotionally affecting as well as educational. I hadn't known, for instance, that the left lung is considerably smaller than the right, with only two lobes. That's how they get the heart to fit in; duh.

There's nothing grisly, really, about these men (and a few women). But we'd seen Werner Herzog's bizarre and wonderful film Grizzly Man a couple of days before, and I couldn't resist the juxtaposition.

Now that Jer and I are both retired, several days can go by without any official obligations on the calendar. That makes the moderately "busy" times seem downright hectic by comparison. Here's some of what's been going on the last week and a half:

A Willamette River cruise on the sternwheeler Rose with Mike Houck, Bob Sallinger, a bunch of Portland Audubon members, plus some politicos and media people. Mike is co-author of Wild in the City and the go-to guy, locally, for urban ecology issues and the politics associated therewith. Bob is deeply involved in preserving the peregrine falcon population, especially the families that roost on and under the bridges of Portland. The focus of our trip was Ross Island, which may or may not become a city-managed park/wildlife preserve. We saw a bald eagle nesting, several ospreys, and two or three great blue heron nests, one with four young in it. It was a glorious day on the river, and a perfect way to celebrate Great Blue Heron Week (the heron is Portland's official city bird). Here's Mike doing, perhaps, his Great Blue Heron impression.

A Slow Food potluck in the wilds of North Portland. Once again, a location that looked remote and improbable on the map turned out to be a charming pocket o' Portland that we wouldn't have dreamed existed, less than 20 minutes away. About a dozen people attended, all smart, articulate, progressive, and passionate about food. One woman turned out to be an acquaintance from Sea Ranch whom -- this is going to sound so jet-setty -- we last ran into in Athens, at the Acropolis. (Coincidentally, our friends Rich and Dean, whom we were traveling with at the time, are visiting Portland now; we spent last evening with them.) We're going to try to do these potlucks monthly; everybody had such a good time. And of course all the food was delicious.

A walking tour of midcentury modern architecture, including buildings on the Reed campus and homes in the adjacent Reedwood neighborhood. The outing was one in a series of walks sponsored by the city transportation department; the idea is to get us out of our cars and onto our feet or bikes. It was semi-interesting, although many of the buildings struck me as undistinguished and occasionally even tacky. Gerrie and Steve, who live in their own mid-century modern, walked with us, and Gerrie did a great job with photos and descriptions of some of the better stuff.

The Northwest Quilters annual show downtown, near Portland State. I entered two older pieces, A Few New Sushi (Like, I Know Sushi) and Bamboo IV. I made Sushi for my California guild's challenge, "Something Fishy," several years ago. It also fit this year's challenge theme, "It's What's for Dinner," so I figured why not. Bamboo IV is the latest in a series inspired by the calligraphy of Toko Shinoda; I worked on it during a semester-long workshop with Jeannette Meyer, and it was juried into last year's OCAC student show.

The Columbia Stitchery Guild exhibit at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center. The show runs through next weekend. I'll refer you to Terry's and Gerrie's blogs for photos and more complete descriptions. Two of my pieces are on display. One, Occasional Sunbreaks, looks great. The other, Crop Circles, doesn't. It looked fine pinned to my design wall. But suspended from a hanging rod, the lovely hand-dyed wool sags where it's not heavily quilted, and the merciless overhead lighting emphasizes each bump and wrinkle. Oh well.

A house concert in NE featuring our friend Zoe Kaplan and three other talented young singer-songwriter-musicians. This is a monthly series that's been going on for several years. The ticket price ($25) includes an ample and well-prepared buffet dinner. We've been to several, but this was the first one that Libbi and David were able to attend; it was good to see them there, to hear Zoe perform again, and to meet some more nice people.

Dinner with our Sea Ranch friends Dean and Rich, and their Portland friends Juanita and Dale, who live just a few minutes from us. It turned into a small birthday celebration for Juanita; Dale's son Tony and his fiancee Amy showed up, as well as an old family friend. Everyone was delightful company, the food was terrific, and the conversation flowed like wine, which also flowed. We'd missed Rich and Dean a lot, and it was great to spend time with them and their old friends.

The next couple of weeks are also studded with events and obligations, including -- oh joy -- jury duty. Sometimes I worry about becoming one of those old ladies for whom postal delivery is the high point of the day: "Oh look, the mail's come!" But I don't think I'm at that point quite yet.