Belly Full of Beans

Another rapturous morning moment spent in the local Garden of Eden, surveying how the midnight rain refreshed K & H's plantings. So I can be forgiven for grazing on some tender green beans while singing to cats and other Deva garden spirits? I'm keeping your Mojo going while y'all are away. There's plenty of time and many sunny days ahead to replenish your stock by the time you get back. Then I returned home to water the porch planters that were teased by the rain but got no love, and then polished off a few handfuls of gold and red cherry toms. I like this hunter-gatherer stuff. This was truly a Breakfast of Champions.

The tide has turned on this summer, it is really noticeable in the evenings now. Not being one of those folks who hungers for autumn anymore, I am hanging on to this cooler and gentler summer for dear life, the green that lasted throughout, the earth unscorched for a change. Maybe we in the Willamette Valley can slide slowly slowly into a two month Indian summer, some spicy notes, some golden hints in the trees, lots of southern sloping sunshine and crisp blue skies, liquid honey sunsets. No rains, no frosts, no permaclouds, no gray windows, not until November anyway. The tomatoes can last that long without frosts, the ones that were on their way to ripening before the sun fell away. I wish.

This year we are thinking about enclosing the porch with the kind of panels that come down in the spring, so the front porch is another room for all but the coldest winter days. Keeping the cold winds out, and letting the warming sunshine through, almost like a public house biergarten.
What else would we be doing out there in the cold? There are three home brews on the schedule---Rubus Maximus, a ruby IPA for our girl Rhubarb romping in the Elysium Fields;
Zephyr Golden Ale, beautifully clear and bright, but packs a wallop; and Bruno Bitter IPA, a dark and robust strong flavored brew with a handsome head. This Autumn will see us swimming in hoppy heaven, so if you are on your way over and hear Jimmy Buffett's live CD and people singing along to "Cheeseburger in Paradise"---you're at the wrong house. But park any where you find a space.

From my window this heavy gray bank of clouds looks like snow, as we used to say in Michigan. Coming from the coast, they look like waves and waves rolling in on the black sand. Two blocks over I can see the top of a maple tree already beginning to go gold the top three feet. This is a huge Japanese maple with small leaves that look like baby dragon feet, and it turns earlier than any other tree in the neighborhood. More accurate than a calendar, with black bark like wrought iron fingers, the tree hovers for a few days as a glowing lantern, before they all fall at once. Sure enough, it's usually the third week of September, and the other trees seem to take the cue.

Not such great weather for the Hawthorne Street Faire this weekend, however. Cool is okay, chilly and rainy is not. Dang. Lots of pedestrians the past few days, and the street renovation is officially done (fanfare) with new crosswalks that drivers still zoom through, and two more lights to snarl up 5pm traffic. I love it that the #14 is a straight shot downtown, but it takes 45 minutes during rush hour to get between downtown and 39th St or vice-versa. So let's add a few more lights...But I digress. Since the turnout at House of Vintage might not be what we all planned on, I hope once the sun returns this coming week, the newly arriving college kids needing STUFF will come here and stock up on funky with mom & dad's SUV to take it back to the pad. Forget about that Scandinavian Nightmare by the airport, don't go! Don't conform!

Keep the Local Love Happening, my brothers and sisters. Peace.

Absolutely Boggled!

Pulling myself away from the two boxes of BUTTONS that arrived this morning to share with y'all my utter rhapsodic bliss and new flowsy determination to launch the new money-making thing.

My trip to the Thrift Emporium yesterday was very worthwhile, and I browsed there for an hour, to "get a read" on the place and the people there, and the shoppers. I am now on the contact list for the owner/manager to call me, since it is nearing the end of the month, some people decide not to renew at the last minute, and they have sudden openings. The used record store that used to be two doors down closed after Christmas, and I think it is perfect for me to segue on in with all my vinyl and used books, since the place also used to be a used book and mag store. This is very exciting, dare I say.

And as my pal Jolie reminded me, look out yard salers, Laura will be blitzing you and making off with goodies!! Oh what fun!

But the buttons... Within an hour, I had started sorting all the Bakelite ones from the mother of pearl ones, and tossing the bone, wood, rubber, and metal ones in little piles in a flat box.
The mother of pearls began a nice cozy soak in some warm Mrs Meyers' and water, and the bed is layered with beach towels for them all to dry in the spring breeze coming in the south windows. (sounds like a great place to spend an afternoon to me) I've already been dreaming up the way to card some of them up to wholesale to stores and sell on my soon to launch Etsy site. I'm using them for lots of things besides fastening layers of clothes together, as you may imagine. Like beads, some sort of past life thing makes me value buttons like primitive money, trade currency, circulate and value, hoard then sell. I'm a crow, they sparkle, feel good in my hand, look good on a string, and I wanna just pounce and fly away with them.

Perhaps I'm being naive, but this feels like the right thing for me to be doing right now. The ultimate irony of a Worst Case Scenario being realized in January, and the screeching end of a 10+ years commitment like being dumped for a younger woman is, I look around and see only good as a result. I do terribly miss Linsey and some of my peeps, and the day to day intelligent and goofy fun we had, but almost everyone has gone on to greater glory, and that is a delight to me. I had wanted this to be the summer fer shure that I got out of there, but being termed was better, just more of a shock and adjustment period. Re-entry to my real life has taken me most of three months, really. And there was that pay off... (gracias, Spiritu Mejor!)

Almost everyday I sit down here and write something, either blog, essay around, business plan mission statement type of thing, or another list of story ideas. Almost everyday, I go outside and check out the tomato blossoms, pull some weeds, water herbs, smell roses, put in a new plant, check out my neighbors' plantings. Free Wi-Fi has hit my neighborhood, my cellphone is fun, the gym is nearby, I walk to the Daily Grind for some veggies. Late spring, great apartment, fabulous folks nearby, great dogs and friendly cats, grills in the evening, and I am so in gratitude that the push to reach here has actually led me here, where I dreamed and intended to wind up. Is this a mid-life thing? I think so. Two months ago it dawned on me I just didn't care anymore about a title, a corporate identity or status, whether I was promoted or passed over, listened to by muckity-mucks or unheard, valued and retained, or just a number and let go. It doesn't matter to me. It felt so good to let it all go, and be happy where I am, doing what I choose to do from here, loving my Portland Life, feeling more genuine than I have in .... years and years and years.
I've got 15 basil plants going on my back porch to plant in about a week, the tomatoes are staked or caged, the lavender and sage, creeping thyme and echinacea are filling out in the rock garden, and I found a nice Thai basil plant to add to the collection. And now the buttons...
Nothin' but smiles from me.

What I did on my Spring Vacation

Because I know everyone wonders what I do all day...

This project has the delirious combination of drinking corked wine, intense focus, immersion in details, more bottle opening, getting contributions from corked wine drinking friends (no stinking boxed winos, please!) and lastly, a comfy floating chair to swill away in and be insulated from static shocks and ever being taken seriously as an artist or sober adult. I found this on the Martha website....ha! No, actually, this comes courtesy of the fiends of fabrication at MAKE magazine via the CRAFT blogsite. Instructions for the wrap-around sectional are sure to follow...

Speaking as a spanking new craigslist entrepreneur, those archival copies of ROCK magazine from the 70's should be flying out the door and netting me in the high two figures...although in Portland, you never know...could go higher. I told my landlady that the heirloom tomatoes should bring in serious bucks, since they sell at Trader Joe's for $4 & $5 dollars a lb. She gave me that blank stare, as in "What the F are you talking about? You're going to sell tomatoes?"
Well, we don't have the acreage for a tea plantation, so zapotec & brandywine heirlooms are it for this summer. Does that really sound strange? Stranger than getting a job? Really?

I just found out my neighbor is opening a yarn store. I'm completely boggled. This is going on right under my nose, and for all the hours I spent knitting in full view of every passersby all last summer in my front yard, no one even mentioned it to me. Last night another knitting neighbor and I were discussing Portland yarn stores, highs and lows, and a third piped up that knitting is really hot in Portland lately.

Right out of a sit-com, we two shot him an eye-roll withering look and tsk-sighed him into a quivering mass.

We both threatened to teach him knitting. It might work. Like a puppy, a guy knitter is a date magnet. And then I could blog about his escapades with sticks & string. Another genre fiction category sparked by my marketing genius mind, metropolysexual knitter hipster vampire centaurs in Stumptown brokering business and marriages, crime solving and tentacle-ripping, time shifting and swatch gauging, hyphen hyperventilating, hard loving baby-making mistresses of sultanic mayhem millionaires, and all centered around the Central Centaur Community in South East. Yep, they're here somewheres. Lest I be considered a snob, Portland is the place where it all can happen and I'm sure it does, so someone needs to write about it. See you on the shelf at B&N.

SE updates

Well, we have to talk about Portland Nursery...

First of all, it's too beautiful for all of the pushiness of lattes in one hand and pulling a cart haphazardly across people's feet in the other. Browser hours need to be early, because when it's busy you have to know exactly what you want, what the Latin name is, where it's placed, where the tomato carts have been rolled to, or you will be gridlocked in rows of carts and coffee sipping oblivious shoppers pulling the staffer assisting them into tiny pieces. Sorry, it had to be said.
My neighbor Steven says we need to cut out over there on a Wednesday afternoon sometime and actually come home with everything we went there for. Cool, coffee's on me.

Another early morning hot item I want to enjoy is the cupping at the SE Belmont Stumptown Annex, where I discovered the amazing variety available, only because the main cafe was packed.
The buzz there is great, and tables are taken early by laptoppers, which is cool with me, I just wish they might share a 4-top, two singles sharing a 4-top, way Euro and better use of resources. Or, let's pop it overhead and do a loft space, even better. I love it there, and we all want to be there at once, not a bad problem for a business to have...

Hot new sk8r place on SE Washington just west of 82nd called "The Office", where a sleepy relic of the 70s used to be, Liberty Natural Products. That stretch of Montavilla is getting very Belmont, now that the theater is restored to showing current 2nd run movies. There is the anchor Lebanese restaurant, and some wi-fi cafes, a paper store, thrifts, and a farmers market.
A few weeks ago I spent over an hour in the Antique Emporium, with the familiar booths of individual merchants and one cashier station, but there's a great variety of antiques, mid-century, reproductions, sleazy kitsch, cutsey kitsch, scruffy furniture, shabby chic, and garage ephemera.

The Hawthorne Beautification plods on, with traffic even worse now with the added lights and one lane merging. Who's idea was this? Someone who lives in SW, obviously. The impact on small businesses here is severe, and everyone has "No Meters on Hawthorne" signs in their store windows. The Bagdad sidewalk side remodel looks great, but this seems to all be going on way too long. I want to have the usual Hawthorne stroll back soon, Spring is here already.

There's nothing like having out of town guests to make you see your town like a tourist, and remind you (me) how great it is living here everyday. The lilacs have lasted a month. Frost is a memory. The roses are almost here. The wisterias are to the gods. I can put on a wool sweater and sit outside with a hot bev in the morning, then by 4 have shorts on and sit on the sunporch with a cold beer. With lots of industrious activity in between, job-hunting, housework, weeding.
You know...

Diamonds Hovering in the Trees

Ending 2006 with the blindsiding episode of being laid-off, I began a furtive search for anything beautiful, shiny, glistening with potential, endowed with some gently hidden meaning just for me.
Opening my front door on a rare sunny late morning, I turned automatically into the warm glare from the south, and there were the dancing diamonds in the tree branches, glittering in waves like fish flicking away all at once. Unbelievably, a veil burned off and the sun strengthened, blinding me in mid-breath on the step, no time no time no time to waste anymore. I stood there for so long.

I'd had an intuitive flash of my next move even while still on the phone with the director giving me the bad news, but you keep your own counsel for a while, console them and be the good sport just to give yourself some more room and a pause (beat beat heart keep going) to finish the phone call, anyway.
'Take the money offer' has been the constant reassuring comment in my head, and after 10 days of pretending to consider my other options with the Company (there aren't any, really) I've begun planning the first few weeks of my Brave New Shoots life as a non-employee. I have so many tools, interests, a few connections, some ideas, big dreams and great stores of time ahead of me in this new Spring. Lists and budgets lie next to re-potted staghorn ferns and budding orchids.
Bare branches reveal the West Hills' lights at night and Mt. Tabor's shoulder in the early morning. I do not want to miss any of this anymore. I'm smart enough to figure out how to make this amazing opportunity work out for me, and know how much strength I derive from this oasis in the Southeast neighborhood.

This blog is about my absolutely sincere love of living in Portland, Oregon, amongst the urban tribes and various quadrant nations of all kinds, and how life evolves for those around and about who recklessly pursue themselves and their passionate whims of all hours. 47th Page & Light is the generating loft for my next stage of projects, including writing, web-pub-ing, art & trade, photography, travel & artifacts, reinvention, and collecting more ephemeral wonders of this river town.