9/30/2002 01:12 pm :: Saturday morning, 23rd Ave. and East Union St.

It could be the most urban corner in Seattle, a setting of mismatched buildings from different decades, a prolific variety of streetlights, improvised parking lots and a smattering of loiterers. On the northwest corner, a big old gas station/food mart (Richlen’s Kickin’ Chicken, one of the oldest businesses in the neighborhood) sits on filthy pavement under security lights craning in from every direction. On the southwest corner, a crumbling 1940s brick building with empty storefronts and upstairs rooms has been surrounded by chainlink fence since the earthquake in February 2001. Tall, narrow maples along the building look dramatic against the brick and the splintering upstairs window trim.

On the northeast corner, there’s a Philly Cheese Steak restaurant and a church. On the southeast corner, a shopping strip includes a post office, an espresso stand, a beauty supply store, a liquor store, and a small fountain plaza with neglected cement flowerpots. Busy, narrow parking areas thread among the post office and shops. A man was killed by police on this plaza last year after he dragged an officer with his car. One of the big cement planters was broken in two when the car hit it.

The espresso stand, which Tom and I refer to as the octagonal coffee hut, is a bright spot in the middle of the post office parking lot. It’s a well-maintained, wood-sided octagon, big enough not only for a barista and an espresso machine, but also for a pizza oven, a sandwich board, and two stools to sit on while you wait and chat with the owner. He’s a lifelong soccer player, with an accent and very dark skin—we assume he’s African, as this area has a lot of East African immigrant business owners. He often chats with us about our boxing workout, which is in a nearby gym, but he decided not to join because of his arthritis. Instead he found a local adult soccer league to help him stay fit. “I’m not as fast as I used to be,” he says. But I wouldn’t want to race him. He’s extremely trim and looks fast, in spite of his gray hair.

After boxing class, on our way to the espresso shop like good Seattle coffee drinkers, we cross the tiny plaza and pass by the fountain in the sun. It’s round, thigh-high, built of rough stones, and about the size of a backyard hot tub. A tall rock rises out of the center. Water cascades down its sides and splashes on a few plate-sized stone islands before tranquilly landing in the main pool. It’s not a great fountain, but worth having. Hey look! There are pigeons wading on the stone islands. They dip their bellies and ruffle their feathers to get their Saturday morning bath. Other pigeons wait their turns, standing on the rough rock edges of the basin. A bathing pigeon, soaked and disheveled, lunges off his stone and lands on the edge, where he grooms himself and basks as a waiting pigeon takes his place in the bath.

They look just like little people wading into a city pool. The fountain may have been designed to make the plaza look nice, but it might as well have been intended as a high-tech bird bath. It’s hard to imagine a better one. It seems to me that the bathing pigeons add some kind of optimism to this noisy corner: a touch of nature where I least expected it. People’s desire to beautify this plaza, to add a little something special, has successfully attracted the only form of local wildlife that would come near this corner.

Next week, we’re hoping to see a bald eagle trying to make off with the carved salmon on the fountain. Not too likely I guess. Th

9/26/2002 01:23 pm :: Additions to the reading list.

I've added two books to the book list page, if you're looking for suggestions for your next library visit.

I haven't posted any pictures in a while, so here is a picture of a recent backyard project. It's the raised flowerbed on the south end of the patio, where I've planted a hydrangea, two mini-rhododendrons, an eastern redbud tree, and some perennials, including three tiny creeping ground covers. I have such a weakness for those. You can also see the patio umbrella I've so enjoyed sitting under ever since we finished the patio in July. Look how brown our grass is! That's what happens in summer in Seattle, believe it or not. We get less rain from May to September than Tucson does. After September comes the deluge.

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9/25/2002 02:30 pm :: Rhododendron rescue.

I went to the Arboretum Foundation plant sale today. It happens every Wednesday under a bunch of trees near the visitor center. It’s very pleasant and the prices are about one-third lower than at City People’s. When I arrived, one of the many elderly lady volunteers was asking a 30-ish man passing by outside the sales area to leash his dog. She let him know that the dog should always be leashed because the Arboretum is not an off-leash park. The man’s response was 100 percent snotty. Rather than accept the fact that he was breaking the rules and had been asked not to, he mocked the woman for asserting authority and trying to enforce a rule on him. It was pretty excruciating. What a juvenile idiot. Is it so hard to say, “Sorry! I didn’t know that”? Thank goodness he had already leashed his dog, and he continued on his way without any cursing or shouting. I admired how the ladies quickly forgot him and talked about other things. Meanwhile I was steamed. I hope when I’m older I’ll have a similar ability not to take things personally. Especially things like this, which had absolutely nothing to do with me!

I bought a few hardy geraniums and other, smaller ground covers to go around the rhododendron I transplanted yesterday. This plant had been languishing in distress on the back slope, where I didn’t water it enough, and where it promptly became infested with root weevils a year ago, when I planted it. (I don’t use pesticides, so my plants need to be tough ones.) I read that rhododendrons can be difficult to water effectively because the water can go around the slow-to-spread root ball and never reach the plant. I transplanted this rhody to the new area I’m working on on the north side of the patio, where I can more easily keep it watered and mulched. I noticed today that the plant looked better already, after being moved and watered. Its poor little bug-chewed leaves had perked up well. If it doesn’t survive, I’ll happily replace it with a fuchsia. Maybe rhododendrons are only for me to admire in others’ yards, not in my own inhospitable one.

In the new area where I put the rhody and the new plants I bought today, I also planted some daffodils, irises, and crocosmia. It looks nice and will be even prettier in the spring when the bulbs come up and the new plants start spreading. This area is about 12 square feet. I’m going to put a raised bed right next to it to match the one south of the patio, and I haven’t made that task any easier by planting in the adjacent area before I build. As usual with making a new flower bed, I have about 200 pounds of dug-up sod chunks to dispose of somewhere and a big mound of soil from the patio excavation to (I hope) use. All of this will have to be moved in order to build up the bed with cedar lumber. Then the soil can be shoveled back in along with lots of new topsoil and compost.

I’m glad I planted today’s little area even though I’ll have to be careful not to trample it durng the next step. Seeing today’s plants helps me visualize the goal of finishing the new raised bed and seeing it all come alive next year. Gardening is really great for giving me tons of things to look forward to.

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9/23/2002 01:50 pm :: Can we bottle some of this for later?

I headed downtown today for an orthodontist appointment (I’m an adult with braces! Pity me!) and discovered that while I had plenty of money in my wallet, none of it was the right kind to stuff into the bus-fare box. Rather than choose a place to go in and ask for change for a ten, I decided to walk. Last time I tried to take the bus downtown, about a week ago, the bus was so late that it made me late even though I’d allowed plenty of time: it took me an hour and twenty minutes to go the three miles from home to downtown Seattle. Walking takes 50 to 60 minutes depending on my destination. Very few things stress me out as much as being late, and going downtown is a really nice walk with several possible routes.

One of my favorites takes me through the Seattle University campus, which contains beautiful naturalistic Northwest-style landscaping, a fountain plaza, and a giant Sequoia. It’s a Jesuit university, and the campus reminds me a little of the Jesuit university campus near where I grew up, Loyola University in Rogers Park (Chicago). That campus lacks the nice hilly topography of Seattle U, but it is set on the very edge of Lake Michigan and has a classic Art Deco chapel called Madonna della Strada that overlooks the water. I used to sit on its front steps sometimes with a childhood friend, Donna, and later with my college roommate, Eileen, to watch the moon rise over the endless lake.

The chapel at Seattle U is also fantastic, but it’s a contemporary design with lots of angles, varied building materials, and a slim, linear cross balanced on the edge of a flat section of roof. It seems to float against the sky and to give the whole building lightness. I’ve never been inside. I feel uncomfortable tiptoeing into a church just to admire the architecture when other people are there for spiritual reasons. As if they’ll be able to sense that a skeptic has walked in looking for a material thrill.

In the garden, I keep waffling on whether to wait for it to start raining before I plant a bunch more new plants. As the sunny days continue to follow each other like a string of gold beads, I am running through a million ideas about what to put on the dry back slope and in the new areas north of the stairs and patio. Those areas are empty and waiting along with a large blue pot. Because the new empty areas border my pebble-and-driftwood “creek bed” walkway, I want to plant little frothy baby’s tears at the edges to resemble watercress. Moving backward away from the edges, maybe some hardy geraniums with taller frothy-looking leaves. After that point, the two areas will be different, as one is sunny and one is shady. For the shady side by the steps, maybe oxalis, bleeding heart, and tallish ferns, with a fucshia in the blue pot. For the sunny side, I’d like to use strongly vertical plants with spiky leaves or at least pointed leaves that point upwards. Maybe I’ll try a few cannas as the tallest element, though I’ll have to read up on them first—do they like full sun, how picky are they, etc. Other than that, I’ll have to find other up-pointing foliage. I’ll probably use some irises and crocosmia, but will have to have some kind of steadier perennial in front of them for when they’re languishing in late summer. These are the ideas of today. By the time I go plant shopping, I may have come up with something else. Or if I have sticker-shock at the plant store. We’ll see.

I wish we could have a sun barrel to save some of this basking weather for January, like our rain barrel is going to let us save some winter rain for the dry summer.