Abundance

Remember Jason's hop vine? Look how much it has grown!!

Abundance. It is the only word I can think of to adequately describe summer in Oregon. Abundance of light, abundance of sunshine and blue sky, abundance of activities as the parks swell with people for concerts, festivals, and fairs celebrating everything from the Blues to Microbrews. Abundance of fruit- in the overflowing baskets at our neighborhood farmer's market, in our neighbor's cherry tree that daily drops pounds of flavorful Rainer cherries, in the apple trees, blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes that boast their colorful fruit over our neighborhood sidewalks. Abundance of life in our garden as the pictures below will attest. Abundance everywhere. And I am thankful. Summertime in Oregon is worth the wait.

One of our tomato plants is about to burst with golden tomotoes...not to mention it has almost reached our dining room windows.

Remember those sunflower seeds we planted back in March? No sunflowers yet, but they have already passed me by (which isn't saying much except that they are now over five feet tall!).

Thank you to Jason for painting our cozy attic bedroom a cheery pale bluish/gray with an accent wall in a dark chocolate brown. It looks much better in person than this picture gives credit...but you get the idea.

Cousins come to Town!

Jason and Aunt Gretchen get Molly settled in for a bike trip to Trader Joes for some ICE CREAM!!!

The rest of the cousins hang together on the back of Uncle Jason's bike (aka. "Extracycle").

Molly shows off her helmet AND her beautiful eyes.

Summer breakfast on the front porch...yes, to those Southerners out there, we ARE wearing fleece jackets IN JULY, thank you very much. Today's forcast: 75 degrees and sunny. yeah, baby.

Happy Fourth of July! (on the 5th that is...)

It is 68 degrees and cloudy outside today making it seem a bit surreal that the 4th of July was just yesterday. Urban legend around Portland is that it always rains on the Fourth only to give way to our glorious sunny, low humidity summer. While the weather has been quite glorious the last two weeks, legend proved true and brought gray skies and cool temps to our July 4th weekend. While the bathing suits were not out, the fireworks were...and in abundance. Our neighbors filled the sidewalks and streets lighting both legal and some quite spectacular illegal fireworks prompting our friend Kevin to remark that our neighborhood felt like something out of another era- 1940s or 50s perhaps. Children waved flags and the Portland sky lit up with lights and smoke for almost three hours.

Eleanor is wowed by holding fire in her very own hand. Mama wasn't quite so sure about this...

The eyes are looking a bit weary as Rynn lights up a sparkler at 10pm- hours past bedtime- but what are you going to do when it doesn't get dark here until ten o'clock!

Rynn pretends to be sledding with some neighborhood friends and future fellow classmates at Richmond Elementary.

Thanks for a great visit Terry & Cathy!

Penisula Park Rose Garden- Now I see why they call this the "Rose City"! Over an acre of roses of all colors groomed to perfection. The smell was AMAZING!

Summertime on Sauvie Island

Another magical Oregon day spent out on Sauvie Island (remember the pumpkin patch??) with Grammy, Pops, our friend Tricia, and our crew. We picked eight pints of organic strawberries, chatted with some very noisy pigs, and explored a lavender farm. Yes, the beautiful Oregon summer has arrived. Under a bright blue sky and seventy degree temperatures we picked ruby red strawberries and sat in awe of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens, all of which were visible from the strawberry field. What fun!

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggedy, Jig

Jason on top of Mt. Hood!

"Mommy, when you leave a place and move to a new place, does the old place become really special?," asked Rynn as we pulled out of Chattanooga to head back to my mom's house in Atlanta. I'm pretty sure that all my ramblings couldn't sum it up any better. Enjoy a few pictures of our trip to the beach, to Atlanta, and to Chattanooga- first time back since the move. As TS Eliot wrote, "Never stop exploring and the end of your exploring will be to arrive where you began and know the place for the first time."

(all our beach and Chattanooga/Atlanta pics are on my flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/27812539@N05/show/ )



And while we were gone, Jason didn't let the grass get too long under his feet. He climbed Mt. Hood! In the dark! More pictures of this little excursion to come.





Life has returned to normal, though, and we are all enjoying the warm sunshine and blue skies. Jason has resumed his role both in Eleanor's shows as "the fairy god-dad" (complete with his own wings) and as the official teepee builder in the backyard. What's a man to do without his girls except go climb mountains in the dark??

Beachin' It

view from our back porch, photo taken by Clay Morrissett

I've been on vacation- still am, actually- but last week I was truly on vacation from my computer, my cell phone, my washing machine, and most other obligations outside of hanging out with my family at the beach in South Carolina. It was wonderful. If I can figure out how to connect my camera to my mom's computer I'll post some pictures; otherwise, the pictures will have to wait until we are back in Portland.
While we were in Folly Beach, SC I found myself thinking a lot about time- its passing, its space in the present, and its quickly coming as the future becomes the present. As a novel whose first line gains more meaning and is infused with more layers of significance as the story progresses, so the many memories of beach trips gone by filled my mind and gained a new sweetness as I experienced another beach chapter in our lives. We had an unbelievable house which was on a narrow strip of Folly Beach- called the "wash out" because it is precisely that, a washed out strip of a barrier island. From the front porch of our house we could see the pounding waves and from the back porch we could watch the quiet beauty of the marsh as the sun set in the West. The dramatic contrast of these landscapes had very different emotional effects. Jason and I enjoyed contrasting the incessant pounding and unending energy of the ocean with the slow, gentle change of the marsh. Both are repetitive, cyclical, and dramatic and yet, while one bursts with energy, the other brings a quiet peace.
I finished a book this week called OUT STEALING HORSES by Per Petterson. At first I didn't really think I enjoyed the book, but during the course of the week I found that it provided insight into my own life. Petterson describes the landscape saying, "Each movement through the landscape took color from what came afterwards and cannot be separated from it." While he is describing the forests of Norway, Petterson might as well be describing a sunset over the South Carolina low country. As the pink glow slowly grows and the egrets begin to take flight in the sunset, the marsh seems to add layer upon layer of life and color.
Watching my children jump in the waves and build drip castles on my legs or seeing my mom and her sisters laugh and tell stories I felt the repetitiveness of time- the moving forward and yet, like the marsh, the present gaining meaning from all that has gone before. There is life in these coastal islands, life which binds our family together in all our memories past and the new ones yet to be made.
And Clay...thanks for bringing back Grandaddy's beach chair. Love to all of you.