Ciscoe's Yard Again

Today is Garden Bloom Day, and I'm supposed to show you everything in bloom in my garden. But I have a much better idea -- I'll show you what's in bloom in Ciscoe Morris's garden!







I was impressed with this place before in April and May, but it really shines in June.

































Looks like Cisco hacked back his giant rice paper plant. Maybe the fire department made him do it.

















After we stopped by Ciscoe's place, we went to my friends' house, where a mother robin scolded me for checking out her young ones.



Cute!

Upcoming South Seattle Garden Tours

Sunday, June 24 -- Beacon Hill
First Annual Beacon Hill Garden Tour ("Check Out Our Bloomers") will be Sunday, June 24th from 10 - 4. Begin at the Jefferson Community Center where you will be able to pick up a map. We have over 25 wonderful gardens ranging in style from professionally landscaped to native plants, family vegetable gardens, English and northwest perennials, and fun family yards and gardens.

Sunday, July 8 -- Georgetown
Twelfth Annual Georgetown Art & Garden Walk. From 10:00 am til 5:00 pm - With more than 40 sites, includes gardens, artist studios, live music, food and drink and tours of the Georgetown Powerplant Museum and The Communications Museum. Free maps available on the day of the walk at the Bank of America parking lot at 1112 S. Bailey Street. Corner of 12th Avenue S. and South Bailey Street, Seattle, WA. 98108.

Saturday, July 21 -- Columbia City
10 - 4. Tickets $6, including hot-dog lunch. On sale starting July 1 at Columbia City Parcel and Post, 3703 S. Edmonds St., 206-760-1617. Gardens in this Seattle neighborhood include flowers, fruit and vegetables.

My Friend Mari's Garden

It's actually my friends Mari and Andrew's garden in West Seattle. And I should have shown you photos of it weeks ago. I took these photos on May 28. The day was very bright, and I still haven't found the manual for my camera, so I don't know how to adjust the exposure. I hope to go back to their garden and take better photos later this summer. Anyway.

Andrew's a sculptor. He made all the containers in their garden out of scraps of steel that he welded together. They are my favorite containers in the whole world.



Andrew also designed the concrete forms for the patio area. It's not finished yet, but there's going to be a fountain and a fireplace.



I want an orange hose too. It looks great against this freshly blue-painted wall.



Bronze fennel.





One of Andrew's many sculptures. They're often military and/or industrial looking (though Andrew himself seems like a pretty pacifistic guy).









Andrew likes to sculpt guns and artillery out of rebar and wire. I'm not sure if I'm getting these terms right. My vocabulary does not extend very far into machinery and weaponry.



In fact, he has a whole arsenal of stuff like this.

Vacation

Does anyone else have trouble figuring out where to go on vacation?

I used to travel around quite a bit. I've spent a few years abroad, and I think I've been to 30 countries -- some of them nice (Spain, Turkey) and some of them not so much so (El Salvador, Ukraine). At this point, the countries I would like to visit are very far away (travel time to Argentina from Seattle is over 20 hours just one way), and I don't think I've left North America in seven or eight years.

But still, every year I like to try to at least go to some city I've never visited before. (And, to tell you the truth, I even get excited when I think I'm on some street that I've never been on before.) Last year that city was Baltimore.

I wish I'd gotten my digital camera before the trip -- all I had was my cell phone.

Here's the spouse in the staircase at the American Visionary Art Museum, a grand tribute to the lifework of weirdos with OCD (my favorite kind of people).



And his picture of me.



Baltimore was actually just a day trip for us from DC, where we spent most of that week. DC is a great place to go for a cheap vacation because you can spend your days checking out all the free museums. (The opposite is true of New York City, where I feel like I'm a longhair cat shedding money like fur every time I sit down for a moment to catch my breath.)



From the Smithsonian's shabby natural history museum.



After DC, we stayed on vacation and went to Oregon. This fake Stonehenge is actually on the Washington side of the border.



Then we went to The Dalles, a beautifully preserved old town in the Columbia Gorge.



We continued west along the Columbia and stopped at Multnomah Falls (supposedly the second-highest year-round waterfall in the U.S.). This was the first time -- out of many, many visits here -- that I had ever made it all the way to the top.



Our friends Chris and Lonny had just had their offer on this house accepted. I love staying out here.



We got busted for having this tailgate party at a Rose City Rollers bout at Portland's Expo Center. (The problem wasn't the tater tots but the booze, not pictured.) Luckily, by the time the authorities arrived, we were planning to head inside anyway.





And our last night of vacation, it turned out that a band that I had always wanted to see was playing in town. This is a terrible picture of the wonderful Klingon death-metal band Stovokor.



About a month later, we had a little mini-vacation in Sayulita, Mexico. Our friends and their cute baby had rented (or traded, actually, for design work, I think) a beach house in Sayulita, Mexico, and invited us to come hang out for a few days. Nice.



I've stayed in this house a few times before over the years, and I have spent many, many hours in this pool. Every time I go to Sayulita, I think I will never come back, because it's getting more and more developed, but I keep ending up there. Worse things could happen.



So this year I found out that some friends of ours have come back to the continent after a three-year vacation in Thailand. These two both look like they could have been on vacation for the last three years, but I'm talking about the guy on the left (and his wife, who wasn't in town the night this photo was taken).



And now they're living in Toronto. Since I want to visit with both of them, and since we have another couple of friends in Toronto (one of whom is listed in the credits for Snakes on a Plane), and since I've never been to Toronto, we've decided that's where we're going on vacation this summer.

Toronto! Why not?

This Just In: T-Mobile Out of Jefferson Park!

I just received this beautiful e-mail from Bradley Wilburn at the DPD. T-Mobile has withdrawn its request to construct a cell phone tower in Jefferson Park! Hurray!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bradley Wilburn
Date: Jun 8, 2007 7:16 AM
Subject: Fwd: request to withdraw app. #3005098

Good morning,

I just wanted to inform you that DPD will be processing T-Mobile's
cancellation request for the Jefferson Park site next week. Please pass
along this information to your respective groups.

Thank you,

Bradley

Bradley K. Wilburn, Land Use Planner
City of Seattle
Dept. of Planning and Development
206.615.0508
bradley.wilburn@seattle.gov

>>> "Madeline Chaney" 6/7/2007 10:45 AM >>>
Dear Bradley,

This email is being sent to request that the Seattle DPD withdraw our
application for construction of a wireless communication utility at
the Seattle Public Utilities property adjacent to Jefferson Park (MUP
3005098). While it is important to T-Mobile to provide excellent
coverage to the Beacon Hill neighborhood, it is apparent that our
neighbors do not consider this proposal to be the solution with the
fewest land use impacts. As we have indicated in previous
correspondence, we are reviewing some of the low rise buildings on
Columbian Way / 15th Avenue South as potential rooftop locations for
our site. In all likelihood, these locations will also have visual impacts
to which some neighbors will object. However, we are obligated under
our federal mandate to provide good triangulation for enhanced 9-1-1
service, and we must also provide a certain level of service to meet
customer demand in this area for seamless coverage, so we will have to
move forward with an alternate candidate at some location in the area
west of the park in the near future. In the meantime however, we feel
it best to withdraw the proposal for the site near Jefferson Park at this
time.

Sincerely,

Madeline Chaney AICP
Applicant for T-Mobile West Corporation
206 490-3823 Desk
425 346-0128 PCS
206 490-3839 fax

Plant Sale

This morning the architect came to the house to take a bunch of measurements, and we wanted to get out of his way, so we took our hangovers to Rosso Nursery.



I'm feeling so stupid today that I was having a hard time taking pictures. That's why these are the only two photos I have of Rosso today.



On our way back to the house we saw signs for a plant sale. They led us here.



She had great deals on everything. $1 for little containers and $2.50 for most gallon containers.





It's rose time.











I think my husband bought some sedum and stuff. I don't know. I'm trying not to buy many plants until fall, when the watering will happen automatically. July, August, and September are typically very dry in Seattle, and I don't think I can spend another summer doing daily watering (apart from the containers).

Back at home I'm enjoying things that I planted two years ago and no longer have to worry much about. Like these cannas, which haven't been hand-watered since last summer.



My new sea hollies still get my care and attention, though, because I am crazy in love with them.

Drink

Last night I gave some quavery testimony about my love of Georgetown at City Council's jam-packed public hearing on the proposed Georgetown dump and council member Richard Conlin's zero-waste strategy for the city. Weird how public speaking is always scary! I've spoken at so many hearings in the last year, that I think I assumed that I would be good at it by now. Oh well. The hearing went well, I think. Great turnout, lots of good comments about how we should try to catch up with Portland and San Francisco in terms of recycling, polystyrene bans, etc.

After that, I needed a drink in a bad way, so my Sierra Club buddy (who also testified, hurray) and I had a super-quick beer at Fado before I ran down to Design Within Reach to see our lamp at the NorthWestern Light exhibition there. It's the cute yellow one toward the end of the table.



My friend Luca, who made our lamp, was there, as was our friend Philipp, an industrial designer whose company made this bendable paperclip lamp.



We went to Virginia Inn and had double Maker's Mark Manhattans, the bar's specialty.



I like to go to Georgetown after hearings about Georgetown, because it's fun to see the people whose personal stories you just heard. So we headed down to Jules Maes, where I had one half-size Manny's.



Jules Maes is the oldest bar in Seattle.



As I'm sure I've mentioned before, it's supposed to be haunted. It sure looks like it.









We went to one more bar after this.



We got a couple of Knob Creeks on the rocks at Nine Pound Hammer, where the owner recognized me from the hearing and thanked me for testifying. He's sweet. They're all sweet. No dump!