neighbor of the week

Not far from our house is a steep hillside, and of course some people like to build houses on them. One such house stabilizes their slope with very large rocks. (For scale, these rocks are probably a foot or two across.)

There is what looks like a kind of pressure-release pipe near the bottom of the slope, with a styrofoam cap duct-taped on. Some wise guy (not me! :-) added a few extra touches for a stylish look.

Bonus neighbor-of-the-week:

japanese garden

Visiting Portland’s Japanese Garden with Bo & Amber and Chris.

(For our earlier visits to the Japanese Garden, see this post and this one too.)

extreme closeup!

Spring has fully sprung here in Portland. with our dogwood and cherry trees in bloom. On a neighborhood walk with the pups I noticed the tiny little daisies scattered through the lawns, so I took out the camera and turned on the “macro” setting for an extreme closeup.

Those little daisies inspired me to look for more tiny things during the rest of that walk.

Here’s an experiment in 3D: cross your eyes until the two pictures merge.

It’s amazing what you can miss if you don’t take the time to look up close.

Returning home, I finished up with a pair of final extreme closeups — the dogwood and cherry blossoms right outside my own front door.

how to use a chair

In today’s installment of our ongoing lecture series, here are six additional uses for a chair:

The yoga “cat pose”, demonstrated by an expert:

(This last chair was previously seen in this blog almost two years ago, here.)

out and about

Typical sights out and about walking the dogs down by the river and through the neighborhood.

Hank: “I can has treats?”

Mount Saint Helens in the distance, seen over the Ross Island Bridge

Spring may not have fully spung yet, but it’s definitely springing.

The aerial tram seen above the Ross Island Grocery, a great little deli with a long history.

One of my favorite things about our early 1900’s neighborhood: the sidewalk makers’ marks.

These embedded marks are so old that they’ve nearly weathered away. But even the slightest indentation retains that little bit of extra moisture that lets the moss thrive (extreme close-up!)

Having a great time, wish you were here!