summer is leaving but I don't want it to go

For today, some photos from aug/sept. that I haven't posted yet. These are happy roses from my summer-long rose-improvement campaign of FOOD AND WATER. Who knew? Besides everyone, I mean. 

These are hops growing on one of the cables that stabilizes a telephone pole. I read somewhere that Oregon (prob. the whole PNW) is one of the few regions in the world where hops grow easily. They're so cute. 

Otis loves to climb trees, but he REALLY loves for people to stand beneath whatever tree he's on, so he can casually hop onto shoulders. This is not always met with delight, as you can imagine. (it largely depends on how big of a surprise a sudden cat on the shoulder is.) 

if only we had a wheelbarrow

Hello again. It seems to me that it has been a huge yawning chasm of time since I last posted -- echoing canyons of LONG TIME GONE. However, the calendar informs me it has been less than a week, so there's that. Thank god for calendars. (I guess.) You know what? Scratch that. I'm not going to thank god for a calendar. Thank god for seasonal stone fruit! YEAH! That's one I can get behind. I ate the most delicious peach today, a black apricot yesterday, and the plums are really good right now.

Speaking of nature's calendar -- I can tell that summer is starting to get restless. I always try to turn a blind eye, but after a certain point it's just embarrassing for both of us. I'm all hopeful in flip flops and a sleeveless top and she's all distracted and raining or blowing unusually cold wind. First it was the tiny half-formed acorns falling from the trees: half-formed, so I could talk my way around it --obviously some delinquent squirrel teenagers are vandalizing the tree! But now there are early trees getting yellow leaves (nooooo!!), larger acorns, the squirrels getting fat and sassy, spiders EVERYWHERE (don't ask), and of course the days getting shorter (sigh), and the moon has shifted. Let's face it -- summer's still here and having a pretty good time (although raining at the moment), but she's dreaming of Australia. I've tried begging, but it doesn't work. You get that stink of desperation and not only will summer stay away, but autumn will be saying "oh, god! do I have to?" and what you end up with is 5 months of nothing but rain.


this photo is of the actual screen with my actual camera.

BUT, speaking of summer and fun things to do -- Saturday night Bec, Martina and I went to Lents park to watch The Princess Bride as part of the Movies in the Park program the city is doing. I had to work during the day, but Martina arranged everything -- my sister and I just rolled up to a convenient parking spot and sat down on a provided lawn chair and blanket and ate a provided picnic. (Provisions by: Martina picnic provisions.) WOO! Not only did I get to visit a park I'd never been to before, but I also learned that Woody Guthrie lived in the Lents neighborhood when he was in the area writing songs for the Bonneville Power Administration. (26 songs in 30 days! so I doubt he was doing a lot of wandering around the neighborhood, but EVEN SO it's interesting.)

The Princess Bride holds up. It was very popular with the crowd (which ranged from pirates to republicans to stoners to goths to hippies to those dudes who work in offices, to families with very small children to teenaged boys covered in axe body spray (why, god, WHY?) to fencers to vegan strippers to the typical granola liberal. and their dogs) -- lots of people were quoting dialogue (I'll admit I found this moderately annoying, especially when they were ahead or behind the movie) -- the kids behind us were very concerned about the "monsters!" (R.O.U.S.'s), the biggest cheer came from "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die." (I suspect the pirates as they looked sort of bleary and bloodthirsty.) (not really bleary. They were mostly respectable suburban pirates, a confounding subspecies that deserves a post of its own.)

The weather was perfect. It's such a satisfying movie, but it's hard going, really hard going for everyone in the whole damned thing. I noticed especially quotes like "get used to disappointment," and "life is pain, Princess" and of course the glorious offhand lunacy of "if only we had a wheelbarrow." It's all just so perfect. P.S. I love Wallace Shawn as Vizzini.

The truth serum I took earlier today compels me to admit that I did fall asleep for about two minutes during the wedding, but woke up in time for lots of sword fights and running down castle corridors and inspired insults. It was a lovely venue and a fine way to revisit an old movie favorite.

what it looks like

I have so many things I want to blog about (news, non-news, delights, felicitations, rants, reviews, ETC.) but I have been crazy busy (for me) this past week and have not had time. I did finally get the pictures off of my camera, though, so I thought in honor of the last full day of summer (TODAY), I would post some pictures of what it looks like here in pdx in middle to late september.


lots of garden work going on this month -- here Busby is on the job deciding whether or not I'm worthy of another wheelbarrow of bark dust. (I was, but there was some serious head/butt-scratching negotiating that had to happen first.)


Blue sky! somewhere! Believe it or not, it didn't rain this day and in fact was sunny and beautiful within half an hour of the instant captured in this photo.


No rain here, either! I know two cloud pictures are probably overkill, but they're so pretty.


This leaf was on the ground -- a harbinger of things to come. I love the orange/green combo, and I love that the rest of the trees are mostly, for now, still green.


This is one of the chestnuts I was going on and on about two blog posts ago! Aren't they pretty? They were all gone when I went to the park today.


I have had this shoe (and its mate) for YEARS but never actually managed to wear them out of the house. I got a great deal on them and LOVE them because they have such classic vintage appeal (in my eyes), but hadn't worn them because they are so very tall (for me -- I realize people sprint all around in higher heels than these all the time, but I am not one of them). Anyway, I wore them last night and aside from having to negotiate unexpected stairs and a floor pitched for broken-ankle downhill MAYHEM, it went okay. I felt very tall, but relatively stable since these have such a sturdy stacked heel.

As always, more later. (threat or a promise?! you decide.) INCLUDING: why I want some sort of cannon or trebuchet I can use to deal with the asshats from the bar on the corner who leave beer bottles by my fence (hint: it has to do with leaving beer bottles by my fence) and seeking understanding as to why so many dudes in opera appear to be the kind of asshats who would leave beer bottles in front of my fence.

coconut woman (september girl)

(these pictures are from the past couple weeks or so -- most during my bookcase project, which explains the high Cherry Ames/Peggy Lane ratio.)

I have been trying to figure out the best way to continue celebrating summer even after the artificial season ender of Labor Day Weekend. (Today calypso music and Big Star have been effective.) I get that it is back to school and in a lot of practical ways summer is over. HOWEVER, (I do love me a good however), the earth is still tipped in the summer direction for the northern hemisphere! Summer's not really over until September 23rd and the autumnal equinox. Take that, local sad-sack-labor-day-end-of-summer apologist-newscaster! Oh, who cares? I'm taking summery September since Portland is always cheated out of a summery June.

So far, this month has been pretty good: I finally have a date for an interview (which I technically found out in August, but the hooray of it is still upon me) and I started Project Color-Coordinate Bookshelf which has brought me MUCH HAPPINESS. Well, the one big bookshelf has been pretty fun. The others, where size is a big part of why the books are where they are, have been slightly less fun -- but the project is enjoyable nevertheless. It's like a party on the shelves! Strange bedfellows, as a friend remarked. Personally, I love it. I think my big hesitation at doing this before was that I thought it would make it impossible to find anything, but I realized I look AT my bookshelves every single day, and I look FOR something on them much less often -- and it's not like my previous system was comprehensible outside my own brain anyway. Plus, things are getting a much needed dusting. (it is possible that my desire for practical order is being met at the library, so I am free to get crazy on my own shelves. Alternatively, it is possible that I don't have that much desire for practical order.) If I've learned one thing, it's that I really need to stop buying Penguin Classics from the 50's-60's at estate sales. On the other hand, I must find more of the Fernand Hazan Petite Encyclopédie de l'Art books, for they are adorable! (Oooh, speaking of groovy book covers, I currently have wallpaper #3 from here (go to downloads) as my desktop. via How About Orange)

There is a downside, and that downside is that straightening all these books has made me realize that something must be done with my out of control art supplies. (did I come across a book titled Something Must Be Done With Your Out of Control Art Supplies? No, but that would be funny.) The supplies are encroaching! It starts with paper items. Since books are made of paper, I think it's okay to shove other paper on the shelf -- which is fine for a while, but quickly degenerates to the mess I find myself looking at today. I suspect that if the earth opened up and swallowed half of this non-book stuff I would be secretly relieved. Anyway, it's a good project too, although it won't be as fun as the shelves. I suppose it's the sloggy, responsible part of September, but slogging that must be done. (my concession to the eventual IN ONE MONTH arrival of fall.)

Okay, now for some fun links since it seems like a summery-type thing to do, and as everyone knows summer goes on for weeks and weeks yet:

+++I love this post at La Coquette about watching Godard's Breathless for the first time. Not only did I also recently watch Breathless for the first time, but I, too, grew up in Florida reading magazines at the 7-11! (except in my town it was the Stop & Go.) I don't speak French or have exciting Parisian adventures (much to my sorrow), but Coquette does and she writes about them with wit and flair.

+++Posie goes to the Oregon State Fair. I love the state fair (although I haven't been in a while), and I love this blog. I'm so happy she's writing and photographing a craft book, but I also wish that she were writing a novel or a collection of stories so I could read more, more, more. What I especially love about this post (aside from the pictures and the goat hilarity) is the part about the horse arena. When I was there several years ago, I had a really strong reaction to that building -- it has such an atmosphere. It was freaky; I swore that if I closed my eyes and thought really hard, I would open them up and it would be 1919. (this MAY HAVE BEEN right after I read Time and Again by Jack Finney, but even so!) Oh! this post also reminds me of the time the National Square Dance Convention was in Portland; it was glorious and completely surreal. There were giant poofy skirts EVERYWHERE, like the city was poised for some huge civic musical.

+++Answer Girl has returned from her August hiatus with a new blog format. This year's daily posts will focus on books she's kept for a long time. I enjoy this blog very much, and not just because she sometimes posts pictures of her dog, Dizzy. (I am a Dizzy fan.)