Forecast: A Shower

Progress on the remodel this week has been undramatic but significant. The waterproof shower pan liner, which we tested overnight to verify that it is, indeed, watertight, went in Monday. Had it failed, we would have awakened to the telltale drip... drip in the guest room downstairs.

Yesterday the liner vanished under a layer of cement. Cement board went in on the walls as well. Cement board, I gather, is used instead of sheetrock in wet and to-be-tiled environments. Now we have a real sense of how large (i.e., small) the finished enclosure will be.

Today, the cement floor acquired a layer of 2x2 matte tile in four colors, which you’ll soon see echoed in 4x4 glossy on the walls. Designing a simple symmetrical tile pattern, I assumed that the drain would be smack in the middle of the shower floor, and of course it’s not. But that adds visual interest, don’tcha think?

There’s a cutout in the wall opposite the shower fixture where a recessed shelf will go. We spent a while today discussing with Greg, the tile guy, how to finesse the tile in and around that area. I have to be out of the house for a few hours tomorrow, and made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that he and Jerry text me with jpegs whenever decisions must be made.

Yesterday Steve rehung the bathroom door so it opens out, into the hall, rather than in, to the bathroom. The change was essential to avoid banging into the new shower door, but we should have done it years ago. Instead, we dodged that damn door every time we got into the tub, made bathroom rug choices based on what would clear the bottom of the door as it swung, and tried not to leave the door agape, with the toilet on display, when visitors were in the living room. It’s a relatively trivial fix, yet we lived with the low-grade annoyance for almost five years. Inertia is a powerful force.

Okay. The tile shower floor and ledge (where we get a preview of the glossy 4x4s) are mortared in. Tomorrow the walls. Then grout. That mere hint of color is promising. We’re entering “finish” mode now.

Speaking of color, as I skirted around the construction zone to put laundry away, the lilacs outside the dressing room window took me by surprise When did they burst into bloom?

Lessons from herbaceous perennials

As both of my faithful readers have noticed, I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been reading, cocooning, trying to keep up with email, generally feeling more like taking in rather than putting out. I haven't shot many photos, either, in the last six weeks or so. I certainly haven't spent any time in the studio, unless you count mending clothes and teaching myself how to knit cables. I've felt like an imposter at the last several art quilt group meetings I've attended; you mean darning socks isn't a form of creative expression? Maybe it's just the late-winter blahs, but my creative impulse has been at what feels like an all-time low.

But I have been going to school. In January I began a master gardener certification course, offered online through OSU Extension. We're about two-thirds of the way through; this week's module happens to be herbaceous ornamental plants, both annuals (the single-season dealies) and perennials (the ones that come back on their own).

In addition to 12 weeks of coursework, including lectures, readings, discussions, quizzes, assignments and a final exam, we're required to put in between 60 and 70 hours of volunteer work. Last Friday I logged a couple of hours just handing out literature at the Yard, Garden and Patio show. Unlike last year, when I staggered out of the Convention Center under the weight of a Meyer lemon tree-let, a witch hazel sapling, and the mother of all aloe vera plants, my takeaways this time were modest: a pair of $2 gardening gloves and an a-ha! moment.

When we first moved to Portland, I noticed several low plants with ratty-looking dark-green leathery leaves growing on the east side of the house. In late winter they put out inconspicuous drooping blossoms in muted shades of pink, purple and cream. Eventually I learned that they were hellebores, prized hereabouts as shade plants. Whatever; they seemed happy on their own, and I was glad to see something thrive on that semi-neglected portion of the lot.

The Hardy Plant Society had a major exhibit at the garden show, several tables of specimen plants and cuttings, with identifying tags. There was a lot to see and absorb. On my first pass through, I noticed some exquisite, tropical-looking blossoms floating in a shallow bowl of water. On my second pass, I read the tag: Hellebores. Wow.

How could I have overlooked these stunners? Easily; the flower faces hang downward, coyly, on hook-shaped stems. From above you'd never know. I wonder how long it would have taken me to discover their beauty on my own. Thank you, Hardy Planters, for the inspiration. Sometimes you have to go beyond the obvious, make an extra effort, place things in a different context, look at them from a new perspective. All clichés, but true -- in art and in life.

Yesterday was gorgeous; it felt like a foretaste of spring. I spent a couple of hours out back at my potting bench, transplanting and fertilizing house plants. The pushy amaryllis that died back to an inert bulb after its flamboyant show last winter has suddenly extruded -- overnight, it seems -- a pair of fresh green stalks. Plants know when it's time to start growing again. People sometimes need a reminder.

OMG, free orchids!

Despite the cool, wet weather, it's been another exuberantly glorious nonstop flower-show of a springtime in Portland. For whatever reason -- perhaps because they're such drama queens to begin with, but possibly because I'm finally learning to slow down and pay attention -- I've been noticing the irises in particular. Like everything else in the plant kingdom, they've grown taller and lusher than usual, eventually collapsing under their own load of blossoms. I've been going out once or twice a day with the pruning shears, snipping the toppled stalks and sticking them in a vase. For me this is the answer to a recurring dilemma: Do I bring all this gorgeosity inside, or leave it out there, au naturel, for the neighbors to enjoy as well? (This is not a problem with the roses, which are ridiculously prolific.)

Watching irises bloom might be a step or two up from watching grass grow. What an unlikely configuration for a flower. Does it really take all those ruffles and crenelations to attract a little pollinatin' action? After a couple of days the older, full-blown flowers curl in on themselves like little fists, and the tightly-furled buds further down the stem unfold, sometimes overnight. I've been doing iris micromanagement, clipping off the spent blossoms, assessing the stalks to see whether any buds are left, and rescuing new fallen stems when I notice them outside. I am an iris co-dependent.

Speaking of overachievers, there's a climbing yellow rose vining up the downspout on the back wall of the house. Last fall I had to lop off the rose hips because they drummed so furiously, when the wind blew, right below our bedroom window. This year, the topmost blossoms, brazen hussies, are peering right in. We have no secrets from the roses.

Meanwhile, on the east side of the house: orchids! I'd noticed these fuchsia-colored little beauties last year, but apparently I was looking elsewhere when they burst into full bloom. First they were buds and, next I saw, very elegant elongated oval seed pods that looked stunning in a dried arrangement. This year, though, I paid attention; it's so obviously an orchid, isn't it? According to my good ol' Sunset Western Gardening Book, it's Bletilla striata (B. hyacinthina), or Chinese ground orchid. I'm grateful to the former owner who, in planting them, paid joy forward who knows how many seasons. I'm also grateful that they're "Bletilla", with a B, which spared me from having to look through the whole damn alphabetical volume. They're definitely spreading, which makes me very happy.

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.

Send me dead flowers

I didn't know til I got congratulatory email from a friend this morning that I'd "placed" in The Oregonian's annual garden photography contest. Out of nearly 2,000 entries, there were five top prize winners and 20 to 25 runners-up, including this one of mine. They cropped it, printed it quite small and, of course, on newsprint, which does nothing to enhance detail. Here's the original. I took it in late August, when many flowers are drying out, going to seed, giving it up for the season. I think they're still beautiful.

Happy Solstice

I observed the summer solstice by showing up for jury duty. Jerry dropped me off at the courthouse downtown. It was a relatively painless experience, as these things go. Comfy chairs, no blaring TV, free wi-fi, a good book to read, frequent communications from the staff about the status of our potential empanelment (30 names were called, mid-morning, none of them mine) and, just before noon, blessed release. In the eyes of the law, I have done my service, and I'm off the hook for the next two years.

It was a beautiful day, sunny but not hot, and I decided to walk home, or at least see how far I could get before calling Jerry to pick me up. I went over the Hawthorne Bridge, along the East Bank Esplanade, and connected with the Springwater Corridor Trail. Wildflowers were in bloom everywhere -- purple, fuchsia, yellow. I saw ospreys nesting, herons wading and geese paddling off Ross Island, and a professionally-printed sign glued to a bridge support that said "You could be a millionaire... if you stopped fucking gambling."

Jury duty doesn't lend itself to photography, and I didn't have my camera with me anyway, so instead of wildflowers and waterfowl, you get a picture of a cool twiggy structure I found that has both moss and lichen on it, and another cactus flower shot. Oddly enough, this is from the same plant as the one that bloomed so spectacularly in May, but the blossom is twice the size and white instead of pink.

Looking at the map after I got home confirmed my hunch that cutting through Oaks Bottom and over to Bybee would have shortened my hike by a couple of miles. But I wanted to go all the way through Sellwood so I could familiarize myself with the portion of the trail that reverts to city streets between the Sellwood Bridge on the west and Three Bridges to the east. Plus I was starving by that point and realized that SoTac Coffee and Cream, which I'd been wanting to check out, was just a couple of doorways off my route east on Umatilla. Plus I get into this macha mindset sometimes where I just have to do things the hard way.

So, fortified by a double scoop of Tillamook's fine lemon sorbet and wild mountain blackberry ice cream, I finished my journey. I did a shade over seven miles in a shade over two hours, including osprey-nest ogling and ice-cream buying time. A pretty good pace, considering that I wasn't even thinking about power-walking. In the back of my mind I've been pondering the best way to get downtown and back by bike, and this was an opportunity to scope out a likely path. It would be a fairly easy trip, I think; it might take half an hour.

I actually wouldn't have minded being picked for an average-length trial. Average = a day and a half, according to the judge who greeted us this morning and explained the jury selection process. It probably would have been an interesting experience. I was summoned a couple of times when we lived in the Bay Area but, like today, just sat until they dismissed us. We were excused outright at Sea Ranch because of its remote location.

Really, though: Given a choice between courtroom deliberations and a long, lovely walk with wildflowers, birds, and ice cream to sweeten the last leg of the trip.... well, you know which one I'd pick. And not a jury in the world would convict me.

Three small joys

One of the less prepossessing plants that Grace installed in our garden -- okay, it looks like a rangy piece of grass -- decided to strut its stuff a few days ago. I noticed that it had flowered; from the living room window, though, it didn't look like much. But then I inspected it more closely, and holy moly, what a show. Worlds within worlds. It's gone now, but hopefully it'll perform again.

My Moo cards arrived, and I love them. I'd been thinking for a while about upgrading my business cards from the plain D-I-Y style I've been using since the advent of laser printers and perforated stock. On Kaua'i, my pal Art, Flickr God and photographer extraordinaire, showed me the perfect solution: Moo cards let you upload photos of your choice, or import them from Flickr or a number of other applications, crop them, and add the appropriate text to the other side. Voila; cards with art, almost instantly. You can use as many different images as you want; the more you upload, the more variety, obviously, and the fewer copies of each. One or two favorite pictures, and you get 50 or 100 of each. Like that. I had lots of fun using the cropping tool to select provocative sections of some of my quilts and favorite scenic vistas. They're about half the size of a regular business card, which I suppose might create some problems, but which I think just adds to their distinction. They print and ship from the UK; I had my order, in a neat little plastic box, in less than 10 days. I am so pleased; I can't wait to reorder. Here, would you like my card?

The retaining wall outside my studio window is in its full green glory. The delicate viney thing with tiny flowers is cascading over the stones, and the ferns are at their peak. Later in the season it'll all dry out and look not so wonderful, but right now it's exquisitely lush. I must get back into the studio, if only to spend more time staring at the wall.